As well as being a design engineer, I was considered a Lead Auditor by my previous employer. As such, I would be asked to go to their other sites and carry out Health, Safety, and Environmental audits. Most of the time, all was fine and dandy, but there were a couple of Not Always Working-worthy moments. Both involved heat treatment plants, but not the one I wrote about in this story.

The first one was when I saw someone not wearing safety glasses in the plant in an area that was clearly signposted as requiring safety glasses. I asked him about it; as a permanent member of staff in the area, his training would have required him to know the required PPE [personal protective equipment].

Worker: “Oh, these are safety glasses. I just removed the shields as they got in the way.”

I had to point out that this was not just breaking company policy but breaking the law.

The second tale happened at a different site. Heat treatment isn’t just a matter of heating and cooling of metals. Well, it is, but it’s how you heat and cool them down that matters. Did you know that to give some steels a very hard surface, you heat them in a bath of potassium cyanide?

As you can imagine, you have to be very careful about how you store these chemicals. My knowledge of chemistry isn’t that great, but I have read enough Agatha Christie to know that cyanide salts are very dangerous.

Something else I read was a note on the sacks of potassium cyanide stored on pallets in the chemical storage area — that these must not be stored next to acids. This is because acids plus cyanide salts will create hydrogen cyanide gas, which is quite high up on the list of Chemicals To Run Away From Really Fast.

Stored next to these sacks were acids.

I raised this as a major non-conformance, which in these sorts of audits is the highest level: basically, it’s only luck that’s stopping you from having a major incident. I made sure the heat treatment manager and the site health and safety manager were aware, and I made it very clear in my audit report, of which they both got copies.

A year later, I was back at that heat treatment plant. The heat treatment manager was very keen to show me the improvements they had made since the last audit. No longer were these dangerous chemicals stored on pallets in the middle of the chemical store room; the room now contained several special heavy-duty lockable chemical storage safes. This added an extra level of security instead of just relying on the lock to the chemical storage room.  

He opened one safe to show me what was inside: several sacks of potassium cyanide salts… right next to the same acids as before.

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Managers Might Not Foresee What Happens, But Our Readers Will

I work as a housekeeper for a senior assisted living facility. Every month, we run a fire drill for both the main building and the memory care building. The procedure is to go to the nurses’ station because there’s a panel that tells us where the fire alarm is being set off. Then, we move the residents from the affected area to the other side of the two sets of fire doors, and we evacuate the entire building if need be.

Residents are not encouraged to try to find their own exits because we need to know where they are and who is accounted for.

Every so often, fire system maintenance comes out to test and maintain the fire system, including testing the fire alarms. One day in the main building, the alarms were going off and the fire doors were automatically closing in response to the alarms for about six hours. The staff and the residents who were aware of it were getting annoyed.

Finally, sometime in the afternoon, the company finished up and left, giving us some peace. It was short-lived, though; about half an hour or so afterward, the alarm went off for a split second and the lights started to flash.

Rolling my eyes, I headed down to the nurses’ station just to make sure it wasn’t the company doing one last test. No one else showed up. The nurses were looking at the fire alarm panel in confusion as it was showing them that a “Resting Room, West” had the triggered alarm, but we had no such room.

Admin came down from their office to see what was going on. As my boss, the head of the maintenance department, and the head of nursing tried to figure it out, I waited. As they ran back and forth between the panel and the various alarms in the different rooms, no one else showed up. It was just me and the nurses who were already at the station.

When they pinned down the alarm, it turned out that it was a real trigger; the baker had left something in the broiler for a bit too long and it got smoky.

Admin was furious and called everyone down to the nurses’ station to give them the butt-whooping they deserved. One of the dining people was brand new and started to cry because she was getting yelled at for something she hadn’t been taught yet — apparently, someone had told her to tell residents to go out the closest exit rather than the fire evacuation routes — and she had to be consoled by the head of dining away from the meeting.

The head of maintenance decided to run a fire drill again that day to drill into peoples’ heads what they were supposed to do. That was the fastest drill I have ever seen take place since I’ve been there.

My dad used to do a lot of reenacting. At one battle, a group decided to hike to some historic site “not far” from their campsite. They had to walk through a long train tunnel to get to their goal. There was a human-sized passage beside the tunnel, but it was very muddy. Everyone except Dad decided to walk along the tracks since that was a dry path, and they’d only seen one train come through in two days. They felt safe to walk into the tunnel with no side space to jump to safety.

Dad walked faster than the others, so he exited the human tunnel when the rest of the group was still in the train tunnel. He could see the guys in the dark, within fifty yards or so of the exit.

Suddenly, a train whistle came from deep inside the tunnel behind ’em.

Those out-of-shape middle-aged men set some sprint records getting out of that tunnel before the train came barrelling through. They laughed off the close call, went to see the historic site, and headed back.

Half of the guys decided to follow Dad through the muddy human tunnel. The other half were convinced that there was no way another train would come along so soon after the first, so they headed into the train tunnel. They’d not gotten far when they heard a train whistle. Everyone ended up following Dad through the muddy human tunnel after that second train came barrelling down the tracks.

I’ve always wondered if those dumba**es gave the train workers heart attacks as they saw a group of idiots on the tracks ahead of ’em.

CONTENT WARNING: Severe Injury

My partner worked in a sawmill over the summers while in college. He was assigned to be in the moulding plant. A moulder is essentially razor-sharp spinning blades to chew off wood and cut it into decorative shapes. It was my partner’s job to tie the strips of moulding into bundles.

My partner’s coworker’s job was to feed the wood through the moulder. Despite the presence of safety guards, he managed to stick his hand into the spinning blades and lose the first joint of his finger.

He was back to work the next day. During the safety investigation, he was asked to how he managed to get himself injured, as the guards and other safety equipment were fully functional.

Coworker: *Standing at the moulder* “There were too many chips, so I went like this to clear them.”

He duplicated his motion… and lost the rest of his finger.

When I started my first job in a restaurant kitchen, I was trained on using the slicer — like what delis use to slice meats and cheese. My trainer told me specifically:

Trainer: “Don’t put your fingers in the blade while it’s running.”

I must’ve looked at her funny because she then told me:

Trainer: “I have to tell you that because we had someone do that, cut off the tip of his finger, and then say, ‘You didn’t tell me not to.'”