I remember having a partition fall on me at work.
I worked in a very large dark control room for many years of my career. One time I was working a position that was near the supervisor's desk in the middle of the aisle between our areas of specialization.
These desks had been put in the middle of the aisle in an effort to bring the supervisors of the shift closer to the action in the operation and make them more available. Once the desks were put into place, of course, things were modified and cubicle partitions were brought down and put partially around the desks to give the supervisors a little bit of privacy while working and especially when talking to trainees or discussing private matters with different employees.
An operational environment is challenging because you have to be in the middle of it but you also have all these administrative things that are outside of the bounds of the operation that still have to be done.
The partitions had been put into place by staff people, and they didn't have all the parts that they needed, and so they were being held up in different ways.
One partition was held up the way it was supposed to be. Another partition was taped together. Another partition was held together with a bunch of rubber bands. They didn't have any money to do what they did, and so they had gotten partitions from another building and brought them in.
One day while I was working a position it had been a particularly strenuous session where I had had to express myself clearly to people that were working other positions. That's a polite way to say that I probably made several people mad that day. So i was hunched over my position concentrating on what i was doing. All of a sudden I felt this weight hit my back with a lot of force. It hurt but I was working a live position and i couldn't just stop what i was doing. So I said "ow" and then I started hearing movement. The supervisor and several people came rushing down the aisle. They lifted this weight off of my back. All I thought was "Wow, I really must have made somebody mad that they came over and decided to pound on me!"
What had actually happened was one of those partitions had fallen from the supervisor desk and landed leaning against the back of my chair and hit me on my shoulders and back of my neck. The supervisor and the other managers were very very apologetic. They got me off the position and made sure I was okay. I had to fill out a couple of forms and life went on.
But it was so funny thinking that I had made somebody so mad that they had to come and take care of me.
What a life!
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