Workplace hazards. Poison, compress gas, bubble wrap…

I’ve taken on a new volunteer job where I get to smell like fish and risk tetanus every time I go (more on that another day). Before I could start I had to take a number of online training courses about chemicals and falling hazards and inappropriate touching. (Oh my!).

After taking the courses I feel well prepared to face the risks in my new volunteer role; and fairly certain I won’t touch anything or anyone inappropriately. (At least not on the job.) However, the safety training has had the side effect of making me feel decidedly unsafe in my normal job. Not because I’m really at any greater risk in my day-to-day life but because I’ve realized just how many things in an office can kill you if you eat them and how unprepared the rest of my office mates (who have not taken the fish-related-job online training courses) are to keep themselves and therefore me safe.

I used to think my boring office was a bastion of security. After all we have a health and safety committee that follows every rule there is; they really looks after us. (The committee once reprimanded me for storing something too high-up. They were worried it could fall in an earthquake and cause injury. It was bubble wrap.) So my office is safe right? Wrong. WHIMIS training made it very clear that I was in danger and I should have already had safety training (tsk, tsk, bad employer) to make me aware of the proper handling of workplace hazards like, wait for it, printer toner (which is apparently poisonous if swallowed).

What the training didn’t make clear is how I might accidentally swallow printer toner (I have some research to do), or if the risk is from disgruntled colleagues discovering that black toner blends right in with office coffee without effecting the taste (allegedly).

I’m sure my heightened awareness of risk will fade over time, but just to be on the safe side I think I’ll go make a list of everything at work I shouldn’t lick.

PS. There were so many jokes about inappropriate touching training I had trouble choosing just one. Please feel free to take a moment and tell yourself a few now.

I don’t know if anyone else who writes feels this way, but I’m fairly certain that most of my good ideas come to me via a demon that lives in my head. Or who at least visits my head from time to time.

I haven’t decided if he’s good or evil. The ideas are great. (One point for good.) But he doesn’t seem to understand that critical plot points or new story ideas should not present themselves, demanding my attention, while I’m on the highway doing 90 kph. (One point for evil.)

Seriously, I once wrote an entire song pulling over every block to write a new line.  I’d stop the car, write a line then wait and see if more was coming. When no other lyrics seemed forth coming I would drive away only to have the next line slide into my head complete with percussion and instruments that I have no idea how to play and so have no ability to get down on paper. Thanks.

My most recent story idea has me leaning towards evil. The idea came while I was walking down a hospital corridor.  It was a great idea that quietly suggested I risk sitting down in a possibly plague infested hallway to get the critical plot points down before they faded into “what was that idea” and “damn it, that was good, why can’t I remember” territory. I didn’t sit down. I took a picture of the wall that inspired me instead and hoped for the best (I can’t afford to get sick again.) Nice try demon.

PS. I’ve been thinking of setting my phone up for hands free calls so I can call myself on the road and leave random messages about writing ideas while dodging traffic.