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 Matt Swain wrote:
If some fool says we dont need gubmint regyoolaytin big business, try showing them this little snapshot of the good ol' days.

I don't think I've ever met a person who is actually against safety regulations as a concept, rather they're against the specific implementation of the regulations, and how they function at a business level.

Things like the trope of the safety guy who cares more that an incident report is filled out correctly than whether the person is actually okay, or removing the trip hazard because that's on the safety checklist while ignoring the machine that could cut you in half.

But again, there's safety regulations saying remove trip hazards, use guarding on dangerous machines, put dangerous chemicals in a chemicals cupboard... and then there's "maybe don't store thousands of tons of explosives in one bundle adjacent to a large city", it'll be interesting to see if there's a trustworthy investigation and if they figure out what the failings were that led to this.

You'd think that stuff like that ^^ should be common sense.

I had to argue with one "safety manager" about removing the fire sprinkler (water) in a couple of our DG segregation cupboards because it made the fire risk a lot worse. Then again, he was also the guy who signed off on putting a firehose right next to a general purpose power outlet (very much inside the "Don't do it" radius).

First one: Sodium and potassium metal samples for chemistry classes/labs. Anyone who's done basic chem at school knows this one.
Second one: Pool chlorine. Which has big "KEEP DRY" warnings on it (and specific directions for adding it to water for chlorination). Dumping a lot of water on it in one go isn't one of them.

It is actually specified in the regs for storage of these items that fire sprinklers NOT be fitted to the segregation areas for them.

I hear that chromedog, and those kinds of anecdotes are often trotted out as examples of "health and safety gone mad" etc. But the facts of the case show that the regulations are fine, it is people not following them that is the issue.

As you said, the actual regulations for storing of the materials in question was clear and sensible. The issue you have is with the implementation, in the form of a badly trained safety manager. If the safety officer was well trained, the first step in looking into the issue would be to look at the regulations for storage of those materials and then making adjustments to the storage area for that purpose to bring them in line.

It's like people thinking that the regulations here in the UK are massively draconian because they read a story in the daily mail about a school banning conkers games, or requiring children to wear safety goggles whilst playing. These are isolated incidents in which badly trained safety officers don't understand how to do the job. The Health and Safety Executive, the governmental agency here in the UK in charge of occupational health and safety regulations, has never regulated the game of conkers. There is literally no regulation regarding whether you need eye protection.

When people on the street are talking about bad experiences with health and safety, they are talking about implementation of the regulations (and possibly the implementation of regulations that do not exist, such as the conkers scenario). When the politician in Parliament/Congress/etc. is talking about it they are talking about stripping away the fundamental regulations which are rarely the actual issue affecting the populace at large.

Stripping away those protections will not make the health and safety officer at your workplace better trained. It just means that, when something does go wrong, you are less likely to be able to get compensation due to your workplace having breached the standard agreed upon by the relevant health and safety law.

Honestly I think one big issue with many companies is there are a lot of management positions "in house" that people get promoted into because they did well at a different job lower down the company. However when they are moved into the new role they don't get proper training. The company assumes if they did well before, they will do well in their new role. Even if that role suddenly requires an entirely different set of skills, understandings and such.

I think there are a lot of bad managers/safety officers and other such roles created as a result of promotion policies and practice that don't pair promotion with key skill training.

Remember that people are stupid.

I was on the safety and security team where I work. Technically still am, but the whole working from home bit makes it mostly irrelevant. I work in medical billing, so there are no hazardous materials, but we do have to rigidly adhere to HIPPA laws for ensuring the safety of Protected Health Information. But people still do stupid stuff, like take selfies in the office without checking what’s in the background, etc. (despite a no camera policy, and being read the riot act in orientation about how serious we take things) But you have a bunch of young people, who don’t pay a whole lot of attention to the rules and regs. “They are not important” “Nobody really cares”. etc. I can totally see how some random guy moving boxes would just shrug and not care. What are the odds something would happen? Not my problem. It will be fine. Just bureaucratic paperwork from people detached from reality.

I’ve had to enforce my share of silly rules. Some make sense for safety (keep the aisles clear in case of fire). Some make sense for corporate (no beverage containers without lids at your desk: we don’t want you spilling on your computer and need to replace it) but all of them are there for a reason. We have to tell people not to let others in the secure building without checking in. We also have to tell them not to flush socks down the toilet. Even before COVID I kept hand sanitizer on my desk because I could not even trust the people in the office to wash their hands after using the bathroom. Basic kindergarten level stuff. People are stupid. People do stupid things. Regs are there for a reason.

I wish we could just trust everyone to act like rational adults. Nope.

Getting people to actually work when they are supposed to be, ya know, working can be a huge task of itself. Actually following rules while doing it?

 Overread wrote:
Honestly I think one big issue with many companies is there are a lot of management positions "in house" that people get promoted into because they did well at a different job lower down the company. However when they are moved into the new role they don't get proper training. The company assumes if they did well before, they will do well in their new role. Even if that role suddenly requires an entirely different set of skills, understandings and such.

I think there are a lot of bad managers/safety officers and other such roles created as a result of promotion policies and practice that don't pair promotion with key skill training.

Yeah that's a well-known thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Overread wrote:
Honestly I think one big issue with many companies is there are a lot of management positions "in house" that people get promoted into because they did well at a different job lower down the company. However when they are moved into the new role they don't get proper training. The company assumes if they did well before, they will do well in their new role. Even if that role suddenly requires an entirely different set of skills, understandings and such.

I think there are a lot of bad managers/safety officers and other such roles created as a result of promotion policies and practice that don't pair promotion with key skill training.

Yeah that's a well-known thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle

It also has a cousin in the manager who subsequently successfully moves up the ladder through jumping from business to business, as their incompetence is covered by the glowing references he receives from their current employer in order to get rid of them and hoist them onto some other poor sap. This can be seen in The Brittas Empire with a wonderful performance by Chris Barrie (Rimmer from Red Dwarf).

 chromedog wrote:
You'd think that stuff like that ^^ should be common sense.

At my org, they are trying to restrict the ingress of covid into the data center. They decided they want everyone using the same entrance and leaving out of the same exit, to keep the flow of foot traffic uniform. In practice, that means that everyone comes in the same entrance - the one with a manually actuated, sealed turnstile - so everyone who enters the building touches the same surface and breathes the same stale pocket of air. Penny wise, pound foolish.

And that's to say nothing of the queue that forms when several people show up at the same time and all wait to have their temperatures taken, again all hanging out in the same close area by the same entrance.

I wonder if what caused Beirut was the same kind of management-by-distant-committee.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

Spoiler:

I hear that chromedog, and those kinds of anecdotes are often trotted out as examples of "health and safety gone mad" etc. But the facts of the case show that the regulations are fine, it is people not following them that is the issue.

As you said, the actual regulations for storing of the materials in question was clear and sensible. The issue you have is with the implementation, in the form of a badly trained safety manager. If the safety officer was well trained, the first step in looking into the issue would be to look at the regulations for storage of those materials and then making adjustments to the storage area for that purpose to bring them in line.

It's like people thinking that the regulations here in the UK are massively draconian because they read a story in the daily mail about a school banning conkers games, or requiring children to wear safety goggles whilst playing. These are isolated incidents in which badly trained safety officers don't understand how to do the job. The Health and Safety Executive, the governmental agency here in the UK in charge of occupational health and safety regulations, has never regulated the game of conkers. There is literally no regulation regarding whether you need eye protection.

When people on the street are talking about bad experiences with health and safety, they are talking about implementation of the regulations (and possibly the implementation of regulations that do not exist, such as the conkers scenario). When the politician in Parliament/Congress/etc. is talking about it they are talking about stripping away the fundamental regulations which are rarely the actual issue affecting the populace at large.

Stripping away those protections will not make the health and safety officer at your workplace better trained. It just means that, when something does go wrong, you are less likely to be able to get compensation due to your workplace having breached the standard agreed upon by the relevant health and safety law.

I haven’t checked recently, but HSE used to have a “Myth of the Month” about stupid application/overreach/blaming of health and safety. A significant portion was “we don’t want to deal with customer complaints/fix poor service, so we’ll just blame health and safety” on the basis that most people have been trained by the tabloids to just nod their head and go “of course, that’s why it’s stupid”.

After a major explosion at a plant in texas the texas state government basically changed the laws on storing dangerous chemicals near people's homes in texas to make it so that companies did not have to announce they had any stored and could refuse to answer if asked.

Now what was that about "should be common sense" again?

 Matt Swain wrote:
After a major explosion at a plant in texas the texas state government basically changed the laws on storing dangerous chemicals near people's homes in texas to make it so that companies did not have to announce they had any stored and could refuse to answer if asked.

Now what was that about "should be common sense" again?

Not to be rude, but the rest of the world has accepted that the USA has no more common sense when buissness practices are involved.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Matt Swain wrote:
After a major explosion at a plant in texas the texas state government basically changed the laws on storing dangerous chemicals near people's homes in texas to make it so that companies did not have to announce they had any stored and could refuse to answer if asked.

Now what was that about "should be common sense" again?

Not to be rude, but the rest of the world has accepted that the USA has no more common sense when buissness practices are involved.

Stating the simple facts of the matter is not being rude.

And while we may not have exactly resigned ourselves to it, yeah, we've pretty much accepted this is the way both major parties want it to be so we're stuck with it.