interrobang (‽)

Today, I attended the mandatory hour-and-a-half ‘newcomer’ safety training for my current work location.  I’ve actually been here at this location for three months already, but I wasn’t able to attend the last quarterly conduct because I was too busy actually doing my damn job (I was on a site visit at another location).  I also learned this week that my project team is being moved back to my old location next month.  So learning how to ‘be safe’ at this location at this stage in the game seems like a bit of a waste of time - hell, I’ve managed to […]

A couple of years ago, I bristled at a fellow employee berating me for running up the stairs at work and not using the handrail.  I argued that using stairs is something that we educated people should be trusted to be able to do without the need for further instruction or the helping hand of a corporate mother-figure.  Apparently I was wrong.
At my last location (which I’ve thankfully now vacated - geez, what a deathtrap that turns out to have been!) there were signs aplenty around the stairwells (of this two-story building!) advising people to hold the handrail, watch their step, […]

After four months on my new project, I finally got the chance to travel beyond my cubicle.  All the way to our refinery at ‘beautiful’ Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  We’re implementing (among other things) a new dock management system, and I had to go and train some of the users on how to use it. The site is on Scenic Highway, but I think this must be an attempt at suspension of disbelief, because you’d be pretty hard-pushed to find a place less ’scenic’ than this - it’s just a huge collection of tanks, pipes, and chimneys which takes up all […]

Well, that’s another near-death experience narrowly avoided.  Someone from PC Support just came round to my desk and started fiddling around the back of my PC.  I asked him what he was doing, and he pointed out that he had been ‘disabling’ the voltage selector on the back of the PC.  [For the uninitiated, most PCs these days have a voltage selector on the back that allows you to switch (with the aid of a starightened-out paperclip) between 110v (used in the U.S.) and 240v (used just about everywhere else in the World) - it means that the PC manufacturers […]

I work for a company that prides itself on its safety-conscious attitude. This is generally a good thing, but sometimes they can push it too far.  Case in point: I recently had a run-in with one of their over-zealous, self-appointed ’safety enforcers’.  It was about 7am and I was just going into work.  I crossed the car park, stepped over the grass verge, and cut across the road to the building.  I’d barely reached the other side when a voice behind me boomed “Use the crossing!”  Admittedly, the crossing was only 5 meters further up the road, but this is […]