Sleeping On The Job

My story happened 5 years ago on December 25th. I was working as a security guard on Christmas day in a sawmill industry in St-Benoît and I was alone.

I was starting my work shift at 6:00 o'clock AM. I making my round in a yard with the pick-up and I was inspecting each building to make sure that everything was ok and after my round I was returning in the main building. I was so tired because the day before, on December 24th, I had gone to sleep too late. Therefore, the day after, I went to sleep in the employee's lounge during my work shift. I was sleeping for 3 hours while something serious was happening. When I was woke up I decided to go for another round in a yard, but when I stepped out of the employee's lounge, I saw thin smoke coming down from the celling in the mechanics workshop. I didn,t know where this smoke was coming from, I was searching the source of it when I opened à door giving access to the inside of the sawmill factory. After when I opened this door, I saw à thick dark smoke coming down from a conveyor giving access to à circular and bandsaw warehouse. At that moment I started feeling very bad. Nevertheless I was going up in the saw warehouse where the air was stifling. I saw fire in back of the warehouse which made me feel worried, because if I hadn't slept, this fire would not have happened. I took the firts fire extinguisher that I found and I extinguished the fire.

Then I went to call 911 to warn the firefighters. When the firefighters arrived, my boss got at the same time to know what was happening. The firefigthers spent 4 hours to extinguish the rest of the fire. Finaly my boss ans a fireman came to congratulate me for my good reaction toward this situation. But me, I knew that I didn't do à good job because I had slept in the employee's lounge. Therefor was feeling cheap. The moral of my story is never sleep on the job.


Samuel Babin