Bozos And Horror Stories

P T Schram said:
And, don't forget your safety glasses!

My safety glasses are first thing on in the morning and last thing off in the evening.
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In that same shop I mentioned at the top, I was wearing my safety glasses under my welding hood. Guys were giving me a hard time about that, like it's somehow not manly enough to be careful. When one of them was grinding something nearby and I suddenly found myself watching a piece of shrapnel cooling just half an inch in front of my right eyeball I had an opportunity to show them exactly why I wear them. Nevermind the fact that the UV glasses prevent getting burned by the reflected arc light, they're also very useful when the helmet is up.
 
intjonmiller said:
Your *late* friend?

What a collection of Darwin winners. It really sucks when they take out others as well. My brother was recently arguing that we shouldn't be so concerned about safety and let survival of the fittest work for our benefit. I pointed out that the safety stuff is largely to protect everyone else from their stupidity.
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Sadly yes, but surprisingly, not from being stupid.

He was born missing some muscles across the back of his shoulders and the complications of other developmental things finally caught up to him.

That said, he was THE BEST welder I'd ever seen and at one point was hired to do underwater welding where he was strapped into a contraption that followed the contour of a ships' hull and he was pulled from one side to the next. There was ONE AWS cert he didn't have and IIRC it required a level of dexterity he could not meet with his limitations-NOT disability!

He ended up working as a fabricator for a company that made prison hardware. He said ti was the best job he'd ever had and made the most $ doing it.

He also used the black powder in his civl war cannon. My dad, one to never let an opportunity to suggest someone else do something incredibly stupid suggested to this gentleman that if beer cans shredded from the ignition, to fill them with concrete Yes, beer WAS involved in this discussion. The next thing I know, I'm reading in the paper about a woman's house getting hit by a concrete filled beer can that came careening through her house and landed in front of her TV... Of course, there was a HUGE cloud of black smoke that was kind hard to hide from!
 
Worked in a small jobbers shop in the seventies. This was before CNC and tape machines were still new. I did the set up on the turret lathes and punch presses and worked doing repairs when needed. Saw one of my fellow workers, maintenance guy, hoist the forklift's forks right out of the guides so he could work on them. Put his hand on top of the guide while he bent over to adjust something. The fork slipped off the hook, no strap, took two of his fingers off and broke the hand leaving him with limited use of it from then on.

We also had a woman buffing small spindles on a belt sander. She used to wrap her hand in a rag to hold the spindles. Got her hand pulled into the belt and lost two or three fingernails, ripped out of the quick.:dread:

I don't know how many people would not use the safety harnesses on the punch presses. I set them up so I know they were there and had a three-four inch clearance when the punches engaged but people were always loosing a finger or the end of the finger. Had one guy feeding stock into the punch press fast as he could go. Cut the tip off two fingers and then cut them shorter on the next piece. Foreman had to tell him he had already lost his finger tips before he would stop. He never felt a thing.:eek:

If the foreman had been doing his job he would have told him, before it happened, to wear the harness then fired him the next time if he didn't.
 
how many times do I have to tell you the band saw is not for cutting your hand off... high school shop was traumatic enough..hand cut off ..girl scalped on lathe..pot head sticking hand in sulfuric acid....following blood trails to the nurses office ...it only got worse after that.lol
 
Whyemier said:
I don't know how many people would not use the safety harnesses on the punch presses. I set them up so I know they were there and had a three-four inch clearance when the punches engaged but people were always loosing a finger or the end of the finger. Had one guy feeding stock into the punch press fast as he could go. Cut the tip off two fingers and then cut them shorter on the next piece. Foreman had to tell him he had already lost his finger tips before he would stop. He never felt a thing.:eek:

If the foreman had been doing his job he would have told him, before it happened, to wear the harness then fired him the next time if he didn't.
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Isn't that amazing? I did metal roofing for a while and I couldn't believe how often guys would drag around a safety rope while wearing a harness, because the jobsite could be seen from the highway and nobody wanted a fine from OSHA, but they wouldn't actually attach it to anything. I actually attached mine only to find that someone had to move it at some point to install some flashing or whatever, and instead of clipping it back on a foot or two away they just dropped it.

At one point I was on a particularly steep and slick roof, as a storm was rolling in and we were trying to get down to safety, carefully sliding down to the work cage on the material lift, with the plan being that we would leave our lines connected so we could just hook them back up the next day, when one moron unclipped my line AS I WAS SLIDING DOWN THE ROOF. This was about 2.5 stories off the ground, and at best the lift would have been an obstacle to slow and redirect my fall, if not just providing extra opportunities to smack my head on the way down. I made it perfectly clear how I felt about that and he thought I was trying to pick a fight with him, right there on the roof, in the rain, with lightning on its way to our spot. Thankfully his brother held him back and we left safely. That was my last day on the job. We were about 150 miles out of town, having driven out in a couple of company trucks. I called my brother who drove out and picked me up. I went to the owner the next day and said I refused to work with people who had no respect for safety, especially hotheads like that prick. He explained that the guy had substance abuse problems and they were doing him a favor by allowing him to work to try to get back on his feet. So they consciously sent this guy with known substance issues out to a particularly dangerous jobsite? That's insane!

The only roofing I've done since then has been for family and I've actually enjoyed it. As I sit here in my office right now I don't miss it one tiny bit. Not even in this nice weather. Too many idiots on job sites.
 
Okay, a completely different kind:

I had to get an emergency root canal done last month. In the process I had to get x-rays done. My dentist's office is excellent, with all modern equipment and apparently some sort of "gorgeous women only" hiring policy. So this 18-year-old girl is running the digital x-ray on me. I know she's 18 because it came up in the midst of her chattiness I could have done without. She takes a shot and studies the computer screen and decides we can do better. She repositions the sensor in my mouth, walks to the opposite wall where the button to activate the x-ray emitter is kept for safety and takes another. Still not right. So she calls one of the other girls over to come push the button for her, then all but climbs on my lap as she holds the sensor in the right spot. I admit it was not unpleasant. Anyway, I'm wearing a lead vest, but she isn't. Good thing it worked that time, but I'm starting to be a little concerned about how many times they've hit my head with the x-rays (I know the modern ones are much lower doses than the old ones), but I just go my way and get the work done.

As I'm leaving I pass the x-ray area (it's an open part of the office, not a closed room) and I see the same girl manning the button while the same other girl is in some other lucky patient's lap. They have clearly done this enough to know the routine. She's getting married this fall, but I suspect her eggs will all be fried before then.
 
boostin53 said:
I don't have anything good to add. But I can say it really grinds my gears when I see people using screwdrivers as pry bars, Cresent wrenches as hammers and drill bits as punches.
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You don't have bushel of worn-out screwdrivers. I have one large one that I have put some bends in the handle of to make it a better pry bar. Broken drill bits make serviceable punches, too. I've never needed to use a crescent wrench as a hammer, though. I've also go a bushel of hammers.
 
Broken bits do make good punches, but I'm referring to perfectly good bits being used as a punch on metal. I however do not have a screwdriver that's been repurposed as a pry bar. I have plenty of different shape and sized prybars for what I need. Maybe one day I will need to fashion one from a screwdriver haha
 
John Hasler said:
...I've never needed to use a crescent wrench as a hammer, though.
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The first machining job I had...well the second come to think of it, the engineer for the company told me they (whoever they are, Cresent, General, Craftsman, etc.) spent years trying to find a way to incorporate a hammer into an adjustable wrench. Never did get it to work. He told me this after just witnessing me tapping on some something with my adjustable wrench.

Go figure!

Guilty!;)
 
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