05.30.2014 01:35 PM

Urban Ontario meets Rural Ontario

[I’m outside Toronto, in a small convenience store. A man in a uniform, holding a clipboard, is sternly addressing a young man about propane gas storage.]

Officious official: And what is your emergency response procedure, please?

Young man: Hey, Mom _ what do we do when something goes wrong?

.

17 Comments

  1. Al in Cranbrook says:

    Answer: HOW SHOULD I KNOW! ASK YOUR DAD WHEN WE GET HOME!

    Probably don’t lock their doors, either.

    Love it!

  2. Bobby says:

    Are you in my town?

  3. Kelly says:

    Possible answer from back in the day . . . “We plan to make a rocket out of the propane tank and fly it up yer butt…”

    When I was a kid growing up in the country we used to burn stuff, blow stuff up, and shoot stuff all the time. One of our favourite things to do was take big plastic models of warships, squirt airplane glue on them, set them alight, push them out into the middle of the slough then shoot them with pellet guns until they sunk in a smokey hissing gurgle. Once, on a breezy evening, we took a ball of rags soaked in melted paraffin, hooked it up to a big kite, lit the rags on fire and sent the whole thing aloft. Apparently the fireball was visible from a mile away. That’s what the mounties said, anyway. That’s the sort of crazy shit farm kids used to do back in the 1970s.

    Naturally, if you’re reading this, please do not try any of this stupid stuff yourself.

    • Al in Cranbrook says:

      Amazing any of us survived, given we actually have schools now that won’t let kids even play with a f***ing ball of any kind on the grounds.

      • Chris says:

        The ones that didn’t survive aren’t around to talk about how much better it was in the good old days. Child and infant accidental death rates and head injury rates have plummeted since the 1950’s.

        Who is going to be the first to say ‘ok, we’re safe enough. can’t save ’em all’

  4. Student501 says:

    It’s this for real ?

    We have the “Propane Police” in Canada.

    OMG !

    Note to self: move to remote desert island…

  5. Ralphie says:

    Old Geezer: “Duck and Cover…!!”

  6. Steve T says:

    There are good improvements to safety, and ridiculous improvements to safety.

    On the latter front, my wife is a high-school chemistry teacher, and they must write up a WHMIS (Workplace Hazardous Material Information System) report on everything they use in the lab. Everything. Including saline solution (aka salt water) and acetic acid (aka vinegar). Each sheet is two pages of questions about various properties of the substance, how you dispose of it in an emergency, etc, etc.. No judgement is left with the teacher whatsoever.

    Bureaucrats take a good basic idea and twist it into something asinine and overblown.

  7. Chris says:

    Somebody at her school/board is misinterpreting the WHMIS guidelines. You don’t need sheets for anything that comes in retail packaging with labels on the bottle. And as for water, that’s just silly.

  8. Andy says:

    I am going to use this line in a meeting – “Bureaucrats take a good basic idea and twist it into something asinine and overblown.”

  9. Al in Cranbrook says:

    And a very good indication in the first place of too many bureaucrats, a lot of whom, with nothing else to do, make up such silly crap in order to somehow justify their paycheque at the end of the month.

    • Andy says:

      ^ This!

      I am actually dealing with this at work right now. A department has grown from 5 people to 25 people and all they do is make up forms for us to fill out.

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