On Straining Gnats: Safety Vs Efficiency
Is the Safety of a Few Worth Harming Our Entire Environment?
So, I work at a place. I doubt there would ever be any issues, but just to play it safe, let's avoid using its real name and just say I work at a place that has a lot of products coming in, being put on shelves, and bought by people.
My job is to put things on shelves, as well as organize and keep track of the things that don't fit.
An aspect of this job involves things called pallets. We all probably know what a pallet is. If not, Google is, well, not your friend, but it's there.
Anyways, pallets.
Today, I came in to work, and in our morning meeting I was informed that the rules regarding our stacks of used pallets has changed. We no longer stack them at X number, they are now at Y where Y=X-2 pallets high.
This change was done for 'safety'.
Sure. Makes sense. A smaller stack is absolutely safer. 100%. No disagreement here.
But, I tend to be a big picture person from time to time. This morning, my mind went immediately to the simple fact that smaller stacks means wasted space on trucks, means more time, energy, and resources spent moving a higher number of stacks, means more hours of trucks on the road, means high risk of road accidents and more damage to the environment. It means more death and misery.
Maybe there was an epidemic of high pallet stack related suffering that I don't know about. I do know that while moving a stack of X pallets I have felt that it was a tad too high for comfort and that I better be careful with it. But, I'm not so sure reducing the stack height by two pallets is going to do more good than the harm that it will create.
Accidents do happen. I don't want to mitigate any tragedy that has happened as a result of pallets being stacked pretty high. However, I just can't shake the feeling that a decision which has wider impact was made based on a fact of small statistical likelihood.
The other thing that gnaws at me is a wide, I assume company-wide, change for something that seems to be as simple as taking personal responsibility and just being careful when working with inherently dangerous things.
I've moved large stacks of pallets that were stacked horribly. Some were wobbly messes that had to be handled delicately. And I did just that, I handled them delicately as needed without incident.
Part of me is worried that now that stacks are a little shorter and feel (because they are) safer, that that inherent sense of danger will be gone.
I believe more accidents occur when dangerous things don't feel dangerous.
But, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the people whose actual job it is to figure this stuff out got it right. Or, maybe there isn't someone whose job it is to figure this out making the decision and instead someone with power made a snap reactionary judgment based off of an isolated incident. I have no idea, and I will never know.
I'm not sure how to wrap this all up, so:
Bottom Line: I'm not sure how to feel about systemic change being made to mitigate likely personal problems, meanwhile being told that personal change is the answer to deeply systemic problems...
Rock Bottom Line: Money rules everything. It's the only real motivator in our broken society. Maybe if we want to see change that really matters, we need to play dirty and make purses pinch.
All it takes is one ant...