My company is extremely safety-conscious, sometimes to the point of (at first glance) absurdity. Given that we're an engineering firm and there are plenty of opportunities for folks on projects to get hurt or killed, I can't really ding them for that emphasis.
One thing we do is start every meeting (including most conference calls) with a safety moment, a reminder, a tidbit of info to help create a better, safer workplace (field or office) or home. It's usually pretty interesting or useful info.
But sometimes ...
For a big project review today, I got a preview of the PowerPoint presentation. The person doing this is one of my sharpest employees. On the first (non-title) slide, there was a safety tip about Purell skin sanitizer, which is alcohol-based, and some rather gruesome photos showing what happened to someone who had just Purelled his hands and then went out for a smoke (hands shielding the match, not fully rubbed-in sanitizer, hands burst into flames, horrible burns).
Since I know some folks who live and die by Purell, I wanted to look up more info so I could forward it to them (non-smokers, but, hey, safety first). And, so, of course, I ended up on this Snopes page, which debunks the whole thing.
Which goes to provide two lessons/tips for today:
Filed under :: Job Jollies
Mad props to the staffer, who, in a call I was just on, raised this particular issue and emphasized the need to research info before passing it on.
Thanks for the link to that website, there was a lot of useful myth debunking there. No surprise that "Obama is a radical Muslim" is number one.
Oh, man, Snopes is one of the most useful sites on the Net, no question.