Loyalty, look after people.

This Echium pininana (Thank you Fuentes3) is living quite happily, full of bees it is enjoying it’s escape attempt. Penny was worried it might be bothering us, not a chance we love bees. You can see how the plant is desperately seeking the sun. 

Yesterday I wrote a bit about the winter of 1986. During the cold snap I was getting ready to head North East again. Having done our paperwork and signed for the beast I headed down to where she was, 0630, cold as a witches left boob and pitch black. The aircraft handlers had just completed her refuel and one of the gents clambered up into my seat, put the power on, checked the fuel levels and started to get out. The temperature was a few degrees below zero and the aircraft apron was a sheet of deadly black ice. As his foot touched the ground he let go of the handles and wham, he hit the deck on his back, his head whiplashed, immediately he was unconscious. We gathered around him then I climbed onboard and ordered an ambulance by radio, it would take 10 - 15 minutes to get to us. I asked permission to fly him to A&E, that takes 3 minutes. Cleared to go I could not get her to start. Frustration writ large. Eventually he was placed in an ambulance and taken away.
About 5 or 6 hours later we returned and I asked the engineering staff how the handler was. Puzzled stares, nobody knew or had bothered to check up. Now a touch of anger crept in.
One thing I learned as a young Marine was you always look after your men. Having changed from my immersion suit I went to the hospital and found my newest friend in a ward, sitting beside him was his wife; he had suffered a severe concussion and was bandaged up, I did my best to comfort his wife and assure her he would be looked after. By now I was fizzing. The next morning I asked for a slightly later flight and went down to inform the chief engineer, a dour miserable piece of bovine excrescence that his worker was concussed and would need a long period of recovery. He just stared at this obviously pissed off pilot type. Leave or go over the desk? Leave. 
I then went into the engineering staff, passed the message on and visited the handlers coffee room. They sat quietly as I explained what had happened and that their colleague would need help and visitors, especially as his wife was scared for his future. They were appreciative of my efforts and said so. 
I am not a saint, I am, at times, hard to handle, but, and it’s a huge but, I cannot imagine not being concerned for the people I work with. A bunch of flowers for his wife, a handshake, with apologies that nobody checked on him and two hours added to my day was nothing. However it meant the world to that couple. No wonder company loyalty went out the window decades ago. 

Now….where’s that suit of armour, it must need a polish by now.