Story Time:

After I graduated, I went to work for a large PE firm that most of you probably hate, working for one of their subsidiaries focused on energy who happened to have a couple refineries. As someone passionate about renewables, I was actually excited to go see the underbelly of one of the most evil companies. I also wanted to learn more about the energy industry and the maze of pipes that looked like steel spaghetti to me.. it was also always in the back of my mind that those student loans wouldn't pay for themselves.

I started off in IT but eventually was fortunate enough to land a job focusing on their developing new products with other portfolio companies that focused on addressing challenges in O&G. One of the things I prided myself on was spending time, boots on the ground, with the people who were doing the day to day work and learning about what there problems were. This included a lot of escorted trips through the plant learning about the chemical processes as well as work processes, etc.

One of the things I had picked up on was how nasty benzene was, this was widely acknowledged at the time by the company, and not in the typical window dressing sort of way that these things are often glossed over.

Well long story short, one day I'm standing on top of grating resting above a concrete pit coming off a refining unit while they are using a truck sized vacuum to extract the liquid (guess what the truck is called), which is told is an every day occurance. Standing a few feet above the liquid, it looks like dirty water. As an afterthought, I ask "what is this liquid?".

"Oh, it's just benzine"

... taps 4 gas meter that's supposed to keep me safe from anything "well isn't this thing supposed to go off?"

"Not all the time"

Never did that again.

I was surprised it was treated so nonchalantly, but when your job is to deal with dangerous stuff day in and day out, I guess certain things don't raise alarms. I, of course, didn't ask what concentration it was, etc., I just filed a few lessons away. But it's always stuck with me how routine some of this incredibly dangerous work can seem, and how difficult it must be to differentiate types of danger when they're not things that are obviously dangerous, such as having your finger chopped off, or worse, ruining a nice set of steel toes.

Anyway, that's my benzine story.