Last week, (sorry this post is horribly late) I visited a timber yard to buy a short length of window sill board.  I am finally getting round to putting a nice window sill in the kitchen..  It has only taken me erm years..

Anyway, after wandering about a bit I found what I was after, but as I only needed 1.25 meters I needed to get someone to cut it to length for me.  This is where the fun started.  The chap I was dealing with hadn’t been trained on the static circular saw, and the company safety policy prohibits untrained use.  Sensible enough if you ask me. 
So I ask who can use the saw.. which is met with a blank look..

At this point I also learned that it is policy that staff members can not use hand saws… But if I had a saw with me I could cut the wood for myself.  Sorry what!

Given that I am not a full time builder with a van full of tools, I didn’t have a saw with me, and the sharpest thing I was carrying was a pen..

This clearly identified me as a very strange person, clearly I was comfortable in a timber yard, I knew exactly what specific thing I needed, but I wore a suit coat had no discernable paint marks and had no tools with me..
What was worse, not only did I not have tools I didn’t have a van or a car having walked.

While I was quizzing yet another member of staff just who could use the power saw, my original helper returns carrying a hand saw, that he has borrowed from a slightly perplexed builder who is visiting the yard.

Apparently I am allowed to use a hand saw in their workshop, but they can’t.
So I set to and cut my own bit of wood, before returning the saw.

This has just left me baffled.  Clearly they have identified a safety risk with the use of hand saws.. one that is so serious that it can’t be mitigated by staff training. Yet untrained members of the public can be given a saw (that has been borrowed from some other member of the public) and allowed to cut their own wood in the workshop space of the timber yard.  Given that they have a duty of care to members of the public, I wonder just what would have happened if I had had an accident.