Is It a Full Moon?

The belief in Fate, a divine hand, or just plain bad luck is encouraged and promoted by our understanding that call volume has some association with innocuous universal truths.  Friday the Thirteenth is a widely held bad luck date.  We adamantly hold that any shift during a full moon is automatically assumed to be both busy and filled with oddity.  That bad things come in threes and we just know that there are certain individuals that are a magnet for unusual calls.  And possibly the worst case, any confluence of the just mentioned idiosyncratic beliefs portends real disaster for us.

Just think, if we are unlucky enough to work on Friday the Thirteenth, during a full moon, after two bad calls, with a crap magnet?  We might as well receive Last Rights and make a down payment on a cemetery marker because the world is about to end!

You are chuckling to yourself, but quietly lest you bring down some form of retribution on you or your crew, because you know as soon as someone utters the phrase "it sure is quiet" all hell will break loose.  The same thing happens when you challenge any of these universally accepted truths.

How do we combat these assumed truths?  Should we even address them?  More importantly can we use them to our advantage for training, education, or safety?

Obviously if we believe these things we should prepare for them.  The full moon comes every 28 days.  Friday the Thirteenth occurs every year.  If we get two difficult calls can the third be far behind?  All of these things must trigger a response from those of us that lead.  We can use the coming full moon to plan for pending issues.  Training and equipment checks can be completed or at least encouraged based on these or any other belief.

Now I'm not advocating an immediate transformation or return to support for unsubstantiated superstitious beliefs, just turning negative belly-aching woe-is-me  mentality to our benefit.  Maybe you can see this in other avenues.  It takes time, it takes leadership, but the rewards are attainable with little or no cost.

Thinking, educated, trained risk takers developing strategies to prepare us for the future, or just a few officers using an opportunity to encourage learning and preparation.  Yeah, it just might work.  By the way, the next Friday the Thirteenth Full Moon is 6/13/2014.  Enjoy!