Safety Talk

There’s one at every job site – the practical joker. He thinks he’s pretty funny, but he’s playing around with your safety.

Horseplay on the job is dangerous. Work situations are risky enough already without adding the unexpected hazards of a practical joker.

You know him: He’s the guy who blows compressed air at you, comes up with homemade explosives, hides your safety goggles and pulls your chair out from under you at the morning meeting! You might die laughing over his antics. Serious injuries and even death have resulted from stunts such as these.

Here are some real-life examples of horseplay tragedies:

– A lab worker used a substance that was known to extract moisture from organic substances in order to dry out a co-workers’ donut. What he discovered, too late, was that the substance was a deadly poison.

– When two workers turned a compressed air line on another, up his rectum, the victim suffered agony before dying three days later of internal injuries.

– When one worker “spiked” another’s soft drink with a harmful chemical, the result was a serious illness and a week in the hospital.

– Another worker put a match in the sole of his co-worker’s shoe, the joke went tragically wrong. The match set the victim’s oil-soaked coveralls on fire, enveloping him in flames. He later died from third degree burns.

Horseplay may seem like a little harmless fun to lighten up a serious day at work. But there is nothing harmless about activities which can result in serious or fatal injuries.

So what can you do to get rid of horseplay on the job?

– Don’t encourage it! The practical joker thrives on attention, so don’t give him the laughs and admiration he is after.

– Don’t engage in it! Don’t give in to the temptation to play tricks on others.

If you are the comedian, this might seem like an over-reaction to some light-hearted fun. Well, just stop and think for a minute. What would it be like to be on the receiving end of someone else’s joke-gone-wrong?

Imagine if you quickly had to put on your safety goggles and discovered some clown had removed the lens. Or if you were on a 20 foot ladder when some joker came along and started shaking it!

How would you like to lose your eyesight to a homemade explosive? Or be run down by a stunt driver aboard a forklift? Or be crippled for the rest of your days after falling down a flight of stairs because you were startled by some dumb prank?

Before you launch your next practical joke – think! The result could be injury, dismemberment or death.