Safety People Are a Different Breed

This week I spent 2 days at my state's convention for people who work in occupational safety. Here are a few examples from Tuesday that illustrate that safety people are a different breed.

Illustration #1
Every meeting that is for safety people always begins with the locations of the fire exits being noted. I've been to enough of these meetings now that I don't even think about that. Well, our keynote speaker the first day did. He's a professional football player, and he remarked to the effect that "I can tell I'm at a safety conference. I've never been anywhere that started a meeting by pointing out the locations of the first exits."

 Illustration #2
In our first breakout session, the speaker noted the following: We're in a safety meeting, the room is sprinklered, the exit sign at the back is out, and the side exit was blocked (tables were set up perpendicular against it). Yes, we safety people notice things like this wherever we go. It's just second nature.

Illustration #3
In the exhibit hall I told one of the vendors they need to remove one of the pictures from their display. It showed a person entering what was labeled to be a permit required confined space, but the person had no harness, no retrieval line, and no air monitoring equipment, all of which are requirements for this type of operation. I told them that I realized that the photo was probably staged, but it needed to be right. Again, safety people notice this stuff

Illustration #4
In the afternoon a member of the hotel staff was vacuuming the carpet. The cord for the vacuum was stretched completely across the hallway. Most normal, nonsafety people would have just walked on the cord and went on. Not me. I stopped, watched the cord to make sure it wasn't moving, carefully lifted one foot over it, then followed with my other foot. I looked over, and the lady next to me DID THE EXACT SAME THING! We were discussing how this is something safety people just do, and the guy in front of me turned about and said that he also DID THE EXACT SAME THING.

Safety: It's not just a job, it's a state of mind