Trying to Make Sense of a Senseless Workplace Tragedy

One of the most useful proverbs that I learned in my journalism classes was tell a friend. Its an adage that can apply to any kind of storytelling fiction or nonfiction but it was especially helpful to me when I was starting out as a small-town newspaper reporter. Overworked, overtired and overcaffeinated (but underpaid, of course), tell a friend was a life preserver for me in my most desperate moments of deadline-induced writers block.

The idea is simple (keep it simple, stupid theres another useful maxim): If youre having a hard time writing the story, write it in the same way that you would tell a friend. If you want to picture yourself telling a friend while enjoying a cold, frothy beverage, go right ahead (thats what I like to do).

I bring this up because Im struggling to articulate my feelings about a recent story that I wrote, so I thought it would be interesting to use the tell a friend method for the purposes of this blog post.

If I were at a bar, trying to explain this story to a friend, I might say something like this:

"There was this factory in California. Its not around anymore, because it blew up.

Anyway, the corporation was pressuring the guys at the plant to do plastic extrusion thats where you melt plastic to form it into stuff. But this was a new operation. So the plant guys had to set up the plant for plastic extrusion and install the equipment to do plastic extrusion. Are you with me so far?

This is the crazy part: To do plastic extrusion in a factory, you need an industrial-grade boiler, right? I mean, everything in a factory should be industrial-grade, but that goes without saying. Well instead of using an industrial-grade boiler, the guys at the plant decided to buy a Whirlpool water heater from Lowes! Just because it was a lot cheaper and easier to install. Can you believe that?

So the guys in the plant jury-rigged it and used it to melt plastic for their operation. They even removed all the safety features. But this Whirlpool was not designed to do the kind of stuff you do in a factory! It was a Whirlpool, for Gods sake!

Anyway, they had all kinds of problems with this thing. It was breaking down constantly. Keeping this thing working was practically a full-time job for the maintenance guys. The thing was always on the fritz, because it wasnt designed to do this stuff. Im surprised it lasted as long as it did.

So the water heater exploded and killed two guys who were trying to fix it. The thing blew through the roof like a rocket. It ****ed up the factory so bad that that the factory shut down for good.

The rest is here:
Trying to Make Sense of a Senseless Workplace Tragedy