Your Corporate Masters Do Not Care If You Live Or Die
If they can get away with it, they will let you die instead of spending money on your safety.
This story is true. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent.
1. The Incident.
Once upon a time not so long ago, a lower-middle-management friend of mine was hard at work in his office. A team of firemen burst in. They were wearing gas masks and full firefighting gear.
“What are you doing here?” They asked.
Their voices were muffled by their gas masks. But he understood, took the hint, and evacuated. The parking lot was full of those who got the word and left first. Others were trickling out of the building behind my friend as the firemen rousted them.
It was not a fire by the way. The alarm was caused by an electrical failure in an equipment room which set off a gas alarm. It did no harm except to summon the fire department.
It turned out the fire alarm’s bells & sirens were broken due to an electrical failure. They had been broken for two years. Management knew this. They put a ‘facilities request’ in the system, declared “problem solved.” (And, no doubt, departed on time to meet the wife for drinks at the club as usual.) The facilities team put it in last place in their backlog. In the meantime, upper-management instructed middle-management to do something. The latter instituted a phone tree to notify everyone in case of fire alarms.
Obviously, there were overlooked flaws in their plan.
2. Corporation’s Response.
A few weeks after The Incident, a safety audit team arrived from an independent consulting firm hired by the company to do its thing on all the buildings. My friend got put in charge of following them around and filling out ‘facilities requests’ for all the fixes they recommended. (He found out the Fire Marshal had gotten in upper management’s faces. Management had to listen — the Marshal threatened to condemn the place — and so the consulting firm got hired.)
What they found was:
* The alarms were working and so were the smoke detectors.
– They were fixed the weekend after the incident.
* Fire extinguishers were missing or misplaced.
– Some areas had none, some were gone.
– One guy used a fire extinguisher as a door stop! (It didn’t have a wall mounting bracket, so why shouldn’t he? At least he knew where to find it.)
* Fire drills — none in recent memory.
* Vending machines under a staircase had to be moved. (I never figured this one out. It seems like a good use of wasted space to me.)
* There was a very long list of frank safety violations and lower priority recommendations in addition to the above highlights. Including:
– installing fire stops in holes between walls
– removing certain highly flammable furnishings
– relocating electrical outlets (Another one I never figured out.)
– improve ventilation in restrooms (I’ve been in one, and I figure they were right.)
– etc. (long list)
* The upper management office building was largely free of safety violations, and their restrooms were well ventilated.
– What a remarkable coincidence.
3. The Remedy.
What management did was:
* Institute a schedule for combined alarm testing and fire drills.
* New fire extinguishers for all! … Except where there was one already.
* The vending machines disappeared.
– From then on, it’s bring your own from home or hike to the cafeteria if you can get away for a half hour.
* The rest of the ‘facilities requests’ were
– submitted for the audit team’s approval
– shown to the Fire Marshal and somebody from the city building department as proof of “intent to comply” with the fire code and building code
– submitted to the facilities management dept. for action …
– Problem solved!
4. Final Outcome.
None of the remaining ‘facilities requests’ were so much as started a year later.
My friend was still the “manager in charge.” Thus, he asked his boss (upper-middle-management with office in same building): “It’s been a year. Why haven’t the ‘facilities requests’ been completed? Have you heard anything, boss?”
His boss got angry and chewed him out — all the while pretending he didn’t know what my friend was talking about and never mind having heard a thing from on high.
My friend never mentioned it again, not to his boss anyway. The company still has not spent a penny on all those facilities upgrades.
5. Epilog.
The company requires my friend to take separate courses in diversity, sexual harassment, and how to do manager-subordinate relations. It is not optional.
The company does not offer courses in workplace safety.
Society asks MGTOWs: Why are you not making more tax-slaves?
Giggity 4 years, 10 months ago.
