Silly Office Policy

A few weeks ago we had a building-wide meeting where some high level execs flew in to yack at us about our division, goals, profitability and concerns. It went on for about an hour and a half I suppose, and I probably nodded off for about 25 minutes of it. Actually, there was a lot of talk about sustainability and "green" awareness. As I work in the chemicals business it piqued my interest, though most of it was blah-blah rhetoric and empty statements. Somewhere in the middle, Rich(ard) Whiteguy started speaking to us about our injuries and accidents rate and how it compares company wide. June had been our big safety month where just about every morning we received an email (OK, I didn't because they never gave me email to start with) giving us safety tips. At the end of the month a reward of sandwiches was given because of our clean record. We have a chemicals lab in our building, so it wasn't only about how not to give yourself papercuts. After an incident-free June, at our meeting, the office head congratulated and complimented us on our safety month success. Immediately following him, the division head yelled at everyone for our poor performance in the safety realm of our workspace. He got rather flustered and seemed very frustrated that things were not being complied with. Honestly, I didn't really know what was going on. I had been there for about 3 or 4 weeks at that time. When he finally stopped, two points came out to round up his conclussion: 1) if you injure yourself or happen to involve yourself in a recordable accident/incident, you may be subject to termination. 2) if either of the previous two things happen and you don't record it, you may be subject to termination.

During question time I thought about putting forward the idea that to achieve a zero incident rate for the division they could just fire everyone. I didn't think the mood of the meeting room was sarcastic enough though.