MERT Voyeur

I've worked in a number of our divisions over the years. The majority of our factory campuses are rather large. Some problems have resulted due to the sprawling size and rat-maze layout of these sites. A major issue that crept up was how to assist an employee that suddenly becomes seriously ill on the job. If a person drops to the floor unconscious for whatever reason, and requires immediate medical attention how do you help them? Paramedics probably won't be able to get on-site and then be able to navigate their way through the buildings on our campus in enough time to reach someone in need. This is why MERT was created.

MERT stands for Medical Emergency Response Team. It's a group of volunteer employees who receive special training about stabilizing an injured or sick employee until Paramedics arrive on the scene. MERT guys and gals do more than administer first aid, so the training they've gone through can really make a difference when it might count the most.

We're all trained on what to do when someone in our immediate area falls ill. All employees have been instructed to call a special emergency number that is a direct line to security. When they pick up the phone in the security center all we have to do is say there's a medical emergency in X building and give them the nearest column marking where the sick person is located. So you'd say something like, "We have a medical emergency in building 3 near column 22J." That's all we have to do. Security takes it from there and does a couple of things at once. They call the appropriate emergency services on the outside and get them rolling. Inside, security makes an announcement over the P.A. system calling for all MERT members and gives them the building and column number info. It's sort of an unspoken rule that anyone not involved with MERT is supposed to stay out of the way. Even if the guy sitting right next to you is the person that just had a seizure, you're supposed to leave the area or go work someplace else on the line. Once MERT is launched there isn't anything else we can do.

As soon as a call goes out for MERT, those folks drop whatever they're doing wherever they're at, grab some gear and converge on the spot where somone is in trouble. These kind of incidents happen infrequently but often enough you just end up knowing who's on the MERT roster after a while. During the last couple of months when a MERT announcement has been made over the P.A., Genia gets up from her workbench and heads out to go help. Nobody questioned her involvement and we all assumed she was part of MERT too.

That isn't the case.

Last week MERT was called to assist someone in another building that complained of severe chest pains and was having trouble breathing. That sounded like a heart attack brewing so the employee's coworkers did the right thing and called for help. As usual, when the announcement came over the loudspeakers Genia got up and fled our production line. When she arrived at the scene the rest of MERT was already there working on the person. Something happened, I'm not sure what specifically because I heard about this incident second hand. Anyway the MERT people suddenly realized that they didn't know who Genia was and asked her why she was there. What was she doing? Afterward they thought about it and remembered she's been there for the past year or more every time an emergency call has gone out. She never did anything but stand there and watch what was happening. They also made the discovery that Genia has never been on their team.

Smelling something fishy, MERT approached management and asked them to look into the situation. Genia was hauled out of the production area the other day and questioned. Turns out she told them she just likes to go and watch. She likes to watch people who are ill, or injured and in pain. I don't know what management is going to do with her, but all I can say is this is one of the more demented and creepy things I've heard about around here in a long time.