A Societal Good Allegory

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wrt the first point, no one works in the storage facility on an ongoing basis; it is kept locked and dark, and people key in the code enter it to deposit or retrieve items, and then leave. Lab staff access the facility perhaps once a week, for about 5 minutes at a time; I have seen no indication that other departments use it more than that (we are a small hospital, in case you hadn't figured that out).

wrt. the eyewash bottles, two appeared in micro within the last week (after several months of nothing, which is what reminded me of it): they're held to a board on the wall by zipties, above my eye level. Not sure how easy of a time I'd have getting them if I had something in my eyes and was panicking, vs. the easy stick-your-head-in-the-sink-and-hit-the-6-inch-square-paddle of the old eyewash. You're right that it's better than nothing, but I still think the regulation is BS. Likewise on the bulletin board regulations. Likewise on the 'nothing, not even cleaning supplies, can be stored under the sink' regulation.

All of this while we're still pouring formalin from container to container with no venting and no apparent regs at all. It's like it's someone's job to sit at a table all day, somewhere completely removed from a laboratory, and make up hoops for us to jump through. It's not just the state; there are a whole pile of corporate regs that have been loaded on lately too.

edit: not sure if the 'all holiday decorations must be treated with fire retardant' rule is corporate or state, but given that the stuff is toxic and accumulates in humans, you can imagine how I feel about that one.

You just hit why I won't work for any corporate or franchise business anymore LKL, I'm sure that's exactly what's actually going on. I still remember working for franchise delivery shops were they not only mandated the color and material of the pants you could wear, but also the number of pockets that were allowed (they had something against cargo khakis...). Now considering that this was a delivery business where you were expected to juggle a cellphone, pens, cash, mapbook etc while driving at high speed in a crowded city, and having the more easily accessed while sitting cargo pockets made this all easier and safer; what possible reason could they have for that policy? Sheer meddlesomeness, and not something I will put up with anymore in an employer. State regs are bad enough, I do a lot of off the books work these days just to avoid the hassles, ducking the taxes is just a bonus.

Hi Dox47,

I've cited Richard Mitchell's works to you previously, but to little avail so far.

Here is how OSHA (once?) defined an exit:

"That portion of a means of egress which is separated from all other spaces of the building or structure by construction or equipment as required in this subpart to provide a protected way of travel to the exit discharge." As if that's not enough, they now elaborate on "means of egress": "A continuous and unobstructed way of exit travel from any point in a building or structure to a public way [which] consists of three separate and distinct parts: the way of exit access, the exit, and the way of exit discharge."
http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/cfr_2002/ ... 910.35.htm

If you think this definition is just "Big Government, Small Brains, and Dumb Laws"," "it's because you're just not thinking".

"Ugly" English "doesn't need simplification; it needs simply to be kept pretty much out of sight, lest it provide some plain English fanatics with what they think is a useful example." But, "to answer, before the fact, any imaginable questions that might be asked in a court of law", covers the tricks of oversimplification used in flim-flam.
( http://www.sourcetext.com/grammarian/ Chapter 12: Darkling Plain English (LESS THAN WORDS CAN SAY, by Richard Mitchell))

True, corporations & franchises aren't as disinterested as governmental agencies, but they claim the priority interest of the "shareholder". If I owned a francise with the protected image of a "Great Guy Mark Twain" clone as spokesman/representative, I don't want my customers encountering him drunk, and in only a string-bikini, at any public/private group event, nor at any instant of customer service delivered through, or by, my franchise's services or deliveries. (There was a national lawsuit involving much the same with another franchise/spokesman a few decades ago). A very recent example over "remarks & jokes" involved the "voice" of an insurance duck (duck, as in the bird).

More direct encounters for me, involved being "buried in the product". And while unexpected medical "mistakes" and "freak" occurrences have a higher mortality rate (for example, the environmental influences on reading, and distinguishing between versions of "Hep-lock" and "Heparin": http://news.injuryboard.com/dennis-quai ... eid=281628 ), workers have often experienced fatality from similar "pseudo-impossible" events. http://www.osha.gov/dep/fatcat/fatcat_w ... 22011.html
If anything can go wrong, it will: "6/13/11---Crown Health Care Laundry, Selma, AL 36702----Worker was cleaning lint out of an industrial dryer when it fell on her crushing her at the waist."
& http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/2011-123/ ... 11-123.pdf




Tadzio

People already do take out insurance against these activities. Publicly funded medical insurance programs are paid for through the taxes that we pay during our healthy, productive years and from which we collect during times of illness.

It does not matter how healthy a lifestyle you lead--you are still going to die. Let's be really cynical: the person who smokes, overeats, fails to exercise and has the good manners to keel over from a heart attack during his working years is subsidising the rest of us--he has been paying in every year he has been earning income, and his unhealthy lifestyle has saved us all from the cost of his medical care during his old age. Do we refund his contributions to medicare as a result? No we do not.