Welcome to the 37th edition of Safe For Work. Some recent safety news and then a story inspired by the evolution of haptic feedback.

In Safety News

• The biggest US money managers are cutting back on ESG. Safety leaders need to be able to make the economic case for their initiatives.

• The most common workplace safety hazards.

Touchpoint

by Matt Cantor

He moved his arms like he was in the room. He lifted the boxes. He moved them over, put them down. As far as there was a hang of this to get, he was getting it-- he’d been getting it, for weeks. “Probationary period” wasn’t a bad pair of words, the way the company used it, but it always felt like a bad pair of words. But Andrew knew that the other guys were going to stop looking at him just that little bit different after tonight.

He lifted another box, slightly heavier than the others-- he could feel that slight difference in the weight through a whirring suite of motosensors, through five inches of wires and about fifty feet of humming, connected air, into his gloves and the control-pads on his arms and back. He made sure to be slightly more careful with it, about the same difference. He moved his tiny, full-of-bones-and-strings arms, a little more slowly, and fifty feet away, two, enormous arms of metal and circuit and pressure-pistons moved, a little more slowly-- but still--

He was only human.

Carlos, standing next to him in the control bay, let out something between a snort, a sigh, and a wince as the contents of the crate jangled awkwardly against the inside of the lid-- a bit too much of a jolt-- “You’re ready,” he said to Andrew, before Andrew could say anything about maybe not being ready.

“Easy for you to say,” Andrew said right back. “It’s not your kid.”

“But it was, when it was my turn. And I did it. And I’m still here. And Harry’s face is still the same shape as before-- a little bigger, maybe, I swear that kid grows an inch every time I blink-- but all his parts are where they’re supposed to be.”

“Sure, but--”

“I wouldn’t be letting you do this if you weren’t ready. None of us would be letting you do this if you weren’t ready.”

“And you could just think I’m ready and be wrong. Can’t I just skip it?”

Maybe it would be better to just let the guys keep looking at him that little bit different; what kind of harm did a little bit of a different look do, really? Compared to all the other things that could happen to a person. That could happen to a person’s daughter.

Technically, Andrew didn’t have to do this. He’d never had to do this. No one had ever had to do this. It wasn’t a test. There was no certificate at the end of it-- he’d be getting one before leaving work today, from the foreman, signifying the official end of his probationary period. What would he be getting tonight, after sneaking back into the warehouse with everyone else? What would he really be getting?

Technically…

Technically, Andrew shouldn’t have been doing this at all. Technically, HR had no idea this was happening, and everyone who knew didn’t know, and everyone who ever talked about it was talking about something else, actually, and it was just an inside joke anyways, it was just a funny story that one of them had heard at a bar once, from a different group of workers from a different company over at a different table-- nobody from Mason Industrial Services would ever engage in such reckless behavior. Never even dreamt of it.

“Misuse of company property”-- technically, that’s what this was, wasn’t it? And Andrew had signed his name at the bottom of several very long lists of things he’d agreed not to do, hadn’t he?-- hadn’t that been on at least one of them?

He really didn’t have to do this.

A rite of passage. That’s all this was.

“Is Alice frightened?”

“I’m her dad,” said Andrew. “Of course she isn’t frightened.”

“Well, there you go,” said Carlos.

“After tonight, she might be frightened.”

“Fine. Don’t do it then.”

The sort of pause where you wait for the windshield to defog, or the kettle to boil-- steam came and went-- the pistons were hard at work in the main warehouse-- even from so far away, even without the headsets on, you could practically hear them hissing.

“No, I’ll do it.”

Alice rode on her dad’s shoulders through the security gate at around 9:45 PM-- it was the latest he’d ever let her stay up on a school night, and she knew she was getting ice-cream on the way back because he’d promised her ice-cream on the way back in exchange for not telling her mother where the two of them had really gone. What Andrew had told her mother was that he was taking her out for a late-night ice-cream because her pet rabbit had died last week, which was true, and so now he had to make sure she would wake up tomorrow morning with the sort of sticky fingers a seven-year-old simply cannot avoid after two scoops of vanilla. The security-guards waved them through without a badge-tap or a question. They never saw anything. They’d never heard any sorts of rumors about anything like this ever happening-- certainly not at Mason Industrial Services. Never even dreamt of it.

Everyone else had arrived already. All the guys. Everything was already set up. Quick and easy. Andrew slipped on his gloves, his control pads for his arms, his back, his legs. He put on his boots. He started up the system. Fifty feet away, in the warehouse, his usual Proxy-Frame whirred into life-- straightened upright from the awkward, hunched position he’d left it in today before clocking out. He rolled his shoulders, and the Frame’s shoulders rolled. He stretched his arms, and the Frame’s arms stretched-- not that it would have ever needed it. He turned his head, and the Frame’s head turned, scanning throughout the half-dark warehouse. A few lights were left on, just in case, and more than enough for the head-mounted cameras in the Frame to catch sight of his challenge. Right there, in the center of the main walkway.

There she was.

The guys had set everything up. It had only taken a few minutes.

“You can do this,” said Carlos, into Andrew’s ear.

Yeah. He could do this.

He took a step, and the pistons moved him ahead. Like he was in the room. He took a step. He took a step.

There she was. Here he was, getting closer. Closer, closer. Until, finally, he was close enough that he could reach out his arm of metal and circuitry and…

He hesitated. Of course he did. There wasn’t a man in this room who hadn’t hesitated, doing this. Every instinct in his body screamed at him to hesitate. To stop-- to turn around. He could still stop. He could still turn around. Wouldn’t it be every bit as good to pick out eggs from a carton instead? Wouldn’t it be every bit as good to fold origami cranes?

But no. No, this is what it was. If he could do this, if he could trust himself to do this, and then actually do this, there was nothing else that he couldn’t do. He’d be one of the guys, if he could do this.

So he did it. He took his great arm of metal and six-thousand pounds of lifting and moving and crushing force and he reached downwards. He took his hand that had just this afternoon nearly smashed a bunch of space-grade instrumentation against the inside of a shipping-crate, and he…

And he…

And he touched. Like he was in the room.

And she felt it. Soft, gentle-- through an inch of wires and fifty feet of humming, connected air to the sensory pad on the skin of her cheek.

Like she was in the room.

She smiled-- she knew exactly what it felt like to have her dad’s hand on her face. She reached out and touched him right back, on the side of his leg, through the fabric of his jeans. She gave him a little tug-- “I love you, too.”

The only thing that scared her was the sudden noise when everyone began to cheer.

That ends our exploration of inventors and inventions. See you next week as we dive into computing and cybersecurity.

Stay safe.

SFW Films presents: The Thunder Beneath

On an alien world, a human research team is besieged by powerful, lightning-wielding dragons. As the creatures intensify their attacks, a safety technician and a determined professor must decipher whether the dragons' wrath stems from primal instincts or an advanced intelligence—and what that means for their survival. Adapted from issue 20.