Safety Inspection

We had a fairly big safety inspection at the University last week. There was a sense of dread and the usual "what a waste of time/ how inconvenient" rants. Our fear of being scrutinised was such that I couldn't help but get this tune in my head come the day of reckoning.

Actually Darth Vader's armour looks pretty safe for a lab environment.
On day one the safety inspectors played a clever mind-game by not actually inspecting the labs on day one. This meant the vast majority of people who'd planned a minimum lab-work day had done so for no reason. Round one to the inspectors.
Day 2 was the real deal but my lab remained unscathed until lunchtime when a member of the lab dashed into the office, "They're here" grabbed his bag and left for a long lunch.
I was midway through my lunch and was going to stay in the office until i realised i was the ONLY one in the lab meaning I'd be the one who'd be having to answer questions. I looked out the window and decided the weather was good enough for an outdoor lunch after all.

Having finished my lunch I returned to the building only to be told "they're still there" so I decided to go down to the safety sanctuary coffee room for a tea. Turns out the safety inspection was quite a good networking drive as I spoke to several people I'd never spoken to before down there. The main topic of conversation was that the inspectors had found an out-of-date bandage. We debated whether that was worse than having no bandages.

In the end we all survived the inspection with a little bit of sweat from our floor technicians. While an inconvenience, it's hard to deny that it provides a good motivator for an overdue lab clean. The forced sociability was a nice side-effect as well.