I Beg to Defer

The credit for this post goes to Paul's sister-in-law who lives in London, England. (I have to emphasize England so the Canadians reading don't get confused with London, Ontario.) She sent Paul <long time friend, now colleague, occasional loose cannon on deck> an article about the following proposal being put forward with the education body in the UK.

Education Secretary Ruth Kelly has dismissed suggestions that the concept of "failure" should be removed from school in favour of "deferred success". Think about it, this would actually raise the bar because eventually teachers professors would stop saying "F for Failure" in favour of "D for Deferred!" In no time students would be studying harder to avoid deferring.

On the business side, Paul's sister-in-law claims that at her office they coined a similar phrase “deferred employment” which translates into “You’re fired.” This aroused our interest within our own HR department and opens up a whole new world assuming that failure = deferring.

There are many places in society where we use the word failure:

Would this approach help us to avoid conflict? "I defer to understand what you are talking about?" Response: "Okay then, we'll talk about it later." Or even create procrastinators?

Create cliches: "Embrace deferring, we all must learn from our deferments."

Save lives: "He is suffering from heart deferment."

Alter nasty expressions: "Yup, his life is a mess, he is a deferrer."

Warranty Periods: The Company is only responsible for product deferments when the purchaser has submitted a warranty coupon without deferring.

Computers: "Warning: there has been a critical deferment in your operating system. If this deferment happens again, please re-boot."

Or create confusion? "Hello, this is Product Deferment, how may I help you?" Response: "Have I called Shipping or Quality?"

Create new self-help books: "Overcoming the Fear of Deferred Success" or "The Art of Deferment"

Insightful comments: "Deferment reminds us of our faulty definition of success."

And then at intersections:

Officer: Excuse me sir, you failed to stop at the stop sign back there.

Driver: Oh officer, I merely deferred to stop at the stop sign. I'll do it later. Honestly I have a coupon right here: 'good for one deferment provided deferrer embraces deferment.'

Officer: Yeah, okay, this is when I show you my "Deferred to get out of jail free" card.

Anything to add?

Comments

[knobody]

"boot disk deferment" bitter, me? you would think that after several hard drives deferring in his lifetime, my lovely husband would have a backup. but alas, he defered to back up our server's hard drive. that's why you won't see our bbs anymore when you click on my name. maybe someday it will be back up, when he doesn't have to work all weekend.

then here in florida we have to worry about roof deferment. especially since we are now officially six for six. come on franklin, come and get me. i dare ya! hey, it's only a tropical storm. i could sleep through those. i have slept through those.

defered alarms systems could pose a problem. i do check our smoke detectors occasionally (usually by spilling some cooking oil on a burner and subsequently filling the house with smoke), but if they defered to sound then there wouldn't really be anyone to sound off to. but at least we would feel better knowing that they did work....eventually. i'm convinced that car alarms are already defered. why else would they go off seemingly at random in parking lots? they were triggered hours, or even days previous, and are just choosing a more convenient time for them to sound.

[Carl V.]

Very funny! I read about this ridiculousness the other day...good to see that someone has a sense of humor about it!

Thanks for the site visit!

[meditative music]

You article is an eye opener to whoever reads it.