Yesterday the owners of our company bought lunch for everybody because September was a good month. The billing is finally done and we made a good profit in what was one of our busiest months all year. Great.
Of course, after lunch there was a general meeting and one of the owners reminded everybody to be careful; the equipment in the shop is dangerous and after all, just last week the foreman had just cut his finger badly enough to need seven stitches.
Not an hour later the receptionist walks by my office and says “Jim fell off the ladder.” Now, there’s a built in ladder just outside my office. It’s a retractable one leading to the “attic” on this side of the building. There was a technician on the floor servicing our imagesetter (machine you deevs) and I thought she was making a joke. Wrong.
A couple of minutes later I looked out toward the shop and noticed people gathered. I walked out and found out that Jim had in fact fallen off a ladder. Evidently he was trying to get to some boxes stored on a high shelf and rather than use the extension ladder had used a step ladder that wasn’t quite tall enough. He’d done what all ladders say you must never do - climb all the way to the top - and naturally he lost his balance and the ladder went out from under him. He did manage to grab the shelf and slow his fall but still came down hard. Paramedics took him to the hospital and we later learned that luckily he had only sustained a hairline fracture above his ankle. Neverthe less, it was a warning for everybody regarding ladder use, and was humorous in a way, since Jim was the one who had been lecturing us on safety less than sixty minutes prior.
Didn’t happen to me, but there’s video circulating on the internet of a DEA officer giving a talk on gun safety, who then proceeds to shoot himself in the leg. Classic.
The best part of that gun safety video is how the audience starts nervously yelling, “Put it down!” when he pulls out the next gun he’s trying to demonstrate.
Following a successful claimfor £220k by a nurse who had been disabled by lack of lifting equipment and training, all staff at the hospital where I used to work were put on a manual handling safety course.
We were in small groups they had a schedule, first was to pick up a piece of A4 paper from the floor correctly, using the thigh muscles.
The physio nurse demonstrating this steadily sank down toward the paper, showing us the correct way, and stood up smoothly and quickly, unfortunately she bashed her head rather hard on the First Aid cabinet mounted on the wall.
I thought the best part was when he self-importantly says “I am the only person in this room qualified to safely handle this gun” or something very similar, followed IMMEDIATELY by the bang of him shooting himself.
I read somewhere he sued the DEA over releasing that video.
My state has spent millions training state employees how to deal with terrorism threats and what to do in case of a suspected terrorist attack. After going to this training for two weeks, the warden’s secretary opened an envelope that was sent through the office mail and was showered with white powder.
So, what does she do? Does she think back to the lessons she just learned of what to do if there’s a potential biological weapon? No. No, she doesn’t.
She got up from her desk, carried the leaking envelope down the hall, up a flight of stairs, through the building to the investigator’s office where my husband was and tossed it onto his desk. When he learned what it was, he recoiled.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I don’t think it’s anthrax. It smells a little like cocoa powder.”
Hubby stared at her. “You-- You* SNIFFED* it?” he asked. “You actually put your nose into an envelope of unknown powder and inhaled?”
Luckily, they had a field testing kit which showed that the powder was benign. (It was sent off for further testing with the same results.) Hubby said his head ached just thinking about the problems her little journey would have created if it had come up positive. He would have had to shut down two floors of the building, and she had exposed God-knows how many people as she passed.
Does Sally still work there? She sounds like she’d be the perfect person for testing mortar shells a’la Bugs Bunny.
“Okay Sally, as the shells come down the assembly line you hit each one with a hammer. If nothing happens you write DUD on it. Got it?”
The link goes to a PDF report, but here’s the gist:
Basically, to demonstrate that hydrocarbon gas is safe to use in motor vehicles for… something or other, he gets into a car, opens a can to completely release the contents, then strikes a match.
About once a month our corporate newsletter carries an article worrying over the declining state of education (and it’s likely effect on our hi-tech business in the future). This month’s column-o-worry carried a statement that we should be concerned about “loosing our technological edge” due to declining education rates.
A couple years back, the themes of the yearly safety session were announced: hand and head injuries.
In the week between the posters being put up and the actual meeting, a guy injured his hand (broke a finger pretty bad, sick leave for a couple months, recovered nicely) and another his head (they kept him at the hospital for 24h and released him, no damage done except for his pride being hurt when people remarked on his head not being a delicate organ at all).
So the EHS manager started the session by saying “well, we’d gone over two years without an on-the-job injury and when I got the orders from HQ I thought it sounded like a silly pair of subjects. Should I ask HQ to please not make new year’s meeting be about ‘mortal accidents’ or will you remember that your heads are for thinking and not for banging them?”
The OSHA poster where I work (and probably where you work too if you’re in the USA) has a picture on it with 2 safety violations - an electrician with a large loose coil of cable on his belt, and a cook carrying a large unsheathed knife. Here’s a pdf of the poster. Apparently someone noticed something wrong, since the knife has been photoshopped out - it’s the woman 3rd from the right, with the large pan of sausages. She was holding the knife in her right fist by her leg. You can still she the shadow of the knife on her white coat. The electrician with the cable is still present though.
Seasoned sporting goods store employee to rookie:
“Never test fire a pellet gun. Leave it to us more experienced employees to determine if a returned gun is defective.”
In walks customer with defective gun.
Ambulance called because more experienced employee shoots his own hand. :eek:
