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FROM THE PORCH SWING I DUNNO THE SHOCK ON their faces was palpable. A HazMat/DG instructor who didn’t know the answer to a compliance question? How could that be? Who would’ve brought in such a person to deliver training? And didn’t he seem to know his stuff otherwise? Can we trust anything else he’s said? Who ever admits they don’t know? I didn’t let it last long. I followed up with “but I know how to find out”. And then we used the regulations to find the answer.
I’ve done this over and over, for different courses and, of course, different audiences. Most react the same way. Heck, sometimes people will ask me during a break whether I knew the answer or not. Usually I did know and had just picked a topic that had the answer in the regulations where it was expected to be. Actually, most of my CDGP preparation course for the open book CDGP examination is based on my asking a lot of questions and answering every single
And then we talked about how they could use a similar process when questions arise in the future. And they were relieved. They still weren’t sure whether I truly knew the answer or not, but they understood that I was creating a teachable moment either way.
one of them with “I don’t know”. Finding the answers quickly can be a learned and practiced skill, especially when the answer isn’t where it would normally be expected to be. But, just between you and me and the lamppost, sometimes I really don’t know. Shhh.
HCB MONTHLY | OCTOBER 2020
I wasn’t the only one though, at least once upon a time. Back in the old days when SDSs were MSDSs it was legal to say “I dunno” on them. Well, different words and acronyms were used, but they all seemed to mean the same thing. NA, unknown, not fully studied, not listed in the literature, ---, not available, not found, use all reasonable precautions, and of course, . (That was a blank, by the way). At one of my employers we used to keep a champion of sorts, the best example of what we called The MSDS of Ignorance. It was indeed amazing to see an MSDS that said the form and color were both unknown. Um, how about you just look at what you’re selling and shipping, and then write down what you saw?
