What do you get when you replace reality with BS?

We have a yearly health and safety meeting at our place of work each spring. They invite different guests each year give out awards and basically dot the I’s cross the tees when it comes to displaying due diligence if shit every hits the fan. It’s always on the most beautiful of spring days and it ends up being more sad than informative for me.

If there ever was an exercise on covering your ass our annual meeting along with thousands of others in the province of Ontario would be award worthy.

This year we discussed our harassment policy, certainly one should always be fair and just certainly being a foreman. Trouble is there are always truths to be told, faced and adhered to. Heavy construction doesn’t get done passing out roses, hugs , and political correct BS. Guys stand in mud,water and sometimes human shit up to their crotch and get stuff done. They don’t stand at the top of the trench and say ewww . The best jump in put a smile on their face and give it all they got. They swear , loose their temper, smile and tell it like it is. In a good man there is truth in almost everything he has to say even if he’s having a bad day and like that old dog your grand dad had on the farm ; gets a little snarly.

While I sat and listed to our safety rep massage our brains with our new harassment policy, no one got mad even though they know it’s a bunch of crap. All the men in that room who are the best workers never got hugs and admiration because they stood and watched someone else from the top of the trench. Their sweat and swear words stained the air and soil around every inch of road , every inch of sewer line, they have constructed . You haven’t seen an honest smile till you’ve seen a man smile covered in mud, cement dust, or human shit smile while earning your heartfelt respect.

They are men after all and so many before them worked so hard ,wore out and died without an harassment policy, the bureaucracy of safety, or a trail of paper saying they walked with righteousness and that their ass was now covered. I would imagine most of them would have said they lived a good but hard honest imperfect life.

That’s changing at light speed and now real men fill out reports, stay clean. Give out hugs before work and coddle those that can easily place their responsibility on others. Fueling the need for more safety regulations, safety inspectors, and instructors ;its becoming quite an industry, on the journey to a perfect world where no one ever gets hurt or dies, feels hurt or ever has a bad day,and if your a foreman you sure as hell don't rock any boats.

As I raised my hand in defiance of political correctness and asked sarcastically when our sensitivity training was starting I knew then it’s the beginning of the end. An adherence to an illusion has been fostered by government bureaucracies and we seem only to happy to follow. It has taken hold, and reality is no longer hostage it's about to have a bullet put in its head.


"A viler evil than to murder a man, is to sell him suicide as an act of virtue. A viler evil than to throw a man into a sacrificial furnace, is to demand that he leap in, of his own will, and that he build the furnace, besides."

Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged. Part2, III
US (Russian-born) novelist (1905 - 1982)