AOL had a list of
the ten most dangerous jobs. Interestingly, being a fisherman was
at the top. I guess you only have to watch A Perfect Storm to see
how that might be possible. But people in sales are up there too
-- since they're on the road a lot. Apparently they fall asleep
more than we realize and drive off the road. Men mostly, from
loggers to steelworkers to construction workers, garbage collectors,
and powerline
workers round things out, not unexpectedly. But the weirdest statistic
was at the bottom of the article:
Homicides, which account for the majority of workplace deaths
among executives and supervisors in retail and other business services, continue
to decline. Following general national trends, homicide as a cause of workplace
death fell to 767 incidents last year, from 822 in 2004 and 1,080 in 1994.
Personally, I think that's a lot of dead people that I didn't think were very much at risk.
For comparison there were only 48 actual deaths among fishermen last
year. It's just that there are not very many of them. So the percentage
per 100,000 is high, ranking them at the top.
I don't know about you, but I think I may start wearing Kevlar to my
job. Which reminds me, I notice that police weren't on the list. I
always thought that was a dangerous line of work. Maybe those guns come
in handier than I thought.
6 comments:
It's not so dangerous being a Cop. We only die after we retire, living an average of seven years after leaving the job. I think it has something to do with our pensions and strippers.
Cliff worked concrete construction for a few years. He had many, many close calls, and I was glad when he got out of that line of work. Fishermen? Strange.
One summer my dad built houses with my uncle. He fell off a two story roof once. My mom worked in fast food when one of the guys there sliced his arm in half. Don't remember what he did to do it though. When I worked in a thrift store they were robbed, at gun point. It was my day off though, thankfully.
Guess it's not that surprising to me what's dangerous...
~Lily
My degree is in safety and occupational health and I worked in safety for about 10 years, so I have seen tons of injury and fatality statistics. I was over 103 retail locations and the biggest threat of fatality under my watch would have been from a robbery. I always hated when my pager went off at 3am because I knew something bad had happend. Fortunately, there was never a fatality at any of my locations or warehouses.
The last week I was there, we had a man drive into the back of our semitruck leaving a store. He was going about 50 when he hit the truck going 11mph. I could have gone without having to deal with that gruesome scene, but yes, he apparently fell asleep too.
Alexis and I both have carry permits and I routinely carry my gun where ever I go just because there is so much crazy stuff going on out there. But there is so much you can do to reduce risks. Hell, you do a huge reduction just by staying home after 10pm. I always stay that nothing good happens after midnight.
Ok, I'll quit rambling....sorry;)
Chris
http://inanethoughtsandinsaneramblings.blogspot.com
I was a social worker, and was threatened often, but none ever actually followed through. I sat on a gun in a house once in Detroit, and walked into a house in a suburban area and found a shotgun on the kitchen table, next to the drugs. I had a bottle thrown at the back of my head in Pontiac, MI, but it shattered on the sidewalk behind me. It wasn't boring.
xoxo
I think the bottom line is you never know when someone is gonna snap, and take it out on one of your coworkers. Or you. People are can get a little tightly wound, and the best thing you could ever know about your workplace is the quickest way to exit.
What can I say, even lab geeks have been known to want to bust out of the maze. There've been a couple that I've worked with that were downright scary. (Honey, can I borrow your Taser?)
Just watch Dangerous Catch on the Discovery Channel to believe fishermen have to be a little nuts to do what they do.
I wonder if you could find Kevlar with a Polartec cover? :p
Anna
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