Humour – The Life of a Safety Professional
Definition of a Safety Professional | |
Sandwiched tightly between Top Brass and the teaming masses sits a wild-eyed individual madly singing a safety tune. He’s the most misunderstood, maligned and unsung person in all the world of business. He’s the proverbial “SAFETY PROFESSIONAL”.
This fellow’s a little bit of all strata’s….a member of none. To the employee or worker he’s a tool of management; to management, he’s just another employee. He finds his job interesting. He speaks for management from the “Ivory Tower” and then runs out to the Production Area, Warehouse or Work Site to hear how it sounds. He must keep his head in the “brass’ board room”, his feet in the muck…. a difficult position to keep from falling on his butt. He has the busiest, shrewdest, plottingest, worryingest, most thoroughly washed brain of any human. His mail basket is always full, his desk is a constant mess and his calendar looks like cave drawings. Nobody has been given the run-around as often, has been passed so many bucks, is left holding so many bags, and has cut his way through so much red tape. Whenever there is an accident, the SAFETY PROFESSIONAL is often called in to explain why and how it happened. He’s expected pull rabbits out of nonexistent hats; when the job is thankless, he gets it. He must engender interests in good housekeeping to people who live in garage sale clutter …promote wider responsibility to people who have a narrow focus … preach safety to people who think they don’t need it. He must listen to the phrase, ‘that’s always the way we’ve done it,” until he vomits. He’s suppose to be a “specialist” who can breath new life into committees and meetings… leadership into management… cooperation into supervisory personnel… responsibility into employees/workers. He must inspire without propaganda… propagandize without being obvious. He parks his 1980’s jalopy between the boss’ new Mercedes and the janitor’s SUV. When he’s clever, it goes unnoticed…when he stubs his toe, the world is there to see and mock it. To him a headache is normal; he’d have ulcers if he could afford them. He has more critics than Donald Trump. He meets more people who think they know more about safety than the company has conveyor hooks. More people bend his ear than anybody else’s. Everybody thinks he always has time to stop and listen to a joke…hear a gripe…attend a meeting… serve on a committee. He does, and winds up taking most of his work home. He has no peer in the realm of praise, propaganda and procrastination. He knows he’s right; only the world thinks he’s wrong. If he has an idea, it was stolen. However, a stolen idea is research! Where else do you think the background material for this sad tale of woe about a Safety Professional originated? |
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