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    The Health and Safety Brigade

    At our charity shop, we've got a space on the wall by the till for a shelf. It's in a niche in the wall, and you couldn't hit your head on it if you tried- and it couldn't fall on anyone. We could put really nice books up there, and they wouldn't get pinched.

    Apparently none of us are allowed to put shelves up, and have to call someone in from out of London and pay hundreds of pounds. We need to bid for that with money we aren't given, even though it would pay for itself very quick. We can't use any of the few thousand quid that we pass on to HQ every month to pay for those shelves either.

    Yeah, I know, it's our fault for our own silly internal procedures. Not really health and safety gone mad at all.

    Have you got any examples that aren't in the least the government's fault? We want to hear from YOU.

    #2
    The Health and Safety Brigade

    I am not allowed to turn on the ceiling projector in our college classroom due to insurance issues. This means that our teacher has to get on a chair and do it.

    She is about 5'5" and I am 6'2"

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      #3
      The Health and Safety Brigade

      All of you. Get in a union. Have daft accidents, I'll see you right....

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        #4
        The Health and Safety Brigade

        union of voluntary workers?

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          #5
          The Health and Safety Brigade

          You probably need a snappier name, but I'm sure there's a long and fruitful relationship in all this...

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            #6
            The Health and Safety Brigade

            33 posts. Good grief, I'm rubbish at this these days.

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              #7
              The Health and Safety Brigade

              You never recovered from that job without the internet, did you?

              Our work practices are governed by the assumption that we're all looking for chances to fall down like Adam Faith in the titles of Budgie, while shouting "compo!" and dialling the number for "ambulancechasers4u".

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                #8
                The Health and Safety Brigade

                I'm a fully trained Health and Safety Auditor, to IOSH standard.

                I hope you're typing these posts from a comfortable workstation position, that doesn't allow any possibility of repetitive strain injuries.

                Actually, it's easy to take the piss (and I do) but people genuinely do end up with serious spinal problems, and hands like useless claws, if they've spent ten years or so at a continuous job of being hunched over a keyboard without realising what they're doing to themselves, not exercising inbetween working periods. They can end up looking like Zelda from the Terrahawks.

                And you wouldn't believe how many people lose parts of their fingers in office printers or photocopiers every year. Well okay, you might, it's about 5, on average, but even so, that's the kind of horrific injury you don't really expect to happen in your workplace when you turn up in the morning, is it?

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                  #9
                  The Health and Safety Brigade

                  I wasn't really the taking the piss. Britain has done pretty well to reduce accidents at work, I think- though that might be a fair bit to do with not having much manufacturing as well.

                  In a minor semantic way, of course, concern for H&S is a concern not to get sued as much as for welfare, and it can be a bit irritating if you're doing it all for free and wouldn't dream of sueing your "employer".

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                    #10
                    The Health and Safety Brigade

                    We had a beaut the other day. My lot run a staff shuttle bus between here and the railway station a mile up the road, to cut down on the number of people travelling by car.

                    All well and good and environmentally responsible so far. But the shuttle bus is always very busy, and to make things worse the bus company have recently taken the front row of seats out of use, reducing the seating capacity and therefore making the queues longer.

                    After repeated queries as to why this was, the guy who runs the service sent out this e-mail:

                    I have been asked several times why staff are no longer allowed to occupy the front seats on the bus. The reason for this is that have been reports (NOT ON OUR SERVICE) of staff in other organisations claiming that drivers were sitting too close to passengers. The bus operator has stopped people sitting close to the drivers to protect his staff and ours.

                    Protect his staff and ours from what, exactly? Are the drivers infectious? Do we smell? Does the bus explode if the passengers don't have enough personal space?

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                      #11
                      The Health and Safety Brigade

                      Rogin the Armchair Fan wrote:
                      And you wouldn't believe how many people lose parts of their fingers in office printers or photocopiers every year. Well okay, you might, it's about 5, on average, but even so, that's the kind of horrific injury you don't really expect to happen in your workplace when you turn up in the morning, is it?
                      Years ago, I sliced off the top of one of my knuckles while pulling a folder of photographs out of a filing cabinet that was absolutely crammed with other folders. Blood sprayed everywhere and ruined several of the photographs, much to the disgust of the production editor.

                      Happily, the skin had fully grown back after a couple of months.

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                        #12
                        The Health and Safety Brigade

                        I sliced my finger nail off at work once. But that was on a guillotine, so it was a crisp clean cut and it's healed up nicely.

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                          #13
                          The Health and Safety Brigade

                          My sister took my niece's kid to a pantomime a few weeks ago. You know that bit where they chuck a couple of sweets out for the kids? They didn't do that because of health and safety. Parents brought their kids up on the stage. Isn't that more dangerous?

                          There may be no brigade going around like Puritan wreckers, but there seem to be people who are making decisions on the basis of no understanding at all about risk.

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