Comments on: Things That Make You Go FACEPALM!

By: Dakotarick

Dakotarick — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 20:01:37 +0000

It’s nice to see I am not the only one this kind of stuff happens to. Always on a Friday!

By: Mike

Mike — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 17:25:13 +0000

Meh… You’re being too hard on the guy. Write him up, or fire him, and let that be the end of it.

The customer is dealing with, your company to an extent, but you. You are the brand. The guy riding on the lift/trailer is going to come off as a moron, or untrained, but you are still the brand and it’s out of the customer’s respect for this brand that he had the guy call.

At the end of the day, it’s not the dumbest thing he could be doing, nobody got hurt, and in six months you’ll get a chuckle out of it.

I’ve been in the machinery business for over 20 years, and can tell you that it doesn’t hold a candle to the dumb things I’ve seen, permit me to list a few:

* Pilling people onto the back of a forklift to keep the back wheels down (so it can steer)
* Operating an overhead crane, while standing on what’s being lifted
* Handling shear blades w/o gloves on
* Working in the pit under live machinery
* Randomly pushing relays to “see what they do”
* forgetting the rotation on 3ph motors and crashing blades on shears

I’ve even seen those little scissor lifts being hoisted by a forklift to change a lightbulb.

By: Kemonojin

Kemonojin — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 14:13:46 +0000

For every stupid warning label you see, like on a lawnmower where it says ‘Do not put fingers under rim while mower is running’, you know there’s some goober out there who now can’t count past two and a half that made them put that on there…

By: kattrinsaa

kattrinsaa — Sat, 04 Aug 2012 23:12:46 +0000

that’s just.. wow..
reminds me of the shop assistant kid on H&H Tech. (loved that show)
He was a top notch aluminum welder, but a complete BFRC everywhere else.

*** BFRC for the uninitiated means Big Friggin Red Cloud, a moniker given to the Titan rocket I think. They were notoriously difficult to maintain, and if something went wrong and the solid fuel ignited, it left.. well.. a BFRC.

By: Pawzy

Pawzy — Sat, 04 Aug 2012 21:00:09 +0000

That… not so mentally gifted… employee should count his blessings that he didn’t wind up needing the services of my profession. (Nurse, I work in a hospital.)

By: Klepsacovic

Klepsacovic — Sat, 04 Aug 2012 14:38:16 +0000

I might have missed the part, but you seem to have not considered the even-worse scenario. Maybe he’s not being passive-aggressive or indirect. Maybe that use of the lift is actually more strict than the customer’s policies. It’s a wonder they’re still alive.

My brother used to be a civil engineer and he’d often be sent out to do inspections on overpasses. They’d pull their truck off the highway and send up the boom. There’s some waiting to do. He’d always get out of the truck and stand way off to the side. Other guys would laugh at him for it, since he’d often be freezing his ass off in the cold. Then one day someone died when the truck he was sitting in got hit. After that they changed company policy to mandate that people not sit in the giant target.

By: Ursa

Ursa — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 22:28:47 +0000

Oh lord. I work around commercial pipelines and facilities, and the stuff I see makes me cringe on a regular basis. I’ve shut down work on several occasions and forced people to correct things. One of the worst offenders – bell holes. Just google the term and you’ll see what I’m talking about (for the non-construction inclined). OSHA requires you to have a means of egress to the excavation. Yeah, some of the things these folks do and call “a means of egress” just drives me insane. I’ve seen ropes tied to trucks and heavy equipment; all manner of horribly narrow ramps in unstable areas; people being lifted out of an excavation via an excavator bucket; etc.

As a side note, here’s the OSHA reg I’m talking about: 1926.651(c)(2) Means of egress from trench excavations. A stairway, ladder, ramp or other safe means of egress shall be located in trench excavations that are 4 feet (1.22 m) or more in depth so as to require no more than 25 feet (7.62 m) of lateral travel for employees.

I have to draw pictures to get this into the apparently empty skulls of many a foreman, and I now have a nifty card I made to carry around. This does NOT mean you need a ladder every 25 feet. It means you need one every 50 feet. You can have more, but you only NEED one every 50 feet. It also means you need a clear, lateral path to that ladder – no obstructions.

That’s just a small sampling of the insanity that comes with inspection. Unfortunately, I see things on an almost daily basis. Seriously, if you’re work place requires some kind of protection – even if it seems a pain in the butt – just do it. OSHA regs are only made because someone probably got killed or horribly injured. I could go on forever just on ladders /sigh

By: Xew

Xew — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 20:40:58 +0000

Forwarded to our EQ manager and Safety Director. They need a laugh on a Friday. :)

Totally (and sadly) sounds like my company.

By: FurryWookie

FurryWookie — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 19:26:51 +0000

Ok what is the company name? I Insure people like you against accidents and need to make sure your not one of my insurers.
If so, you can expect notification about cancellation!!!

Lol

By: bigbearbutt

bigbearbutt — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 18:29:55 +0000

In other news, this is actually an official OSHA violation. Per OSHA requirements, the only way you can use a lift that is on a triler is if the lift is bolted physically to the trailer, the trailer is stabilized with outriggers.

This is just… you know, this makes us look like we hand a truck and trailer with tools to any schmuck that walks in off the street, and that our guys are amateur hour on the midway. It’s embarassing.

I’ve got it addressed now. It most certainly will not, ever, happen again.

Until the next stupid thing.

You know, this is exactly the kind of STUPID SHIT people record on their phones and post on Youtube, with the caption, “Darwin Awards”.