Whorf helped to attract new customers to the Fire Insurance Company; they favored his thorough inspections and recommendations. Another famous anecdote from his job was used by Whorf to argue that language use affects habitual behavior. Whorf described a workplace in which full gasoline drums were stored in one room and empty ones in another; he said that because of flammable vapor the "empty" drums were more dangerous than those that were full, although workers handled them less carefully to the point that they smoked in the room with "empty" drums, but not in the room with full ones. Whorf argued that by habitually speaking of the vapor-filled drums as empty and by extension as inert, the workers were oblivious to the risk posed by smoking near the "empty drums".
whorf helped to attract new customers to the fire insurance company; they favored his thorough inspections and recommendations another famous anecdote from his job was used by whorf to argue that language use affects habitual behavior whorf described a workplace in which full gasoline drums were stored in one room and empty ones in another; he said that because of flammable vapor the "empty" drums were more dangerous than those that were full although workers handled them less carefully to the point that they smoked in the room with "empty" drums but not in the room with full ones whorf argued that by habitually speaking of the vapor-filled drums as empty and by extension as inert the workers were oblivious to the risk posed by smoking near the "empty drums"