Superb!
That's it!
"Is he still there?" I ask the PFY, maintaining direct eye contact with him so that I can truthfully claim that I didn't see the Health and Safety guy hanging around the hallway to Mission Control like a bad smell. There's a new push in the company to make the place safer and unfortunately the push concerned doesn't involve …
I was once asked it I'd read the safety manual - apparently this was listed as mandatory for all employees in another manual that was restricted* - so I quipped that I had received a paper cut while reading it. A few days later the delivery man got a hernia bringing the new laminated version round to everyone.
* I'd swear some companies model themselves on Dean Warmer from Animal House and run things on a permanent 'Double Secret Probation Level' so they can instigate wild-cat strikes during the rugby world cup.
I had to handle cryogenics (liquid Nitrogen etc) so was sent on a cold-something-something safety course. Great day out at the Scott-Polar institute listening to stories about being trapped in crevasses, how to put up a tent in a blizzard - nothing about liquid nitrogen but I got a certificate.
@Safety Dance
Argh! Stop making reference to it! It only makes it worse! I had a hard enough time getting it out of my head after watching the latest South Park episode. Although for the very fact Mr Garrison f**ks Donald trump to death, it was worth it.
I didn't know that,explains the frequent airplay over here in Canada (really loathe the remix version that usually gets played).
I usually spend a lot of time trying to figure out if that actually is rural England in the video & where, so I finally googled it, West Kington, near Chippenham.
Icon - A Clever Man With A Hat.
I said it last week and I'll say it again - You've saved the sanity of our team on yet another maintenance Friday.
Instead of changing backup tapes, checking reported disk failures etc while making boring small talk about the coming weekend - we are instead trying to come up with the most imaginative way to kill a H&S rep :)
God bless you.
A couple of years ago, I received a H&S questionnaire that asked some truly bizarre questions
One of the questions asked if I stored chemicals in my office. One of the boxes was for "organophosphate-based nerve agents".
I found myself wondering what would happen if I ticked that box - would they send in a team to decontaminate the building, or make me sit through https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38sQFFuTMzY ?
On this note, our company's old leave system required that you select a reason for absence in the case of sick leave. This list included (and this is by no means exhaustive in it's ridiculousness) Scarlet Fever, the Plague and Smallpox. Methinks that if someone genuinely ended up in a position where they had to legitimately select that box, the company might have a little more to worry about than filling in the correct paperwork.
This old system was retired two weeks ago with a new one that actually worked at a reasonable speed. Did they take the opportunity to write up a new, sensible list, or did they just inherit the list from the old system? Go on, take a wild guess.
Taping the grip of a CO2 extinguisher is fraught with danger, there's a risk someone could undo the tape in time. Cable ties, now... They're also good for bypassing those bothersome "grip safety" cutouts on chainsaws and the like, tape peels off when it gets soggy with, uh, "fluids". Or so I conjecture.
During my very first job as a mainframe operator, H&S noticed that there wasn;t a First Aid kit in the computer suite, so they installed one. Unfortunately, they installed it on the outside wall of our office within the computer room, which formed one wall of a not too wide corridor with an IBM 4381 forming the other side of the corridor. There was a lot of white and grey in our computer suite, and the First aid box was white, with a wee red cross on, and mounted on the wall at head height.
We'd never had an accident up to that point. The very first shift after they'd installed the First Aid kit, I spotted that the backup job my colleague had started was about to need a second tape, dashed enthusiastically (hey, I was a newbie PFY, I got over it eventually!) out of the office door, sharp right to go and change the ..CLANNNNNG!! - and very nearly knocked myself out. I later had the fun of dutifully filling in the accident book explaining how I'd injured myself on the badly-positioned First Aid kit. Bizarrely, H&S refused to move the thing to somewhere safer. It did keep me alert for dangers around me, I suppose...
Speaking of H&S and first aid kits...
My old man works for an Utility company (water), and at one water treatment works they had some H&S bods (they hunt in pairs) turn up and inspect. They clocked the First Aid box, and after inspecting it, fastened it shut tight with a cable tie "seal".
My old man goes over and asks "why have you tied the First Aid box shut?"
Bods say "Its so we can tell if someone uses the First Aid box"
My old man then raises the following issue "How do I get in to this sealed First Aid box? Especially with a hand injury?"
Bod goes "You have scissors on site?"
And my old man says, with a beaming smile "Yes we do, a really good set as well. They're in the First Aid box..."
I would pry it out of the wall with my own bloody hands, (actually bloody from the head injury, probably) with bolts and everything, throw a hissy fit with the Health Department blokes, and probably throw the First Aid cabinet in their general direction, while cursing their sorry asses to the 5th generation. And tell them to shove that thing outside of people's head's general path.
But that's just me.
Well, I once actually got the bathroom cabinet over the sink to fall on my head due loose bolts, except it was nobody's fault but my own for the lack of maintenance... It still hurt, and opened a nice bleedy gash on my forehead... Still got me really angry about it.
"I'm intruiged - how does one use a mouse wrongly?"
I was using the scroll wheel to scroll up and down through documents. Apparently that's the wrong way to do it.
What you're supposed to do is *press* the scroll wheel, move the mouse forwards/backwards to scroll through the document, and then press the scroll wheel again to go back to normal mouse operation.
Or, you could choose to tell them to shove the H&S nonsense up their arse, point out that you were using a mouse before they were even born, can remember when the scroll wheel was introduced and have been using it like that ever since then.
"What you're supposed to do is *press* the scroll wheel, move the mouse forwards/backwards to scroll through the document, and then press the scroll wheel again to go back to normal mouse operation."
Since that method doesn't work on a Linux desktop does that mean that Linux desktops are banned by H&S? Hah! Year of the Linux desktop. Only over the cold dead bodies of the H&S reps!
Wait....what? :-)