Saturday, February 18, 2023

Safety: Hierarchy of Controls

 

Stolen from Dad's Deadpool Blog

I saw this meme on Dad's Deadpool Blog and thought that it was worth sharing with some of my progressive, female acquaintances.

Within minutes, one of them responded "Joe-very old idea.  Women’s restrooms have posters like this all over.  Especially in lg urban areas and campus communities"

There is very little I can say to contradict that. I avoid large urban areas and areas near "campus communities".

But I might be able to "add value" by discussing the preferred hierarchy of responses to safety concerns.

According to The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)


training is second-from-the-bottom of the list and "signage" is not even included in the Hierarchy of Controls.

In my opinion, the primary reason for that is that countermeasures need to have 99.999% effectiveness and not be perishable in the sense of not requiring frequent human interventions to maintain their effectiveness.

Since 99.999% reliability is very difficult to visualize and to test for, what if we used 95% as a metric. That is, if more than one-in-twenty fails then the system (as currently configured) does not meet the requirements.

Imagine that you are the manager of a bar in East Lansing, Columbus or Madison.

During the course of your five-minute, pre-opening meeting you read through the sign that will be posted in the Lady's room.

What is your confidence level that all of your servers would be able to recite, from memory what actions are required if a customer orders an Angel Shot if they were asked a week later? Half of them? A quarter?

Three months later, what percentage of that staff is still likely to be working in your bar or restaurant? In many food-service businesses 30% of the staff will have turned-over. Was there a plan to train the new people coming in? I bet not.

Durability of signage

Restrooms in bars are a hostile environment for signage.

The cleaning chemicals are harsh. Customers are sometimes drunk and destroy property.

The walls often have residue on them from cleaning and tape does not form a solid bond to the walls.

"Break in case of fire" hammer is missing and inspection sticker is a year out-of-date

What is the confidence level that a sign installed in the restroom of a college bar will be there four weeks later? Is it over 95%. That would mean you could inspect twenty restrooms a month after the signs were handed out and nineteen of them would still have legible signs mounted.

Maintenance

The sad reality is that most progressives are oblivious to the fact that systems require maintenance and maintenance requires resources. Redundancies and safety measures that are assumed to be in-place and healthy...but are not...are one of the factors that will contribute to the speed of our collapse when shit gets real.

If you point out the need for maintenance and resources, the typical progressive is likely to brush off the concern saying "That is not in my swim-lane. I am an idea-person."

But if it is not their responsibility, then whose responsibility is it? And who is responsible for inspecting to ensure those "ideas" didn't evaporate.

The last set of rabbit holes

The last set of rabbit holes I went down on this sign was the realization that involving the bar in "Calling an Uber" or "Calling 911" when 99% of the women have their own phone and should be capable of making the call themselves.

What value is there in involving the bar?

I got schooled when I asked somebody who had been sexually assaulted on a date. This person is one of the toughest people I know so I had to respect what they were saying.

Paraphrasing what they said "The bar can slow-walk the bill until the Uber or the Cops show up."

"But more important from the standpoint of the intended victim, most victims lock-up like a rabbit with a fox sniffing around. Hitting those three numbers 9-1-1 might be beyond them. They need the human connection. They need somebody to step-up and be their advocate because they cannot believe this is happening to them. We are in denial and we need somebody who is outside the victim-perpetrator role to judge "Yes, 9-1-1 is not an over-reaction" or "Sure, there is no shame in getting an Uber ride from a bar".

Summary

Even though the sign has many shortcomings in terms of durability and reliability, it has utility according to those who walked through that particular hell.

11 comments:

  1. I feel, not just old, but ancient.

    Signs? Virtue signalling mostly I suspect, although the options ‘may’ offer some support but … to me this smacks of yet more pandering to the “women are responsibility and consequence free superior beings, whilst needing extra support, funding, special treatment and excuses at every stage” (apparently) fact of modern life.

    Chivalry, where men treated women with respect, protected and provided for them was predicated on … women only noticing, dating and marrying men who did so. Women unilaterally dumped that whole millennia old system, not men. They now deliberately choose the very men they ‘should’ avoid, with predictable consequences, but we are supposed to provide help and support instead of saying the obvious? Maybe “Don’t date, or even talk to, men you know will probably act like this” (let alone go to somewhere where they ‘can’ attack you), but that would require some measure of responsibility, and acceptance that choices have consequences … even for women, and that’s unacceptable in the modern world.

    Hint: Maybe, just maybe, if women didn’t pick the ‘bad boy’ (whilst reporting any normal one to HR/police for daring to look at them) then assaults and date-rapes would be considerably rarer. [and yes, I ‘am’ partly blaming the victims, as you would a man who did anything even vaguely similar].

    Call me an ist of some kind but … if you need a sign to tell you what you should do (in a public place) if feeling threatened by, uncomfortable with, or just ‘not interested’ (because let’s be honest this ‘will’ be used mostly by women who don’t want the hassle of dumping him for not being up to her, wishful thinking, standards) you really shouldn’t be out in public alone, let alone dating (especially men you do not trust not to assault/rape you).

    To quell the usual response, there are ‘always’ signs, and women always report after the fact that they had doubts, feelings, etc. long beforehand. Always! If women hadn’t been socialised and indoctrinated into ‘fitting in’, they’d simply deal with it, as they did for those millennia, as adults (with the full support of every other man within hailing distance, and there is another crucial factor ...).

    ‘Part’ of the issue is the behaviour of … other women. You’ll be hard pressed now to find a man who hasn’t done, what all normal men ‘will’, i.e. stand up and defend a woman in public being threatened or attacked and … had the woman turn around and attack him for hurting her ‘man’. (I’ve even been stabbed by one, for daring to stop her – OK dislocating his shoulder ‘may’ have been going too far - ‘boyfriend’ from beating her to a pulp). Women would, as in days of yore, be safe and protected in public if … men didn’t (justifiably) fear that some of them … want the attention. But, as per normal, the ones doing the play-acting/attention-seeking are never the ones actually put at real risk by the behaviour (just like all those women making regret-sex, he didn’t call/did something I don’t like/want some money/attention ‘rape’ accusations put ‘real’ rape victims in doubt too). [we could bring up the whole 'hook-up' culture too, where a certain type of man 'expects' sex now because 'culture', defined by other women, insists women 'should' sleep around constantly - It's almost as if 'feminism' aims to degrade and defile women. Old, like I said, Sigh!].

    People can fool you, but if you are reduced to hoping a server remembers to call you an uber … I’d suggest maybe you should have considered ‘not being there’ at all first (and maybe change the criteria you use to identify “datable men” too).

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  2. If a woman can't take enough initiative to call an Uber or to call 9-1-1 *for her own safety* but rather needs another woman to do it for her because she can't make the decision for herself, then they demonstrate that they should not be out in public without a keeper.

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  3. I've wondered about signs like that, or the ones about rape, human trafficking, etc that are required in some areas. You have a good point about the durability of them.
    A similar example: Have you ever seen emergency telephones in parking lots, along bike trails, etc? More than half of the ones I have seen were visibly non functional.
    Jonathan

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    Replies
    1. P.S. in my experience, signs are considered Administrative Controls.

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    2. In my experience, the signs are required by company/corporate lawyers to mitigate law suits.

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    3. In my experience, signs like that can create liability, It proves establishment awareness of types of problems, and it creates an expectation of performance to address those problems.

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    4. Indeed, acknowledging a potential hazard creates the condition of liability to mitigate that hazard. A "beware of the dog" sign can get you in trouble where a "dog on property" sign won't.

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  4. "They need somebody to step-up and be their advocate because they cannot believe this is happening to them. We are in denial and we need somebody who is outside the victim-perpetrator role to judge "Yes, 9-1-1 is not an over-reaction" or "Sure, there is no shame in getting an Uber ride from a bar"."


    At the risk of sounding sexist, they want a (real) man.
    The world is full of pussies. They want someone else (the state) to handle the 'icky' parts of life. They brush it off with notions like you said about swim lanes.
    Honestly one big reason I'm pushing for upheaval. Over half that lot will be dead inside the first 7 days. Things will get a lot easier after that. The remaining few will no longer cling to broken ideology.

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  5. This is why women are under authority. First of their fathers, then of their husbands. In a pinch, brothers, uncles, etc. must take the responsibility.
    Much of the social breakdown we see is due to women rebelling against this hierarchy and men failing to enforce it. The problem started with Adam and Eve.

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  6. Part of the issue is that women are no longer taught how to disengage from a situation in a way that saves face on both sides.

    That said, if we continue to normalize a woman 'vapor locking' then we might as well go back to fainting couches and chaperones.

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  7. As the father of a daughter who was sexually assaulted by a customer while at work, I must disagree with your "somebody". My daughter didn't need an Angel Shot. As soon as he grabbed two handfuls of her butt, she did exactly what I'd trained her to do, turned and laid a heel strike on him. Unfortunately, he moved and she only broke his nose rather than driving it into his brain.

    No, she didn't get into any trouble. Her employer was fine with how things were handled. The cops nailed the perp and gave her a big attagirl. He got 2 years in prison.

    Train your womenfolk to take care of themselves rather than relying on the uneven helpfulness of strangers. It's what we've done for men forever--why not do it for the women?

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