ORacle
Prom Night
By Douglas A. Samuelson
Spring was in the air. The sun was shining, the flowers were blooming, the birds were singing, and the two OR/MS analysts were beaming with pride. Darlin' Daughter, their first-born, was almost ready to graduate from high school. She had been admitted to a respectable college that met with Mom and Dad's approval. There had been some tensions and conflicts over the years, but now they were delighted and confident, except for one small worry.
The family had moved the previous summer, when Dad got a career opportunity he really didn't want to pass up. An added benefit of this was that Darlin' Daughter got separated from her boyfriend, who did not meet with Mom and Dad's approval. Darlin' Daughter had made new friends, but had not dated anyone else. Although Mom and Dad strongly encouraged her to move on with her life, it seemed she didn't agree. At the very least, Mom and Dad were pretty sure that, despite their objections, some regular communication between Darlin' Daughter and Boyfriend was still occurring. Now, with the approaching end of the school year, came the interesting possibilities of prom night.
Mom and Dad were sure that they had made their views clear. Darlin' Daughter had not objected. As the big Saturday neared, however, Mom, in particular, became curious about Darlin' Daughter's plans and was concerned about Darlin' Daughter's vague and unworried — too unworried — responses.
The morning of the prom, Mom observed Darlin' Daughter leaving the house with her car keys. The conclusion had now become obvious. Boyfriend and the prom dress had been stashed at a friend's house, and there was not much to be done about it without creating an awful scene. "Look," Mom told Darlin' Daughter, "I can see what's going on. You know what we think, and you're doing what you want anyway. I'll agree not to bug you about it if you'll just promise to call us a couple of times this afternoon and evening and let us know where you are and that you're all right."
"OK," Darlin' Daughter conceded sheepishly. "I'll call you this afternoon when I'm done at the hairdresser's — that should be around three." Mom smiled at her, mumbled something about squaring things with Dad, and wished her a good time.
Three o'clock came and went. Mom and Dad began to fret. They proceeded to call everyone they knew who might have seen Darlin' Daughter, becoming more and more distressed as time went by and fruitless contacts accumulated.
It seems that these two well-educated, professionally accomplished analysts had overlooked one small detail. There were two of them placing all these phone calls trying to track down Darlin' Daughter. They had two phone lines. Therefore. ...
Around 5:30 Mom and Dad called the police. The nice police officer who came to the house heard "prom" and "boyfriend" in the same sentence and immediately concentrated on trying to calm Mom and Dad down. We're in a nice suburb here, low crime rate, very few kids really disappear. If you haven't heard from her by noon tomorrow, give us another call. Relax. Don't worry. It's almost certainly just fine — which, like so many risk assessments, is very reassuring on the average and quite disconcerting to the people directly involved.
After the police officer left, Mom and Dad decided to go down to the dock from which the boat was supposed to sail, carrying all the happy prom-goers. Sure enough, they spotted Darlin' Daughter, complete with hairdo, prom dress and Boyfriend, heading up the gangplank.
Mixing their prayers of thanksgiving with the most dire pronouncements about what they would do tomorrow morning, they went home.
Of course Darlin' Daughter did come home before dawn, with all her significant assets undamaged, and in due course she explained: the hairdresser had run late; she had tried several times to phone Mom and Dad; for some reason the line was busy every time she tried; eventually they had to go catch the boat.
"And what did you learn from this? " one of Mom and Dad's friends inquired after the dust had settled and the smoke had cleared. This friend, as it happened, had learned a similar hard lesson himself, several years earlier, when he and his wife pursued each other from one logical meeting place to another at a fancy reception, resulting in missing most of the fun and meeting at last at their parked car. He had learned from this experience. As it happened, his wife worked near the Pentagon. When he heard the news about the 9/11 Pentagon plane crash, rather than trying to rush to his wife's office, he headed straight home to sit by the phone in case she needed to call him and ask him to do something. So his question was not just fooling around; he thought there was an important lesson about crisis management in there, and wondered what his colleagues made of it.
"One thing for sure," Dad replied. "When you're in crisis response mode, make sure at least one member of the team is always standing by, with an open communications line, to take incoming messages about what's going on!"
Doug Samuelson is president of InfoLogix, Inc., a consulting company in Annandale, Va. He is also an adjunct professor at The George Washington University and at the University of Pennsylvania, and an external research professor at the Krasnow Institute, George Mason University.
OR/MS Today copyright © 2003 by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences. All rights reserved.
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