Workplace safety follies

In My Humble Opinion
1

SIGH

The Facilities department here at my workplace (okay, I’ll tell you who–Gateway) just announced new policies regarding unsafe “personal appliances.” In short, we must get rid of all our small (break-room) refrigerators, microwaves, water coolers, and toasters. We also have to get rid of things like fans, lamps, and radios at our desks. Anything not complying with the new policy by Dec. 1 will be confiscated.

The reasoning behind all of this is supposedly to reduce the electrical load and hazards. Of course, it’s very frustrating, especially to those of us in Engineering who routinely connect multiple test laptops, desktops, and even servers (not to mention peripherals like printers and monitors) to any spare outlet we can find. Strange thing is, the new policy won’t impact how many computers we can connect, just the “personal extras.”

So, after a day of brainstorming, we already have people (myself included) planning on hiding toasters in their file cabinet drawers (with the plugs snaking out the back). Other camoflauging measures are also being toyed around with, but you can already see where this is going–the camoflauging only increases the potential danger of using the devices.

And, within the space of the 48 hours since it was announced, the policy has gone from bad to just plain silly. Free-standing bookcases are no longer allowed (they could fall over and hurt somebody), even though ours are considerably weighted down with books and hardware samples and are pretty solid. And a “guest chair” we have between my & my neighbor’s cubicles may have to go, because it’s not a 5-way adjustable ergonomic chair (it is, however, non-reclining, padded, and has armrests–a conventional, modern chair). Forget the fact that it’s rarely sat in (we usually put stuff on it), what it’s come down to is facilities telling us the chair is unsafe because it has four legs and doesn’t swivel. Isn’t there some universe somewhere where a four-legged, non-swivelling chair is considered safe? Perhaps only through the mercy of a great and benevolent God has mankind been able to survive this long using these death traps.

I know there’s a need for safety and good ergonomics, but man,…

Anybody else have similar (or worse) stupid safety regs they have to deal with?

:rolleyes:

2

Actually, we get up to just about anything around here. Our heating and air conditioning is screwed up, and my office-mate has a space heater under her desk. I did, however, just count the legs on my chair, and it looks like I’m safe. What a relief. Does this mean I can stand on it to change a light bulb?

3

The stupidest thing that ever came out here at the Depot was the requirement to wear hard hats in any of the hangars. Because something might fall. Like a stray rivet. Or a sheet metal mechanic who wasn’t required to wear a safety harness when walking across wings 12 feet in the air.

They finally did away with the hard hat requirement.

Heck, your head is in more danger in the cubicle farm from rubber bands flying over the partitions!

Sometimes the safety people are so out of touch with reality…

4

I work at facility that does health-related research of various kinds, including epidemiological studies. Every month employees are required to do a training module on handling and disposing of hazardous chemicals, etc.

This is all well and good. Except that I do survey research and statistical analysis. The only risk I run from the hazardous waste I handle is a really nasty paper cut.

5

Do a search for CRorex in the Pit. Hoo-boy, that’s some scary stuff!

6

We decided to log our accidents. And we also got first aid kits to be placed at strategic locations around the office.

Our very first accident log describes an incident in which a worker was trying to get the first aid kit off the top of the refrigerator in the breakroom, and it fell on her.

:smack: :wally:

7

You’re allowed to change a lightbulb?!!?

Man, we’re not allowed. Nope. Nuh-uh. No way. You have to call maintenance then sit in the dark until someone shows up. Only a select few may stand upon The Ladder.

8

I’m the Health and Safety Representative (bullshit term for what The Simpsons describes more simply as The Safety Guy) for a large mail processing plant in Sydney. Being a government workplace, I have all sorts of statutory powers I can invoke, but I’ve never used them. I could have black helicopters descend on the place with government agents demanding the managers tell them why the toilet roll holder is in a position liable to cause back pain due to excessive twisting…

I’m probably the worst person for the job, because my outlook is all wrong. It’s not that I won’t act on any safety breaches I see, but that I’m expected to assist management formulate new safety guidelines, and most of them are nearly as silly as the ones in the OP. I’m more interested in actually removing some of the stupider ones, but that is very hard politically for a Safety Rep to do.

It really sucks.

9

I temped at a place where dresses and high heels were forbidden but jeans and sneaks were the order of the day in case we had to run from toxic spills.
Oddly enough, they printed safety equipment lables.

10

our facilities guys are a strange bunch - i can’t use my own headphones with my pc (apparently they aren’t made by an “approved manufacturer”). Which to me seems just slightly anal.

but about a day after they emailed me to inform me of this, i also found out that apparently i’ve been the fire marshall for my floor for nigh on one and a half years.

but they had never gotten around to telling me i was fire marshall…

11

I’ve had the fire marshal for my area happen to me. I was appointed fire marshall on a day I was out sick. No one bothered to tell me because they figured there was so many people in the meeting that someone was bound to inform me. I didn’t find out until 18 months later when I was laid off.

12

Wow. If you’re in a commercial building that can’t handle the strain of radios and lamps, and whose break room isn’t equipped with dedicated 20 Amp circuits, then I’d bail from that death trap.

I think that there are two much more likely explanations. The first is that the company is penny pinching on electrical usage and is doing so under the aegis of removing unsanctioned appliances. Or the company wants to downsize and is hoping that enough employees will be pissed off enough by this petty BS that they will leave on their own.

13

Or, the company just got a new insurance carrier and/or agent.

Thank the lawyers for this crap.

14

There’s a great Onion story called “Workplace Safety IS a Laughing Matter”. It’s not on the website, but it’s in the new book. Basically the guy is talking about working in a steel mill, and saying how he doesn’t need a day-glo sign to remind him that molten steel can hurt you.

15

Actually, Finagle, we learned it was the insurance issue–but it’s not a new carrier, it’s the old one, suddenly concerned about “safety.” Seems a guy who “didn’t work out” (hired a little while ago, gone now) was moving his bookcase and it fell over on him. Must have been a claim filed, for the insurance company to get all over it.

The kicker is that one of the affected groups is the Human Factors Engineering (ergonomics) folks, who are the real authorities on what’s healthy (lighting, sitting, etc.). But because their jurisdiction is our products, not facilities, they are never consulted. It’s gotten to the point where the director of our whole area, a doctor of ergonomics/human factors, is arguing with Facilities about what is healthy. Sigh.

16

well i don’t know… i’d be much happier if they put signs around molten steel, i mean, what if a kid is playing nearby - they might not know that molten steel is dangerous! :slight_smile:

17

And they may not be old enough to know how to read. :rolleyes: [sup]And crawl right into it[/sup]

18

We had a nurse seriously injured in the hospital where I worked, she was lifting a patient because the management had refused, in writing, to purchase the correct hoist on grounds of cost.
She won £240k damages.

The result was that after the court judgement, every memeber of staff(around 7000) had to attend a lifting course.
Being a maintenance technician on heavy plant, this seemes silly as we’d already done lifting slinging and crane hoisting courses.

The pysiotherapist put pieces of A4 paper on the floor and told us she would demonstrate how to lift them up, knees bend, back straight and all that stuff.
It seemed faintly ridiculour for a lousy bit of paper, but when she did the practical demonstration for us to watch, she stood up fairly quickly, and didn’t half bash her head on a first aid box fixed to the wall!

19

I keep a five gallon bucket of waterbourne rubber cement in a cabinet near my workbench. It’s not flammable. Furthermore, the bucket is very nearly indestructable. (try to break one of those things if you don’t believe me.)
A safety inspector told my boss that the bucket would have to be placed in the flammables cabinet. When he was told it was waterbourne, non-flammable glue, he countered with, “Well, it wll be contained there in the event of an earthquake.”
Apparently having the glue run into a stormdrain in the event of an earthquake would contaminate our rivers, and ultimately the bay. The storm drain is at least fifty feet away from the cabinet.
Any earthquake that would accomplish the prodigious task of,
1-destroying the bucket (itself no mean feat)
and
2-simultaneously dispersing it’s contents in a fifty foot radius
is Hellish, unspeakable horror. If we are cursed with an earthquake of these proportions, the one pint (and that’s being charitable) of glue that would get into the river will be the least of our worries.
:rolleyes:

20

to you and garius, as a semi serious question… If a fire were to break out in the office, (esp something like a small garbage fire that cause bigger damage) and with all the “political” BS that seems to go around in these offices, would they come down on you, since I assume that you would be the one responsible for putting the fire out or calling the proper authorities?