Safety gone mad

[CaptainPanic]

This morning, a safety manager passed by the office and started commenting on my book shelves. I have to clean them up. I must rearrange the books, and a book cannot be on top of another book. The books (which have been on that shelf for the last couple of years, in pretty much the same arrangement) could fall off, and injure someone, according to the safety guy.

 

An official report was filed, and it's in our computer system now. I think it's utterly ridiculous (no book ever fell, but even if it would, an injury is extremely unlikely), and I am contemplating how I can avoid rearranging the shelves. I'm feeling a little rebelious, and despite the fact that cleaning up would probably take less than an hour, I really want to refuse. The bad thing is: it's in the safety computer system now, and that means there will be a follow-up. And childish as it may seem, ignoring safety warnings is a serious thing. And that computer system doesn't see how silly the warning is.

 

Do you have any anecdotes of safety managers who just have to say something in every lab/office they visit, even if everything is perfectly in order?

[swansont]

Say you believe in Feng Shui and that rearranging the books will disrupt your qi, and that is more likely to result in an injury.

[imatfaal]

Find a course on health and safety in the workplace being held somewhere pleasant and warm - and claim that your recent brush with danger shook you to the core and has changed your feelings on the matter; you would thus like to learn more, and would the company agree time out of the office and pay for your holiday course.

[JohnB]

Don't worry, they're all around you, in every industry.

 

One venue where I used to build exhibitions brought in a couple of good rules, courtesy of the "Safety" officer.

 

1. All persons climbing a ladder 6 feet high or more must wear a safety harness. This seems reasonable until you realise that a. The only thing to hook it to is the ladder and b. You have to climb the ladder (without having the harness attached, which is a no-no) to attach the harness to the ladder. The final point is that a safety harness is designed to let you drop 2 metres before going tight. Which means that it will go tight just before you hit the ground and will probably pull the ladder over on top of you.

 

2. All forklifts carrying loads must a "spotter", someone who watches the load and makes sure it doesn't hit anything. Again fair enough, but they couldn't leave it at that. They further required that the spotter must watch the load at all times and be in a position where he has an unobstructed view of the load. The only way to fulfil the requirement is for the spotter to be in front of the forklift and looking up at the load while walking backwards. Most people agreed that walking backwards on a construction site while in front of a loaded, moving vehicle is not condusive to prolonged existence.

 

While there are good ones out there, a number are padding their job. It looks good on the quarterly report to say that they have located and fixed 26 "potentially hazardous" situations in the workplace. They just hope to God that nobody actually asks what the situations were. Which is why the safety officer speaks last at the meetings. Since meetings generally run over time and everybody wants to leave, nobody asks any searching questions.

[michel123456]

Maybe they are looking for excuses when it will come to get fired...

 

IMHO a good excuse is to say that the security manager is right, it is too dangerous to approach the books, they may fall.

[Marat]

Safety officers today are what the priests of Antiquity were: a professional class called into existence by the absence of enough real tasks to occupy people having a sufficient degree of education and skill to expect some task to be assigned to them. To keep themselves employed, the priests keep having to invent new sins which only they can forgive, just as today the safety officers have to keep inventing new risks only they can remove.

 

The problem is that since today's 'priesthood' of safety officers hides behind the guise of being scientific, they are harder to dethrone than the old priesthood, which started to lose its grip once Galileo pointed out that the planets don't look right in terms of the demands of theology.

Edited July 8, 2011 by Marat

[Pantaz]

Write a thorough report of the current state of the books -- including plenty of before-and-after photographs from different angles -- and your steps (and time spent) to "remedy" the situation, including citations of any regulations. I would preface the report with a heart-felt (but very professional) thank you to the safety manager for his help in identifying such a hazard. Print hard-copies and present them to everybody remotely connected to the safety department.

[Moontanman]

I was a safety manager for DuPont for a couple of years, if anyone is more obsessed with safety than DuPont I'd like to see them but this guy is safety OCD, unless the book case is high over head I'd say he's just f-ing with you.

[Janus]

Do you want to hear an example of safety gone overboard?

 

In one of the buildings were I work there is a door in an alcove. In order to get to this alcove, you would have to take one of two paths. One is to pass through a locked door, climb 2 flights on a steep metal spiral staircase and then cross one of two cat walks. The other is go through another locked door and then climb a ladder bolted to the wall.

Put simply, this alcove is restricted access.

This door is locked, leads to the roof, and has a sign that say's "ROOF, WATCH YOUR STEP" which is repeated below in braille.

Edited July 8, 2011 by Janus

[John Cuthber]

Lets just say that it would be very ironic if, while following the instruction to tidy the shelf, you pulled a muscle. If that injury were investigated properly the investigation would look for a risk benefit analysis of the original instruction. If that were missing then whoever sent it out would look rather foolish.