The company I work for is strongly considering a policy that will no longer allow us to use knives. I know that as a Mariner it has been ingrained in us to always carry a knife. It was a requirement at the academy to always have your knife on you at all times. Even entry level mariners entering the workforce through apprenticeships are told to always carry a knife.
I have heard that some of the larger shipping companies as well as the offshore oil industry have gone to a “No knife policy”. My question is:
Has anyone had any experience with this sort of policy? If you have had to deal with such a policy, have you come across situations where there is a better tool for the job? Or you really wished you had it?
I have my mind made up about how I feel, but not enough to loose my job over. I believe they will still allow us to carry them for emergencies only, but I would like to go back to the company with industry wide feedback. So any of your thoughts or experiences would be appreciated.
What John said is probably the best advice you are going to get. If you stick to your guns you may well make history. Use the system in place to make a change. But as he said be prepared for a negative reaction from the policy makers, your boss and others up the food chain. One thing they hate is people with common sense bucking the system. Such things make them justify their decisions and they HATE justifying their decisions.
Sad thing is most hand out here in the GOM don’t carry a knife even if there is no policy against it…
Over a decade out here and a hitch has yet to go by without me seeing a hand go searching for a knife because they can’t be bothered to get one for $5 the next time they get gas.
25 years at sea the last 20 in the GOM and I’m still stunned at how many hands don’t own a knife. I carry three or more different knives to work every hitch. I can go a whole year changing out weekly and not use the same knife twice. A new crew member usually only asks me to borrow my pocket knife once. I give them so much shit they never mention knives around me again. My favorite thing is cutting polypro with the bread knife from the galley.
My question is, what causes companies to make the policy? Too many people accidentally injuring themselves, or too many incidents of people threatening, or purposely injuring, others? Or both?
People slicing their fingers and having to be choppered in to a hospital to be stitched up. These things are recordable incidents that sometimes lead to LTA’s that hurt the company’s overall safety record.
Not to be argumentative but I interact with P&I club reps on a fairly steady basis, and the subject of knives has never come up. Hence my original question. Is it a P&I matter particular to this company, because the workers are inept at handling knives (which indicates training in the matter, as a reasonable alternative to banning). Or is it essentially a matter of aggression between workers? The latter indicates that bad hiring practices are the problem (knives don’t stick people, people stick people…) Idle speculation. I chime in with the other commentators: where I work the problem, if any, is to get mariners to carry the knives.
I just paid $25 on Delta to check a bag I could have carried on because I won’t go to work without a reliable knife. I can buy shit in a bayou gas station but nothing I feel I can trust in a pinch
It’s been a very long time since I’ve heard of differences aboard being settled by anything more than fists, if even that. But way back in the day, when drinking was the norm? Sure. We live and work in very different times.
Having said that, there has been a big degradation in general, practical life skills that has gotten steadily worse as the digital age has progressed. Most kids and young adults today couldn’t get their own bike chain back on the sprocket if their lives depended on it, assuming they even ride one. They don’t know how to competently use basic hand tools to maintain or repair anything. In many fundamental ways they are somewhat to severely helpless and this phenomenon didn’t start yesterday: their parents are usually the same way, though maybe to a slightly lesser degree.
The last “knife” incident at my company involved a young man who decided to cut a tug’s deck line that was laid across his thigh while seated. It did not end well. “Training” to not do really dumb things like that, which should be obvious to even the dimmest person, should have occurred in the home when the lad was maybe 5-6 years old and continued until they leave the nest for good.
Short of a genuine and significant learning disability, or outright brain damage, there is no excuse. And it’s the parents who are to blame, now into at least the second generation. It’s the price society pays for embracing “automation” and planned-obsolescence so completely that we can’t do much for ourselves anymore.
Carry a damned knife, of the right kind, and have the skills to use it competently. Keep it sharp. Anything less is just plain un-seamanlike.
Amen. I find myself at friends houses doing simple jobs for their parents like replacing a doorknob simply because no one in the clan knows how to operate a drill.
I work with kids on farms where they keep there heads in their phones so constantly that they cause accidents on a regular basis. Employers have little patience for it but at the same time the hiring pool is filled with these same kids.
The one bright side? Its easier and easier to look good to employers these days.
The un-named oil patch company I work for now, on this un-named mud boat, has a 'no knife" policy. The company provides us with these goofy, useless, alternative cutting devices. One can always find them on the top self of a toolbox, blade missing, rusted up good and tight.
Twice in my career I have witnessed men walk away from near fatal incidents, both on deck, shaking from adrenaline after cutting themselves free from crap they got tangled up in as the gear was going over the side.
I have spent much time on deck working with lines, and though an engineering type now, will not take the watch without my trusty Bill Moran Spyderco Drop Point fixed blade tucked in my thigh pocket. I am careful to not pull it out in front of “company types” and I use it multiple times every day.
To all of you greenhorns reading this, be advised: the lawyers and insurance companies out there who write the rules, do NOT care about the rare but always gruesome entanglement claims. They care about the thousands of claims from slack-jawed, drunk, stoned and otherwise unskilled doofs that cut themselves doing stupid things with a knife.
I totally agree with the gentleman who said it is the parent’s fault if their kid can’t safely use a knife.
[QUOTE=Fraqrat;185802]People slicing their fingers and having to be choppered in to a hospital to be stitched up. These things are recordable incidents that sometimes lead to LTA’s that hurt the company’s overall safety record.[/QUOTE]
Goal Zero Baby!!! Who cares if it exacerbates other safety issues. If you can keep that ignorant mariner from cutting a piddy with his pocket knife you get .001 closer to the GOAL!!!.
[QUOTE=Gypsea;185822]The un-named oil patch company I work for now, on this un-named mud boat, has a 'no knife" policy. The company provides us with these goofy, useless, alternative cutting devices. One can always find them on the top self of a toolbox, blade missing, rusted up good and tight.
Twice in my career I have witnessed men walk away from near fatal incidents, both on deck, shaking from adrenaline after cutting themselves free from crap they got tangled up in as the gear was going over the side.
I have spent much time on deck working with lines, and though an engineering type now, will not take the watch without my trusty Bill Moran Spyderco Drop Point fixed blade tucked in my thigh pocket. I am careful to not pull it out in front of “company types” and I use it multiple times every day.
To all of you greenhorns reading this, be advised: the lawyers and insurance companies out there who write the rules, do NOT care about the rare but always gruesome entanglement claims. They care about the thousands of claims from slack-jawed, drunk, stoned and otherwise unskilled doofs that cut themselves doing stupid things with a knife.
I totally agree with the gentleman who said it is the parent’s fault if their kid can’t safely use a knife.[/QUOTE]
The problem has little to do with P&I insurance and more to do with Parkinson's law of triviality (also known as "bike-shedding"). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality Unfortunately, once the company has built a massive HS&E department to build all of those bike sheds they turn their eyes on things that seem trivial to a office weenie but are not the least bit trivial to the mariner of deck (e.g. Knives)
