OT: Knee jerk reactions to safety concerns

It seems that from time to time we see posts where someone questions the safety aspect of one thing or another based on what if this or when than could that. Not that there is anything wrong with that, safety is the most important aspect of any job, project, process or task. But let's face it, things can get out of hand quickly when we think with emotions or wild speculations.

What is the biggest knee jerk reaction or silliest response to a safety issue that you've seen.

For me the first thing that comes to mind is our plant's reaction after a maintenance mechanic bumped his head on an electrical cabinet after climbing out from under a machine. He did not break the skin, there were no bruises, no lost time and I don't think he even had so much as a headache from it. But we had a crew of maintenance personnel out in force the next day taping foam cushions on the corners of every panel in the plant.

Not only did this look tacky, IMHO it was a silly approach to solving a problem that really didn't exist. What things have you seen along these lines? Please tell me my company isn't the only orginization with these kinds of reactions to minor situations.

I was working under a machine in Arkansas during a hot day in August. Myself, an electrician, and a Millright were scrambling to fix a machine that had the entire plant down.

It was probably 105 deg in the plant and even hotter underneath the machine, as a Canuck it was all I could bear. We had a fan blowing on us to try and at least move the air around a bit where we were working.

I noticed the fan had quit and came up from the machine to try and figure out what had happened. I found that our fan was unplugged with a lock and a tag on it. Turns out that our new safety coordinator had just learned that a fan could not have more than a 1/8" gap between the gaps on the fan guard according to OSHA. She was going around with a caliper measuring all the fans and the one we were using had been bumped and there was a portion of the guard that was .01" out of spec.

I contacted the safety coordinator immediately and asked her to remove the lock (somewhat politely) as we did not have access to another fan readily and needed to finish our job without passing out. What peed me off the most is that I was the one that spec'd out and bought the cord lockout ends she was using. She told us that her job was to look after our safety and we were using an unsafe fan that was not acceptable and she wouldn't remove the lock.

This has turned out to be the one and only time that I have ever bypassed a lockout. I cut off the end of the fan cord and handed the electrician a new cord end. I then took the original cord end and lock up to our plant manager and told him "You need to put a leash on your new safety b****, or we might as well shut this place down".

It takes a lot to get me worked up but on the verge of heat exhaustion and having someone tell me that having air blow on me is not safe was more than I could take. Eventually cooler heads prevailed and I won.

Hope this is relevant to what you are looking for, I look forward to other stories

I don't know if this was a knee-jerk reaction or just a case of a dunce headed production supervisor watching too much Star Trek.

The operators of a production CNC turret lathe had bypassed the switch on the sliding door so that they didn't have to operate the door twice a minute to change parts. The operator didn't get one part chucked correctly and the lathe flung the part, nearly hitting the operator. The dunce headed (and I use that term loosely) supervisor stormed up to engineering demanding that we fix the problem. I went down and found the bypassed switch. I ordered maintenance to replace the switch with a tamper resistant switch and the supervisor to enforce company policy against bypassing safety switches. The next day I'm called into a meeting with the dunce supervisor and his manager where the dunce demands that we take the switch off the lathe door and install a light curtain so they can leave the door open but still run the lathe safely. The dunce supervisor actually thought a light curtain was a force field. I couldn't help myself and broke down in fits of laughter. I asked him to explain exactly how he thought a few LED light beams was going to protect the operator from flying parts. To his dumb stare, I had to explain how a light curtain worked and that there really was no such thing as a force field. I never heard another word about it. Fortunately, both the dunce and the manager have long since left the company.

I'd bet dollars to dough-nuts had dunce head won the first time a flying part penetrated his "force field" he would have he would have been on you like wrinkles on a raisin.

ChuckM said:

It seems that from time to time we see posts where someone questions the safety aspect of one thing or another based on what if this or when than could that. Not that there is anything wrong with that, safety is the most important aspect of any job, project, process or task. But let's face it, things can get out of hand quickly when we think with emotions or wild speculations.

What is the biggest knee jerk reaction or silliest response to a safety issue that you've seen.

For me the first thing that comes to mind is our plant's reaction after a maintenance mechanic bumped his head on an electrical cabinet after climbing out from under a machine. He did not break the skin, there were no bruises, no lost time and I don't think he even had so much as a headache from it. But we had a crew of maintenance personnel out in force the next day taping foam cushions on the corners of every panel in the plant.

Not only did this look tacky, IMHO it was a silly approach to solving a problem that really didn't exist. What things have you seen along these lines? Please tell me my company isn't the only orginization with these kinds of reactions to minor situations.

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Wouldn't it have been easier/quicker/cheaper to wrap the mechanic's head with a foam cushion?

We were once called into a big safety meeting over an issue brought up by the safety supervisor. When we heard the concern we attempted to explain that the odds of the concerned event were likely smaller then a direct hit in the head by a meteorite. The response was "I know it can happen because I saw it in a movie".

try failing a safety audit over one of two lightbulbs that show the same conditions as to whether the truck can move or not

It is not just us that see how ridiculous some of these over-reactions are. The UK Health and Safety Commission is currently launching an initiative to try and curb these excesses and it is rather appropriately called "Get a Life".

ChuckM said:

But we had a crew of maintenance personnel out in force the next day taping foam cushions on the corners of every panel in the plant.

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This is standard practice where I work... I wish this was the most ridiculous knee-jerk reaction I had ever seen. I can't eve find humor in how out of control our safety department is anymore.

If you ever start a company, don't hire production managers into safety rolls and give them unprecedented power to show how 'safe' the company is.

My thanks for all your well-written stories. They're funnier than any "internet" humor anyone's ever mailed me.

Dan

I don't have a funny story for this thread but, just as an observation based on my years working with industrial automation, it seems to me that the basic problem in safety programs is twofold. First, is this totally unrealistic notion that there is such a thing as zero risk. If you look back at most of these stories, that's the underlying problem. Second, for any safety program to work effectively, you have to have people that are willing and able to exercise judgement. Most people just want to hide behind "I'm just following the rules" and avoid exercising any judgement. Sometimes, the organization punishes those that try to exercise judgement and that just makes things worse.

Having said that, all I have to do is read about the horrendous hazards in some of the big projects and industries that existed 100 years ago to be convinced that things are better these days than before even with some of the absurdities that come up.

Having said that, all I have to do is read about the horrendous hazards in some of the big projects and industries that existed 100 years ago to be convinced that things are better these days than before even with some of the absurdities that come up.

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This is certainly true. Very early when I was doing construction, some projects were tagged with an expeceted death and injury rate. Now days all projects expect a ZERO occurance.

I am one for sometimes going overboard on safety (on some things, just look at the skill of the operators). The worst I had to argue with was when a corporate safety guy came down and saw a computer, monitor, and charger plugged into a "surge strip" and then plugged into a receptacle in the wall. There was also something else plugged into the second receptacle in the wall. He "wrote" us up because we were overloading the circuit. He said that there is 4 things plugged into a duplex receptacle and that since the there were only 2 openings in the wall socket, we can only have 2 things plugged into it. Our plant safety guy called me and said we will have to add more receptacles in the wall if we want to plug that many things in. After arguing and then threatening to go to the plant managers office and unplug all his surge strips, I STILL LOST!

Believe or not, it is still an open finding on our plant safety audit. I just don't have the spitefullness to hire an electrical contractor to add thousands of receptacles. And yes, I do understand how some people do overload circuits by plugging in 2 heaters, computers, monitors, printers, chargers, and lamps into surge strip going into surge strip, but this was not the case.

That one is rich you should work out a project quote for all the additional subpanels etc that it would cost to have seperate outlets for everything I'll bet the plant manager would step in at that point

Iwould also ask him if he knows where you can purchase single outlet surge protectors with CSA approval