Jim Thompson

Email Jim at jim.thompson@ipulpmedia.com

Safety is not something that can be compartmentalized. Break your arm on a jet ski on Saturday, and I will guarantee you it will still be broke the next Monday. Your safety awareness has to be constant awareness.

A maintenance manager that worked for me backed off a porch at home (about a two-foot fall), broke his neck, and died. When I was younger, the most dangerous thing I could do was buy a new car. Somehow, I got into my head that I was invincible in new cars. I tore up two new cars badly and was fortunate I was not seriously injured. These accidents happened about twenty years apart.

By the way, both of those accidents happened on my way home from work.

One company I worked for required that one park their vehicle back end first. This was required at all their facilities. It made a significant improvement in pedestrians being hit. Park your car the wrong way and you got an internally generated ticket. Three of them within three months and you had to find some other place to park for a while--some place not on company property.

In another facility we had a model shop with saws, routers and so forth to make piping models. If a project had a compressed schedule requiring overtime, two people had to stay. This was in case a person was injured while working.

Every season it seems like people are seriously injured or killed while participating in some sort of sporting activity. I don't know the statistics, but likely there are some who see stunt people in movies or on television make certain activities look easy. This has to be the genesis of the line, "Hold my beer..."

And, of course, alcohol or so-called recreational drugs played a large part in some of these accidents. There was a nice young man who was a waiter in a local restaurant here. He died one evening by driving off the road at a high rate of speed forty miles out in the country from here. There was never an explanation for why he was in that particular place--he had no family around there, no reason at all to be there.

So, safety is not just in the confines of your working hours. You carry results of safe or unsafe actions with you always, unless you take a shortcut, and your friends must carry you to your grave.

Be safe and we will talk next week.

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Safety Study Guide

Quiz

1. According to the author, why can't safety be compartmentalized?
2. What happened to the maintenance manager who worked for the author?
3. What dangerous belief did the author have when he was younger?
4. Where did both of the author's serious car accidents happen?
5. What specific parking rule did one company require at all their facilities?
6. What was the purpose of the required parking rule?
7. What consequence did employees face for accumulating three parking tickets in three months at that company?
8. In the model shop described, what was the rule regarding overtime work and why?
9. What does the author suggest might contribute to people getting injured in sporting activities, in addition to alcohol or recreational drugs?
10. How does the author illustrate the idea that the results of unsafe actions are always carried with you?

Quiz Answer Key

1. Safety cannot be compartmentalized because an injury sustained outside of work, like a broken arm on a jet ski, still affects you when you return to work. Safety awareness needs to be constant.
2. The maintenance manager backed off a two-foot porch at home, broke his neck, and died.
3. The author had the belief that he was invincible in new cars.
4. Both of the author's serious car accidents happened on his way home from work.
5. One company required employees to park their vehicle back end first.
6. The purpose of the required parking rule was to significantly improve safety by reducing the number of pedestrians being hit.
7. Employees who received three parking tickets within three months had to find another place to park that was not on company property for a while.
8. In the model shop, if a project required overtime, two people had to stay in case one person was injured while working.
9. The author suggests that seeing stunt people in movies or on television make certain activities look easy might contribute to people getting injured in sporting activities.
10. The author illustrates this by stating that you carry the results of safe or unsafe actions with you always, unless you take a shortcut and your friends must carry you to your grave.

Essay Format Questions

• Discuss the author's argument that safety is not something that can be compartmentalized. Provide examples from the text that support this idea.
• Analyze the specific safety measures implemented by the companies the author worked for (the parking rule and the overtime rule in the model shop). Evaluate their potential effectiveness and discuss the underlying safety principles they address.
• Examine the role of personal responsibility and awareness in the context of safety, drawing on the author's anecdotes about his own car accidents and the incident with the maintenance manager.
• How does the author connect leisure activities and personal choices (like sporting activities, alcohol/drugs, and driving) to the broader concept of safety discussed in the essay?
• Identify and discuss the various examples of unsafe actions and their consequences presented in the text. What common themes or contributing factors emerge from these examples?

Glossary of Key Terms

Compartmentalized: Divided into separate sections or categories. In the context of the text, it refers to the idea that safety cannot be treated as a separate part of life or work.

Constant Awareness: Being consistently mindful and vigilant about safety at all times, not just during specific periods or activities.

Invincible: Too powerful to be defeated or overcome; in the context of the text, a dangerous belief of being immune to injury.

Internally Generated Ticket: A penalty or citation issued by a company or organization itself, rather than by external authorities.

Compressed Schedule: A shortened or accelerated timeline for completing a project or task.

Genesis: The origin or beginning of something; in the text, the potential source of a phrase or attitude.

Recreational Drugs: Drugs used for pleasure or enjoyment, often having intoxicating effects.

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