Thursday, November 02, 2006

Shooting Fish in a Barrel

This is an easy target, I know, but I just can't resist: Health and Safety. At my place of work, we recently had installed, at great expense, and over a long period of time, special fire safety doors to stop the spread of the fires which, of course, regularly break out... These doors are situated a few steps from the existing 1930s doors, which, I would imagine, being very heavy and solid would take a while to burn. Anyway, a colleague asked if she could have a coat hook on her office door. The answer, following a risk assessment, was no: a hook might injure her if, in a fire, the door were to collapse on her. I would have thought the hook might be the least of her worries in such a circumstance, but that was the reason. Of course, the rest of us have hooks on our doors, and have had since the place was built. There is no recorded instance of death by coathook...