I got called out for a recent blog post I did that had what I mistakenly thought would be received as a somewhat clever and funny title: I Drive a Forklift in Heels… I admit it, I was totally pushing the envelope, pimping out my article title in an attempt to boost readership. And boy did it do its job! But not all of the attention was positive. There were a couple of folks who felt that it is never appropriate to joke about safety. Though I agree that safety is a serious topic and in practice should NEVER be taken lightly, I think humor can be helpful in bringing difficult and somewhat uncomfortable topics to a level we can all relate to and talk more easily about. I believe that talking about things, in whatever context (humorous, serious or otherwise), calls attention to the topic. Safety should always be on our minds. In my opinion, humor can be an effective way to keep safety in mind, just as well or better than dry old safety videos. I fully accept that not everyone is on the same page as me and I respect that.
I think we can all agree that HVAC work can be hazardous to your health if you’re not careful and smart. It’s important that the safety equipment available to us is PRACTICAL and COMFORTABLE enough to ACTUALLY USE. If you can’t get the work done with the safety equipment on, it’s not going to help anyone. I think women have it especially hard, because not all safety equipment fits us. If a glove is too big, it can be impractical or even dangerous to wear it. So, in an effort to make women’s safety equipment easier to find, I perused several websites that had equipment that would not only work, but that I would actually WANT to wear. The search was more difficult than I anticipated.
Assisted by a professional finder of things, Mike Harrell from Grainger, I went on a hunt to find safety stuff made for women that met two important criteria:
- NOT PINK. (This was my own personal biased criteria. And it made the search ever harder!)
- Stuff I’d actually enjoy wearing.
Oh, and it’s also actually functional safety stuff. Since that was like a “duh, obviously” criterion, I didn’t actually include it in my list. So here’s what Mike and I came up with…
OH, and they’re all clickable links, so if you see something you like, click away!
I had a lot of fun searching and found some really cool sites that cater to women specifically. Please feel free to contact me if you want more info on where to find more safety items for women or to share your own sources. I’d love to hear from you!