Workplace safety is no joke. Injuries on the job can lead to lawsuits and months of headaches. Last thing any shift supervisor wants to see when they arrive at 5 in the morning is the "Days Without Incident" poster reset to 0. That's what OSHA, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and other safety organizations are for. They keep people safe and those poster days up. Sometimes, though, a day at work doesn't always go completely safe.
Reddit user, u/KrazyKingZ, wanted to hear from OSHA people firsthand about the dumbest thing they've seen when they asked:
OSHA employees of Reddit, what is the biggest safety violation you have seen in a workplace?
50. Surfin' USA
Not OSHA but I worked for a year in a small plastic molding plant. Saw a guy surf a bale of scrap plastic as it ejected onto the pallet. To be fair it wasn't on purpose lol, the bale wasn't coming out so he climbed behind it (so his body was between the back wall and a 1500+ pound bale) to push it out from the back. It worked but he held onto the bale and rode it on the way out.
49. Gross People Shouldn't Work For Food Places
I'm not an OSHA employee, but I worked at a convenience store that had a pizza place inside that made food for travelers and that locals could order. We had to make cookies and we had about 6 kinds, two of which contained peanut butter. It was important to keep those two separate from the rest when making them because of how serious nut allergies can be. My manager put all the cookies into one tub to bring out (they were already pre-made in frozen disks, we just thawed and baked them) completely contaminating all the different kind of cookies with each other. I brought it to her attention, but she didn't care.
There were other violations when she was there. Like leaving food in the way past its time just so she wouldn't have to make new stuff and never dated any of the food in the fridge. She never cleaned up after herself either by wiping down counters.
48. Who Needs BOTH Hands?
I was the new safety guy for a metal shop that would send out a can of aerosol adhesive(flammable) with some products. For some reason they had someone peeling the label off of the can and applying a new one. The guy was using a heat gun to remove the labels. He said he didn't think it was safe, but one of the other guys told him that they always did it that way. I've seen some crazy and dangerous practices, but this stands out for the absurd lack of common sense.
47. Shot Yourselves In The Foot
Military safety guy here. We have a building on base with a ceiling that leaks and basement that floods when it rains. The coolest part is that there are unshielded wires and comm boxes laying in the parts of the basement where water pools. We also have the emergency phone lines for the fire department for the nearest large civilian, passenger airport right next door running through that basement. So, F everyone if we get water in those. You didn't need the fire department anyway.
It has been two years since I reported that building. The responses I got then were "it has always been like that". Also, we're "still waiting for bids for the repair".
OSHA doesn't cover the military.
46. Not A Single Thing Right
I'm not in the USA but part of my job involves working in confined spaces accessing cabling ducting and risers etc. There's a crap-ton of confined spaces working regulations in this country that have to be met when working in spaces such as these.
The work we do is classed as very low risk confined space but a friend of mine works at a chemical processing plant and sometimes has to enter empty chemical holding tanks or pressure vessels to clean out sediment and other contaminants by hand. Obviously these are classed as massively high risk.
There was an incident a few years back at his place when a new management team took over and the cleanup crews were ordered to go in and clean out an unknown sediment layer without proper breathing apparatus. They had air-fed fume hoods but these were nowhere near sufficient protection.
Previously they would bring a specialist contract company onsite who had all the necessary BA gear and training to carry out the work safely but the new management didn't want to spend the money. The union got involved and there was threats of the company being reported to the HSE (UK equivalent of OSHA) for endangering life.
Weirdly though, according to one of the BA contractors i was speaking to previously mentioned that it's usually the confined spaces classified as low risk that are the biggest killers. Apparently when it's an obvious high risk situation or when nasty chemicals are involved, you're more inclined to treat it with caution, yet it's in a seemingly harmless space that stuff tends to go wrong.
Apparently what usually happens is Person A enters an unknown space without a risk assessment or the proper protective equipment, passes out. Person B enters the space to try to retrieve Person A, passes out. If they're lucky, Person C calls the fire service and once they arrive on site and suit up, enter the space to retrieve two bodies. If they're unlucky, there is no Person C.
45. I Guess It's Problem-Solving?
GiphyNone summer in college I worked in construction. We had to hang some stucco board on the side of a building. It was probably 50-60 ft tall at its highest, at the bottom was a sort of drainage ditch. We had to build scaffolding to get to the top... of course the drainage ditch isn't level, so our boss found some flat rocks, stacked two or three of them and then we continued to build the scaffolding. We worked at the top of that thing with heavy ass 12 ft stucco boards on scaffolding that was balancing on a couple of rocks stacked up. Hindsight, I can't believe that scaffolding held up over two full days.
44. Almost Blew Up The Town
Uhh not sure if it's exactly an OSHA violation but I worked as a security guard out of high school for a high security warehouse (stored toxic, flammable, and otherwise dangerous containers) and one night a driver fell asleep while bringing his load in and flattened our plywood guard shack, turned the truck on its side and dumped a bunch of oxygen tanks into the countryside. Nobody got hurt though!
43. Pendulum Swung Into You
I was at a steel mill in the middle of PA. One of the EEs had gotten really good side pulling the ladle from the furnace, arcing it down a corridor, and placing it in the cooling area.
All of the overhead cranes had just been modified from a pendent control to a wireless control.
The EE stood at the top of the fulcrum, next to a railing of a cooling pit for another furnace.
As the EE swings the load, he is struck by the ladle and hit into the railing.
He suffered several broken ribs, a broken back, and arm. His side pull did not go as planned.
I've also investigated fatalities, and a bunch of other stupid decisions that lead to bad injuries.
Everyone needs to slow down and think about what you are doing, at work AND at home. Bad habits follow you everywhere.
Remember stop work authority too, be that guy or gal. If your company doesn't care that much, you don't want to work there.
42. Flip Flops Go With Boats, Not Cranes
Intern at an osha equivalent org in asia. Was at a site where they were building two housing blocks very close to each other. The blocks were up to 40 floors high. The main contractor installed proper bridges with handrails to link the two blocks every 10 floors, but the workers also placed thin, unsecured planks on every floor to link the blocks. The end of the plank on the top floor looked like it was less than 3 cm away from the edge.
There were bare live wires randomly poking from the ceilings, workers climbing on scaffolding without helmets or harnesses, workers on 3m tall ladders and using them like stilts (rocking side to side to "walk" the ladder to the next light fixture) and the workers were housed on the site in the unfinished building. Their tower crane operator turned up and climbed up the crane in wifebeater, sarong and flip flops - his excuse was that the weather was really hot that day.
That site was disastrous. My supervisor was shaking with anger by the end of the inspection.
41. A Ticking Time Bomb
Security tasked with ensuring EHS compliance here.
The absolute worst has to be this one department on my post (chemical processing and storage facility.) Going in there when they have agitator motors running on drums (and venting the exhaust right into the room) will physically make you sick. I once had an extremely painful sore throat for a week after one ~60sec exposure.
Yet, not a single person who works in there regularly wears even a dust mask, let alone a respirator. Elsewhere in the facility, people have allegro hoods being fed O2, good respirators, etc, but not in this one area where it seems to be the worst.
Other than that, fire extinguishers with blacked-out gauges, lights starting fires because they're so covered with cobwebs, PPE is essentially optional, yeah, good times.
40. Standing Up For Safety
Giphybut my job put in brand new 20 foot shelving units for holding pallets. They looked great and we really desperately needed the space to get pallets off the floor. Only one problem: they weren't bolted to anything. They also were not against a wall, so if they fell it would almost certainly hurt or kill someone. They'd be bolted down in a week, my supervisor said.
I was threatened with a write up for insubordination because I refused to load a dozen pallets weighing over 200lbs each on this shelf. I told them I had already taken a video showing that no shelves were bolted down while my coworker loaded them and they could kiss my *ss. They did not kiss my *ss, but they did not write me up either.
39. What Not To Do
One of my college instructors showed us a picture he took of a scissor lift on an angled rooftop with it fully raised the basket fully extended doing repairs on the building. The roof in the picture did not look sturdy whatsoever, and it looked like the slightest breeze would topple the thing. He doesn't even know how they got the lift on the roof to begin with since the only machinery that place has were fork lifts and the one scissor lift.
38. My Cigarrette Took Down The Store
When I first started working at my current workplace, I used to smoke and I had to go to a designated shelter, which was right next to a large pressurised oxygen tank. On a number of occasions I saw employees actually smoking right next to the tank itself, for some reason deciding that they didn't want to be in the shelter. What people don't seem to realise is that yes, oxygen is good for breathing, but that goes doubly so for fire. If that tank sprang a leak and someone lit up nearby, their ordinarily not so flammable clothes and flesh would suddenly be very flammable indeed.
In the end they moved the shelter after a couple years to be at least 200 yards from any building.
37. Sparkling Cyanide
I once found a cabinet with random vials of cyanide laying around. Another time I found an asbestos enclosure where the enclosure had failed and it had been without negative pressure for 2 days, this was in a VERY busy federal building. I know of one agency that routinely sends it's employees into high pressure steam tunnels without any kind of confined space training or rescue apparatus. I saw one of the carry-on scanners the TSA uses (480V) with exposed wiring directly adjacent to carpet/passengers. I know of a popular online retailer that under-reports its recordable and lost time rates by writing an essay on why the injuries don't count for every single injury.
36. A Difficult Thing To Witness
real life OSHA inspector here. Most gnarly case I had was when a father/son team was doing field service work on the hydraulic piston of a mobile crane. The piston cylinder casing failed due to a combination of over-pressurization and metal stress fatigue. Opened up an 11" fracture on the piston, releasing pressurized hydraulic fluid directly into the torso of the father, who was standing on the crane deck next to the piston. The pressurized fluid jet cut his torso in two, from roughly his left collar bone to the bottom of his right rib cage. The son was on the ground and watched it happen.
35. Just Like A Cartoon
GiphyMaintenance guy was changing the bulbs in one of our overhead light fixtures in the warehouse. Goes up in the scissor lift with the new bulbs and somehow makes contact with the live part of the fixture...with his bare hands.
He's shocked pretty good, even his belt buckle flew open because of the surge. He apparently "squealed like a stuck pig", somehow manages to hit the lever to lower the lift, and stumbles off of the platform.
He never went to the hospital and said his arm "tingled for a few weeks".
34. Malicious Noncompliance
I was the safety officer at a few workplaces. I had a bunch of rescue qualifications. The rule was this: protest the bad thing in writing. After that it's not your problem. The boss will break any law he sees fit and if something goes wrong, you told him so and it's not your fault. Some businesses actually care about getting sued and the safety officer is king. The companies I worked for cared about daily costs and that was all. I was often asked to do things (as I was also a worker) that contravened OH&S and I would refuse but I would never stop anyone else from doing it.
I was never given that authority. Managers like to keep all the "God of this activity" to themselves even if they don't know what they're doing and they just want A done, they don't care how. I was once asked to move 40kg loads on a regular basis. I refused as it exceeded the legal limit and I didn't want to hurt my back.
I suggested the person telling me to do it should do it that way if they wanted. They apparently couldn't as they had hurt their back. Strange coincidence yeah? Different guy wanted me to store a 20kg box at full reach from a ladder. I refused as it was unsafe. He put it up there himself.
Cue two days later when the box broke as it was being retrieved and destroyed the expensive contents. On another occasion I was busy with something and someone wanted to use the forklift to shift a drum of oil. I was the driver but we had one of those walk behind models with a steering handle which you are allowed to use without a license. I announced that I would be a couple of minutes and of they simply went to collect the drum pincer (a special tool for picking up drums that is awkward and heavy) I would be there shortly.
No. They are in a rush, they'll just do it themselves. OK, I think. Saves me the effort. Suddenly, I hear telling and commotion. This is never good. I run out and they have pierced the drum with a tine. What's more, they have removed the tine from the hole and the drum has fallen over. Cue me on safety mode yelling at everyone and rolling out the super expensive spill kit. Two hours later and it was decided nobody was at fault as it was the boss who did it and since he couldn't blame anyone, nobody was to blame. That place was a hotbed of malicious compliance. Always had to get it on writing though.
33. Pipin' Dangerous
Watch 8 tonnes of pipe fall from about 20m because someone was in a rush and used the incorrect rigging.
The kicker is everyone there (20-30 people) were totally willing to let it go unreported, except me. I never really did make too many friends after that. Oh well.
32. That's No Lift...
But my local junkyard has their draining lift made out of steel shelving with 3 legs. The 4th leg is a piece of 4x4 wood, sitting tall ways, with a bottle jack on top of it. They have it covered with a tarp so it's safer or something. A good friend of mine worked under it for a number of months.
31. Like The Least Fun Game Of Jenga
two electricians changing the lightbulbs of the street lights in my hometown did it with one driving the van and the other standing on top of a ladder on its roof.
30. Water + Electricity = Bad
GiphyMy tafe teacher tells a story of an employee hosing down a three phase outlet with a water hose and getting badly shocked. He copped all the blame as he was not following the safe work method statement.
29. All With A Chainsaw
It wasn't related to my workplace (which is extremely strict with OSHA) but work I needed to have work done in my yard and knew the violations because of my job. Hurricane Florence knocked a tree over in my yard. The contractors who ended up coming out to remove it didn't use any safety equipment at all and, while wielding a chainsaw, stood on a bobcat with a forklift attachment to get a better reach, being raised up at least 10 feet in the air.
28. All For The Trash
I'm OSHA certified since our store needs so many employees certified.
We have a magnetically sealing door that leads to a trash compactor. The door is broken so it won't stay open. So instead they use a broken bungee cord to hold the door.
The one window is taped up because someone thought it would look better.
They lost the key to the door so the only way to keep it open is to wedge a peace of card board in the hole so it won't seal.
And it doesn't open from the other side for some odd reason.
When I have to use it,I have to put one foot in the door and toss my trash.
27. Sparks! Face! Burns!
go to a lot of sketchy body shops all day, so I see some unsafe practices. I have two.
Once saw a guy using an angle grinder to cut metal. He wasn't wearing any eye protection, and the sparks were flying straight into his face. He wasn't even looking away.
I also once saw a guy using a MIG welder with no welding helmet. Staring straight at what he was working on. Bonus points because he was smoking a cigarette.
26. Why Is There Always A Chainsaw
I work in construction and have seen some gut-wrenching safety violations. Too many to count. I once saw a man walking across a 2 x 4 brace (1.5 inches thick) cutting the unwanted remainder on support beams off with a chainsaw while 60ft high and no safety harness.
25. Is It Really Worth It To Cut So Many Corners
GiphyI work for a company that manufactures electrical equipment that prevents explosions in hazardous environments like and oil rig or refinery. I've seen electrical enclosures that are designed with very small tolerances for error that have only had 4 bolts holding the cover on when 20+ are required. Even one missing bolt can lead to catastrophic explosion. We're talking the risk of major loss of life just to save a few minutes of time.
24. Poor Cows Don't Deserve This
My old boss had us spray out trailers hauling cattle with Sulphuric Acid to sterilize them, all without using PPE or respirators. Cheapo wouldn't even buy us gloves until I had to take a month off work due to chemical burns to my right arm.
23. Yum, A Fungus!
the restaurant I used to work had mushroom formations a foot tall growing under the drink station. I saw it being scraped out during my last week.
22. This Ain't A Race, It's A G*D* Post Office
I wish OSHA would come to my local USPS facility. But only sort of. They'd shut it down after just a few hours, no doubt.
Some forklift / tug operators zooming by in the halls at 20-25 miles an hour when they're not supposed to go more than walking speed. Also just the general unsafe nature of equipment.
21. Micro Center With Macro Problems
Worked for a Micro Center that way overstocked its warehouse without good options for navigating the mess. We'd have to regularly climb on, through, and around loose pallets and gaylords, as well as boulder about 15 feet of shelving. Hard drives dropped on heads (thankfully packaged) were really common. Lucky it wasn't more often worse.
20. No Safety Here
GiphyA "friend" worked for a safety audit company. Fire alarm goes off. Not a drill. Turned out to be a false alarm. Which was handy because when they went to leave via the only emergency exit on the floor the door handle came off in his hand... Only other way to exit the floor was via the elevator.
19. Door To No Escape
I opened a fire escape door once and someone had removed the staircase from the other side so the door just opened into thin air with a 20foot drop on the other side.... it was like something out of an acme cartoon.
18. Sometimes It's Not Worth The Court Case
Not an inspector but did work comp insurance for a bit.
I saw this on cctv for evidence
Factory that made foam for mattresses had a machine that would cut up medium sized chunks of foam into smaller ones to put into mattresses. Sort of like a wood chipper.
One guy got tired of putting handfuls at a time (the recommended way) and decided to get a bucket and starts shoveling into the cutter.
When it got stuck from too much foam he used the stick part of a broom to push it thru. This got the broom stuck. He then decides to put both hands in to dislodge the stick and stuck foam.
The machine was still on this whole time.
He somehow manages to get the stick out and the blades start going again.
He amazingly only lost two fingertips and tried to sue his boss.
We settled for 30k...
17. Gotta Love Ingested Chemical Burns
While working on a small pipeline project, one guy had a 6-pack of beer under the back seat of his truck. Obviously the beer was warm. We figured we could cool the cans by tipping a propane bottle upside down and spraying them with liquid propane. I guess there is a safety device to prevent this, so we put a hose on the tank and cut the hose. One guy held the cans with his bare hands in the stream of liquid propane on the worksite. Good times.
16. Electric Coats
I interned at OSHA. I got to ride around with a former electrical union superintendent and I'm still telling stories. As an intern they honestly let me ask anything. The inspectors were so glad that someone actually respected them and wanted to learn so they just spilled.
Personally the worst was a couple dozen guys hung their coats up to cover the hot commercial electrical box they had pig tailed their broken radio directly to. The OSHA inspector saw it and just turned to them and said "do you have a family?
Do you ever want to see them again?" Turned out the crew chief had a brand new baby girl at home. He basically cried his face off about how stupid they were and shut it down until they could make it safer. No fines were issued. Even though it could've bankrupted all 3 companies on site. Just real talk.
In case you didn't know that amount of electricity would kill you in the worst way (unable to let go and feeling every single shock) and leave you a pile of dust.
15. Eh, We'll Fix It Later
In college I took an OSHA certification course and my instructor, who was an OSHA inspector, shared this story;
My instructor was inspecting a lumber mill in northern Maine, walking around the facility. Employees told him to be careful around two large milling machines in the back of the mill. Every 10 seconds, like clockwork, a giant high voltage charge would jump between both machines, arcing over the walkway path. Apparently all of the employees knew about it and just carefully timed when they would walk through.
That, he said, was the most glaringly obvious violation he's ever seen, ever.
14. So Long As It's Dry, Right?
Using a wet-dry vac to clear a plugged drain.
In a lead-acid battery pit.
Without the benefit of any PPE at all.
13. A Story Of Catastrophe
I work in pharmaceutical manufacturing, and we occasionally get OSHA investigators to give safety trainings. One trainer/rep in particular had been assigned to a case in Texas where a natural gas refinery exploded because a perfect storm of miscommunication, failed safety checks, and employees not following their SOPs. Opaque sight glass (that needs to be clear to detect levels), pressure gauges out of calibration, broken overfill alarms, among other safety violations.
12. The Things You Do When You Think You're Not Being Watched
I do EHS and watched a bunch of guys using a forklift to literally lift an entire box truck over a fence instead of just pushing it through the gate.
They thought I was at lunch. I was not.
11. It'll Hold. Trust Me.
Once saw a foreman tie a rope around a 100lb gooseneck elbow, secure the rope with a pair of vice grips and then pull it up about 40-50 meters onto the roof of a building.
10. When Your Bro Doesn't Have Your Back
I work in a CSO and had to clean out one of our vortexes manually. It's a confined space so I needed an attendant. After about an hour I finished and came out to find nobody was around. Walked up to the office and two of our guys were asking where I'd gone, because my attendant went to take a sh-t 45 minutes before and was playing on his phone in the office. He said he told me to come out and figured I was f-cking off somewhere. Should of lost his job then
9. Buses On The Run
I don't work for OSHA but I do work in a role where ensuring compliance with Workplace Health and Safety and arbitrating on those matters were a major portion of my role.
The worst issue I have ever seen has been a bus operator (for a major metropolitan area) direct their employees to drive buses which due to the inclusion of a new safety barrier did not possess a line of sight to the Left-hand side mirror ( This is in a Left-Hand side driving Country). I filed a dispute, and after some argument, approximately three weeks of it, they came to the conclusion that there was a problem and made the right decision to withdraw them and install a new less obstructed panel. Through this period the operator was threatening to take disciplinary actions against drivers who refused to drive these buses, drivers who couldn't see the mirrors and posed a huge risk to the public.
8. Skateboards Aren't Safe
I work in construction, and when on site, I heard our OHS person had to leave to write up a violation.
Someone decided to send one of the young blokes down a drain pipe on a skateboard to clear a blockage on a pipe. The line was 80m long, and a 450mm dia pipe. It was also storm season.
Apparently they used the skateboard so if he passed out, they could pull him back, or words to that affect.
7. How Did This Place Not Close Already?
My father was a safety coordinator at Kennecott Copper Mine and... Boy... I'll go in order of severity:
First, there were times that he caught the crew out by the woods trying to feed apples to the deer. They had skewered the apples and were trying to reach as far over the fences as they could to coax them just a bit closer. Nobody fired.
Next, he found some guys trying to break this gigantic bolt. He came across them right at the time that one was standing under this giant wrench to hold it in place while another guy was climbing up onto some equipment and planned to jump onto the wrench. Genius, I know. Two guys got fired that day.
Then comes the story about the acid vat... During a shut down, he came across some guys playing "Jack Be Nimble" with the opening of the acid vat. Needless to say, these vats, designed to process ores, were extremely dangerous. My father came across them doing this as one guy jumped and lost his shoe in the vat. Instantly disintegrated. About eight guys got fired that day, and the one had the balls to ask for a replacement for his shoe! Probably why my dad has high blood pressure nowadays.
There are more, but those ones stood out the most in my mind.
6. The Wheels On The Bus
Bus had the donut on for 8 weeks. WEEKS
-username deleted
5. Sour Experience
International Gas Plants, construction and operations:
-Once my idiot Chinese customers decided to ignore a massive leak in a sour gas line, that was like 200,000 ppm of H2S. I was infuriated and fled site, and only then were they willing to shut it down. Waiting to kill off the control room and poison the nearby town. This was by far the most dangerous thing I've seen.
-Confined space entry without an attendant. Yea that was stttuuupid. And of course this is the time it catches on fire. Luckily were able to escape.
-Hey lets dump sour water into an open drain = slowly forming cloud of poison gas.
-Online unplugging: In one case this guy waits for the bottom of a vessel to plug. He has a drain the same diameter as the vessel discharge pipe. SO when it plug he blocks off the discharge valves, opens the drain, and eventually the pressure builds up and a hunk of solids flies out from a 300 psi source.... followed by a corrosive solvent which they'll quickly block but not before getting it all over their boots
I was in the receiving end of an ice plug that blocked a vent valve while we were pressure testing some pipe. It released with enough force to tear apart the metal pail we had hanging on the valve to catch what should have been a couple cups of fluid. I got showered head to toe with methanol. Ended up totally fine.
4. Importance Of Grounding
A 19 yo employee was cleaning out a silo with a vac-truck and got fatally electrocuted. There was enough static generated from the friction between the air and the wall of a 100ft hose to stop his heart. All because the other operator said he didn't need to ground the hose because he'd "done this a hundred times"
Another time for a hydroelectric power plant, some guy had literally gotten cooked with a ton of voltage when someone forgot to lockout/tagout something. My friend said will never forget the smell of burning flesh.
Not an OSHA employee, truck driver instead. I don't see a lot of big rigs violating the safety laws since we get in huge trouble if we do, but I see stuff on dualie pickups and box trucks all of the time.
Last week, I saw a pickup with mattresses stacked almost as high as my trailer (~13'6") It reminded me of this one time when I saw the front end of a Mustang completely smashed in from a mattress that had fallen on it, on the freeway.
It's terrifying how some people load their pickup trucks. I once saw an uncut 4'x8' sheet of heavy (like 3/4") plywood fly out of the back of a truck on the Dumbarton Bridge going over the San Francisco Bay. The guy was going 70mph, and I had to swerve big time to avoid getting hit, nearly going over the side. I see loose steel pipes all the time too, reminds of the opening scene from The Descent...
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3. Crushing News
Owens Corning had a company wide stand-down that affected all their plants. The issue? Someone had disabled an interlock that prevented the door to a caged in area for an automated robotic portion of the production system. A worker was crushed. Cleaning agents were stowed in the area and it seemed to have been used as stowage for a long time.
I was part of an engineering team that was modernizing the system at the time this occurred about 15 years ago. Same company also had a tornado response of going outside in the even of a tornado warning. The muster area was also where millions of squares of shingles were stowed. There was perfectly adequate "building inside a building" called the restrooms and showers.
Yeah, that pace was unreal.
2. Employee Revenge
My first job was for a large grocery chain and the store's huge walk-in freezer wouldn't defrost. It was covered in sheets of ice and wasn't getting fixed. When I ate sh!T hard in there one day, twisting my arm and smacking my face, I marched my overly confident teen self over to the store manager and told him, as if he didn't already know, that the freezer floor was covered in ice and that I had fallen and hurt myself. He replied, verbatim, "Yeah! Haha! It's like an ice skating rink in there!" And then he walked away.
Which it was. Which was dangerous. So I filed a complaint with OSHA and investigators showed up THE VERY NEXT DAY. The store had to finally fix the freezer and no one else got hurt in there.
1. Mai Eyez
I worked for the USAF, and I usually made people run safety equipment, like eye washes, rather than relying on the inspection cards not being pencil whipped....
One time (in Texas), they hit the foot handle for an eye wash and water trickled out then a swarm of fire ants came out with the water. I couldn't even get angry and their pencil whipping the inspection card because all I could think of was some poor bastard getting degreaser in his eyes and running to the eyewash.... to get his face full of fire ants. It was literally the scene from a cartoon waiting to happen.
H/T: Reddit
Experiencing death is a fascinating and frightening idea.
Who doesn't want to know what is waiting for us on the other side?
But so many of us want to know and then come back and live a little longer.
It would be so great to be sure there is something else.
But the whole dying part is not that great, so we'll have to rely on other people's accounts.
Redditor AlaskaStiletto wanted to hear from everyone who has returned to life, so they asked:
"Redditors who have 'died' and come back to life, what did you see?"
Sensations
Happy Good Vibes GIF by Major League SoccerGiphy"My dad's heart stopped when he had a heart attack and he had to be brought back to life. He kept the paper copy of the heart monitor which shows he flatlined. He said he felt an overwhelming sensation of peace, like nothing he had felt before."
PeachesnPain
Recovery
"I had surgical complications in 2010 that caused a great deal of blood loss. As a result, I had extremely low blood pressure and could barely stay awake. I remember feeling like I was surrounded by loved ones who had passed. They were in a circle around me and I knew they were there to guide me onwards. I told them I was not ready to go because my kids needed me and I came back."
"My nurse later said she was afraid she’d find me dead every time she came into the room."
"It took months, and blood transfusions, but I recovered."
good_golly99
Take Me Back
"Overwhelming peace and happiness. A bright airy and floating feeling. I live a very stressful life. Imagine finding out the person you have had a crush on reveals they have the same feelings for you and then you win the lotto later that day - that was the feeling I had."
"I never feared death afterward and am relieved when I hear of people dying after suffering from an illness."
rayrayrayray
Free
The Light Minnie GIF by (G)I-DLEGiphy"I had a heart surgery with near-death experience, for me at least (well the possibility that those effects are caused by morphine is also there) I just saw black and nothing else but it was warm and I had such inner peace, its weird as I sometimes still think about it and wish this feeling of being so light and free again."
TooReDTooHigh
This is why I hate surgery.
You just never know.
Shocked
Giphy"More of a near-death experience. I was electrocuted. I felt like I was in a deep hole looking straight up in the sky. My life flashed before me. Felt sad for my family, but I had a deep sense of peace."
Admirable_Buyer6528
The SOB
"Nursing in the ICU, we’ve had people try to die on us many times during the years, some successfully. One guy stood out to me. His heart stopped. We called a code, are working on him, and suddenly he comes to. We hadn’t vented him yet, so he was able to talk, and he started screaming, 'Don’t let them take me, don’t let them take me, they are coming,' he was scared and yelling."
"Then he yelled a little more, as we tried to calm him down, he screamed, 'No, No,' and gestured towards the end of the bed, and died again. We didn’t get him back. It was seriously creepy. We called his son to tell him the news, and the son said basically, 'Good, he was an SOB.'”
1-cupcake-at-a-time
Colors
"My sister died and said it was extremely peaceful. She said it was very loud like a train station and lots of talking and she was stuck in this area that was like a curtain with lots of beautiful colors (colors that you don’t see in real life according to her) a man told her 'He was sorry, but she had to go back as it wasn’t her time.'"
Hannah_LL7
"I had a really similar experience except I was in an endless garden with flowers that were colors I had never seen before. It was quiet and peaceful and a woman in a dress looked at me, shook her head, and just said 'Not yet.' As I was coming back, it was extremely loud, like everyone in the world was trying to talk all at once. It was all very disorienting but it changed my perspective on life!"
huntokarrr
The Fog
"I was in a gray fog with a girl who looked a lot like a young version of my grandmother (who was still alive) but dressed like a pioneer in the 1800s she didn't say anything but kept pulling me towards an opening in the wall. I kept refusing to go because I was so tired."
"I finally got tired of her nagging and went and that's when I came to. I had bled out during a c-section and my heart could not beat without blood. They had to deliver the baby and sew up the bleeders. refill me with blood before they could restart my heart so, like, at least 12 minutes gone."
Fluffy-Hotel-5184
Through the Walls
"My spouse was dead for a couple of minutes one miserable night. She maintains that she saw nothing, but only heard people talking about her like through a wall. The only thing she remembers for absolute certain was begging an ER nurse that she didn't want to die."
"She's quite alive and well today."
Hot-Refrigerator6583
Well let's all be happy to be alive.
It seems to be all we have.
Trying to lose weight is a struggle understood by many people regardless of size.
The goal of reaching a healthy weight may seem unattainable, but with diet and exercise, it can pay off through persistence and discipline.
Seeing the pounds gradually drop off can also be a great motivator and incentivize people to stay the course.
Those who've achieved their respective weight goals shared their experiences when Redditor apprenti8455 asked:
"People who lost a lot of weight, what surprises you the most now?"
Redditors didn't see these coming.
Shiver Me Timbers
"I’m always cold now!"
– Telrom_1
"I had a coworker lose over 130 pounds five or six years ago. I’ve never seen him without a jacket on since."
– r7ndom
"140 lbs lost here starting just before COVID, I feel like that little old lady that's always cold, damn this top comment was on point lmao."
– mr_remy
Drawing Concern
"I lost 100 pounds over a year and a half but since I’m old(70’s) it seems few people comment on it because (I think) they think I’m wasting away from some terminal illness."
– dee-fondy
"Congrats on the weight loss! It’s honestly a real accomplishment 🙂"
"Working in oncology, I can never comment on someone’s weight loss unless I specifically know it was on purpose, regardless of their age. I think it kind of ruffles feathers at times, but like I don’t want to congratulate someone for having cancer or something. It’s a weird place to be in."
– LizardofDeath
Unleashing Insults
"I remember when I lost the first big chunk of weight (around 50 lbs) it was like it gave some people license to talk sh*t about the 'old' me. Old coworkers, friends, made a lot of not just negative, but harsh comments about what I used to look like. One person I met after the big loss saw a picture of me prior and said, 'Wow, we wouldn’t even be friends!'”
"It wasn’t extremely common, but I was a little alarmed by some of the attention. My weight has been up and down since then, but every time I gain a little it gets me a little down thinking about those things people said."
– alanamablamaspama
Not Everything Goes After Losing Weight
"The loose skin is a bit unexpected."
– KeltarCentauri
"I haven’t experienced it myself, but surgery to remove skin takes a long time to recover. Longer than bariatric surgery and usually isn’t covered by insurance unless you have both."
– KatMagic1977
"It definitely does take a long time to recover. My Dad dropped a little over 200 pounds a few years back and decided to go through with skin removal surgery to deal with the excess. His procedure was extensive, as in he had skin taken from just about every part of his body excluding his head, and he went through hell for weeks in recovery, and he was bedridden for a lot of it."
– Jaew96
These Redditors shared their pleasantly surprising experiences.
Shopping
"I can buy clothes in any store I want."
– WaySavvyD
"When I lost weight I was dying to go find cute, smaller clothes and I really struggled. As someone who had always been restricted to one or two stores that catered to plus-sized clothing, a full mall of shops with items in my size was daunting. Too many options and not enough knowledge of brands that were good vs cheap. I usually went home pretty frustrated."
– ganache98012
No More Symptoms
"Lost about 80 pounds in the past year and a half, biggest thing that I’ve noticed that I haven’t seen mentioned on here yet is my acid reflux and heartburn are basically gone. I used to be popping tums every couple hours and now they just sit in the medicine cabinet collecting dust."
– colleennicole93
Expanding Capabilities
"I'm all for not judging people by their appearance and I recognise that there are unhealthy, unachievable beauty standards, but one thing that is undeniable is that I can just do stuff now. Just stamina and flexibility alone are worth it, appearance is tertiary at best."
– Ramblonius
People Change Their Tune
"How much nicer people are to you."
"My feet weren't 'wide' they were 'fat.'"
– LiZZygsu
"Have to agree. Lost 220 lbs, people make eye contact and hold open doors and stuff"
"And on the foot thing, I also lost a full shoe size numerically and also wear regular width now 😅"
– awholedamngarden
It's gonna take some getting used to.
Bones Everywhere
"Having bones. Collarbones, wrist bones, knee bones, hip bones, ribs. I have so many bones sticking out everywhere and it’s weird as hell."
– Princess-Pancake-97
"I noticed the shadow of my ribs the other day and it threw me, there’s a whole skeleton in here."
– bekastrange
Knee Pillow
"Right?! And they’re so … pointy! Now I get why people sleep with pillows between their legs - the knee bones laying on top of each other (side sleeper here) is weird and jarring."
– snic2030
"I lost only 40 pounds within the last year or so. I’m struggling to relate to most of these comments as I feel like I just 'slimmed down' rather than dropped a ton. But wow, the pillow between the knees at night. YES! I can relate to this. I think a lot of my weight was in my thighs. I never needed to do this up until recently."
– Strongbad23
More Mobility
"I’ve lost 100 lbs since 2020. It’s a collection of little things that surprise me. For at least 10 years I couldn’t put on socks, or tie my shoes. I couldn’t bend over and pick something up. I couldn’t climb a ladder to fix something. Simple things like that I can do now that fascinate me."
"Edit: Some additional little things are sitting in a chair with arms, sitting in a booth in a restaurant, being able to shop in a normal store AND not needing to buy the biggest size there, being able to easily wipe my butt, and looking down and being able to see my penis."
– dma1965
People making significant changes, whether for mental or physical health, can surely find a newfound perspective on life.
But they can also discover different issues they never saw coming.
That being said, overcoming any challenge in life is laudable, especially if it leads to gaining confidence and ditching insecurities.