Green bananas

Step by step, the drama leading to the crash of two Boeing 737 Max planes starts to unravel. Triggered by the good reception of the Airbus 320neo, Boeing started the development of the Max in 2011. The desire to keep up with competition and even try to surpass them led to a number of disputed decisions. Before the plane was delivered to the first customer, Boeing technicians already signaled their doubts on the plane’s safety – signals that were ignored to meet the delivery deadline. Company commitments and the desire for a larger market share outweighed the public safety precautions, which consequently resulted in the death of 346 people.

Planes aren’t the only technical piece of equipment subject to the idea of the ‘green banana’: deliver a half-baked device to the customer, where it will ripen further. This pops up everywhere in society. In many building projects, the contractor rushes in, delivers a green banana and waits for the complaints to come in. Many companies have permanent fixing teams, often staffed with experienced employees, to swiftly calm down angry customers.

When our kitchen was refurbished, the assembly team arrived at seven in the morning and finished the job twelve hours later. Immediately after, however, the list of issues started to grow. We had a flooding, the countertop had to be replaced and much more. A repair team had to come back to our house three times, spending another twelve hours.