My wife works for a tech company that sells to the Federal government. Her company is part of a larger holding company that includes many different entities engaged in a wide range of activities. As part of keeping costs down, the parent company requires all parts of the company to review safety procedures and promote safety messages for their employees. Her stories about these meeting and messages reminded me of the many weekly safety meetings that I attended during my summer construction jobs in between my college years.
These meetings were very different than the ones she attends. We would have them weekly. Approximately 150 men would press together around the superintendent of the construction site as he reviewed different things that he observed over the past week that he had determined needed to change. These were usually raucous affairs with lots of coarse humor flowing below the surface of the superintendent’s pronouncements. I was the only college guy employed by any of the subcontractors that summer. And with that status came a large amount lot of teasing…some of it not very well intended.
About half-way through the summer, I noticed that I would invariably be the subject of the weekly meeting in one way or another. Part of that had to do with the fact that I was always in a hurry and made mistakes. But others had to do with the fact that I took chances too. In the meetings the superintendent highlighted my habit of not wearing my hard-hat (at times I would kick the thing down the pathway on my way to the place where I was working). He identified my not wearing gloves while reaching into the poured concrete to retrieve fallen tools, pouring diesel fuel into the water-tank of a roller, and being pretty loose with how I used a jack-hammer among other things. At each meeting the other guys in the group would laugh and in a sing-song way would say in unison – “fuckin college kid…”
Bottom line though…if I hadn’t accomplished far more than anyone else each work day…they would have gotten rid of me in half a heart-beat. Playing fast and loose with the rules only works if you’re extremely productive.
Todd Rivetti 