Small Calamities

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Your Calamities

Where Were You When Humpty Dumpty Needed You?
May 24, 2006 | permalink

You want to know something that I truly abhor? Rules for rules sake. The blind following of a regulation regardless of whether or not it is applicable, and the refusal of the enforcer to be willing to engage in a discussion about the appropriateness of a given rule in a given situation. Rules and laws, untempered by knowledge and good judgement, are useless. Worse than useless; rules applied badly are worse than no rules at all.

If you are thinking to yourself, Gentle Readers, that something must have happened in the last week or so to spark this rant, well, you're right. I did an event last week. It was in one of the city's major transportation hubs, and they had a lot of rules. Which is fine, in and of itself; I'm not advocating chaos. I think that rules, appropriately and judiciously applied, are a very good thing. But this place was out of control. And the powers that be kept changing the rules on us, seemingly without rhyme or reason. The end result was that a job that should have taken a total of 35 hours over three days took 65 hours of the same three days. Yes, we were there 65 out of 72 hours; that is not a typo.

The worst part, to my mind, was that many of the rules were in place to ensure our safety. However, they weren't designed for our industry, but for general contractors. And while on the surface the two industries seem very similar, they are in fact very different. So many of the rules were only partially applicable, if at all, and actually gave rise to a more unsafe situation than if they weren't used at all. And the people enforcing them insisted on enforcing them blindly, because those were the rules. I was constantly in a position where I had to compel my crew to do things that were against our collective better judgement to satisfy some desk jockey's idea of safety.

An example- we were required to wear safety harnesses and be tied off with a lanyard if we were working above six feet. All well and good. I advocate harnesses for my crew when it is appropriate. Not when my guy eight feet off the ground, working on a free standing lighting boom, has only two choices as to what to tie in to- the boom, or the ladder. Either of which he would have pulled down on top of himself should he have the misfortune of falling. How is that better? Can anyone tell me?

Posted in Musings & WTF!? & Working
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