This Is How You Become The Subject Of A Health And Safety Poster

We work with heavy machinery, some of it pretty hazardous. The whole shop floor requires safety boots and chemical-resistant overalls, and some areas also need earplugs and safety glasses.

The company has decided that, because people walk between these areas and a sister site recently had a bad eye accident, the whole site will now require safety glasses.

I don’t think it’s a big deal — it’s clearly for our safety — so I wear mine without complaint. 

Some people, however, have taken massive issue with it and routinely don’t wear them or wear them on top of their head.

It has gotten so bad that anyone who “forgets” their glasses at home more than once has to go home unpaid. Anyone who refuses to wear them gets written up. Repeat offenders get escalated through the discipline process.

Most people comply. Of those that don’t, most only get told off once, but one guy constantly complains, constantly takes his glasses off when he isn’t being watched, and ridicules everyone for wearing them.

One day, [Coworker] gets caught again wearing his glasses on top of his head, this time with his head inside the machine he is cleaning, where there’s a massive risk of getting something blown into an eye.

He storms back out of the office and throws his safety glasses across the workshop. The manager sees this and follows him out, shouting after him. [Coworker] shouts back, pausing only to wipe something from the side of his eye.

But he does it with greasy hands not washed since he cleaned the machine. He gets tiny splinters of metal in his eye. Everyone thinks he is joking, but when he starts to scream in pain, they get him to hospital to pick out the metal.

I don’t think he got written up for not wearing his glasses, but I think he learnt his lesson either way.