Safety & Comfort
The Enrichment Center has never identified a hazard. Not in sixteen years, not at four thousand feet, not in nine shafts. This sheet sets out how that was achieved, with the definitions attached, and the reader is invited to check them.
There are no hazards in the Aperture Science Enrichment Center. That is not an aspiration or a form of words assembled to please an inspector. It is the standing finding of seven revisions of this document, and it is why we can put a man four thousand feet under the Upper Peninsula on a Tuesday morning and have him back at the window by three.
A visitor arrives at a sheet titled “Safety” expecting a list of dangers, and the Enrichment Center is sorry to disappoint him. There is no such list. There is a list of conditions, which is longer than most companies would print, and beside it a column stating what each condition is. Not one of them is a hazard. That is the whole of our safety programme and it has not failed yet.
I.What A Hazard Is, And Therefore What It Is Not
Confusion in this industry proceeds from a loose use of the word. Working with the Legal Department — three people, a basement, worth every dollar of them — Operations has established that a reported condition is a hazard if, and only if, it satisfies all three of the tests opposite.
All three. Not two. A condition satisfying two is an event. A condition satisfying one is a measurement. A condition satisfying none of them is a Tuesday, and this company has had a great many Tuesdays and has never complained of one.
The Three Tests — Directive 12, Appendix C
- First — Unexpected
- Nobody in this company anticipated it. The President anticipates everything and has said so in writing.
- Second — Uncontrolled
- It cannot be stopped by a man turning a wheel. There is a man on every level and a wheel beside every man.
- Third — Unmeasured
- No instrument was recording. There is an instrument in every chamber and it is always recording. This test has never been satisfied.
- Fourth
- It was reported by the person to whom it happened.
II.Reported Conditions & Their Classification
Personnel are encouraged to report conditions and personnel report a great many, which Operations takes for a healthy sign and not the other thing. Below is every condition reported in the first quarter of this year, from the ledger, in the reporting party’s own wording.
Conditions reported to Operations, first quarter 1959
| Condition, As Reported | Location | Classification | Action |
|---|---|---|---|
| Water entered Chamber 4 to a depth of four feet, all at once | Shaft 09 | Scheduled Humidity | Boots issued. |
| Volunteer went in by one door and came out of another | Chamber 2 | Ingress Variance | Data retained. Volunteer paid. |
| Volunteer came out of the same door twice | Chamber 2 | Ingress Variance (Compound) | Data retained. Both paid. |
| Impact mark on the wall at the end of Corridor 6, at nine feet | Sub-Level 3 | Architectural Feedback | Repainted. Height recorded. |
| Fire, third floor, fourth of the quarter | Surface | Materials Department | None. Budgeted for. |
| Air in Observation Room 3 caused four men to sit down on the floor | Shaft 09 | Atmosphere, Enriched | Ventilated. Three of four returned to shift. |
| Employee heard his own voice from an unoccupied chamber | Sub-Level 4 | Acoustics | Referred to Computation, which has not written back. |
| Elevator continued eleven seconds past the lowest indicated level | Shaft 09 | Enthusiasm | Indicator to be repainted. |
| Grill removed a volunteer’s fillings, buttons, keys and wedding ring | Chamber 6 | Property Recovery | Ring returned. Fillings not. |
| Nothing whatever reported from Chamber 8 in the entire quarter | Shaft 09 | Compliance | Chamber 8 commended. |
| Personnel decline the Sub-Level 7 stair after the shift bell | Sub-Level 7 | Preference (Collective) | Stair remains open. |
Two hundred and eleven conditions reported. Two hundred and eleven classified. Hazards identified: none. Consider how improbable that would be if there were any.
III.The Categories, Taken One At A Time
Fire. The third floor has burned four times this year and we have not lost a working day to it. Materials works with things that would rather be doing something else, and such a department occasionally gets its way. Nobody has been in the room at the time since 1956, and Operations asks that the sentence be read carefully.
Depth. Four thousand feet is not a danger, it is a distance, and a distance is a thing an elevator solves. The descent takes eleven minutes and there is nothing to see for ten of them. The minute in which there is something is Sub-Level 4, and personnel face the doors.
Momentum. A speedy thing goes in and a speedy thing comes out. That is the whole physics of it and no amount of committee work will get you a slower one. Momentum is conserved through an aperture. So, in the great majority of cases, is the volunteer.
Chemistry. Do not swallow the repulsion gel; you will not keep it down, and the part of you that does will spend the afternoon near the ceiling. Do not handle conversion gel without a mask, whatever you may have seen the President do on a Thursday.
IV.A Word From The President On Asbestos
Dictated, and printed on this sheet at his insistence
Somebody in Personnel has been telling the new men that the insulation in this building is a problem. The insulation in this building is asbestos, and asbestos is the finest thing ever pumped into a wall. It does not burn, it does not rot, it holds the heat where you put it.
The lab boys tell me it wants thirty years to do a man any harm. Thirty. So if you are thirty years of age or better you are laughing, because the worst of it costs you a few rounds of canasta at the far end of a long life and buys the sciences three centuries. I call that a bargain and I have called it that in front of a senator.
If you are under thirty and it worries you, come to the third floor and I will find you something on the surface. I will also think slightly less of you, and I say so here rather than behind your back, which is more than New Mexico would do.
“A thing that has been written down is not a danger. It is an entry.”
V.The Memorandum That Settled It
Interoffice Memorandum
Medical has sent me eleven pages on this form. I have read four. Here is my answer and it is word for word the answer I gave in 1954.
A hazard is a thing you did not see coming. We see everything coming. A man on every level, an instrument in every chamber, and a President on the third floor who does not sleep. What Medical describes is not a hazard. It is a result, and results are the entire product of this company.
If a result is unpleasant we write it down, and the moment it is written down it stops being unpleasant and becomes data, and data has never hurt anybody. Operations will go on classifying. Legal will go on defining. Medical will go on being wrong at length, and I will go on reading the first four pages of it.
Cave JohnsonPresident & Founder
Medical has examined four hundred and nineteen men this quarter and classified none of them. Medical would like the word back. — Medical Dept.
VI.The Comfort Half Of This Form
“Comfort” is in the title and it is not there to soften the first half. A comfortable man gives cleaner data than an anxious one, and we have spent real money on the proposition: coffee at the gate house, a laundered numbered coat, chambers held at sixty-eight degrees in all seasons, and a bench between every pair of chambers. Nobody will hurry you. The man whose job that would be has never been budgeted for.
The announcement voice was chosen from eleven candidates on the single criterion of reassurance. At the conclusion of the final test there is refreshment in the commissary, and sixty dollars from a tin, paid by a man who has never once been late with it.
Personal Precautions — All Persons Below The Gate
- Remove all metal before descent. The gate will find what you forget.
- Walk. The corridors are long and the floor is not always the same floor.
- Do not pass through an emancipation grill twice in one day.
- If the chamber lights turn orange, stand still and wait to be told.
- If the announcement system uses your first name, it is not the announcement system.
- Report a condition once. It will be classified within the hour.
- Familiarise yourself with the location of the fire doors.
Form ASI-305a — Personal Safety Card — Carry At All Times
- In the event of fire
- Continue testing. A door will close.
- In the event of water
- Continue testing. Boots are issued.
- In the event of gel
- Do not swallow it. Do not fight the bounce.
- An aperture where no aperture was
- Step through it once. Not in both directions.
- A noise from where there is no equipment
- Note the time. It will be classified as Acoustics.
- In the event of a hazard
- There are no hazards. Report the condition.
The fire doors on Sub-Level 4 close before the fire, not after. I have checked the times twice and both times the doors were early. Maintenance says the doors decide. It is written down and it is in the third drawer with the rest of it. — C.
Cave JohnsonPresident & FounderForm ASI-305, seventh revision. Approved for printing without amendment.