Musings of a Marketing Maven

Yesterday I was reminded that interfaces, if untested for a critical use case, can have potentially disastrous consequences.

In this case the interface was between the rubber friction pads at the bottom of a long extension ladder and the rain slick Trex surface of a deck. While cleaning gutters vigorously after a recent windstorm, my husband must have put that interface under stress…

The ladder slipped out from under him, and my husband fell two stories from where he was raking out the gutter. Fortunately, the top of the ladder scraped along the wall before its bottom end crashed through the deck banister. This slowed the momentum of Bruce’s fall, leaving him with serious contusions instead of broken bones (or even worse) when he recovered from the shock of hitting the deck.

Now he double-checks and backs up the interface before mounting the ladder.

A useful metaphor…