Originally Posted by
SeedToSequoia
"accidents are exactly that, accidents.” Yikes! I hope that is not the knowledge that you received from your EHS consultant experience. EHS is about putting in controls for risk avoidance (likelihood of accident x magnitude of accident).
While I can appreciate the fact that you can express sarcasm, I have chosen not to turn this thread into a sarcastic, humorous post, as I believe it's an important thread even though you may not. If you want to turn this into something like this, please express the fact and I will express myself in such a sarcastic manor as you will find it difficult to eat or drink without spitting up all over your computer screen. Until that time, I will express myself on your thread, in a professional manor, regardless of your insulting sarcasm.
But please, do allow me to explain the point I was attempting to make, which seems to have been lost on you. Being that you are a self described EHS consultant, I would think you already would understand the terms that the insurance industry uses. Accidents generally are not a term that they prefer to use, allow me to present an example:
If you are driving, and are involved in what most people call an "accident", when you receive your police report, or read your insurance documents, it will almost certainly be described as a "collision". The reason for this is, that when what we call an "accident" occurs, it is almost never an accident, but because of some error that was made, and thus it is called a collision. An "accident" refers to chance, something that happens outside our ability to negate or control it. If you look up the meaning for the word accident you will find both explanations, however the insurance industry uses other terms to describe what we might call accidents, so that it is clear it was not chance.
In the future, I would appreciate it if you would keep the discussion on topic, rather than attempt to make it seem that I am lacking in safety, or my understanding of it. Have you ever in your experience, consulted for someone who works with things that are so deadly, and so incredibly toxic to humans, that any mistake could cause death? I deal with these types of dangers on a regular and consistent basis, as do others on this site. Suggesting that I do not value safety in stating plainly that an accident is an accident, meaning that they happen because of chance and cannot be avoided, could lead others to believe that I do not take seriously the safety concerns related to my chosen profession. And that sir, I will not put up with, not even for a sarcastic joke.
Originally Posted by
SeedToSequoia
There appears to be a lot of opportunities for an EHS expert to provide his knowledge and experience. It does not matter what the size of the company is, it matters what is the future intention of the company. That appears to be a great discussion for one of my next posts.
You are right, there are many opportunities for an EHS expert to provide
HIS/HER knowledge and experience. And you are also right, it does not matter the size of the company at all if you are actually imparting the information on this forum, for no fee at all. What I said was in direct relation to your seeking to drive business on this forum. Being that the majority of the people who do own businesses, own small ones that can ill afford to absorb the costs of a consultant. I was actually giving you advice, although perhaps not wanted, about the size and scale of the businesses that exist on this forum. That is not to say there are not businesses of the right size, that generate enough revenue, that would not be allowed to pay you for your services, on this forum. But only to say that the majority of people who contribute, and selflessly I might add, to the accumulated knowledge of this forum also happen to be those people who would not pay for your services.
As of right now, while I write this post, at 7:45 AM on a Tues, and I am posting from California so we are talking about 7:45 PST There are currently 707 users online. 58 members and 649 guests. That is a lot of people, online, right now. A lot of paid members. I would wager that the majority of those members paid for their membership even though it was not really an expense they wanted to incur or could easily afford. But they value this forum so much, that they did so anyway. For many of those that cannot afford to purchase a membership, they are imparting valuable information that can be accessed and used by members, and guests. YOU have stated:
Originally Posted by
SeedToSequoia
Yet in the 6 days you have been on this forum, the only thing you have been able to do is post your expertise, and state repeatedly that you plan to post information we might find valuable. You did however give your reasons for not doing so:
Originally Posted by
SeedToSequoia
I also intend on posting long columns to this site after I figure out some tech issues that I am having on this site.
Yet I have not seen one post asking anyone to help you with your technical difficulties. Matter of fact, on the contrary, I have seen you post in even just this thread, in many different ways. In quoting you I have stripped away all the bold, enlarged font, etc in your posts which you seem to have no problem operating, to good affect. Matter of fact, considering all you have to do in order to post "long columns" in a post, is simply to just copy and paste what you have already accumulated on your own website. Yet, still, you have not done so.
I would like to point out, that if I hired a consultant who promised to give me information, and did not do so for a full week, I would hold that consultant as suspect.
I also get the feeling that you do not fully understand the real value of this website. So allow me to act as consultant for you in this regard, and impart some important information you seem not to be aware of.
This forum, this place, most likely has more accumulated knowledge on recycling, material handling, hazardous waste and how to deal with it, recovering valuable assets, re purposing and much more, than any other single repository of information anywhere on the internet. Do you have any idea what that should mean for someone like you, with very little experience in comparison to the thousands of years worth of accumulated knowledge that exists on this forum? Think about this, intelligently. There are currently, as I write this, 22,060 threads, 219,489 posts and 18,207 members. If each member only has 1 years worth of experience, that is over 18 THOUSAND years of accumulated experience. You yourself have stated that:
Originally Posted by
SeedToSequoia
My last eight years have been in the recycling industry (
e-waste), first as an operations manager and then as an EHS Manager.
And while I can understand why you might move from being an Operations Manager to an EHS Manager, as the pay range is from about 50k-60k per year for an Op Manager, compared to about 55k-65k for an EHS manager in the scrap metal industry, I have to ask myself the question "how many years of actual experience as an EHS manager does this gentleman actually have?" Compared with the literal, thousands of years of accumulated experience on this website, it would seem that you most likely have far more to learn here, than you could ever impart in what I am sure is valuable information, but yet you still have not imparted.
My point is that if you stop, and think about the real value of posting your information, compared to the real value of the information you have access to, there is a huge giant deficit. I realize this, I understand, and humbly so, that there is far more for me to learn here, than I can ever hope to impart. This is also why I choose to support this forum by becoming a paid member. So any information that you do choose to post here, will never be nearly as much as the valuable information you have access to. I would keep this firmly in mind when re-stating over and over your intent to post columns of information. You have far more to gain by being here, than you could ever give back. And if you are as good of an EHS manager as you seem to be leading us to believe, and if you just last month helped someone with licensing, I am sure you can easily afford the membership fee, and would encourage you to become a member.
Regardless of the way my responses to you might sound, I can appreciate the fact you are here, and also consider a consultant of your type a valuable forum asset. But you will not actually become so unless you contribute. When you post links to your own website, you are not contributing here. When you post and encourage people to ask you questions, via your personal business email address, you are not contributing here. When you repeat, over and over that you will post yet do not, you are not contributing here. Please, contribute, engage, enjoy more importantly. You will find the people here are very appreciative, and very very friendly regardless of how I might sound myself. These are good people who freely share what they otherwise could sell to others as a consultant. Who give their time, freely, without any promise of reward or monetary compensation. Who will challenge you in ways that will help you grow your business and help you become a much better consultant. You do not even have a decade in this industry, and I suspect if you were an operations manager prior to a EHS manager, you most likely do not have Project Management experience which is a huge plus in your chosen consultancy field. Not that you need it, but you could certainly learn it here. There are so many people who have experience in exactly that field, organic and natural, that you stand to learn very valuable information just by interacting with them. There are a few really good threads on project management, large scrapping efforts, I would encourage you to access them.
Take what you will from what I have said. If you wish to engage me in intelligent and thoughtful conversation I would gladly engage you. If you use sarcasm in order to make it seem as if I do not care about safety, or for any other negative purpose I will simply do as I have done here, correct you and then point out those things I think are more important. I do not wish to turn this into a tit for tat argument. My intent is to encourage you to become an active, valuable, contributing member of this forum because I do happen to understand the value you might bring, if you do only what you have stated you plan to do.
And if another week goes by, you have not imparted the information you have stated you intend to, I think perhaps I will make the time myself, and post information I believe would be important in this regard on this subject. I believe it is that important for that information to exist here. But I would like to see you do so instead, so please do.
Scott
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