Health and Safety Heroes

They’re the people who protect us from scorching the contents of our undergarments with hot beverages. They prevent us from spontaneously eating our monitors. If it wasn’t for these guys, Britain’s workforce would be adding to the NHS’s problems with paper-cuts, mild headaches and a whole host of other work-restricting ailments.

The Health and Safety Commission yesterday revealed plans for three major campaigns to ensure that the nation’s workforce have absolutely no excuse to take a day off sick. A similar set of proposals were made last year with the government soon giving their seal of approval. Perhaps the most memorable piece of legislation passed back in May 2006 was the infamous ‘Whispers in the Workplace’ proposal. The scheme was devised to ensure that all employees (regardless of gender, race, skin colour, sexual orientation and how many Walt Disney films they’d seen) wishing to communicate with a colleague, must whisper to avoid causing distress to other non-verbally active employees.

The proposed uniform for all office workers

Campaigns for this year’s shake-up are equally aggressive and include:

·                    Employees visiting the toilet in pairs. This will ensure that if the employee wishing to use the toilet slips on a banana skin at any stage of the journey, the Lavatory Chaperone can either perform first aid or call for assistance.

·                    Employees being supervised when drinking either hot or cold beverages. This will provide protection for the drinker and surrounding employees in the case of a spillage occurring.

·                    A ban on the consumption of numerous foods during lunch hours. The ban includes: bread, meat, dairy products, nuts, fruit, vegetables, salads and any other foods which are spelt using at least one vowel. The ban has been proposed to provide employees with protection against food allergies. The removed foods will then be replaced with sunlight, oxygen and employees being asked to just imagine that they are eating during their lunch hours.

The Chairman of the Health and Safety Commission for Great Britain, Alan Anal, said “Some people may see our campaigns as pedantic and unnecessary. But I would like to point out to those people that Health and Safety is an extremely important, if not completely mundane, aspect of modern day employment.”

Mr Anal then switched on a nearby paper shredder, fed a sheet through the machine, managed to catch his tie in the device and can now be found in hundreds of thin strips in a refuse bag, unfit for recycling.    JG