It seems we all need validation of the fact that we do good jobs, especially on those really bad days when nothing seems to go right. This is true even when the job that we do is not so great. The truth is for such kudos will not come to us unsolicited. We have to work, not only on our performance, but also in the complex game of employee/ manager psy-ops to get them.

I woke up the other morning having eaten red beans and rice the previous day and my stomach was not really upset, it simply had something to say. I sat on the decorative pipe end in the bathroom and was grieved at the lecture I was given. This in and of itself was disturbing to me, but worse still was that according to my custom, afternoon was the time for such conversation, and my routine was thrown all akilter. I left the house ten minutes late as it was and headed of for work. It was the end of August and the mornings in New Orleans start at eighty-eight degrees, with ninety-nine percent humidity. I got in my car, sweat already rolling off the slope of my bald head. As I came to the point where Oak meets the river, a train stopped me. The day was not starting off well. I checked my watch and was due to be twenty minutes late. I frowned inwardly and waited for this enormously long and slow moving train to go by. I was certain the conductor had a cup of coffee in his callused hand.
Though he may have been aware of the fact that he held up traffic in general he was quite unaware that he was holding me up personally and I was grieved at my situation. This was the fourth day in a row that I had been stopped by such a long slow moving impenetrable wall of boxed steel either coming to or going from work. I made a mental note to buy in the stock market guessing that if such an industry was on the up swing, the rest probably was as well.

Being a stickler for the schedules of life, I was in a state of panic when I arrived at work. I entered the building twenty minutes late, as scheduled, consoling myself with the fact that even if My Absentee Manager had showed up on this particular day, he would be far later than I. When I arrived I saw the voice mail responding to my self-therapy with no less than six messages blinking on the phone from My Absentee ManagerÕs home number. No message was left on any of them, but all the calls were made at consecutive minutes of the morning. He had been urgent to contact me right when I got in for some reason. I lurched to pick up the phone to call him and was checked by its ringing in response. I picked up the receiver and greeted My Absentee Manager, as identified by caller I.D. I was informed that I needed to go to the morning Operations Meetings in his stead to tell the big boss the bad new of some late projects, . . . a lamb led to the slaughter. These meetings take place, not so
promptly, at nine every morning. It is a chance for all of the managers to get together and discuss any late projects in the company and cast blame before the seat of The General Manager. It is in such dens across the corporate world where our economy makes its natural selection, deciding which projects are a priority, which are less so, and which are dead. As I hung up the phone I inwardly wept. Poor bowels, poor scheduling, and now to be subjugated to the fiscal equivalent of the confessional booth. The day was not starting off well.

I pulled the Ops meeting off relatively unscathed and decided that as far as the day goes I was going to take lemons and make lemonade. I started my work an almost an hour in the red because of the unfortunate circumstances revolving around the economy in general and beans in one more particular instance, but I resolved to catch-up in my work. The day hummed on like the morning train rolling along to make good the economic engine of our fair country. I was making good progress, but little setbacks abounded. About mid morning the shipments arrived from Fisher Scientific and I needed put them away in the lab. I had wheeled them over on a hand-truck and set them in the middle of my prep space, and they had been in the way ever since. It was after noon now and after tripping over the boxed for the fourteenth time I resolved to stop whatever it was that I was doing and put all this garbage away.

My father tells of a story where he was working on a ship fixing an antenna high atop the riggings while down below deck the mates had decided to rev-up their diesel engine. When burned, this engine, burning whatever fuel it was, put off a vaporous cloud of sulfuric acid that wafted over my father position on the boat. That evening as he lay asleep he was awoken by the fact that his back arched itself off the bed. As his eyes opened his back fell to the cushioned sheets. His lung had collapsed in his chest due to the vapors. He was consequently bed ridden for a period. He had made his contribution to industry and had been paid.

The last thing I had to put away was a case of 2.5lt bottles of concentrated hydrochloric acid. On pulling the two bottles out, one in each hand, they clanked together lightly and, due to some sort of pressure build up, one exploded, pouring its contents forth like the great deluge. I was, of course, dressed in full safety apparel, which consisted of a lab coat, safety glasses, and latex gloves. In other words I was more than probably doomed to the same fate as my father, as none of these things would protect me from the could of noxious gasses ascending to my nostrils at that very moment.

My brain jumped quickly to remember my safety training. The first thing that came to mind was the catch phrase, “do what you say, say what you do, and document it!” The problem was that this catch phrase was from the ethics meeting, not the safety meeting. I conjured up some distant thought of walking into the conference room and propping my boots on the conference table as I asked The Safety Officer in the pre-meeting quiet, “so, . . . does our company adhere to a deontological or utilitarian ethic?”

He said, “Utilitarian,” and chuckled as if to share a joke between us only he understood.

“You donÕt know what either term means do you . . .?” I said, stressing my Alabama accent. I was rudely ignored for the rest of the meeting and therefore rudely ignored back.

I could remember no safety meeting at all visually. The only pat advice I remembered was that the proper authorities should be notified.

I was lucky. When the acid spilled most of it spilled into the open box that the bottles are shipped in. In that box is a Styrofoam container meant to keep the bottles from clanking and hold any spill. When I saw the bottle bust and the cloud of vapor rising at me I held my breath. This was not one of those, “suck in all the air you can hold and see how long you can go,” hold your breaths. It was a strait up, “what you got is what you get, donÕt breath anymore or your on the floor” hold your breaths. I lifted the box and put it in the hood to get rid of the fumes. My mind raced as I saw the puddles of stinging liquid that did hit the floor spread. Already a mist was rising from them like ghosts on a battlefield in the pre-dawn fog. I grabbed some absorbent padding and threw it, doubled layered, onto the spill. That took care of most of the vapors. I bolted out the back door and went over to the other building inquiring as to the whereabouts of The Safety Officer. “HeÕs not here
today” was the response. So much for notifying the proper authorities, I walked back scratching my head. When I got back into the lab it reeked of hydrochloric acid, and I realized that so did I. I also noticed that the absorbent pads were already soaked through and the vapors were starting to rise again. I grabbed some Spil-ex solution and covered the pads with it, neutralizing the acid. Then I turned to the hood. I poured all the acid in the Styrofoam container into my disposal bucket and rendered it harmless, chemically neutralizing it as is my art. I next dunked the acid soaked box into the bucket and neutralized it. I went out for a breath of fresh air then returned for the clean up of the floor. Slowly the lab cleared out and everything was back to normal.

Now to make lemons out of lemonade, My first instinct now was not to tell anyone, and hide my shame like Adam with chunks of apple glistening from his teeth. But my former safety and ethics training kicked in hard and I realized that I must not only tell the tale of my near obliteration, but must do it with style, and to my credit. Hands still shaking from acidic inhalation I typed out the epic drama of my brush with finitude. Carefully I documented all of my correct assessments and quick reactions, all the while downplaying the fact that the happenstance that brought this accident about was the work of my hands. At the end of the letter I asked for an evaluation of my actions to give it a purpose for being sent, calculating that this would force the letter into wider circulation, gaining me fame. I e-mailed this letter off to The Safety Officer and My Absentee Manager.

As soon as the next day it was responded to by The Safety Officer who put a cc to the whole safety comittee saying that I handled the situation excellently, and that he would look into getting some masks that would protect against acid vapors. Apparently I was not the only one schooled in e-mails aimed at covering your butt. I have seen no such masks yet. The emails continued as the safety conversation grew until the climax a few mornings later when an e-mail appeared from The General Manager on my screen.

“Great Job Phillip!”

It appears that I got my Kudos after all.

Phillip G.

Literature