“Look at this, at my daily humiliation.” [shows plastic hook-can-opener widget] “I am not permitted to carry a knife on a job site, not even a little two inch pocket knife to cut straps or open packaging. Although I work with numerous lethal tools, if I have a razor or knife on me at anytime I can be fired.” [1]

-Nero the Pict

The man then showed me a paper, that he wanted me to take and write an article on why America will never do anything or win anything as a safety first bitch nest.

“I have to fill at least one of these out on every job I go to.”

My eye will explode if I try to read this. So I will reproduce the headings and count the yes/no answers that must be filled out by the maintenance technician, in an obvious attempt to make sure that if he is injured, he will not be compensated and might even be terminated, blamed, sued, etc.

Front Page

Field Level Hazard Assessment

Branch/Project

Complete form prior to starting each task or when conditions/locations change.

Environmental

11 Y/N questions

…

Administrative

4 Y/N questions

...

Ergonomics

7 Y/N questions

…

Access/Egress

9 Y/N questions

…

Followed by ACTNOW STOP THINK graphics

…

Material Handling

6 Y/N questions

…

Electrical/Tools/Equipment

9 Y/N questions

…

Fall Protection

7 Y/N/ questions

…

Back Page

Description of work task

Task location

PPE required

…

Identify the task, then identify the plan to eliminate/control the hazards below.

Work Task Steps

[7 lines for written description]

Hazards Identified

[7 lines for written description]

Plans to Eliminate/Control Hazards

[7 lines for written description]

…

Followed by job completion check list, and signatures of all employees involved: printed, signed & initialed

…

I could see workplace life headed this way in 2009 as I was among three men who had worked with walk behind lifts and jacks for decades, who had to be retrained in a two hour session by a much younger man who had not actually worked with this equipment, in order to qualify for insurance coverage.

Below Nero explains to me a certain roof leak he was tasked to fix.

“The ladder is anchored. Fine, but even then, hauling up a bucket of roof sealant it can shift, and I have no helper which is the idea behind all of this safety checklist bullshit. I get up there to fix one hole, and procedure requires me in 90 degree heat to put on this heavy fire retardant suit and harness, as if heat stroke is not a hazard. I must then tie off. This means, that if I fall, I will be anchored to the roof and swing down and get bashed against the exterior wall and then hang there, by myself, until employees arrive at this abandoned work location on Monday, circulation to my legs cut off. [1] This location, like many, has no cell service. I work at a lot of remote government locations.”

“This is basically done instead of sending a helper, thereby denying me the best safety net, a guy to hand me tools, hold the ladder, scrape my ass up and drive me to the nearest hospital. Essentially I am being put in danger to cut an employee off the service call and then made to fill out this bogus form so that I may be blamed for any accident that befalls me.”

“On this one particular call, is also demonstrated the insane irony of our entire fucked up society-economy-country and this safety first mentality. I am there to fix one hole in the metal roof of a prefabricated piece-of-shit structure. To do so I must suit up, which takes more time than the task, and I must tie off to a new anchor point every six feet. Each anchor point requires me to drill twelve holes in the roof. So, by the time I get to the hole I need to patch, I have made 50 holes in that fucking roof!”

I laughed and laughed with hearty abandon.

I then felt guilty for a moment, and that passed—and I laughed again.

Sorry, Bro, that it has fallen to you to maintain the outsourced bandaids that have been applied to the blundering mechanistic Leviathan that is our monstrous mother.

…

Notes

-1. It occurs that this knife prohibition prevents a man who has fallen while tied off at a job site where he is alone, from cutting himself free of the harness