athena [16 / RSX-s except when i co-drive hubby's 330 ZHP]

PS  i was a bit shocked at the driver's meeting when no one challenged the comment about how corner bosses shouldn't be bossy and lazy.  personally, i don't agree --  i think corner bosses should take leadership responsibility seriously and should tell us what to do differently when it's needed -- sure, corner bosses should fix a cone right in front of them or run out to help if we're dealing with a clutter of downed cones, but otherwise, i think it's much more effective and safer when they're focused on watching for red flag situations and getting the radio calls right.   from what i've seen, working the course is most effective when we work as a team, which i find usually means having the corner boss stand where s/he can spot numbers and do less running, so if i have to right a cone quickly, i don't have to waste time looking at a number long enough for my brain to store it because i know my corner boss has "my back" covered in 2 ways 1) on the number and 2) that s/he's watching the bigger picture and will yell at me if s/he thinks i'm cutting it too close and need to get the hell out of there. 

so my two cents worth is that calling a corner boss lazy for not running out for as many cones as other workers is like calling a soccer goalie lazy for not running the length of the field.

I don't think this is appropriate in public

Cheers

Mark

Dolly Sprint (9/23/2008)

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corner bosses should xxx a cone right in front of them

I don't think this is appropriate in public

Cheers

Mark

reworded so that now you can focus on the content of the post.

This Sunday's event was pretty interesting. We had a good number of workers and spread them out well. On the other hand, there were a lot of cones hit, a lot of DNFs and red flagging, much more than usual. My observations:

1. There were a lot of very slow and very late _walks_ to pick up cones. I had people in front of me on the course on at least two of my runs. They looked at the oncoming car and continued to the cone instead of running the hell away.

2. There was at least one occasion when the red flag was left in the bucket, not held by anyone. Screaming "Red Flag!" resulted in a person running to the bucket, grabbing the flag, unfurling it... took a lot of time while the previous car spun and was stopped on the track.

3. It is very difficult to hear and understand several calls, especially when teh radio person is running and trying to talk at the same time.

What am I trying to say here? I'd love to have corner bosses to hold the radio and the flag and do minimal amount of running. They would control the other workers, report proper car numbers, make sure the cones are put back in the right boxes... and bring general sanity to the whole thing. At an event like this Sunday's it would be a little difficult due to the number of hit cones. But something that can be discussed and implemented, perhaps.

I'll admit it's a long working session and standing around gets tiring.  I can see if you had 1 cone hit down after working an hour, indicates it's not a hot corner so I don't think there's any issue if people want to talk a bit.  As long as they try to pay attention.  Missing a cone getting hit down, no big deal as your only human and didn't intend to leave it there.  I miss some cones once in a while.  But if its a hot corner, everyone should sure as hell spread out, pay attention to the course, get off their cell phones, focus on getting cones setup before the next car.  There's no excuse for one cone being hit down to cause a re-run.  If you don't do this, you obviously think you are different from everyone else.

That stuff is my biggest pet peeve.  Red flagging prematurely or some of the other things is no big deal.  Most of the time when those things happen, people are at least trying their best and still getting used to the worker assignment.