Forwarded on from my company’s IT safety council …
Are you a lefty? Do you put up with doors, sinks, computer mice, keyboards and desks that are made for right-handers to work at? Every day contorting yourself using back-to-front tools and gadgets that make you look clumsy and awkward in your efforts to make them to work?
Today the environment of our world strongly favors the right-handed majority. Studies have documented that left-handers are more prone to unintentional injuries, head trauma, motor vehicle accidents, and increased sports injuries. Left-handed industrial workers are 5 times more prone to finger amputations than right-handed workers. Source
Many of the problems left-handers face are everyday implements such as gearshifts, scissors, and can openers, which are biased toward right-handed use. Even in their homes the left-handers are forced to accommodate to everyday items such as spiral-bound notebooks with the spiral on the “wrong” side, electric irons with the power cable protruding on the right, corkscrews, light bulbs, garden secateurs, and potato peelers. Source
In and out of the workplace, left-handers have to take into consideration the extra risks of performing certain tasks when left-handed equipment isn’t available. Here are some things to think about in order to keep it safe:
- Slow down: take your time performing a task that may present risks for a left-hander
- Assess the situation (situational awareness): for instance, be careful not to burn yourself reaching for a coffee pot with the handle on the “wrong” side
- Tool Placement / Selection: scissors and knives especially can create risks:
– Left-handed scissors have the blades reversed so the top blade is always on the left so that you can see your cutting line and the natural squeezing action of your hand pushes the blades together so they can cut like a guillotine rather than pushing them apart so the paper bends between the blades.
– Getting a proper left-handed bread knife with the serrations on the right side of the blade so it counteracts the natural twisting motion of your hand as it should rather than reinforcing it.
Power tools (hedge trimmers, leaf blowers, weed eaters and even miter boxes) are often made to be used by right-handers. Lefties need to take time and precautions to reconfigure equipment or protect themselves from less-than ideal ergonomics. Righties need to keep these subtle yet very real risk factors in mind when working with the left-handed.
Though left-handed, I was taught to use right-handed scissors as a kid (thank goodness). Never heard of a left-handed bread knife. And I’ve adapted to having the mouse on the right. But, yes, there are a lot of things that remain right-handed orientated, and, as the amputations stats show, that can sometimes be dangerous.
I’m right-handed, but I keep my mouse on the left. I switched partly in the hope that I would develop better motor control of my left hand, and partly because I was feeling some soreness one day in my right hand after a lot of mousing. It worked, but I sometimes still grab the mouse with my right hand, so it didn’t make me ambidextrous. (This works better with a wireless mouse!)
I am, however, reminded of a prank sometimes played on new boy scouts when I was a scout. They would be sent to look for a left-handed smoke shifter. Har-de-har-har.
Ah. In our troop it was a Left-Handed Bacon-Stretcher.
Ah, this makes me so nostalgic.
Oddly, at work because a) my office is left handed b) 90% of every thing I do involves the number pad and Enter, end, home, del, backspace, etc my computer is set up left handed, which really messes with the IT guys….which just a bonus.
Do Not Taunt Happy Fun IT Guys!
I was exposed to left-handed scxissors too late for my brain to adapt.
I mouse right so that I can write left. I think Dave Newman’s idea is perfect for righthanders’ same setup.