“Tired of getting knocked on the head”

It puts a smile on my face when I come across a worker who uses ingenuity to address a safety hazard.

I had a big grin yesterday as I was leaving a restaurant in Austin, TX. I was walking around the outside of the building toward the area where I’d parked my car. I saw one of the restaurant’s employees dragging a garbage can toward a dumpster. I looked away for just a minute and in that brief moment, he'd propped open the dumpster lid, like so:

Restaurant worker with gadget to keep dumpster lid open, Austin, TX (September 17, 2015)

It’s been quite a few years since I worked in a restaurant, but it brought back memories. I said: “That’s neat. What are you trying to do?”

He said: “Not get hit by the lid."

"Brilliant," I said. "I wish I'd thought of that when I worked at a restaurant. I never could figure out how the wrestle lifting the can while trying to hold open the lid."

"Yep," he said,"We got tired of getting knocked in the head.”