Sunday, February 8, 2009

Occupational Humor

The other day I was reading a local occupational "rag" and came upon this little ditty.

I thought to myself that it was going to be really lame.

"Number one", I thought,"that's pretty geeky. This is going to go down hill from here. "

However, when I saw "me" in bullet number two, I though "Oh, oh !!!"

I just howled from that point on.

~~~~~~~~~
You Know You are a Safety GEEK When...

1. You plan your annual vacation around the date and location of a National Safety Conference.

2. The last time you needed a hammer when you had a wrench in your hand... you actually went and got a hammer

3. You put on your seat belt even though you're just moving your car out of the garage to wash it.

4. You own a battery tester to test 9-volt batteries instead of just putting the end of the battery o
n your tongue.

5. You sincerely believe that workers will work 365 days safely just to win a fire extinguisher or first aid kit.

6. At lunch yesterday you and your colleagues got way too excited about creating an OSHA version of Trivial Pursuit.

7. Your heart beats noticeably faster when you hear or read the word "audit". Did it happen just then?

8. You'll stand proudly on a deserted downtown street corner in the rain, waiting for the "Walk" signal.

9. Every casual jacket in your closet has a "safety award" patch on it.

10. Your prescription eye glasses have side shields permanently attached and you wear them EVERYWHERE because "you never know when you're going to run into an eye injury hazard"

11. You have a dog-eared copy of the local Occupational Safety legislation in your bathroom...and almost every third section is HIGHLIGHTED.

12. You think it's hilarious when you respond to a worker's question about how much they can safely lift by chuckling "I don't know...how much CAN you lift?". Extra points if you slap your knee as you say this.

13. You can actually recite, from memory, the Occupational Health & Safety rules for confin
ed space entry and fall protection.

14. Whenever you hear that a fellow safety geek's company has a lower lost time injury rate than yours, you immediately suspect that they are just better at their modified duty program.

15. Your favourite baseball caps have "Think Safety" boldly displayed on the front of them.

16. Your mouse pad has a built-in ergo wrist rest and you sit at your computer on an ergonomically designed plastic inflatable ball.

17. "N-Nitrosodimethylamine" has been added to your spell-check dictionary.

18. When watching a CSI television episode, you have a pen and paper handy so you can write down any new investigation methods you see.

19. You've installed a pull-down projector screen in your house so you can hold off-the-job safety training sessions for your family.

20. You have ordered "safety slogan" travel mugs for safe driving awards even though you know that eating and drinking while driving is the number one distraction among drivers.

21. Your children won't bring their friends over to your house to play because you make them all wear hearing protection, safety glasses and knee pads.

22. You can accurately mouth the words along with the company's Safety Orientation DVD as it plays.

23. You can list every type of respirator cartridge made by name, manufacturer, number and colour coding.

24. You know that not all "hygienists" clean people's teeth.

25. You know at least one person who is a certified industrial/occupational hygienist... you just never understand what they are saying.

26. You have what you think is a great answer to a worker's question about why she has to wear a hard hat while working alone in an open field.

27. You have a presentation slide that quotes Heinrich's "Ten Axioms of Industrial Safety".

28. You also have a slide with a picture of an iceberg on it that has nothing to do with the sinking of the Titanic.

29. You clip and post on your office bulletin board every newspaper article you find where a company has paid a safety violation fine.

30. You have at least once told someone that 88% of all accidents are caused by unsafe acts, even if you don't remember that the source is a very biased study conducted in the 1930's.

31. You can mount a great verbal argument for calling some incident causes "root causes" and some incident causes "immediate causes"...and you can say it like it REALLY matters!

32. You have a labelled set of Frank Bird Jr. incident causation dominos to knock over during a safety demonstration.

33. You own at least one "back injury prevention" training film, video or DVD. If you've been in the business long enough, you own all three and are thinking of transferring the film to blu-ray.

34. Your hotmail/yahoo email address cleverly includes the word "safety" in it like - SafeTGuru@hotmail.com or Safe_Tee_First@yahoo.com or SayFTGal@hotmail.com.

35. You believe that "Zero Injuries" is possible; you've just never worked for a company that has achieved it.


"Safety Geek" by:
Alan D. Quilley CRSP
© 2008 Safety Results Ltd. Sherwood Park, Alberta. All Rights Reserved


My apologies to those who have just finished reading this list and then wished there had been a warning at the beginning, advising of the risk that this might not be at all funny.

Occupational hazard, I suppose.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

What does it mean if you look up Frank Bird, Jr and N-Nitrosodimethylamine - and have actually handled it?

Anonymous said...

sometimes somethings happen strangely
mp3-legende

MedStudentWife said...

Fidel - you have handled Frank Bird Jr ?

Speedcat Hollydale said...

16. Your mouse pad has a built-in ergo wrist rest and you sit at your computer on an ergonomically designed plastic inflatable ball.

That actually sounds really nice !!

Steve said...

Me, I went and got the hammer, among other things, and I did look for the 10 axioms. Sheesh.

Also, I seem to remember something about phone booth hygenists in somekind of safety reference manual...

Olga, the Traveling Bra said...

Warm up yer blog....I'm ON MY WAY!!!!!