This is, this show is brought to you by safety. FM. The following program is rated for mature audiences and may contain adult language, adult situations and frank safety discussions. The names in certain details have been changed to protect the safe and the unsafe. But believe me, every item in here is true today. On safety words jim puzzle. Don't let people make your decisions for you. Let me start out by saying I'm not an attorney and I'm not offering legal, health or human resources advice. But this really needs to be a topic of discussion in your organization. I ran into a problem at the beginning of my career on a project where we had an environmental management company who had an overbearing and micromanager type of and I'll use air quotes safety professor. This is one of those people and you always butt heads here every day. It seems like there is a power struggle going. Usually we were on the same page, but there were a few times he would not judge and undermine everything that we were trying to do, especially in meetings in front of my client and the workforce. I was in charge of management. But today's world of email, voicemail and pet specialty. This would have been handled really different and really quickly. You wouldn't have everything in an email scene and it would have been put to bed early 1990s that wasn't going to have. I did what I thought was a professional think before I speak to him in private and asked him not to deliberately undermine we're not talking about inadvertent things that happened in life where you may say something out of place and accidentally under buying semi that happens. But this was something to play beyond when this didn't work well. They kept on undermining us. I followed it up the line of the management no to the client by supervisor and everyone said we'll just deal with it. And they blew me off one day. This first made a solution that was totally wrong and he took people out of respiratory protection and the air monitoring results that we were coming up with were four times in the permissible exposure limit. I put everyone back in the appropriate protection and work proceeded. You see when I heard about this, of course he was nowhere to be found. Later that day I was in a meeting with him and he started to harangue me in a meeting over respiratory protection and I asked him why he took people out of respirators when they were way over the P. E. L. He then started to argue. Then I asked him if you actually had the authority to make that decision since this company and him, nobody from his organization were on any paperwork and he actually wasn't the employer of anybody. I told them that it's the employer's responsibility and me by proxy to protect the employees. And it was wrong of him to insert himself into any decision, especially things dealing with respirators. Since this time he was wrong. He wanted to all of a sudden cut the meeting short and I told him that this conversation would happen in front of the workforce since he started it in front of the workforce. And he rang me in front of them. I pointed out that he had little or no liability in this situation. I've got his wrong decisions were putting people at risk and I will not let him do that any wrong. You'll see the lesson here is this. If someone has no liability, they have no skin in the game, You don't let them make the decisions. So here's some other learnings from this situation. Number one don't argue in public, especially when you're wrong or there's some debate that maybe you're wrong. Do it in private or small meetings. Republican, high ranking people. It's not a good idea. An appropriate way of handling this. Would have been for him to ask the question saying, Hey, have them were wearing these restaurants rather than just say, well you're wrong and I'm working at this one, right? I don't let people make decisions like that unless it's an ideal age. Immediately dangerous to life and health situations. Number three always document this behavior. If something cannot be proven beyond all doubt, especially if you're a safety professional, don't expect any kind of resolution in your favor. We are safety professionals, not production people Were seen as a drag on the organization and this also leads to a lack of credibility. # four remain calm. Be nice and calm like Iowa's right. Always be less confrontational. The minute you lose control, you lost the argument with these figures and it will tend to get the other person aggravated. If you don't get upset as it did in this situation, which if they got upset and guess what they look bad, you don't look bad. Stick to your position. Number five, stick to your position. Have a backbone. Even if it does not turn out in your favor, you at least show you have a backbone and are looking at your people's interest. No and your client and your organization's special. If you can show a logical and reasonable towards some action, people have a tendency, even difficult people to respect you. Even if that situation does not turn out in your favor, you might not agree with you and you know what you need to get over. So what, how does this resolve the next week? There was a huge meeting in the boston's and I had a conversation on the inside. I told him what happened in my attempts, these objects and I had it in my nice handy logbook. We don't have a lot of us so much. Nowadays. We use apps and emails. Guess what happened? Everyone ended up in Greenland. They even got a good laugh out of this situation. He ended up moving on after this and no one has seen and heard from him in tears. We don't know whatever. It's a matter of fact who's boss ended up hiring me And I still got work in that company over 25 years later. So what's the purpose of all these discussions we have here on safety words last couple of episodes, right. That's the show that you're not alone in this fight. You're not alone in this safety. This type of stuff is common. We see it all the time as safety professionals. This is the way I handled it and it turned out in my favor. I've had similar situations. They haven't turned out in my favor. But guess what? I don't care. But when things turn out in your favor, it's a great thing, sharing knowledge and showing people that they are not alone and in these situations is how we're going to win the safety for safety wars. This was jim wholesome. The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the host and its guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the company. Examples of analysis discussed within this podcast are only examples. It should not be utilized in the real world as the only solution available as they are based only on very limited and dated open source information, assumptions made within this analysis are not reflective of the position of the company. No part of this podcast may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means mechanical, electronic recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the creator of the podcast, jay Allen. Yeah.