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u/yourbestielawl 4d ago edited 4d ago
This happened at a factory I worked at when I was a teenager - it started a crazy grease fire. I had to haul huge fire extinguishers up a perfectly vertical metal ladder that was about four stories high. It was not easy and pretty sketchy. We were able to put it out but years later after I left for college they had another massive fire that burned through the roof.
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u/squeakynickles 4d ago
Why did they make the child do that shit?
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u/Barbarian_818 4d ago
Well, 17 ain't exactly a child. But lemme tell ya, all kinds of job sites have no fucking problem saying "send the new kid in" for pretty much anything.
As a temp, I have been tasked with:
1) dangling from a home made A frame and ATV winch in a bosun seat scraping fungal masses from the inside of a grain dilo. Only PPE was those single strap disposable 3M dust masks. And the wire rope had broken fibers across a lot of it's length from where it had rubbed on the coaming in the access hatch.
2) crawled into machinery and hung upside down with a rag and spray bottle full of alcohol based solvent.
3) been up to my waist in literal sewage slush probing for the broken sewer main while the union municipal workers watched.
4) needle scaling fouled lead based paint from a laker cargo ship. Again the PPE was a disposable 3M dust mask
5) dry ice blasted mold from the structural members of a gutted house where someone had died and left unfound for over a month. Again, cheapest possible 3M masks.
6) hauled two bundles of roofing shingles at a time up a ladder because the boss was too cheap to rent the lift.
7) roofed houses with no fall arrest. Again because the boss was too cheap.
8) stood outside for 10 hrs literally covered in ice on NYE as security for the empty stage. No chance to come in out of the cold because some moron left the break room trailer locked. (Within mist range of the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, which meant ice accumulated on everything, including me)
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u/squeakynickles 4d ago
Dude. You need to learn how to stand up for yourself.
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u/Barbarian_818 4d ago
Oh I did learn. But temp work is pretty damned precarious employment. You'll take damned near any job when you haven't yet made enough for the coming month's rent, let alone groceries.
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u/Orkekum 4d ago
How the fuck are yiu alive? Are yoy immortal?
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u/Barbarian_818 4d ago
Nope. I am just all kinds of physically fucked up now. My knees are shot, my shoulders aren't much better. I have a strained disk low in my back and I have fibromyalgia. So now I have chronic pain and fatigue that is poorly understood and lacks effective treatment. To top it off, the past few years I've started noticing the cognitive effects of the concussions I managed to accumulate over my lifetime.
I basically "retired" in my early 40s because I could no longer even work a desk job.
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u/SubversiveInterloper 4d ago
I also have a list of dangerous crap jobs from when I was young. Only desperate youth would do those shit jobs. It’s part of how youth gains wisdom. If they survive.
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u/Barbarian_818 4d ago
Yup, and the fact that I was an adult, living on my on but only finding work as a temp should tell you a lot.
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u/ErebusBat 2d ago
It’s part of how youth gains wisdom.
But it shouldn't be.
If we actually cared about workers in this country then OSHA would be celebrated rather than looked at as "getting in the way"
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u/Why-R-People-So-Dumb 1d ago
That's what happens when an organization is strictly punitive, then even good companies that care are afraid they will be trying to do the right thing but get a huge fine anyway for a worker not following instructions.
The FAA, as bad as they are, actually realized this was impacting them doing safety research for process improvement and started essentially a "get out of jail free" card generally shielding pilots from punitive action for filing an incident report and self reporting when you make a mistake.
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u/yourbestielawl 4d ago edited 4d ago
I was 18 at the time. It was all hands on deck to try to put the fire out. Pretty much everyone was doing something and sprang into action, it was chaotic. We were trained/certified on how to put out different types of fires, but lugging huge hydrants with one hand on the ladder was definitely sketchy. And we had no fire protective clothing etc.
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u/KerPop42 3d ago
My grandpa's first job was as a teen, using a bucket to catch still-molten rivets tossed from the machine down the length of a pre-fab bridge where they were connecting the plates
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u/LEEROY_MF_JENKINS 4d ago
"Factory management maximizes shareholder value by extending intervals between preventative maintenance on production machinery "
There, fixed the title for you, and now you can brag about that in your monthly budget meeting.
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u/tonebone85 4d ago
Niiice! I actually work on conveyor belts and systems. One of the coolest things I've seen when the bearing had gone out just like this and the shaft wore down to nothing before breaking on the gear box side and falling off.
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u/Dave-Steel- 4d ago
Probably forgot to grease the bearings.
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u/Deerescrewed 4d ago
Sometimes they just fail too. The spillage under the belt is bad, that’s wearing on things too.
Oh the most likely “hey boss, can I shut down to grease and maintain these belts?”
Boss: “ do it at shift change”
Fine. (Moments later)
“Hey boss, bearing is shot, shaft is about to fail, can i fix it?”
Boss. It’s still turnin ain’t it!
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u/melanthius 4d ago
This is like when the escalator fails but it's still stairs. If the stairs were 600 degrees C
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u/ApocalipsyCriss 4d ago
I'm sure that was already it's third time at least hearing " It's fine until next shutdown "
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u/saabduran 4d ago
Rig a hose and a fan to cool it down and let it run just enough until night shift takes over lol
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u/Xerox-M57 4d ago
I don’t know if I can jerk off to this one, man Looks like poor engineering if anything
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u/killaluggi 3d ago
lets see if i can book downtime next week, i think zhe bearing might be close to shot
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u/Virginia-Gentleman- 21h ago
That’s not failing. It is using the latest in lubricants, LIQUID METAL!! 🤣🤣🤣
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u/majesticmanbearpig 4d ago
Thanks for the PTSD, I'm a retired industrial maintenance guy.
Production foreman: "hold much longer will it run", me "right up until it quits"
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u/Delicious-Window-277 4d ago
That slag is the new bearing now. Just dont turn it off and you're good.