Safety worst safety first

So today I am in a bit of a dud mood meaning that I don't feel like writing much. I think today I am going to take a bit of a swipe at safety people although I should point out in advance that safety folks come in two flavours and I only dislike one of them. The first group are former trades people who actually know what is going on where construction sites are concerned. Them I like. The other group are career failures who either took a safety course or had EI pay for it. This is the group which still thinks hammers come in both left and right handed. Today let's have some fun at their expense, kay? Yesterday was a beautiful day and so all the safety folks chose to be proactive in their jobs by wandering around our site pretending to be helpful. Our old Forman Mario made the point once that on a really shitty day we should pay them back by doing a tour of their offices. You know the drill, look at their trash can for garbage levels, check how high the paper stacks were and make solid recommendations such as using alcohol based hand creme before and after touching any keyboard. I always thought that was a great idea! The fact is that it started to look a bit like a snowstorm with all the white hats floating down on us. They follow the typical approach of moving about in little herds of 3-5. They would probably tell you it's for professional reasons but I think in reality it's because they are afraid of us. That and the fact that most of them haven't a clue what we are doing so they need witnesses of how 'safety conscious' they are when they do wondrous safety activities like checking to make sure that the fire extinguisher has been recently approved for use. I always laugh at this one because a little scan of the subcontractor list would show that no one approved to do that has visited our site so obviously it's us punching those little date holes. Or how about the safety tape? This is a program where every piece of equipment has to be inspected and then have a piece of colored tape wrapped on it to show we completed this task. There is a different color of tape every 3 months so we waste a lot of time changing the tape. Yes. It's us who change the tape. We do it so the the safety wonks will have something else to 'catch' when on their important little tours. In reality we check our tools every time we use them so when it's time to change the tape it is often just that... a tape change. We know the tool is safe as we checked it that morning when we started. We checked it after lunch. We checked it in the afternoon and again at the end of the day when we put it away. But if we didn't have to put tape on things then these non-construction people who wander around our sites wouldn't be able to tell a safe activity from a dangerous one. So we go along with it. Yesterday 3 of the wonks herded their way over to where I was sweeping. Two men and a woman. One of them immediately looked at the tag on the fire extinguisher. It bugged me so much that I decided to have some fun with them. 'Hi I'm Peter' I said politely approaching them. The woman started to remove her glove to shake my hand so I started to take mine off too but then I stopped. 'Hey wait a sec,' I said while pulling the glove back on 'This is a trick isn't it?' I asked. Not waiting for an answer I went on 'I know I'm not allowed to take my glove off while working and this IS working. The fact is I leave it on for most things now. Why just this morning while I was in the john having a dump I left it on to wipe bu that turned out kind of shitty!' The woman's eyes bugged out of her head and a shocked look appeared on her face. For my part I kept a straight face and extended my gloved hand towards her for a handshake. 'Don't worry, hon, I got most of it off...' In truth I have never seen a herd of safety tools beat such a hasty retreat. For the record I am a Union Ironworker. We are safe because we are professional and take our jobs seriously. No safety walk will ever improve that especially when the safety wonks involved have never actually worked on a construction site. Well unless you consider walking around looking at tape and fire extinguisher tags to be work! :)