Tony's Story

Author: Joseph Barnes, MSc, CSHO, SHEP

Behavioral Based Safety….Why Results Don’t Meet Expectations ? ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  It was the start of my second year at a new company and I had enjoyed the challenges immensely. Tony, the Operations Superintendent, was officed next to me in the shop building. Our superintendent was the type of guy that had the innate ability to have his ideas become your ideas. Not because he was loud and yelled, but because he had mastered the art of communicating without saying much. He was funny but intelligent. To say the least. I liked him completely.

  In my first few months at my new job, Tony strolled into my office often and say stuff like, “hey safety, we got some bad weather headed our way”, I would tell him that I was watching the radar and we had a day or so before anything was going to present a problem. He would always continue, “You know Eric (our Bog Boss) would get all warm and fuzzy feeling if an email went out to all the supervisors that safety was watching the weather and would be posting updates. You know like those weather guys on TV do”. “Thanks “T”, I would tell him. I could always tell by his facial expression, his visits were more than just a suggestion. “Just a thought”, he would say as he would stroll out the office. I sent out the emails. Within seconds, I would get an email response from Eric thanking me for staying on top of the situation. I wasn’t on top of anything….Tony just knew what needed to be done. Tony have left my office before Eric’s response, but he knew what he was doing. This was my first few months in the new roll and, I believed, whether true or not that Tony was looking out for my well-being…... Tony gave me a reason to trust him. Without force he developed loyalty in me.

Working alongside Tony helped me develop the life practice that I would like to share with you, if you will permit me:

If you drop the “Y” off YOUR, then whatever is left becomes OUR problem. The “Y” that you dropped off the YOUR….is the questions that didn’t get answered in the first place. Which is why we now have a problem.

These may be my words, but his life lessons. You see if we are honest about a bad situation, we find ourselves, or an investigation where an employee looks to be the cause, we can generally track it back to where someone in leadership or to some point where we helped dropped the ball. From training to supervision…… to policy, incidents are almost never a singular focus.

On the morning of December 31, 2015, I was sitting at my desk, clicking away on the computer. The company was pretty much shut down for the New Year’s holiday. To be honest, I think I was probably making list of what I needed to buy for that night’s party my wife and I were going to attend. I like nachos and she always buys me nachos stuff.  I was the only guy in my building. Next door, the leadership and office staff were setting up for a holiday luncheon and just enjoying each other’s company. Let me put it this way, not a lot of work was getting done in either building. It was a good day… a good day….

As I sat there, I could hear someone running outside yelling….Odd….that doesn’t happen often in this environment. I couldn’t tell what the guy was saying but it was getting closer. Just then my back door started shaking. My back door is almost always locked. Hardly anyone comes through my back door. Within seconds, I saw the runner fly past my side window to the front door. Through my front door Jeff, our logistics manager exploded breathing heavy.  He had terror on his face….he yelled, “Tony just stopped talking and we don’t know what’s wrong”. I jumped up and hit the door as Jeff ran past me back to the front office.

I’m not sure if I told you but I have been a medic for near 30 years.  Having been medic for near 30 years, I had a good idea of what I was walking into.  I entered the room and there was Tony, sitting in the chair near the coffee pot…. head back…..eyes open………mouth gaping. In front of him were the office ladies and Eric, our boss.  Let me stop here and give you a little history on Eric and Tony.

Tony and Eric have both been in the industry longer than I have been alive. Not only have they been in the industry more than 40 years they both came up under Eric’s father,  a legend in our business. At various stages of their careers, Eric and Tony were on the same crew taking orders from each other. Now, Eric owned the company and Tony, his most trusted adviser, ran the operations. To say these men were close was like saying brothers are close. In fact, they were closer than brothers based on the respect and trust they shared. Trust built through years of work and sweat. They literally watched each other raise their families…..

           Eric is a big man. easily over 6 foot and he wears it well. An imposing figure, he stood next to Tony, his face white. It was the first time I have from that day until now seen him afraid. I respect Eric and trust him as I would my own father…. The moment I saw his eyes my heart hurt for him.

Mark, one of my safety guys came in the front door and ran up behind me. I checked Tony’s pulse and there was none. I told one of the ladies to dial 911 as Mark, Jeff, the guy who had come to get me, and I placed Tony on the floor in front of the coffee pots. I heard soft crying as I started CPR on my superintendent. Mark knelt next to me and near Tony’s feet. Eric stood on the other side of Tony, across from me silent.

Over the years I have done CPR on hundreds of people… hundreds of people. But this was Tony…… One of the few men I considered a mentor. In my mind I started running scenarios and drug calculations, hoping to hear sirens of ambulances coming. All of a sudden, Tony opened his eyes and took a big breath. He looked scared…..really scared. I rolled him up toward me, he reached out and took Eric by the hand. For a few seconds the two men just starred into each others eyes. As fast as he came back to us, he left again.

While we waited for the ambulance, I worked him….and worked him…and worked him. Tony came back three times, and each time looked at Eric, then reach for him. Finally, the ambulance arrived. Me moved Tony to the stretcher then into the back of the ambulance. I got in the back of the unit with the other medic and worked on Tony all the way to the hospital. Over and over Tony would open his eyes then fade away. By time we got him to the road we had him intubated and were performing more advanced resuscitation techniques. He would wake up and reach for the tube, or grab my leg, then drift silently off again. Once at the hospital we worked Tony for over an hour in a circle of waking up and softly closing his eyes…. I vividly remember the point…. in time, when I knew we would not be able to sustain enough perfusion to bring him back. I was standing at the foot of the bed watching the cardiac monitor. I just knew it was done. I held his foot and told him goodbye…….For the last time….

           I’m not sure how long I stood there. The ER staff knew me from working weekends on the ambulance, popping in and out of the hospital with patients. The doctor thanked me for staying and helping. It was one of the few times as a medic I truly felt defeated. Together, the ER doctor and I went to talk to Tony’s wife and family to give them the news. They had gotten there earlier in one of the moments we had Tony back and had got to speak to him for a few moments. Tony couldn’t speak, he had a tube in his throat, but he could move his eyes….Tony never responded but I know in my heart he heard them well. I stood next to the doctor as we told his wife he was gone. It was a crushing experience.

I walked outside the ER doors to collect myself, needing just a minute to focus my emotions. As I walked out the door, I saw Eric standing on the sidewalk. I was not going to get that minute to settle down. He perked up and stared at me. Drenched in sweat and fighting back tears I just shook my head, “No”….”No Eric”….Eric turned away with both hands on his face and wept. He wept like a child. This huge was man was in crippling pain. I made it to the sidewalk as he was trying to gather himself and he hugged me. He struggled to speak and thanked me for working so hard to save his friend. Once again…. I felt defeated as a medic. I have trained for years and pushed on hundreds of chests, “why did it have to be the guy I knew that we lost”.

For days and days and I was still going over that horrible day in my mind. Grilling myself on technique and scenarios that could have improved the outcome. Then it dawned on me, what Eric had said, outside those glass doors of the hospital. He thanked me for trying to help his friend…..his friend…..Not his co-worker….. not his employee….. but his friend. It was then that I realized what these two men shared was familiar to me. It was the same as my brothers and sisters in the military. These men were not guys who got paychecks from the same place, they were family. I decided in that moment, if I were to be successful as a safety professional, I needed to find a way to bring what these guys had into safety. Scratch that… I had to find a way to make everyone we worked with family; I had to start with me. I looked into the window of my sole and I asked myself, “of every failed relationship…..business venture ….project ….. disagreement with family and friends, what was the defining character, was the one part of the equation that always broke down, what I determined was the common denominator…. It was ME” and that is where change had to start.