Safety Knights

Buy them the gear b/c they'll use it

I don't know how many times I've had requests to buy Safety-related gear and more times than not this is what happens. Then the next time they are in a situation to use the new gear and they don't.

Or you have the flipside of the situation, they don't use their heads. This reminds me of the time, my mine rescue team was complaining that we needed to buy some new bunker gear b/c the old stuff is nasty and has grease stains on them. So I went ahead and bought new bunker gear. But the next time when our team was called out to the pit to deal with a smoker (coal dust spontaneous combustion and it just smokes FOREVER) they used the brand new gear to crawl around inside the greasy car body of one of the large shovels effectively making the new bunker gear nasty and now full of grease. Sorry, I digress...back to the main story.

Yesterday, my truck alerted me to low tire pressure in one of my tires. I stopped at the local car wash and filled up my tires.

Then, as I was putting the air hose away by properly rolling the hose onto the rack, I looked up and saw this. I couldn't believe my eyes (as I actually did a double and triple take to make sure I was seeing what I thought I was seeing. Here the two car wash employees had a mini JLG to raise them to the roof. It looks as if they were working on the sign. So they have a fall protection harness on with a lanyard. However, they are not tied off to anything. A consultant shared with us his favorite leadership quote, "We have met the enemy and he is us."

If we don't inspect, what we expect, then we should not be surprised with undesirable results.

Meaning, if we provide the gear we need to check to make sure they are using it (and using it correctly).

Neither of these guys had their lanyard tied to anything and worse yet, the guy on the right doesn't have it attached to his harness, so now it's a tripping hazard as well.

BTW, apparently, people have not been trained on how to safely and effectively coil up an air hose or extension cord!!! I was taught this in the brake shop I worked when I was 13. A skill I still use to this day. The reason I mentioned this, is more times than not, the air hose it just left on the ground b/c the previous person didn't know how to coil the air hose.

There are so many "lost arts" like these I seem to be stumbling into. I must be just getting old.