Just counted my 1,500th lift on Friday, totally surprised me

I was flipping through my logbook after a job wrapping up at a warehouse expansion near the river. Saw the number 1,500 on the last entry and had to stop for a second. That's 1,500 times I've hooked up a load and swung it into place over about 8 years. It felt weird because I never really tracked milestones, just do the work and go home. Any of you guys keep a count of how many lifts you've done or just forget after a while?

3 comments

3 Comments

jake9863d ago

Count your safety incidents instead of your lifts. I bet over 1,500 picks without a dropped load or a close call, you got zero in that logbook besides the work itself. Most guys I know only track the bad stuff, not the good habit of just doing the job right every time. Pretty sure that number means something bigger than just the lifts, it means you haven't screwed up once. Every one of those entries was a chance to hurt somebody or break something, and you didn't. That's the real milestone nobody talks about.

theagibson3d ago

You ever stop to think about how we only celebrate the screwups we avoided instead of the good habits that kept us clean? I used to be one of those guys who just counted lifts and called it a win, never thought twice about the safety side. But you're right, 1,500 picks without a single close call or dropped load is a lot more than just the number of times we moved something. I've had shifts where one brain fart almost cost me a guy's fingers, and we never logged that near-miss because we were too busy patting ourselves on the back for the actual lift. So yeah, I'm starting to see that empty logbook for what it really is, and it's making me wish I had kept a different kind of tally all along. How do you think we'd change the culture if everybody started counting their clean streaks the same way we count hard hits?

taylorc403d ago

That empty logbook is really just a collection of things that didn't happen, which is a weird trophy. @theagibson, you're basically suggesting we start giving out participation trophies for not messing up, which is kind of hilarious when you think about it. But honestly, if every guy started bragging about how many shifts they went without a close call, you'd probably see a lot more people getting competitive about following safety rules. Then you'd have the opposite problem where some hotshot lies about his streak to look good in front of the crew. Still, beats the alternative of counting how many times you almost lost a finger.