We were in the mountains on a blue bird day, just coming off the chair at the top of Rampart for another blissful run, when we witnessed a novice skier twist her knee as a result of one ski tangling with a neighbors ski. She immediately went down with a loud groan.
The young lift operator didn’t see it (where was he looking?) so we yelled at him to stop the chair. He stopped it, ran out of his hut, saw that she was decommissioned, probably radioed to ski patrol and then headed back into the hut and turned the lift back on. She was a clear obstruction and couldn’t be moved so skiers coming off the lift had to navigate around the grounded skier.
My husband is a hockey player, and there are two consistent scenarios where I’ve seen him get really really angry. One is on the ice when American’s realize this Canadian can out skate them so they pull some dirty tricks, and two is when an injustice occurs out of self-serving reasons (cars cutting off his bike, etc.). He skied so fast toward the lift operator I thought he was about to take the gloves off (hockey metaphor). In the meantime, another kid pushed the Emergency-stop outside of the hut where the operator was sitting. The kid (operator) inside of the hut came out to yell but quickly realized he had some fairly angry patrons standing ground and concerned more about the safety of this poor injured person than his desire to keep the lift running. I’m not sure that yelling was the right thing to do, but in panicked situations sometimes we can’t help but get our aggressor on. Maybe this operator needed some hand holding instead of scolding. But my hope is that he understands that the Emergency Stop exists for a good reason – the safety of every human on the mountain.
Your mission to be a better human and better leader: Know when to hit the E-stop for someone else.
Be kind along your journey and remember, you got this!
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