Safety first

Today after school, I had to go with the rest of the new teachers to a safety meeting. I had heard humorous things about this meeting from returning teachers, but I was not fully prepared.

“Oh yea, that meeting lasts five minutes and all they tell you is not to stand on boxes at school,” someone told me. A pretty funny formality, but painless.

Our meeting, however, lasted for more than an hour, and hilarity (at least in my post-teaching slap-happy mind) ensued.

Safety policies they clued us in on?

• Men cannot lift anything weighing more than 112 pounds (so none of their colleagues, they told us jokingly) while at work. (We were even given the example that if a colleague were to “throw himself on the ground” we could not pick him up ourselves, but would need to make sure to enlist the help of another colleague, making it a two-man job.)
• No welding allowed at school. (This one, again because of my slap-happy state, I just could not handle. Welding? Why did they think to include this in the safety policy for general teachers? I lost control of my laughter, even after they explained the reason for including it, and people started to stare.)
• We cannot climb up the shelves in the library. (There goes my workout plan.)
• We must make sure that when we walk through the hallways carrying things, we do so in a way that does not knock any of our colleagues over.
• We cannot purposefully kick any of our colleagues down the stairs. (OK, now I’m laughing again.)
• To put out an electrical fire, we should use snow or powder.
• We cannot use alcohol while at work. (And we will be randomly tested to make sure we abide by this rule.)

By the end of it, I had to stifle my giggles. It reminded me of those times growing up in Catholic school when I was trying so hard not to laugh at something during all-school masses, which of course made it that much funnier. Even thinking about the simple fact that this meeting was lasting so long made me laugh.