Falling asleep on the job? Drug tests? What is going on in those towers?
That's what the Federal Aviation Administration certainly wants to know. They've been conducting an investigation into the air traffic supervisor who reportedly fell asleep on the job at Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, forcing two planes to land without assistance from the tower. FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt told the Associated Pressthat, "As a former airline pilot, I am personally outraged that this controller did not meet his responsibility to help land these two airplanes."
Let me say first if you are an employee working the graveyard (midnight) shift and you fall asleep then you have no excuse. It may not be your normal shift, you may be working over time, they may have called you in at the last minute or it could be anything. You might have been up all day and not able to sleep because of a family emergency. You company may have had to come in in the middle of the day for meeting at work and then expect you to work the midnight shift. But if you fall asleep at work you have no excuse and you are guilty.
I have never counted up how many years I worked the midnight shift. I worked the midnight shift at a number of different hospitals. I worked at one hospital for 11 years on the midnight shift. I am an expert on working the graveyard shift.
Working midnights is hard. In fact it is a killer. If you work midnights you have all sorts of medical conditions that you are may get. You will be sicker more often and sicker when you are and you will have more family problems. You can expect to die sooner. The midnight shift is truly a killer.
During my years as a hospital security officer I found a lot of employees asleep on the job. We are talking ICU nurses, ER nurses and lots of other employees.
I also have seen police officer sleeping on duty. At one hospital and that was during the day shift two police officers fell asleep in their car in our parking lot. They were “watching” a bank that they expected to be held up. They were a special unit. Their car ran out of gas while they were sleeping.
At one hospital, a Jewish hospital, we received a threat, phone call, and the hospital had security go on 12 hour shifts. Plus they had the local police supply us with an off duty police officer for each shift as extra help. The police officer that worked the midnight shift came to work with his own red pillow. He took his car into the parking garage and parked up on a level that had no cars and he went to sleep and would sleep all night.
I also have worked security on the midnight shift at two different ATC control towers.
Now I have said that the employee was at fault. Who else is at fault and who is responsible for the ATC mess and problems like this one?
Two Presidents of the United States; President Ronald Reagan and President George W. Bush. I have talked about them and the problems they have caused with our ATC system here in this blog. Plus I just recently said that we would be having more problems because of the actions of those two.
I am not going to repeat it all here and now. I am going today or tomorrow create a YouTube video on the subject and I will tell you what they did to cause this problem and other major problems that put you and your family and our nation at risk.
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