PPE Part 3: If you thought bras were bad...

PPE stands for Personal Protection Equipment (and Philosophy, Politics and Economics, but not on this blog). PPE, as the name suggests, is meant to protect you from injury and long-term damage to your senses as a result of exposure to operational health and safety risks. As a female engineer, it also protects you from flattery and compliments, and can cause long-term damage to your sense of femininity and style if you're not vigilant. This is part 3 in a series of posts dedicated to the joys of wearing PPE.

Black leather stilettos.

These are the first of my mother’s shoes that I remember trying on as a little girl. Well I remember them as stilettos - probably because I couldn't walk in them – but maybe they were just heels. She was a grade 1 teacher with a modest sense of style; her shoe collection was a conservative display of mostly black and navy blue heels... But I thought they were so glamorous! I'd see her dressed for work every morning in a dress or a skirt and heels - all lady-like - and I'd daydream of the day that that would be me.

Fast-forward a few years to my first real job.

I was a production planner at a factory. I thought I was avoiding the beaten path by going into Supply Chain rather than an engineering role. Naively, I also thought this was my turn to wear "glamorous" clothes and footwear. But the flaw in the plan was that I was still based at a factory...

And walking through a factory is to your feet as facing a fast bowler is to a batsman's balls: they stand to get hurt without protection.

So I got issued with my very first pair of safety shoes and I wore them whenever I entered the plant. They were hideous. They resembled Toughees (boys’ school shoes). They nearly scarred me for life. A few weeks later I got a pair of the funkier variety that made a feeble attempt to look like sneakers. At least they looked better than the "Toughees" but they were still uncomfortable and un-stylish.

A year later I took on an engineering role at another plant and things just got worse.

My new plant's safety department did not acknowledge my pseudo-sneakers as safe enough! I had to switch to Bovas: hard core, kick-your-shins-in-with-these-if-you-mess-with-me, steel-toed boots. Bovas are designed to withstand ridiculous tonnages of heavy things that could fall on your feet. The idea being that the steel toe protects the most vulnerable part of your foot, and if you have an incident your toes will break... and not break right off.

Walking with safety boots on is like walking through water with weights around your ankles. Also, they also have zero cushioning inside so in essence it feels like your feet are strapped to a pair of bricks. At first I tried to wear them only when required but as a process engineer in production support, I lived in the plant! So to avoid switching shoes ten times a day, I got over my vanity and the discomfort. After a while I got so “comfortable” being uncomfortable, and being seen in safety boots, that I wore them home in the evenings. And to work in the morning. And - horror of horrors - even to the mall during lunch or after hours. Of course it helped that I lived in Boksburg where the only people who knew me were fellow engineers...

In a nutshell, safety boots are to feet as bras are to breasts: necessary but terribly stifling even if they fit well. I wonder what most femgineers take off first when they get home: bra or safety boots? Naturally, the effect is worse in Summer. But one cannot expect to trot about a manufacturing plant in pink strappy sandals, now can you?

Consolatory PPE Perks: (1) Shoe preservation and appreciation – By wearing your safety boots to work every day, your ordinary pretty, feminine shoes last much longer and you find yourself utterly delighted and appreciative when you do get to wear them. (2) Pseudo-wellies – Safety boots are great in rainy weather. They are water-proof and have thick soles which make you taller, so your pants never drag on the floor and get wet.

Alternative uses: Image management tool – When people see an engineer at a factory walking around in the office area in ordinary shoes, they unconsciously assume that the engineer in question is not hands-on enough. After some time I cottoned onto this and started wearing my safety boots with pride - the dirtier the better. Dirty safety boots project the idea that you are working hard. So do dirty jeans. Complement this by consistently carrying a notebook around under your arm, and you’re golden.

Good morning, Charlie

Have you ever watched Charlie's Angels? Personally I've never seen the series but I loved the movies. Three super strong, super sexy women kicking villain ass in killer stilettos and cute outfits, all without smudging their eyeliner. Going undercover and somehow pulling mad skills out of the hat to fit whichever seductive persona they assume. Stealthily sneaking into highly secure vaults and pulling off Chinese Olympian gymnast moves to manoeuvre through spider webs of alarm beams. That scene in the first Charlie's Angels movie when they've designed gloves and contact lenses with duplicate finger and retina prints so Drew Barrymore and Cameron Diaz's characters can break into the vault? I wanted to be them!!

Unfortunately for me I think working for a bank is the closest I'll ever get to being like an Angel.

Let me explain.

Firstly, being an engineer from a manufacturing background, I was hired as a Business Efficiency Manager to streamline processes and make bank operations more productive. I know it's a stretch of the imagination, but isn't that kind of like that scene where Lucy Liu's character goes undercover into that software engineering company as an efficiency expert? You know the one where she's wearing that black leather pencil skirt outfit and she keeps hitting people with her pointer? Yeah, like I said, it's a stretch but the thought cheers me up when I feel like my job is boring.

Secondly, I often spend half my day in a room alone talking to a speaker phone. (If I need to explain the connection, you have clearly not watched Charlie's Angels and should stop reading this and go out and rent it immediately.) Since my role is national and I can only be in one cash centre at a time, I spend a lot of time in tele-conferences with various people across the country. Not quite the same as discussing instructions for my next mission, but humour me.

Thirdly, I don't just work for a bank. I work for the bulk cash handling division of a bank. So my world is not your cheerful local branch one floor down from the Woolies in the mall. My world is the bulk cash centre. The bank's equivalent of a factory. Think rows and rows of high-speed machines counting bills faster than the eye can keep track of. This is where the cash that you spent at the Woolies one floor up from the bank's branch in the mall ends up. From the retail cashier's till point, to the store's back cash office, to the bank's bulk cash centre. Needless to say there are large amounts of moola in these buildings. And where there is lots of cash, there tends to be lots of potential for robberies. And where there is lots of potential for robberies, there tends to be lots of security. Basically I work in a big old vault. The front door is a hefty bullet-proof, drill-proof, fire-proof, chivalry-proof affair which is programmed to remain open for mere seconds at a time. (No gentleman will be holding that open for me. Ever. ) So my daily dose of stealth is trying to slip through it with my lunch box and my laptop bag before it smacks me on the behind. Glamorous. There are a few more security hurdles to jump before I can get my hands on my morning cup of tea (everything short of a cavity search). But if I tell you more I'll have to kill you. See? That's a little bit undercover agent-ish, isn't it? No?

Well, at least this little fantasy makes my work day a bit more fun. A private joke between me and... well, me. Now if only I could convince my boss to let me call him Charlie...