As I add to the personal calendar of life I find I am drawn to reading the local obituaries for my own information each day. What's the old joke - "you read them to see if you're in them". Anyway when I was a Personnel Director I followed them as it often alerted me to an employee's family member or, heaven forbid, an employee who loosened these earthly bonds and moved on. Participants were always 30 years older than me, then 15, until now it's pretty much my age up to 20 years or so older; and some are actually people I know.
I know one thing. I believe I will be writing my own obit and save my family the task of trying to explain my life. You can tell the ones that use canned phrases that no doubt the funeral director came up with and then you find some that are truly personal and endearing that capture that person's essence. Some focus on their careers, but the best ones capture what they were good at, who they impacted and the eccentricities that made them unique.
What got me pondering was the passing of an employee I knew from "way back when". The last time I really remember interacting with him was when I got the frantic call that two guys were found unconscious in a sewer vault and were being rushed to the hospital - conditions unknown. All I remember of the harrowing ride to the scene was mouthing "please don't be dead, please don't be dead". Upon arrival I donned my hard hat (why am I always in heels and a dress when I get an emergency) and stepping into a mish-mosh of fire personnel, plant management/union personnel and "the media". Of course they always get there first and get my standard "no comment" though I looked great (or bizarre) in the later newscast in my bright green trench coat and hard hat (note previous comment on attire).
At the hospital I immediately entered the emergency room where one of the men was up and talking, good; crying not so good as he was convinced the other man was dead. He gave me a bear hug and begged for information. Note: He was just retrieved from a sewer vault, so one can imagine the state of his clothes and mine after the hug. A small note of humor in a perilous situation is that I always seem to be talking to authority in a state of disarray.
Although the other man was found face down and had aspirated (inhaled) sewage he was holding his own. (He did spend 30 days in ICU but he recovered and returned to work). Talking to the families is always sensitive and it is imperative that you give them accurate information and support. What made this incident especially interesting was comforting his wife in one room while his "alleged" female friend was in another. That was definitely a time when discretion was the better part of valor as they say.
At that time, confined space entry was finally and newly defined specifically by standards (after 20 years) and I spent at least a week training all underground entry workers on recognition, air monitoring, safe entry and rescue in the new procedures. Of course, once the incident happened and the first employee collapsed at the bottom (bad air which the monitor indicated) the second went right down after him and consequently collapsed as well. Fortunately he called for help before attempting rescue.
In the heat of the moment human nature often thinks of saving another instead of themselves. The hardest thing to do is to do nothing, which is exactly what their training indicated, and call for help. Though if the rescue apparatus had not been disassembled before the first casualty went back down the hole, it would have indicated other issues for investigation but there would not have been injuries.
After hours at the hospital and pursuing investigation I made it home late that night knowing that I needed to be early into the office to retrieve training records and programs as I had no doubt MIOSHA would be our first visitor. As I was thumbing through files and paperwork my boss was screaming at me about whether I had checked with the hospital yet and obviously I didn't care about the employee's condition. 1) I knew I wouldn't get any more from the hospital at that hour than I did when I left the night before; 2) we would have to be ready to answer some very hard questions immediately from the authorities; 3) she never showed at the hospital the day before or assisted in any way as she always undermined me when she could; and 4) I am sorry that I did not know she was a nut case until I ended up taking her job when she started crying at a budget hearing on camera. At least I learned never to cry about your budget when you're on camera.
Of course to show that life always has surprises, I was out deathly ill when the citations came in about the incident which always carry a timetable for response. Staff just put the paperwork in my inbox which no one checked. Consequently I get a call from the Director of the whole department blasting me about why I didn't bring the citations to their attention immediately. To his credit he did apologize in person later due to, duhh, my being deathly ill and no one looking at my inbox.
It was heartening to see the injured employee's obit, if that is an appropriate remark, knowing he made it into his 80's. Though how he worked it out between the two ladies I never did pursue. After the incident the two employees became my A-1 instructors for confined space training! Nothing like cheating death to make a believer out of a person.
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