Ode To The Safety Professional

Ode To The Safety Professional – an oldie but a goodie

This piece of prose was sent in by a reader and something all safety people will relate to. Some of you may have seen it before – I’m sure you will enjoy it again:

Ode To The 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 off his butt.

He has the curiosity of a cat… the tenacity of a mother in law… the determination of a taxi driver… the nervous system of a race car driver… the digestive capacity of a goat… the simplicity of a jackass… the diplomacy of a wayward husband… the hide of a rhinoceros… the speed of a rocket and the good humour of an idiot.

He has the busiest, shrewdest, plots ingest, worry ingest, 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-round as often, has been passed so many bucks, is left holding so many bags, and cut his way through so much red tape.

The SAFETY PROFESSIONAL keeps the coffee plantations, aspirin plants, liquor distilleries and the midnight oil companies in business. He must tread lightly over mountains of eggs, knowing where to tread and, more importantly, when and where NOT to tread. You’ll find him everywhere… shouting loudly over the din of a bunch of roaring engines, whispering softly in the hallowed precincts of thick-carpeted offices.

Whenever there is an accident, the SAFETY PROFESSIONAL is often called to explain why and how it happened. He’s expected to pull rabbits out of non-existent hats; when the job is thankless, he gets it. He must engineer 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 the way we’ve always done it’, until he vomits.

Despite all the careful planning he is usually found dangling on a deadline… he’s the original cat on the hot tin roof… in the middle of a muddle and of course LATE. The master of understatement, he must make fire protection sound as essential as religion and an accident cost sound like the national debt.

He’s supposed to be a “specialist” who can breath new life into committees and meetings… leadership into management… co-operation 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’s new Mercedes and the janitors 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 Harry Truman. He meets more people who think they know more about safety than the company has conveyor hooks.

He can never be right. When he simplifies, he’s pandering. When he gets a little technical, he’s over their head. Half the people wonder what he does… the other half know what he does but think he’s doing it wrong! When an idea turns out lousy and after the blame has been thoroughly kicked between the employee/worker, foreman and supervisor, it winds up in his lap.

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 think 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 from this sad tale of woe about a SAFETY PROFESSIONAL originated?