The nuts and bolts of it

The nuts and bolts of it

It’s always important to dot your Is and cross your Ts — even more so when it comes to safety. But sometimes the devil is in the detail.

As Riverton Parts Manager Matt Steed tells, safety is paramount in all our workshops but inevitably, there can be mishaps in any workplace. For him, there’s one incident that springs to mind and will bring a tear to the eye of any grown man.

“It was a couple of years back and our team had their head down, doing their thing in the Saddleworth branch of Ramsey Bros. Andrew ‘Banjo’ Patterson, our Trades Assistant was busy working on a car and there were a few others completing jobs in the workshop, while I was sitting in the front half of the building doing paperwork.

“Suddenly, I heard a loud rush of air and an almighty howl, so I jumped up and ran straight to the workshop, as did everyone else in the building… it was loud enough for the whole town to hear! There, rolling around on the floor in agony was poor Banjo.

“He’s a jovial fellow and it’s usually pretty hard to get him to stop talking but we couldn’t get a word out of him and it took a good five minutes to compose himself and explain what happened.

“He’d been changing a tyre on a car and pumping it with air when the fitting broke off the airline. The rogue hose had snaked back and forth under the pressure and managed to flick him right in the Johnson. Just the thought was enough to make the rest of us wince in sympathy, but once we knew he was ok, that didn’t stop us having a laugh at the sight of a grown man brutally brought to his knees by a hose.

“Later that day, a calmer Banjo dutifully placed the incident report on my desk. And the detail was enough to bring me undone again when I read his very specific description of the wild hose that ‘broke off the fitting and flicked me in the right nut’,” Matt laughs.

“I guess there was no other way to describe it, but seeing it in black and white on paper set me off… and did so for many years whenever I looked at the screenshot of the report on my phone,” Matt chuckles.

And for those concerned about the welfare of Banjo, he made a full recovery and by all reports, everything is back on even ground. He’s come so far — he doesn’t even feel the need to wear a jockstrap and a box when he goes to work anymore.

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