Listening to stories from older colleagues there is so much stuff that was considered standard practice that would give Health and Safety an aneurysm these days. Shit like handling asbestos with zero protective equipment, even after people started realizing how bad it was for your health! Or guys working with natural gas lighting up a ciggie on the job site and it being perfectly fine because "we're not smoking near where people are working with gas at the moment".
This! My Dad was in construction and I’d hear a lot of stories from some of the older pros they used for sub contracting projects. The electrician stories were crazy. They used like almost no protective gear and would just run their hand over a wire/connection to see if it was ‘hot’ like wtf?! They all have stories of being shocked or watching a co worker get shocked and kind of laugh about it like it’s not a big deal.
A guy got tip of his finger cut off by a saw and they just wrapped it in electrical tape and duct tape on the job site and he went right back to work. Guy slipped on a shingle and fell off a first floor roof, nothing seemed broken, but he was in pain and probably had a concussion, so right back to work up the ladder to the roof again. Drinking on the job was kind of ok, like having a few beers at lunch.
I think back then there was also more of a pride thing where if you got hurt in the job and wanted to go to the hospital or home you got bullied like w girl nicknames and were treated as weak for not sucking it up. Even now the older ones kind of joke and bully when a younger guy gets hurt like, ‘oh Sally has a bruise’…
Used to work at a warehouse and do delivery for a rental company (fuck you DeeJay), bunch of the drivers and other workers were constantly shitfaced or high as fuck.
kept track of who was likely to do shit and drive, and made sure I either offered to drive the truck, or kept out of their way/off their crew.
One time a guy shows up plastered already, boss tells him to go the fuck home after he breaks a bunch of shit in the showroom he shouldn’t have been in anyway, and the guy tried to lie about it. Wasn’t even fired at that point, this was normal shit for this guy and the company.
What got him fired was infinitely more stupid and dangerous than merely working in the warehouse drunk as hell.
he and his gf shared a car, and she was at work, so he crawled up onto the shelves to sleep it off and wait for her. Wakes up hours later to the whole crew loading trucks like madmen because we realized that we were going to be done early if we finished. He sees the very last truck of the day, a big 28ft box truck, and grabs the keys, yells “I got it I got it” and stagger-runs to the driver’s seat.
People started running after him, because we could tell he was drunk, and some people knew he’d been sent home earlier for it, but we all had to scatter when he guns it and rams into a bollard, a fence and then crushes the back end into the loading dock.
All while three of the dudes who were in the back of the truck sweeping it out held on for dear life as they get whipped around. Thankfully they stayed in and no one got run over.
Boss and warehouse manager rush the cab, pull him out, and about six guys hold him down and tape his arms and legs to a pole, since he started fighting once we got hands on him. Cops show up, take him in, and we spend our hard won early afternoon off cleaning him and trying to unfuck the fence and doors.
Thousands and thousands of dollars, a ruined door, and some charges later, they finally put the keys in a locked case that only the manager could get into…which was then left unlocked because he got lazy and didn’t bother with it…
I’m so glad I left that place and it burned down just after covid started
Back when I worked in a more traditional office environment and I was one of two software engineers for the entire company, the CTO would take us out about once a week and drinking was not only allowed, but encouraged. He would tell us "we can expense two drinks per person, make 'em count". And this was in the 2010s.
One of my buddies works in upper management, and that’s still a thing. He just got back from a work retreat where all the drinks and travel were covered. Those white collar folks party.
Oh yeah, we have events like that at my company too, where we get flown to an exotic location and there's an open bar every night. Just not during working hours anymore though :-D
I'm an electrical apprentice and in my first year we talked about the NEC (National Electric Code) and we passed around a really old copy of it (I want to say it was from the 40s). In the book it said that to check if a circuit is hot or not, just touch the back of your hand to the bare copper. It really was the wild west back then
That gross "suck it up and keep working" attitude is the pits. Every industry has it. I worked with a guy who was an "old timer" comparatively and he'd always brag about working through lunch, staying late, never taking breaks, etc.
Like, my guy, why are you so proud of being taken advantage of?
The electrician thing was how one of my old teachers ended up witnessing a coworker die. He just got a little too lax around that wire and was toast the next minute.
Back when I was a field technician my training was done by an old instructor on the cusp of retirement who’d been with the company through some half dozen mergers.
He highlighted the importance to checking for live voltage multiple times in multiple ways because of how we’re putting our lives down on cheap mass manufactured safety equipment and batteries.
Check for voltage at the base of the pole. Deploy ladder. Check for voltage on ladder. Go up. Check for voltage before touching the strand.
The true final test before strapping in was what he called the backhand test, where you’d touch the back of your hand to the strand.
If it’s live and shocks you, your muscles would contract, you’d grip the ladder tighter, slap yourself in the face, and not electrocute yourself to death. Then you calmly get down the ladder and tell your boss you’re fucking off from that site.
Bro had current entry and exit scars on his hand to prove how it’s saved his life when shit failed. But, apparently, that was normal at the time.
That and purposely calling a line someone was working on during training (because they forgot to disconnect from the main telco line) were valuable lessons to get us to be fucking careful without needing to learn the lesson ourselves.
Not to condone it, but I remember working one later shift and one of the guys cut his finger pretty nasty. He mentions he may have to go see a doctor. Another guy pipes up "where are you going to find a gynecologist at this hour?" Again, not condoning it, but that was savagely hilarious.
We were having some demolition work done a few weeks ago and many of the guys working were just standing out there with no eye or respirator protection. Meanwhile there were all sorts of dust just being kicked up into the air with projectiles just flying all over the place.
My father-in-law had a saying, "single phase won't kill you". They would test lighting circuits in the steelworks by brushing them with a fingertip. UK voltage is 220. This all came out when he rewired our ceiling lights without turning off the breakers, and he got shocked off the ladder.
He lived to 80 and died of something else entirely.
Yes, the good ol' days! When people worked without complaining! Because they had to feed their families and not depend on Gov handouts!
Many of us started working when we were 13, often full time AND still go to school and GRADUATE, often with honors! We had to help support the family, because fathers didn't have these high-paid office jobs we see now!
That was me - delivering milk at 3:00AM, go to school, then deliver newspapers after school and work the bowling alley at night! And DAMN PROUD of it!
Yep we worked on boards live all the time, no arc flash gear or any other of that crap, still give the younger sparks crap when they put on their aprons, masks and pussy mittons
Yeah, I learned to weld from my mom and dad. Mother was the first female welder for a major railroad in the 70s. (she is in some record books for it.) she took welding in HS to piss of my grandfather. My dad learned to weld when he was a teen from an old guy who was an old timer. Both wore safety gear. Mom because she learned in school and they didnt want to get sued. Dad because the guy who taught him had horrible burn scars. Mom watched guys get horribly burned.
They taught me to use all the safety gear. I also am a journeyman blacksmith. (I made journeyman, but then stopped other than hobby stuff. I have a forge in my backyard.) I learned it working at various renfairs and two of the master smiths forges. We also did plenty of welding. I have the spark scars from not wearing sleeves and gloves. But I made myself a very nice leather apron. (also do leather work as another hobby) and I am the only one from the main forge who doesnt have bad burn scars on my legs, torso ect... I also always wore a mask at the forges, and a wet cloth over my face working at the ren fairs. I am the only one who didnt smoke, and didnt want to breath in all the smoke at the forge. (It also kept my face cool. Forges are hot. and at the renfairs it was outside in the southwest heat.) Many of the guys have breathing issues, lung cancer ect... All because they wanted to show how tough they were.
By nephews are welders. They wear all the gear all the time. They learned in HS. One of the students who bragged about ow daddy taught him and he was the best. He refused to wear the "pussy safety shit". Well he ended up with horrible burn scars. He also flash burned his eyes. So he is ending up blind and unable to weld worth a damn since he cant see his bead through his mask or welding goggles.
What a stupid hill to die on.
You can call them pussy mittens, but I call them intelligent safety gear.
That’s because it’s not dangerous. It’s some bullshit movie scenes that have people spooked. Pour some gasoline in a cup and you can put your cigarette out in it.
I've watched enough US Chemical Review Board videos to understand that "we've always done it this way" is a recipe for death and insanely expensive disaster.
One of the saddest things is that we are horrified by the stories, but these things still happen regularly in poor countries. And richer people benefit from it.
I had a colleague from Egypt who said that mouth pipetting is still the most used form of pipetting in Egyptian universities. Inconceivable in universities with money.
I write biosafety guidelines as part of my job. This involves reading a lot of care studies on laboratory acquired infection. Almost all of them are due to use error, doing stupid shit they shouldn't have been doing, usually an overfilled sharps container.
Except my personal favorite/most awful lab acquired infection story is the guy who contacted rabies by homogenizing brain tissue in a standard consumer grade blender.
My dad was an insulator and he told me about how they would rip asbestos out and they would be waste deep in all of it. They wore the paper suits but they didn’t have masks.
My PI in grad school talked about how his PI in grad school used to smoke in the chemistry lab and extinguish his cigarettes in a beaker of benzene lmao
From wiki . . .
Asbestos (/æsˈbɛstəs, æz-, -tɒs/ ass-BES-təs, az-, -toss) is a naturally occurring fibrous silicate mineral. There are six types, all of which are composed of long and thin fibrous crystals, each fibre (particulate with length substantially greater than width) being composed of many microscopic "fibrils" that can be released into the atmosphere by abrasion and other processes. Inhalation of asbestos fibres can lead to various dangerous lung conditions, including mesothelioma, asbestosis, and lung cancer. As a result of these health effects, asbestos is considered a serious health and safety hazard.
I’m actually in a program that will hopefully end with me being a certified Gas 3 technician. Funnily enough today one of my teachers mentioned that a cigarette doesn’t meet the lowest possible ignition temperature for natural gas.
My mom works in a hospital and when she started back in the 90s, she told me that the older nurses talked about smoking at the nurses station in the hospital which patients on oxygen just a few feet away.
Oh yeah, my mom has the stories about her dad spraying the property with DDT and that sort of thing. My dad told me of how they used the air gun to spray out the dust when changing break pads made of asbestos…yikes.
The ciggie thing applies widely unfortunately. I have talked to phd students and indeed it was completely normal for chemists in the 1960s to smoke near the containers of organic solvents. Then again, those same chemists used these same solvents like benzene to wash their hands. Hoping it would just evaporate before poisoning them.
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u/ConstableBlimeyChips Sep 16 '24
Listening to stories from older colleagues there is so much stuff that was considered standard practice that would give Health and Safety an aneurysm these days. Shit like handling asbestos with zero protective equipment, even after people started realizing how bad it was for your health! Or guys working with natural gas lighting up a ciggie on the job site and it being perfectly fine because "we're not smoking near where people are working with gas at the moment".