Today while I was driving to work I passed yet more road construction. Although I have learned that this is nothing special in CA, I have noticed something about construction crews. It seems like at any time there is always one construction worker carrying something really heavy, and about 5 standing around staring at him/her. Now I am not trying to criticize construction workers. Construction is a tough job that I would not like to do. But seeing so many people standing around made me think of my work place. Just as at the nuclear power plant in Springfield, my company has a "safety coordinator", our own Homer Simpson of sorts. I meet this safety coordinator more than almost any other company employee, because he always seems to be hanging around the lounge, always holding a cup of steeming hot coffee. Now I wondered, what could this man possibly have to do for his job that he gets paid for standing around, drinking coffee, and talking about golf? I mean, there is no way that in this country we would pay someone to just stand around and yak, I mean, we aren't French after all! So while frustrated about my stupid program which isnt working, I decided to look into this man's responsibilities. His first responsibility is to create an evacuation plan. He aparently spent an entire week devising this incredible plan, and making diagrams and posting them all over the building. Now, I understand why say a textile factory in NYC would need an evacuation plan. But I work in a two story building that has doors and stairways every 25 feet. We have about 80 people working here, most of whom are very intelligent people. Is it really that difficult to head for the closest door? Not only that, but we even have a loading dock, so the only area of the building that has a higher density of workers than the population density of rural Scottland conveniently has a 15 foot wide and 15 foot high hole in the wall out of which they all can run if necessary. Regardless, the safety man is very proud of the plan which he devised. His other responsibilities involve constantly walking through the building to make sure that equipment isnt left unattended, or that any kind of fire hazard, triping hazard, safety hazard is ammelerioated. To this day he has never passed through the engineering section, even though we have overburdened surge protectors, heart monitors that are cracked open with exposed parts lying around everywhere, and lots of sharp pointy things on the ground, nor have I really heard from the assembly workers that he has passed through their sections more than once a week. If this is the case, then what can this guy possibly be doing other than sitting at his desk making more boring power point presentations that he forces the workers to watch about "work place safety" (I had to watch all of them when I joined, please note that overburdened surge protectors and exposed heart monitors were not included as safety hazards)? You guessed it, brewing up some quality StarBucks coffee in the lounge and talking about his favorite picks for golf. So other than the possiblity that I may one day understand why people like golf, I can reach one conclusion in this investigation: if there ever were to be a need to evacuate the building, I'm going to find out where his designated evacuation spot is, because while I am watching the building burn down, I'm sure that I will be able to enjoy some freshly brewed-high quality Starbucks Roast.
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