[Towertalk] falling from my tower

[Stan & Patricia Griffiths]

At some point, we have to realize the practicalities of "ladder safety".  I
can't tell you how many thousands of times I have been up and down step
ladders.  My Dad (SK W7PH) was a residential and industrial painting
contractor and guess what I did every summer from about age 10 to my early
20's?  Yep, painted houses.  If we had really obeyed all of today's rules
(like always securing a step ladder to the building or having a second
person hold it while you climb) we simply could not have been in the
painting business.  Since house painting is about 80% labor and 20%
materials, doing all of that securing and holding would have doubled the
labor costs . . . and we would have been out of business.  Gosh, I wonder
how today's painters cope with that?  In the first place, there really isn't
any place to attach a step ladder to the side of a house while you are
painting it and besides, you have to move the ladder every 3 or 4 minutes.
If you really obeyed the rules I read here, there would be as much labor in
securing and holding as there is in painting.  Hey, I am not saying there is
no danger on step ladders . . . there is . . . although I never fell off of
one, nor did my Dad or any of his painters, that I know of.  He did this
work for 40 years.  What I AM saying is that when you come to a place where
you CAN'T practice all of the safety rules spelled out here, please don't
get the idea that they are all stupid rules since they can't all be applied
all of the time.  Once in awhile, you just have to take a risk that you
really would rather not take.  Just do it as carefully as you can and don't
do it at all if you can avoid it.  In the painting business, we couldn't
obey the rules all the time and we couldn't avoid doing the job either.

Stan
w7ni@easystreet.com