Yes, Mr. Sanctimonius, I’m sure the people in Lac Megantic would have called being hardnosed about failure to tie down a train properly conscientious and responsible. I would too, because that failure actually matters. I’m talking about failures or transgressions that don’t really matter.
Do you really think the 'Mr. Sanctimonious" is helpful to my comprehension of your point? Please be assured, it’s as irritating to me as any ad hominem would be, and is therefore not the least bit of an aid to your cause. Kindly find another approach to your argumentation.
In what place of work have you any experience where the employees tell management which transgressions “…don’t really matter?” In any place where I have worked, it goes very much the other way around. It is management who determine the parameters of work, the roles of each paid position, and the descriptions of work. Management is responsible for imposing safety measures if for no other reason than their insurers would refuse to pay claims if they learned the management encouraged a culture of the routine ignoring of safety infractions. IOW, it’s the bottom line that drives policies. Some employees never figure that out, or they dont care if they ever do. They would rather protect each other for the moment than to consider the heady implications of future risks…again, as it happened at Lac Megantic.
It is one thing when management gets it wrong. It’s terrible for every employee below them. But when individual employees begin to neglect pol
In my state, multiple tickets for moving violations within a year can cause you to lose your driver’s license. You can receive a ticket for being one mile per hour over the speed limit.
You go driving on a nice Sunday afternoon. You happen to drive through Nowheresville, which has a 25mph limit for about 1/4 mile through town. Not even a town, just an unincorporated collection of a few houses. Most people don’t bother to slow down to 25, maybe to 40 or 35. But rarely to 25mph. Joe Resident has had it. To prove that the speed laws aren’t enforced, he sets up his video camera and a speed gun. (In real life this wouldn’t be admissable evidence, but it is today for this example. They passed a law or something.)
Joe’s video goes viral on Youtube. It shows multiple cars zooming through town at 10, 15, even 20 mph over the legal limit. Officer Fife sees this video and realizes that he can write out tickets for each offender, thanks to our new law.
You, being a more careful driver, slowed down to what you thought was the legal limit of 25 mph. Except you drifted up to 26 mph, got caught on the video doing that speed, and received a ticket from Officer Fife.
Even though you tried to, and thought you were complying with the rules, you broke the law. Now is doing 26 in a 25 zone more dangerous? Probably not, but it was determined that a safety study warrants a 25 instead of a 30mph zone there. Do you deserve the same treatment as those who went so much faster through the zone? In most people’s opinion, probably no. You clearly tried to comply and were only one mph over. Many would probably give a 5 mph lee way, which is why they chose 25 over 30 originally when setting the limit.
Something along the lines of “Bill, nice to see you smiling on Facebook; however, please remember to wear your safety glass at all times while on duty”. Thank you.
Firing or even a formal warning would be far less effective as people respond better to a friendly reminder than to an official warning or threat of action.
It pays to be careful. A friend was fired because he posted a shot of something that he thought was really neat at his place of employment (not a railroad.) It never occured to him that his boss would think he was exposing the company to risk.