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Comment by philip1209 | Hacker News Reader

> Says Paul Amrine, quality assurance supervisor on this project, “Sometimes we go to work in the morning and end up having to ask our wives to bring us a packed suitcase.” [. . .] Man-hours, parts and resources, and a time-flow to a rock-hard completion date are calculated.

I had to do a double-take to confirm this was written in 2008, and not the 1960s.

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When you're in a specialized on-call role like this you know to expect the unexpected and I surmise they're excellently compensated for this level of knowledge and expertise on the playing field.

It's the same thing with some hospital support teams I've seen in the IT world -- it bewildered me that our EMR vendor wanted to ship someone out next day to drop a replacement hard drive in just because one of the discs that's been mirrored three times over has failed. We'd live with the remaining 3 copies of the same data a little bit longer, but they saw that as a possible safety risk.

If you've ever been involved in an NTSB failure report, you do NOT want to be the person answering the "so why was the replacement drive shipped by pack mule".

While it may not be pleasant, NTSB investigations are generally meant to be blameless, no? Punishment is considered the lowest priority, reserved for specific intentional violations.

They’re usually quite blameful, just the people blamed are often dead.

But even so you don’t want to explain to the boss why you tried to save a few bucks and caused an investigation. So the expensive but safe route wins.

It's vastly cheaper for them to helicopter in (figuratively, usually...) and replace a single drive when the stakes are minimal versus deal with cascading fallout of multi-drive failures and data/system recovery.

This level of support is common for most high-end hardware systems - all the big players do this, including IBM, Dell, etc.

It seems to happen more often than not in my experience that when one drive in an array fails, one or two more go within the next week or two.

-SOP when I did this kind of thing in the offshore business was to always have a bag with your kit and a passport in the boot of your car.

The first few times I called my wife to tell her I'd be late for dinner as I was on my way to Macaé or Penang she thought it was amusing. Her enthusiasm soon waned, and luckily I was bright enough to ease up on the unscheduled traveling before she really tired of it (and me!)

Why the double-take and reference to the 60s?

Likely the "wifely duties" aspect.

I do not see a reason to double take due to that. Asking your spouse for help seems pretty normal, and 99.9% of aircraft mechanics that travel abroad on a moment’s notice for emergency repairs being men, 90% of which are married to women, also seems normal. Even in 2023.

The 60s take is that the woman is at home, ready willing and able to pack a suitcase. In 2023 it's more likely she is at work, like everyone else.

This particular job may self-select towards a (high) single income family scenario, though. Or at least a highly flexible second income.

I like my wives at home.

Your spouse is incapable of going home and packing a suitcase to assist you simply because they also work? If you can't help out your spouse when needed, then you're not much of a spouse - regardless of your gender, income, roles, etc...

This is a ridiculous take...

Yes, people can't just leave work to rescue an incompetent spouse at a moments notice because they didn't prepare appropriately for their 24*7 on-call job.

My wife and I both lived this for a while, and we both made some pretty crazy sacrifices and trips to keep each other moving. We were equals and highly committed.

Be realistic - this isn't an every day thing clearly.

If you cannot help your partner during a time of need or emergency - then you're not really partners, are you?

Not everyone, but some can. Presumably there were other ways for non-married colleagues to figure out that situation. The author was talking about his and [some of] his colleagues’ experiences, not arguing for a position in the battle of the sexes.

The text is specifically referring to 'wife' - the underlying assumption (or fact) that the team all have wives. Not a single husband[1].

It's not about 'helping out your spouse', the 60s comment was in reference to stereotypically gendered language. It was not, and has never been, about 'helping your spouse'.

[1] Or enby partner, but the point still stands.

How do you know they weren’t all men? If that was in fact the case, would you still say the author ought to use ungendered language? Remember this is a personal experience, not a political piece.

I know it's a personal piece. I'd prefer if the author used ungendered language, but my amount of upset about that not happening is close to zero. I'm not the language police.

I do, however, very much object to folks moving goal posts on a discussion. OP commented on 60s language because it was gendered. Apply whatever value judgment you want to that statement, agree, disagree, whatever you need to do - but it was never a discussion about "helping a spouse is bad".

That was the point. Let's stop debating things that have never been said, we have Twitter for that.

This kind of commentary gets so tiresome.

The only time you'd need someone to bring you a packed suitcase is when you can't go home to get it, don't have time to buy replacements, and will be sleeping on-site. They're asking a spouse to pack things up after normal business hours, because they can't do it themselves.

It does seem unlikely that the airplane maintenance would be within reasonable driving distance of the house, the story would have been clearer and more impactful if they'd said "Fedex a suitcase overnight".

Understandable. It's a bit hyper vigilant but the sentiment is likewise understandable (even going by your estimations there could be exceptions to the norm).

That’s what I assumed but thought to be a little silly. Sure people-hours instead of man-hours and spouses instead of wives but neither of those are bad enough to make a comparison with how imbalanced things were in the 60s.

I don’t believe the original article was really a call out to the wife’s duty. Replace it with spouse and it seems reasonable enough. Too many unknowns to do a double take.

The author is also speaking from personal experience. It is totally possible that (for example) all of his experience has involved him working with other men and in all instances it was in fact, wives, who did the suitcase bringing.

I understand wanting to be inclusive but I think its a bit incorrect to police someone's memories.

What about them? Do you think the emergency conference call with Hostile Nation Airlines begins with everyone reading off their preferred pronouns?

If someone's wife is such a miserable person she can't help you out in an emergency, she is an awful person and you made a mistake marrying her.

Do you think an airplane mechanic is married to an arrogant, self-important executive who is far too busy for packing bags to help you out in a bind?

If you're a man with a wife, and you need your partner to bring you a suitcase, then you ask your wife to bring you a suitcase. There's nothing to read into here...

Agreed. And knowing that this is a regular occurrence, one should have a packed travel bag with them at all times (aka bug-out bag, go-bag, shtf-bag).

That’s also a hassle. There’s no reason to claim there’s a right way to handle this sort of situation without knowing *significantly* more about the specifics, which we don’t.

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