Coffey’s Corner – March 2021
March 26, 2021
It’s All About Staying Safe and Healthy
Greetings! This month, I have been thinking a lot about workplace safety and about COVID-19. While they may seem to be unrelated topics, they are both focused on your health and safety. That makes them vitally important to all of us who are part of the CoolSys family.
On the topic of safety, I hope you have been participating in the daily 5 Minutes to Power (5MTP) training videos and quizzes. I sure have. I get up every day at 4 a.m. (old military habits die hard) and, like clockwork, I get an email at around 5:00 a.m., announcing a new 5MTP training session. These are short videos that contain pertinent and useful tips to keep everyone thinking about safety on the job.
While I don’t work in the field anymore, I still have a killer set of tools, and I’m building things all the time. I’m active on ladders and working with a lot of different power tools. My home shop has cranked out all kinds of things: custom cabinets, home movie theaters — and even airplanes! (See the photo below for proof.)
Here’s the way I look at it: If your CEO can find a few minutes a day to participate in this safety program, you can too. I have finished every 5MTP course; most take only a few minutes to complete. Occasionally, I get tripped up by a question, but my current scoreboard is at 93%.
The bottom line is that, for each and every one of us, safety should be our number-one priority. The most important thing we can do each day is to return home to our families in one piece. I look forward to a day when no one at CoolSys gets hurt on the job or in a car accident. Safety requires constant vigilance, and 5MTP puts us in a frame of mind to always be thinking and learning about how to avoid getting hurt.
“I’ll take ‘Covid vaccine’ for 500, Alex”
That’s a little Jeopardy tribute to my friend Alex Trebek, who passed away a few months back. It’s really exciting to know that there are three Covid vaccines currently available to all of our employees — or as soon as you are eligible to receive your vaccine! The Pfizer and Moderna two-shot series have been out for a while, and they’re now joined by the Johnson & Johnson single-shot vaccine that requires no special cold storage.
So are YOU going to get vaccinated? Let me share my thoughts with you: There was never a question in my mind about getting vaccinated. I’m in my mid-50s, I have had some issues with my heart and — like most Americans — I could stand to shed 20 pounds. I have never been more excited to get a shot in my life as I was when I got my first dose of the Covid vaccine at one of California’s drive-in mass vaccination events.
None of us is invincible. That fact has been tragically proven right in our own CoolSys family: Just a few months ago, an employee in his mid-30s, healthy as could be, strong as a bull, passed away from COVID-19 complications. While this virus often impacts the elderly most severely, people of all ages have suffered lasting complications and even death. In fact, over 500,000 Americans have died during the pandemic. Can you afford to take that risk? It’s not worth it, in my book, and I can’t wait to get my second dose of the vaccine.
At CoolSys, our number-one priority is always your safety, whether that means safety on the job, protecting yourself and others by being vaccinated or staying safe in any other way. Take care, be safe, stay healthy — and please get vaccinated!