the inadequacies of job descriptions

At the beginning of his popular presentation for TED, Barry Schwartz outlines the job requirements of a hospital janitor. He points out that none of these requirements mention anything that involves other human beings, yet when janitors were interviewed by psychologists, much of their work involved human interactions and a degree of improvisation and 'practical wisdom'.

I was interested in the job requirements of hospital technicians who may be dealing with pneumatic tubes, and came across these job advertisements for a lab tech at Ochsner Health System and a diagnostic scheduling technician at St Luke’s Health System:

Lab Tech: Gross Room, Ochsner Health System

Duties: Accessions surgical cases, biopsies and autopsy specimens from various departments, and clients via Central Specimen Receiving (CSR), the train, pneumatic tube or courier. Verifies patient’s demographics, accessions patient information and test requested in Laboratory Computer. Accurately labels specimen containers tissue cassettes with assigned number. Assist Pathologist and residents in the gross dissection room. Maintains record of Gross Room workload and data entry. Records all specimen errors or discrepancies. Performs staining, autopsy specimen procurement under direct supervision by a Pathologist, Pathologist Assistant or Histopathology Supervisor. Demonstrates actions consistent with Ochsner Expectations as duties are performed on a daily basis.

Diagnostic Scheduling Technician, St. Luke's Health System

Duties: 7. Operates medical center equipment such as computers and software, phone systems, paging systems, intercoms, fax machines, copy machines, pneumatic tube system, and printers in order to perform the duties of the job. Accept change in a positive and professional manner while willingly learning unfamiliar tasks.

Whilst the job descriptions do mention work with other people (I have only included a section of the second job description), they do not explicitly describe the work that I am interested in: the adjustments, the ‘repair work’, the tinkering that technicians perform to get their work done. There are hints of this buried in words such as ‘record discrepancies’, ‘accept change’, ‘learn unfamiliar tasks’, however so much is left out. Although when does a job description ever really describe a job?

more tubes on the tube

I spent a little time, one evening, not so long ago, watching more YouTube clips about pneumatic tubes. I thought I'd share a few for those who might also want to while away some time in the rumbling whoosh of a few pneumatic tube systems.

Winner of the best catch-phrase went to Quick Tube System for their “If we can lift it, we can land it … and we can land it soft” film clip. The sequel proves it by landing a capsule on an egg. There are a few promotional videos, here and here, and several computer animated models, including this rather mesmerising one with a groovy soundtrack. There is a glass tube trip and an interview with Stanford Hospital’s Chief Engineer, Leander Robinson, who plants a videocamera into a capsule during the video. For a few seconds there is a wonderful split screen capture of the inside and outside of the tube, and then a tracking of the capsule simultaneously on a computer screen. Finally, who would have thought that there would be a film noir made about pneumatic tubes? Below is the film clip for “Through a tube darkly” produced in association with St Olav’s Hospital and Swisslog.

further tales from the underground

I have recently finished reading the chapter about Alfred Beach's pneumatic underground idea in Paul Collins' Banvard's Folly: Thirteen Tales of Renowned Obscurity, Famous Anonymity, and Rotten Luck . There is a wonderful section in this chapter which describes the opening of the doomed Beach Pneumatic Transit Company, 260 Broadway in New York City. When reading this passage, I couldn't help but recall the sets of several recently released films, so have inserted pictures from these between the text (any guesses which films?).

Collins describes how journalists and politicians arrived at an unassuming building for the opening where they were ushered down the back steps into a cellar.

However it was no longer a cellar anymore but a comfortable office, and a few steps down, guests found themselves in a room

“120 feet long and ablaze with gaslit chandeliers, spread out before them ...

... Fine paintings hung upon the walls, lavish tables of champagne and hors d’oeuvres had been laid out, a fountain glittered with its stock of goldfish, and sumptuously upholstered couches awaited the visitors; in one corner a piano was playing, its notes echoing through the subterranean lair … beyond the edge of this cavernous room, brilliantly lit up, lay something that no New Yorker above or below had seen before: a subway car” (From Banvard's Folly, p156).

One wonders whether these set designers were inspired by the evocative image of pianos and champagne and other treasures underground? Banvard's Folly is a great read, and one that I would recommend if you are interested not only in a good story, but also some of the economic, political and other social events shaping pneumatic tube technologies of the past.

fantasy post

Last week I mentioned a research scholarship from the Smithsonian National Postal Museum.

This museum certainly seems to have expertise in pneumatic post, with an online exhibition, details of a pneumatic post children's program and the story of a most wonderful piece of pneumatic mail with "fantasy markings". The markings "TUBE STA. / TRANSIT" were not applied by the Chicago Post Office to this piece of mail but rather later, mysteriously, at an unknown date. Postal historians followed various clues to try and uncover the story of this piece of mail, such as the style of lettering, lack of time and date, and the infrastructure of the pneumatic system in operation at that time.

The fantasy piece of mail reveals something about the social context of pneumatic post in Chicago during the early 20th Century; a little look into the past workings of a pneumatic system, through stamps and other markings.

Image of a cover transported in the Chicago pneumatic tube system from the National Postal Museum site.

the pneumatic underground

On the weekend, many buildings opened their doors in Melbourne as part of Melbourne Open House. It was wonderful being in the city on Sunday along with so many others on urban treasure hunts. After traipsing around rooftop gardens and coffee in Denmark House with friend Annie, I joined the queue to see the Russell Place substation. A tour promised to take all those patient enough to wait in line through a series of stairs to the main transformer transfer corridor, DC rooms, switch rooms and transformer compartments.

Photos from Russell Place Substation tour 2009, DSC_9694 and DSC_9660 originally uploaded by Boumba

Unfortunately, for a number of reasons, I did not have a chance to see the workings of Melbourne's electrical supply this year. However, the intense public interest in this site made me realise how fascinated people are by the 'inner workings' of our urban spaces. This led me to wonder about pneumatic tours in a city, in banks, supermarkets and of course hospitals. I know that during Atlas Obsura's Obsura Day, on March 20th this year, there was a tour of Stanford Hospital's pneumatic tube system by chief engineer Leander Robinson. What a great idea! It is a potentially fantastic way to bring together those interested in this topic together in person (who often chat online), as well as potentially drawing in a wider public to explore the magic of pneumatic tubes.

Post title from Banvard's Folly by Paul Collins.

pneumatic postage

There are tracks and traces left by pneumatic systems of the past, particularly postal systems. For example, there are a number of postage stamps in circulation issued in Italy that were used especially for pneumatic post (other countries allowed users to pay with regular postage). The Web Urbanist, whose post I commented on previously, suggests that "one wishes the engravers would have used the mechanics of Italy’s pneumatic mail network for their subject matter". Imagine a set of pneumatic post stamps of the kind that artist Donald Evans created, with miniature watercolours of different parts of the system ...

Perhaps a scholarship from the Smithsonian National Postal Museum might provide the funds for an aspiring pneumatic postal artist (deadline September 1st 2010)?

Images from artpool.

following a pneumatic capsule 2

IT&T - Office boy travels 25 ft. per second, originally uploaded by Shannon Coffey.

following a pneumatic capsule

How do you follow a capsule in the pneumatic tube system, during its travels around a hospital in one day?

Two of my favourite academics, Annemarie Mol and Jessica Mesman, talks about the limits of following actors, in reference to actor-network theory and a hospital ethnography:

J had read that she should follow the actor. But after following the medium care neonatologist around for a day, J came home exhausted because the man walked so fast. And what about the pieces of paper that travel from ward to the dispensary? J couldn’t enter the hospital’s postal system with them, for its plastic tubes were big enough for forms, but far too small for human bodies (Mol and Mesman 1996, p422 – 423)

I have been thinking about the challenge of literally following a capsule. There have to be other ways of mapping the life of a capsule as it traverses a hospital system, that do not involve being shrunk to the size of a pathology sample Innerspace style.

In a previous post I referred to a German video where a camera had been sent on an explosive journey through a pneumatic tube system. Perhaps another method may be to attach a GPS tracker to a capsule? Take for example artist Jeremy Wood's 'Traverse me: Warwick campus map for pedestrians'. The intricate GPS drawing is a personalised tour of the university's campus, compiled over 17 days of walking with a GPS device. The map has also been superimposed over photographs of some of the locations Jeremy Wood visited on his travels. Is this one way to draw a day in the life of a pneumatic tube capsule?

Image 89 or is that 68?, originally uploaded by pathlost on Flikr.

nonist's beautiful specimens

On previous posts, here and here, I have included photographs of vintage microscopic slides, but none have been as exquisite as the range that the nonist carefully collated on his blog, as sourced from a number of fantastic sites listed at the end of his post. I know that microscopic slides are not strictly related to pneumatic tubes, but perhaps there is some link between microscopic samples, pathology, Victorian science and medicine, handcrafted details or ...?


Images via the nonist.

A postcard from the Hellenic republic

In Stoic philosophy, pneuma (πνεũμα) is the “breath of life”, a mixture of air and fire. The term originated among Greek medical writers who located human vitality in the breath. Pneuma is the active and creative presence in matter and exists in inanimate objects, where it is called ‘state’ or ‘tenor’. As John Sellars writes, “the material world itself has pneumatic qualities”.

Were the Stoics considering objects ‘actors’ before the actor-network theorists? What are the hospital’s pneumatic qualities? How will the Stoics help in thinking philosophically, metaphorically, about the contemporary pneuma-tic system of hospitals?

The postcard depicts Kos island, where Hippocrates practiced medicine, teaching under the tree depicted in the stamp. Information in this post is from Wikipedia, Stoicism by John Sellars and The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy edited by Keimpe Algra, Jonathan Barnes, Jaap Mansfeld and Malcolm Schofield.