Safety First: Keeping Customers Safe

March/April 2006

Several jobs ago, when I was in the safety consulting business and whining about a particularly demanding customer, the personnel director said to me, “Well, you know what they say: If it weren’t for the damn customers, business would be easy.”
   What I like about that comment is that it’s both true and preposterous. Of course we need customers to survive, but all business owners at times wish that certain difficult customers would darken a competitor’s door rather than their own.
   In the recycling business, customers—even the good ones—can pose a particularly difficult challenge. In fact, from a strictly dollars-and-cents liability standpoint, customers pose a far greater challenge than our employees do.
   The law in virtually every state assumes that business proprietors will show “reasonable care” to keep their customers and their customers’ property free from harm while they’re doing business.
   It is “reasonable,” for example, to assume while shopping in the supermarket that the floors will be free from slipping hazards. Thus, when a shopper hits a slick of spilled mayonnaise in aisle four, falls, and breaks a hip, that person is entitled to compensatory damages—the direct and indirect costs incurred to fix the broken hip and reimburse the person for time away from work. Compensatory damages are those that can be documented with receipts, along with the wild card of compensating for emotional distress.
   But that’s not the big money. The big money comes in the form of punitive damages—the financial judgment designed to teach the business a lesson. Without a huge punitive settlement, the plaintiff’s attorney will argue, the supermarket will continue to ignore spills, and soon the entire community will be disabled. In a world where plaintiffs make six figures because the coffee they spilled in their laps was actually hot, these judgments are the stuff of legitimate fear.
   Now let’s consider that in terms of what we do for a living. Think of the nature of our equipment and of just how lost and clueless some of our customers are when they arrive at our yards. Think of the peddler coming through the front gate on a bicycle with 30 pounds of aluminum siding slung across the handlebars. Do you feel your pulse starting to race?
   At the ReMA National Safety Committee meeting last October, the issue of visitors and customers was by far the most hotly debated. What, exactly, are we supposed to do with the peddler who shows up with a truck full of kids, wanting to make his daily delivery of recyclables? Do you instruct everyone to stay in the truck while you offload the scrap, or do you tell them to climb out? Frankly, the arguments on both sides are compelling. On the one hand, if you let them out of the vehicle, you risk having them wander off to where they’re not supposed to be. On the other hand, if you allow them to stay in the vehicle, you tee up the nightmare scenario of an errant grapple swinging into the cab of the truck.
   A few members have set aside areas in the front office where the little tykes can play while the parent conducts business out back. Some member companies hand out hard hats and protective vests to their customers and visitors as a way to keep track of them while they’re in the yard. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see how that could lead to a large hard-hat bill at the end of the month. (To address that problem, one ReMA member issues Pepto-Bismol-pink hard hats that few people would want to steal.)
   I’ve heard that there’s even a nearly universal problem in the summer of customers arriving barefoot. Amazing.
   After several hours of debate on the issue, a clear distinction emerged between the meeting’s attendees: the willingness to take a hard line with peddlers was inversely proportional to the percentage of revenue the member derived from peddler business. Members with yards where commercial accounts are the bread and butter were in almost unanimous agreement that they have to carefully herd and watch peddlers and visitors, whereas members with yards that depend on peddler business often feel powerless to control them.
   It’s an interesting dilemma for which I have no hard and fast solution. But it’s an issue you need to discuss with your management team and your employees. Just like the supermarket proprietor, you have a duty to show reasonable care in protecting your customers—even the barefoot ones. 

—John Gilstrap, ReMA director of safety

Several jobs ago, when I was in the safety consulting business and whining about a particularly demanding customer, the personnel director said to me, “Well, you know what they say: If it weren’t for the damn customers, business would be easy.”