as i see all of your posts you are saying the same thing that i want to cut out all
safety from my theater that is not the case i don't have any disputes with the
safety codes of our school its a discussion thread not an actual example everything i have stated about my school or as examples are hypothetical we do not wear hard hats in our
venue nor have we ever been required to. hell gloves are optional on our fly
rail which i believe is a stupid idea. also in a high school setting the only people with access to heights or any kind of electrical equipment next to outlets at
ground level are people who have keys and training. this is a public school so
safety is a huge deal. I am tired of people ASSUMING i mean to take
safety out of the picture, but when i see several threads about how (not on this forum) you should always wear Rubber soles when plugging in any standard
electric outlet it tells me that my generation obviously shouldn't be working with anything remotely hazardous in anyway because they can't or don't have the common sense to not stick a fork in a
socket.
I am in no way saying is not a huge priority and i guess people aren't understanding how i am stating it or they don't think about it they read it and just immediatly come to the conclusion if
safety isn't first it isn't there. I never rush into a job without thinking first what could happen. Also to clarify working at heights I meant anything over 4 inches.
It's not that people expect high schoolers are stupid, but that they cocky, overconfident, and though well-intended, can cause a great deal of harm to themselves or others inadvertently. Wiring up new connectors and accidentally putting the hot
wire on the
ground terminal now sends electrical
current through the body of your light
fixture (and subsequently anything metal that's connected to that
fixture -- say, an entire
electric). It's a simple mistake, but has potentially fatal consequences.
When you start saying, "Ehh, it's okay to skimp on
safety measures," at a young age, there's a reason you lose the respect of almost everyone here at CB. Many of us have worked with those types of people before -- it's scary. If you had wanted to make a thread discussing where the
line should be drawn on standard
safety measures, there would've been a much better way than saying, "I'm all for
safety but when it starts becoming such a huge focus don't your shows all suffer?"
Because it starts with person who cuts a corner to not put
safety cables on a few lights under mild pressure might be the person who under extreme pressure allows the one-man Genie lift to be used without outriggers or with the operator leaning out of the bucket because that
fixture is just a
little too far away for him to comfortably reach, but you don't have time to properly move the Genie to a better location.
As a professional courtesy, I suggest you watch how you handle situations in the future. You've managed already to discredit yourself to a large number of people in this community, and your attitude is the specific attitude I watch for in people I'm working with. You're the type of person I make certain never makes it to crew management and likely only gets hired out of desperation and ends up pushing
road cases when other people are performing skilled labor. Where I work, not only would we not trust you, but the last thing we would ever want is for you to spread your attitude amongst the crew. I don't care how well-intentioned or misunderstood or out of context your statements are, the moment a student is in a lift and says to themselves, "______ said it's okay to cut corners on
safety every once in a while for the sake of the show so I think I can lean over this guard
rail a little
bit further," you've just taken an otherwise intelligent person and in a best case scenario broken at least half a dozen bones in their body.
Because that's what people will do. High schoolers especially. No matter how well they've been trained, they're always under a constant pressure to perform and don't necessarily realize they have the right to say, "I don't feel safe doing this, I'd prefer to work on something else." And I know there are people that want to show off their "mad skillzz" by getting the job done really quickly because they decided to pull the outriggers on the one-man lift. There's that confidence that they'll be just as safe and will show their employers how awesome they are at getting tasks done quickly.
I've seen your attitude in students before. Those students never get hired for events and only ever see the arts center if they're willing to some basic work in the scene shop for free. We won't hire them, we don't trust them, and we get nervous when they associate with the crew members we do trust.
