Metaphors, Murder and Wicked, Wicked Gravity
-By Bill Glahn-

Very few office folks venture out into the warehouse where I work. Even fewer when the heat index rises into 3 digits. One who does is Nathaniel* - our facility IT expert. He’s a pretty friendly and unpretentious guy. Everybody likes him.

Usually Nat shows up, engages in some friendly chat, smiles frequently, and gets the UPS terminal or some unruly printer to function properly, then heads back to his air-conditioned office. Tuesday presented a bigger problem, though. Our RF Scanners (radio frequency) that give us our picking orders were suddenly knocking us off. No info – no work. And in a warehouse that ships over a million power transmission belts every month, that could put a serious hurting on customer relations. The problem was traced to some obsolete routers and antennas located at ceiling level. Seems they couldn’t communicate with some of the new software. Somebody needed to take Nat up in an overhead picker to run new cable and install new routers and antennas. That job went to Duncan* - a young, and somewhat inexperienced warehouseman. He wouldn’t be my first choice as a driver if I were in Nat’s shoes.

But off and up they went. Nathaniel would be working in the unfamiliar territory of a 4 X 5 foot metal platform attached to the back of Duncan’s lift suspended 30 feet in the air with no guard rails in an old warehouse with virtually no circulation. A large warehouse with a flat roof where the sun pounds down – a furnace at the upper levels - the place where many industrial lift operators ply our trade day after day. In July and August, that usually means at a temperature of about 110 to 120 degrees and sweltering humidity.

Nat had been working up there for about 20 minutes with Duncan chatting him up – a couple of computer game enthusiasts enjoying the conversation while one of them worked. When suddenly, Duncan noticed the color vanish from Nat’s complexion, his eyes glaze over, and his body go limp. Nat was passed out cold, heading towards the concrete floor below.

Gravity is often used as a metaphor in songs for fading love, drug withdrawal, and just about everything in between involving downward movement. In scientific terms, Isaac Newton theorized it was a pulling down from the earth. Albert Einstein said the opposite - it was a pushing down from the heavens. For Nat, gravity was no metaphor. And it didn’t matter if it were Newton or Einstein that was right. The results were not going to be good either way.

Which is why OSHA rules require workers in such a position to wear a harness tethered to a bar that runs behind the canopy on the lift. The harnesses aren’t built for comfort. They aren’t even really built to prevent injury. They are built to prevent disaster. One of the oldest practical jokes played by workers in jobs requiring them is to sneak up behind a co-worker and pull the harness up. It will make him stand on his tippy-toes. Fall off a lift in a feet-first fashion and your gonads will end up in your throat. Fall off head-first and you’re liable to bang your head on the nearby racking. But you’ll live to tell about it.

Both Nat and Duncan were abiding by the rules. How Nat fared overall, though, was in the hands of a virtual rookie.

Duncan had two things working for him. Youthful reflexes and that something else that some folks seem to lose along the way - a pre-disposed instinct to protect other human beings. As Nat began his fall, Duncan reached out, grabbed him and held him in a safe and upright position until he could lower the lift to ground level, then carefully laid Nat out on the ground, and called for the first-responder team. The worst injury Nat received was a mild blow to his ego. The best thing, the knowledge that it is of vital importance to keep hydrated when working in extreme heat. And Duncan earned his wings – a rookie no longer.

On July 11, the U.S. House of Representatives passed their version of the 2013 Farm Bill which will cut the safety harness for 48 million Americans referred to as Food Stamps (SNAP). Congress obviously subscribes to Einstein’s theory. That’s some wicked, wicked gravity. But to hell with metaphors. Let’s call the House's bill what it really is. Murder.

*names changed