Street Smarts and Regulators

I grew up in a city just across the Hudson River from New York City.  It was definitely an urban setting of blue collar families who worked hard for everything they had and were ready to protect it.  My out of school education was always about watching out for the angle, seeing the ulterior motive and being able to spot the scam before it went down.  Everyone in my neighborhood had a story or two about how someone tried to take what was theirs or who tried to get something for nothing at their expense.  In other words, you were taught to be street smart, as it was the only way to protect yourself against those that wanted a free ride at your expense.

If there were PhDs given out for being Street Smart my father would have one.  Even as I approach being considered old as dirt myself, I am blessed with the fact that my father is still with me.  As he is getting on in years now, just turning 89 years old, and in declining health, he finds himself needing some outside assistance for things he always did himself.  One of these chores is general housekeeping.  Upon returning home from a stay in the hospital he received a benefit through Medicare – that of having a housekeeper for two hours twice a week to do general cleanup duties, the laundry and other various tasks.  When you think about it, having a person stay in their home with just a slight bit of assistance is much cheaper than having him stay in a convalescence center until he is able to do these things by himself once again.

Upon a recent visit to my father I was surprised to find him a bit agitated about being had by the housekeeper. My street smart father had been taken!! For the first two weeks of a four week program the house keeper arrived as expected, did the general cleanup, the laundry and even shopped for some groceries when they were needed.  The house was more or less in order and my father was very happy.  But the day before the house keeper was to come for the third week she arrived at my father’s apartment and asked if he wouldn’t mind signing what I would call the service received receipts for the next two weeks so as “to get rid of the paper work nuisance.”  If you are street smart you know where this is going.  So when signing day was the last time my father saw her he figured out too late that he was scammed, and he was really smarting about not seeing this coming.

My father is a fighter, however, and not to let this incident go without redress he called everyone he possibly could to tell them about this injustice.  He finally spoke to someone who acknowledged that no shows are a problem and that they would have to put another rule in place to verify services rendered.  The agency had initiated the signature rule to stop no shows as they happened quite frequently in the past but it seems now that the unscrupulous have found a way around it.  The agency asked my father if we would mind if a phone call to verify the signature and the service rendering was added to the routine.

This incident started me thinking about how regulators have to be street smart in the way they issue regulatory rules.  In my career I have had the opportunity of dialoguing with many different groups of EHS professionals and have often been amazed at how many of us consider compliance a game to be played with the regulator. The constant quest to find the angle or the loophole that will let us do the least seems to be high on some people’s playlist.  But the street smart regulator, knowing this search is on, writes the regulation in a way to make it harder to find the path to doing the least.  Thus a vicious cycle begins just as it is happening in my story above.  So, this is just a thought, but in this era of many in business complaining that complex and arcane regulation is the thing that makes business hard to do, you have to wonder if it is in large part due to the way we in business approach the meeting of the regulatory intent.  Am I being too cynical in this with this view of the world??