'I fired a guy for trying to drive a scissor lift down the stairs': 25+ Safety watchdogs who were caught off guard by careless companies

Author image for Remy Millisky
Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Nov 12, 2023 5:00 PM EST

Maybe safety measures seem like common knowledge to us, but lots of companies would rather save a few bucks and let their employees take on the risk. That's why there's OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which doles out punishments for workplaces that don't protect their workers. However, OSHA is very understaffed, and there's a lot that slips through the cracks. 

Have you ever seen videos of demolition workers who are trying to bring down a building by themselves? They will often be casually swinging at the walls with an ax or another tool, keeping a careful eye out. Because at any moment, the building's walls can suddenly cascade down, and the worker would be caught up in it if they didn't move in the blink of an eye. This kind of work takes years to succeed at, and only a moment to risk one's entire life. 

A few different stories also mentioned seeing painters who skipped that pesky scaffolding and decided to just tie each other to ropes in order to paint a building. You can also find videos of this, and it certainly does look perilous! 

You can check out these absolutely crazy tales below. Then, read about these clueless customers who had odd questions like, "If these T-shirts are buy one get one free, why can't I just have the free one?"

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  • 01
    'Once saw a makeshift welding station... The worker was wearing sunglasses instead of a welding mask. Said it gave him a "summer vibe"
    via Benjamin Wedemeyer on Unsplash
  • 02
    Osha inspectors of Reddit, what was the craziest thing you've found during an inspection?
    via u/Vesper4255
  • 03
    therealhairykrishna. My old boss fell into an open pit while showing the inspectors around. Good times.
    via u/therealhairykrishna
  • 04
    Tuna_Stubbs I was the UK equivalent (Health and Safety Executive Inspector). I was inspecting and oil and gas production facility owned by one of the super majors. In one of the pump rooms there was an eye wash station. On top of the eye wash station someone had left a bottle of acid. It still makes me laugh (as no one was hurt) imagining a scenario like that from a third rate comedy movie where some poor soul got something in their eye, stumbles blindly to the eye wash station, and proceeds to
    via u/Tuna_Stubbs
  • 05
    Bronze_Adonis Once saw a makeshift welding station shielded by beach umbrellas and duct tape. The worker was wearing sunglasses instead of a welding mask. Said it gave him a 'summer vibe'. I was speechless!
    via u/Bronze_Adonis
  • 06
    goblinhands000 I'm not an inspector, but I answer to Osha, and keep my guys safe. I fired a guy for trying to drive a scissor lift down stairs. Like actual stairs.
    via u/goblinhands000
  • 07
    edmanet My sister was a lawyer for the Dept of Labor and did a lot of work with OSHA. One story she told me was about a painting contractor in Pittsburgh who got the contract to paint the three bridges. They used no safety equipment and just hung the painters out there with rope. I believe the contractor went to jail.
    via u/edmanet
  • 08
    HF_Martini6 Non American OSHA: You people know that meme about the forklift carrying its younglings so they can reach the top of the shelf? Exactly that but IRL with a 6ton and a 1.5 ton forklift in a building with 1t/m2 floor carrying capacity and about 1 ton of flammable s as cargo. I'm no longer a safety inspector to keep my own health and sanity
    via u/HF_Martini6
  • 09
    newadventures96 I started work in a little factory. It's been operating for almost 30 years. The day I started, I noticed there were zero fire extinguishers anywhere. None. Anywhere. In the entire building. Upon further inspection, there were no smoke detectors or fire alarms. I started asking around, and the employees told me they hadn't ever had a fire drill. Ever. There wasn't even a plan. The welders told me there's fires in the building all the time, and they just scramble to put them out w
    via u/newadventures96
  • 10
    I asked the safety guy. Like the manager dude that has "health and safety" on his badge. He lied to me and said that the plant was "grandfathered in to not having fire measures." Needless to say I quit. I had a conversation with a friend who works with an OSHA compliance agency, and he alerted whatever authority could take action. My friend's employer actually ended up gaining a big contract from that factory to bring them up to code. The factory was ordered to do so under penalty.
    via u/newadventures96
  • 11
    LordBolton I work in underground mining in Western Australia, some of the I have seen is unreal. s My favourite is a guy stripping off his hard hat, overalls, gumboots and safety glasses to jump into a 1000L IBC full of the saltiest water known to mankind to cool himself down. This was a severely overweight guy as well. I'm confident he no longer has a job in mining after the incident.
    via u/LordBolton
  • 12
    malleebull A mate of mine worked at a mine in QLD where workers were routinely tested for lead. He told me a story of a couple of guys who's lead levels were off the charts. Turns out one had made a hole in his mask that he could smoke a cigarette through and the other was a compo kid licking hand rails trying to give himself lead poisoning.
    via u/malleebull
  • 13
    PIERetro (Not OSHA inspector but...) I was visiting a new Oil and Gas site in Russia to resolve some issues with equipment our company had supplied. My contact was responsible for that whole area of the site, so I used to accompany him on walks round in the morning to check on the status of things. One morning we rounded a corner to be confronted by a paint team working on the side of a large square metal structure (Large like four or five stories high) The paint team, like a lot of the other as
    via u/PIERetro
  • 14
    method consisted of a guy on a "trapeze" with a bucket of paint and a roller, being lowered of the side of the building on a rope, and moving from side to side applying the paint with his roller, while his mates held on to the other end of the rope. My contact screamed at them to stop, and I witnessed a massive dressing down of the entire paint team. (fully justified as he would have been within his rights to have the entire team fired on the spot) He explained that this technique was not accept
    via u/PIERetro
  • 15
    harnesses, etc, etc. The team lead nodded and said he understood, stood his team down, and we continued our walk around the site. The next day, we were doing the same walk, and approached the same structure, expecting to see that the scaffold team had started work, as it would take a couple of days to erect the scaffold, before the painting could be started. The whole building was finished, immaculately painted, and no sign of the team, or evidence of scaffold being there!!
    via u/PIERetro
  • 16
    We tracked down the team lead who swore on his mothers life that the scaffold had been erected, the painting done, and the scaffold removed, within the space of about 23 hours. It transpired that this was the last job the team had to complete before their contract finished, so no doubt they were keen to get paid and begin the long journey home, and no further action was taken. But looking at the dried paint in the sunlight a few days later, you could clearly see roller marks in a gently arc over
    via u/PIERetro
  • 17
    CJGeringer Not OSHA cause not USA, but internal company safety inspector: Guy broke a few bones after doing unsafe stuff without proper equipment. Guy and his buddies knew the guy would get treated at the plant but would get a written warning for not following protocol (enought of those result in termination). So they hid the guy in a shipping container until end of shift (something like 3 hours) and carried him to the free hospital afterwards.
    via u/CJGeringer
  • 18
    NoNotThatScience Not an OSHA inspector but as an electrician in the elevator industry one of our supervisors walked in to a 7 or 8 story lift shaft to find one worker in a makeshift harness made by combining and tying slings together being lifted up the shaft by a co worker using an electric winch hanging on the top of the shaft... They were both Chinese nationals the boss had bought over to work and were Actually very good Liftys but had absolute NO CONCEPT of safety and clearly no regard for t
    via u/NoNotThatScience
  • 19
    KenComesInABox I'm not an OSHA inspector but I am a lawyer that works for a very large company. We had a department team building playing laser tag on company premises and 4(!) separate attorneys ended up tripping over decor that had been put up and spraining their ankles. A week later the company president came to meet with the general counsel and saw a bunch of attorneys with matching boots on and freaked out.
    via u/KenComesInABox
  • 20
    DarthKittens A fire door exit on the second level of a building which went into thin air. They had removed the exit stairs but had not decommissioned the fire exit. Never forget opening that door and looking down imagining the pile of employees on the ground below.
    via u/DarthKittens
  • 21
    morthophelus It was actually before I moved into health and safety (not American). I worked for an industrial demolition company and I witnessed two premature collapses where people in the vicinity almost ded and two failed collapses which are arguably scarier because people have to go back into an already weakened structure. We're talking like 10,000 tonnes of steel coming down unexpectedly and only missing people by a few meters. I, unfortunately, was on of those people on one occasion. It was
    via u/morthophelus
  • 22
    S_Z An engineer friend of mine was consulting with the USPS on safety and efficiency at a major sorting hub. This facility had overhead conveyor belts carrying packages across the whole building, often over the heads of the workers on the floor. At the tail end of one belt was a spiral chute so packages could slide down to floor level onto another belt.
    via u/S_Z
  • 23
    He was standing with a group of USPS employees discussing ergonomics or something when they heard a low rumble overhead, following by an awful clanging as an oversized package banged its way down the chute, coming to rest at the bottom with a metallic thud. It was an engine block from an automobile. Someone was mailing an engine block and somehow it ended up on the high conveyor belt where it definitely wasn't supposed to be. One of the workers said, "That happens sometimes."
    via u/S_Z
  • 24
    Good_Posture Not OSHA, but I worked in the printing industry and the thing that gave me anxiety every time was our paper delivery. We'd order a pallett of A4 80 gram paper. 80 boxes in total at a weight of 1,000 kg/2205 pounds/1 ton. The pallett had to be moved by a hydraulic paper trolley. The truck itself had a tail lift but we didn't have a proper loading bay, so they had to lower it on to the floor. Problem is, the tail lift wasn't big enough for the trolley, which would slightly hang over t
    via u/Good_Posture
  • 25
    What they had to do was, load the pallett on to the paper trolley as normal inside the truck and then pull it out on to the tail lift, but because the trolley wouldn't fit on the tail lift with the operator, the operator had to jump off the lift, but timing it in such a way that he'd activate the locking mechanism of the hydraulic trolley so it wouldn't follow him off the tail lift. I also need to add that the weight of this would make the tail lift slope toward the ground.
    via u/Good_Posture
  • 26
    When standing on the ground, the tail lift was just below head height, so the trolley operator was in a situation where the slightest miscalculation would send 1 ton of paper + momentum + gravity crashing on to him. My heart rate would accelerate every time I watched this.
    via u/Good_Posture
  • 27
    eightfingeredtypist. I was the plant safety guy in a small factory. I learned fire safety, tried to follow OSHA rules, met hazardous material rules, etc. We weren't that bad, all the workers cared about their health. I was on my way to a sawmill in Vermont to buy some wood one morning. I drove by a ramshackle auto repair shop. It was tall, a single truck bay, with sheds, lean toos, a mobile home, a big pile of horror. I thought, "That place looks like it could go up any minute".
    via u/eightfingeredtypist
  • 28
    I was headed back with a load of lumber, and the place was on fire. The fire was up under the roof, smoke was gushing out all the soffits and the gable ends. I stopped. Some guys were pulling a burning Volvo out of the truck bay. They had called the fire dept. I had a premonition that the place could blow up. I got into my truck and left. I met a fire truck down by the road. Then the place blew up. It put the guys through a fence. No one d ed.
    via u/eightfingeredtypist
  • 29
    StingerAE Does food standards count? Cos you have all the general mankiness, infestations and whopping hygiene breaches. But the ones that really stick out to me in the year and a half I was tangentially involved were the ones where they just carried on as if nothing was wrong for something that normal folks just stared open mouthed at. Two ones I particularly recall:
    via u/StingerAE
  • 30
    1. a mince mixing machine that had black machine oil dripping down in directly into the mixing bowl. 2. the shelf with bottles that went: mayo, barbecue sauce, bleach, ketchup...
    via u/StingerAE
  • 31
    Anwhaz Not an inspector, but if you are have a look at basically any tree work site (Ive worked for several arborist gigs and 100% of them have had something). I've seen things as simple as refusing to wear seatbelts or not quite up to code equipment, or working in very rapidly fading light. All the way to "non- safety" around high voltage lines (one of which caused damage shall we say to more than one person luckily no de ths), outright refusal to wear critical safety gear, or extremely lucky "
    via u/Anwhaz
  • 32
    There are times when the entire month/year is just one long OSHA violation. Granted "not all tree work companies" and I have seen safe ones, I'm just not lucky enough to have worked at one that is willing to slow down for .000002 seconds in the name of profits. In fact I've been yelled at on numerous occasions to just hurry up and do "X" because we have 3 more jobs to do.
    via u/Anwhaz
  • 33
    o JohnBPrettyGood Summer Student, 1984, Mississauga Stamping Plant, Electric Arc Welders. My partner inserted the part into the welder, added 3 metal plates, pushed 2 buttons and "ZAP" 8 Electrodes welded the pieces together. Repeat, 1000 parts per day. The problem was that the plumbing hoses providing water to cool the Electrodes were leaking everywhere. Water was running all over the welder. My partner Nick was standing in a puddle of water 2 inches deep, on a concrete floor operating and Elec
    via u/JohnBPrettyGood
  • 34
    I repeatedly tried to get Nick to stop working and contact the supervisor. I told him that "When He Got Electrocuted" I would refuse to perform Mouth to Mouth Resuscitation. Finally he stopped work and contacted maintenance.
    via u/JohnBPrettyGood
  • 35
    o studsper Mandatory not inspector, but I've spent some time the last few months reading safety regulations. So having just familarised with the regulations on working at heights I see on my way home two guys on the roof of the building they're constructing next door assembling a non sufficient railing along the edge of the roof without any additional safety measures. Only half the building had a roof on at the time and they were standing at the end of the part that had a roof. So in one directi
    via u/studsper
  • 36
    which may or may not have stopped a fall, and in the other they had a 7-8m drop without anything to protect them (where they hadn't placed the roof yet). It wasn't a flat roof either, some rain and it would have been really, really dangerous. It was just interesting walking home, seeing this and thinking "I just read about this, that is definitely not allowed".
    via u/studsper
  • 37
    frostandtheboughs. I worked as an art fabricator. A client wanted us to spray oil paint with automotive sprayguns. The paint pigments are full of cadmium, cobalt, titanium, etc and it literally said "do not spray" on the side of the paint tubes. The safety "precautions"? My boss gave us dust masks and stuck a fan in the window.
    via u/frostandtheboughs
  • 38
    I was in my early 20s and just thankful to be out of food service. But the client showed up and flipped out when he saw how little protection we were given. Thankfully he made sure we all had proper respirators, tyvek suits, and colossal automotive down-draft air cleaners....3 months into the project. Anyway...be nice to your wait staff bc heavy metal poisoning was preferable to getting screamed at over a burger.
    via u/frostandtheboughs
  • 39
    brother Toast13 Classic someone leaned on a shelf and the entire thing collapsed.
    via u/brother Toast13

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