"My young friend, you shouldn't go into HSE," a respected employee of our organization told me, standing in the doorway of my new office. "The workers will dislike you, and the management will always give you a hard time. Give it up while you still can. I'm telling you this as a friend, as an experienced person. I've worked here a long time and I know what I'm talking about."
I don't know why, but it seemed to me that his blue eyes were smirking, which made me smirk involuntarily as well. I invited him in, took a massive faceted glass ashtray and cigarettes out of the cabinet. We lit up.
"No, it's settled. If not me, then who? This job is just right for me," I told him, not understanding the meaning of the work ahead, not imagining the path I would have to take or where my reaction to those smirking eyes would lead me.
And so it began: endless reports, action plans. During the day, I clocked miles in the corridor between my office and the chief engineer's office. In the evenings, exhausted and going to bed, I would close my eyes — and through my closed eyelids, I saw a whirlwind of letters and numbers. They spun, danced, and vanished as I fell asleep.
Waking up in the morning, I wanted to give up, to walk away from it all. But immediately, those blue smirking eyes would flash in my memory.
Three months passed in agony, and one day, as if a switch had flipped in my head, I began to understand the essence of the work. It became a little easier. A couple of years later, I already loved my job. Well, truth be told — I hated it too.
14 years have passed since then. I left that office and my first subordinates long ago. I've seen the snowy desert of Arctic islands, the Yamal tundra, the fish-filled rivers of Kamchatka, and Lake Baikal shrouded in mist. I've met many wonderful (and not so wonderful) people on my journey. I am certain: my team and I have saved more than one life.
Yes, I'm disliked. Yes, I'm sometimes reprimanded by management. But I still love — and sometimes hate — my job.
Thank you, smirking eyes.
Friends, count your victories, not your defeats.
Comments 1
At the beginning of my career in OHS, my friends reacted the same way when they learned I work as an occupational safety engineer. This is all because they didn't understand what occupational safety is and what values are embedded in this term.