Safety Third.
No, I don’t mean Blastolene, (Though I do love those folks) I’m talking about the nature of Industrial safety. This comes to mind because most of my safety certifications have expired or are going to expire soon and I am taking my refreshers (And boy are there a bunch of them).
This is what I’m talking about:
Look, the safety training is important, like all training, because you have to know what to do when the moment occurs. You should know how to shoot if you have to, you should know how to use a blowout kit, (and you should HAVE ONE), you should be able to deal with the acids and caustics you can come into contact with, and you should be prepared for the worst.
but like Mike says, just because you’re in compliance doesn’t mean you’re out of danger. Your safety is on YOU.
I hear the “safety first” message all the time in the Army. My reply is, “then stay home”. Some activities are inherently less safe than not doing them. Wisdom teaches to weigh the risk against a potential benefit.
My employer touts the safety first message. Management’s heads explode when I tell them that it’s really not.
I ask, if the choice is between safety and production – what do you choose?
If safety really was the first priority – we wouldn’t even leave the lunch room. Every other activity is less safe than doing that.
Of course, since a guy had a reportable injury claim last year when a wall clock in the lunch room fell and injured him, I guess even sitting in the lunch room isn’t all that safe.
bubble wrap. Everything.
Read Piper’s “Day of the Moron”.
Safety is an illusion. Best you can do it try to not do dumb things.
You know, I may have to make a post for the first time in months. This has me fired up. I see Rowe’s interview and agree with him on the need for one to be responsible for one’s safety, regardless of any “compliance.” OSHA amuses the heck out of me, and the only way to comply with some of their ideas is to go home. But I see a lot of people with the idea “just do it, living is a risk” who seldom are in the danger zone, but say some mythical time in the past before they got to be manager, they did it and came out fine. I’ve driven home in the past so drunk I covered one eye to see just one road, but damned if I recommend it to someone, much less make someone under me do it under pain of termination. If the above sounds like gibberish, it’s distilling 30+ years of work experience into a one paragraph comment.
There are ways to mitigate risks, and there are acceptable risks.
Way back before I came along my Dad worked in a shipyard. Since he had no fear of heights, he did a lot of the high-up stuff. He was working on top of a mast one day and it came time for lunch. He had 1/2 hour for lunch, and it would have taken him a few minutes to climb down the ladder, so by prior arrangement the crane operator swung the hook over to him, he climbed onto the ball, and the crane dropped him to the deck. There happened to be an OSHA inspector there who saw this and had a fit, but that didn’t stop Dad from doing it.
Then there was the time he was red-leading the lifeboat davits. He picked up the bucket of red lead and the handle snapped, dropping a five-gallon bucket over the side where it hit a (thankfully unoccupied) scaffold board, sprung up and sprayed all over the (freshly painted) hull. That coulda been bad had there been someone on the scaffold.
Safety is, or should always be, on your mind, but not necessarily at the front.
Og, most folks reading your blog probably do/have done potentially deadly things at work. Cabinetmaking, USN service, electronics tech, running a jackhammer/tractor/lathe, shooting, a lot of the things I’ve done could have got me killed, if I’d been stupid.
I remember teaching my Mom to shoot after Dad died. She looked at one of my revolvers & asked where the safety was. I explained the nature of a revolver, & told her that with a revolver or any other weapon, the most important safety is between one’s ears.