Warehouse Safety - Global

Carl had worked in a warehouse for about a year. He liked his job, and he felt safe doing it. He appreciated that because his old job had involved working with dangerous machinery, and someone he knew had been badly hurt last year. Sure, the warehouse had a few machines you had to be careful around, but they were nothing compared to what he had worked with before. One day when a lot of people were out with the flu, several large shipments arrived. The available workers found it challenging to get everything done and be as careful as usual. Just before the end of his shift, Carl passed by a stack of boxes that looked unstable. He knew he couldn’t just leave them like that, because they might fall on someone. Earlier, they had stacked those boxes in pairs. But no one else was around and Carl was anxious to leave so he could get to his son’s soccer game on time. So he decided to just do it himself. The boxes were pretty heavy. He couldn’t get one of the boxes to move forward on the first pull, so he gave it a good yank and the next thing he knew, he was on the ground looking up at a few of his co-workers. One of them was on a cell phone, saying “Oh, I think he just regained consciousness.” Carl started to get up, but one of his other co-workers said: “Don’t you move until the paramedics get here.” It turned out that the boxes falling on Carl only gave him a minor concussion and a broken bone in his left foot. The foot would heal quickly, but he wouldn’t be able to play in the father-son soccer game next week. Upon reflection, Carl realized that he had been lucky, but he dreaded explaining the situation to his son. Ironically, just a few days before, Carl had lost his temper and yelled at his son for breaking something by trying to get it off a high shelf without an adult’s help. Carl felt like the world’s worst role model.