Get Premium
Dark mode theme is available exclusively for premium users. Learn more about the benefits of subscribing.
No fees, cancel anytime.
Dark Mode 
No fees, cancel anytime 
then open in external browser
and click "Open in External Browser" 
If you work an office job, chances are that the average OSHA violation you encounter is an overloaded extension cord or a screen that's too bright. However, there are a lot of jobs out there that can get legitimately dangerous when someone decides to just ignore the rules.
Someone asked blue collar workers online to detail their scariest or sketchiest job experience and folks delivered. Be warned, some of these are graphic and might be disturbing. So settle in as you read through, upvote your favorites and be sure to share your thoughts and experiences in the comments down below.
Image credits: bluecollarminer
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
Woman in male dominated field here. Was not given proper safety training or safety gear and forced to use a chainsaw to cut up wood without any experience. Was told later that the boys were betting on which body part I’d lose and instead of helping me, were sitting around laughing and waiting for a scream.
RELATED:
#2
Working the oil rigs and one of the rigging lines snapped and I was inches away from becoming diced meat. I didn't quit but I will never forget that day even when I tried mentioning it at the safety meeting I was immediately silenced.
Just a boring person 3 months ago (edited)
If they shut you up when you're telling them a safety concern, leave immediately. I could sense something awful will happen eventually.
#3
Not me, but my buddy fell off scaffolding and died. I quit the job and refuse to do it again.
Brian Droste 3 months ago
I am not sure but by law if you are more than 4 ft off the ground you supposed to have a safety harness on. Anyway in Indiana.
#4
Was an industrial first aid attendant and stayed with a guy that got sucked into large roller machine. All that was showing was his face.
The Majestic Opossum 3 months ago
F**k no. I've been with guys that got their hand and leg caught in a roller and that was enough for me.
#5
I was sent to do waterblasting in a remote area, the site was on aboriginal grounds (which was once taken over by catholics), and every night, I would have dreams of children crying and screaming to go home.
#6
Was doing work inside a combine harvester and i heard the "beep".
bluecollarminer:
Anytime you’re working on something and hear a start up alarm your heart drops😭.
#7
Watching my coworker get crushed by a 4500 pound frame that fell over off the crane because crane company didn't rig it right.
Beak Hookage 3 months ago (edited)
The same thing happened on a construction site in my area. The poor thing didn't make it, and a guy I know said his girlfriend later saw the foreman at the club where she worked, just drinking and drinking with a horrible blank look on his face because he saw the whole thing.
#8
i once cleaned some river. in my second week on a blue day we take the boat to go clean and after 20min wee see a silouhaite. it was a dead body floating with 2 chain on his leg. call the boss and he call the police département. was my scariest found in my entire life.
StrangeOne 3 months ago (edited)
I know it's creepy and unnerving, but thank goodness for the good semaritans that clean the rivers and lakes, and who end up finding missing people. Winnipeg sometimes has a "Drag the river" thing, where a group of boaters scour the river for missing people, since we have so many, mainly Indigenous people, go missing and some are found floating in the river or seen jumping from bridges but never found again. It gives closure to the loved ones so they can put them to rest, or at least know what happened to them.
#9
Working with high voltages, a person ceased to exist( literally no trace of him left ) because he switched a lever in the wrong direction.
#10
Boss had a PM to test the high level switches on two 100% liquid SO2 tanks. Told his crew to go past the standard max operating level (80% of max volume) Crew asked are you sure? Boss said yup. Both tanks are full to the top. Next morning a technician comes in the morning to take sample from the lowest elevation tank. Inadvertently equalizes the levels in the tanks and proceeds to put 20mt of liquid SO2 on the ground. Nearly k**led 20 people, if it wasn’t for the quick reaction of the operators to tell people it was coming seconds before they wouldn’t have had a chance. This boss is still employed by the company and was never punished for his actions.
#11
European plumber here, i had to go do something in a basement for quite some time and i swear on everything i love there was something or someone watching me, i heard noises coming from different directions and caught head shaped figures peaking from around corners, i never went alone in that basement after since.
#12
I saw a man's arm get flattened when I was building roof trusses. we built on a giant table. we'd set up the trusses, bang down a corner of the spike plate and a giant roller would come by to flatten them down after. a guy left his hammer on the table when the rollers were coming and it can really mess it up so he tried to reach and grab it quick. he was laying on the table with his and didn't slide back in time, he was lucky it didn't crush his whole body. his forearm and bicep eviscerated over the corner of the truss and I was told his elbow was the only thing left, laying between. I was certified in first aid and on health and safety so I ran over but passed out immediately. I never offered to be on health and safety ever again. I don't want first aid anymore.
sofacushionfort 3 months ago
First responders: you’ll have a front row seat to the worst day of someone’s life. If you do CPR on them it’s a one out of eight chance they’ll live. It’s not something that won’t scar someone for life, but it needs to be done
#13
I was going inbetween jobs a while back, with a little previous roofing experience joined a new start business roof cleaning to get by. First day they had me on 3 different roofs with no harness or Saftey equipment I did 2 roofs and the 3rd was a 2-3story building I climbed to the top of the ladder and had to clean the gutters off the roof nearly fell off, and just climbed down called the boss and quit immediately. Drove past the building the operated from a couple months later and the company no longer operates / exists.
StrangeOne 3 months ago
Sometimes I see people working on roofs without any safety gear. Is there a number to call to report unsafe work conditions if you're just passing by?
#14
Worked in a copper refinery at a mine, every breath you took was burning your lungs. End of the shift was excessively vomiting and massive headaches.
#15
I was working as a fire tech in a paper recycling factory. I had a colleague with me. We where deep in a service tunnel when he said can you smell that it's like really strong rotten eggs. Then he said never mind it's gone. Later that day we where in the office when a guy came in waering a H2S gas meter. He said the level was 1400ppm. I said what does H2S gas do? The boss said you will smell really strong rotten eggs then you wont then you'll pass out and die. 500ppm is enough to k**l you.
#16
Worked on a home that had the second story caved in from a storm and was told before there was no asbestos… I was walking around looking at the damage (you could see dust particles floating around like snow) so I flipped over a piece of the walls from upstairs and it had ASBESTOS written on it 😐.
Poppy 3 months ago
Asbestos is such a lottery. I grew up in Australia near an asbestos mine called Wittenoom and we visited and looked around inside (this was 1970's before it was fully understood how dangerous it could be) and we even brought some home and had some on display in the living room. My parents are now in their 80's and have had no issues because of this, however, someone is exposed once and develops Mesothelioma a few decades down the line and pass away earlier than they would have done.
#17
Not a blue collar worker, but my job deals with the aftermath of asbestos exposure. It is not fun…
Bored Botanist 3 months ago
So we have a picture of a person in a trench next to a plastic pipe welding machine.
#18
Went inside a combine harvester to clean it and it started closing. thank god the model i have closes slower than usual.
#19
Coworker calibrated a natural gas flow meter on a shutdown, followed the instructions that were laminated and zip tied to the meter. When we came back up, there was triple the gas going into the boiler than what the meter read. You could smell gas in the control room. We went to investigate and the walls on the boiler were flexing. Operators were too scared to make the call to do an emergency master fuel trip. o2 control was out of wack also. Closest to a 5 story bomb going off I’ve ever seen. Ripped that instruction set off the meter and googled the correct way.
ColdSteelRonin 3 months ago
I hope the calibration sheet was placed there for the outage. Otherwise, it means it had been there a while and operators were disregarding the SOP, because they knew it was wrong, and did nothing to correct it.
#20
My dad's story: he went to fix something at a slaughter house when he was starting the job, he could see all the sheep in the pen, scared. then once the job was done there was just a skip full of sheep heads :( he said the energy was horrible in that place.
Mel in Georgia 3 months ago
Yeah, I imagine working at a slaughterhouse would diminish a person. Still, the work needs to be done. There's not much appreciation for those who do this type of work, so thank you, from someone who eats meat.
#21
not me but my fiance. he nearly fell into a dust silo working at a limestone quarry, he injured his arm but stopped himself from drowning in dust. he did not have a harness or anything he needed to be doing the job safely.
Pheebs 3 months ago
Speaking of silos - farm silos are dangerous af. My dad used to work as a repair tech for farm equipment, mostly the silos his company sold and built. A good chunk of his repair calls were due to silo mechanisms (I don’t remember names - chains, elevators, etc?) failing while the silo was full, meaning emptying the silo wasn’t going to go so well. He called them dig outs, and said he’d almost died doing one more than once. Had to go in with an oxygen tank to do the work - got stuck more than once, oxygen running out, etc.
#22
Scaffolding without any safety because wearing the safety belt will slow us down, and we are still working the same way.
#23
Buddy of mine had a seizure on a 10ft ladder, fell off and passed away a few hours later, the noises he made will stick with me forever.
MeMosabe 3 months ago
Years ago I did customer support for diabetic blood glucose meters. A guy called with problems with his meter. I asked him to change the battery. He said he couldn't because whenever he touches a battery, he drains it. Surprised, I asked why. Years earlier he was changing light bulbs and doing other maintenance on a cell phone tower. Got struck by lightning and fell off the tower. Landed on the ground, of course. Spent several months in the hospital, but now drains batteries. His wife changed the battery and that solved his problem.
#24
When I was 15 my dad got me a summer job as a general labourer for this heavy equipment rental yard. The owner had all kinds of old equipment, even a tracked snow-truck you’d see in Antarctica. He bought a property from a recently-deceased-old-guy who had a small farm that he hadn’t been taken care of in 10+ years. We were told to take a V8 engine upstairs from the flooded basement. The water was shin-deep, there were dead animals floating in it, mushrooms growing on the walls…good thing I was a strong kid, probably took 5 years off my life 🙃.
#25
First week of apprentice mechanic: I took off a driveshaft on a decline and the park break didn’t hold the truck it nearly rolled over my head it missed me by millimetres.
#26
Loading containers of a ship , stepped off the side 4 storeys up. By pure luck I caught a rope. Been shot at , blown up , hit by lightning but that was the closest to death I've been. Apart from being electrocuted.
#27
Getting electrocuted on a cell tower while installing an antenna almost a 150ft in the air.
Multa Nocte 3 months ago (edited)
"Dictionary Definitions from Oxford Languages - electrocute /ɪˈlɛktrəkjuːt/ - verb - injure or kill (someone) by electric shock. - 'a man was electrocuted on the rail track'"
#28
Rolled a prawn trawler a 120km of the coast of Port Douglas qld. we lost a deckhand for 8 hours. he was in pitch black shark infested water and he washed up on the same sand island as us and the destroyed trawler 8 hours later.
#29
Not me but my dad had told me one time in the early 2000s he was a truck driver in New Zealand one morning he was doing his runs as usual it was about 4 am when all of a sudden a lady had appeared in the middle of the road with her back faced towards him….she was wearing a black leather coat,black boots and long black hair, he then proceeded to swerve on to the other side of the road he then looks in his mirrors just to find the lady had vanished into thin air. He thinks to himself “has she gone under my wheels” but knew she couldn’t have so he carried on like nothing happened. About a week had gone by and he proceeded to do his runs as usual. He’s now talking to a local trucker over the CB radio and some how got onto the topic of the night he seen her and before my dad could describe her, the man over the CB says with a breathy low voice “did she have black hair and long black leather boots” dad had a cold sensation running through him with an expression like😳 he then says “yep that’s her” the man on the CB then says “yeah…. Some of the boys have seen her early in the mornings……she got run over by a truck a couple of years back……….She’s a ghost bro” my dad then cuts the conversation as he was so freaked out but from that day forward he never seen her again and he thinks it’s because he swerved out the way. But who knows it’s some really unexplained sh*t no one talks about and people seem to deny the fact stuff like this really happens. This all happened somewhere in the Waikato in between Taupiri and Huntley. To this day he still talks about it.
Bob Brooce 3 months ago
The basic story was already old when Red Sovine put this out in 1967: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mye3aikHBjc Tom Waits' version may be better known.
#30
Working in sewer. got lowered 75 meters down in a cage, radio signal cut out as they kept lowering us. they stopped it due to no response from us. the sewer water was sitting waist high.
#31
Worked in a hospital - I worked in pharmacy and was on the late shift so I got out after midnight - I was cutting through the main area that went up about 14 plus floors- all the floors had the half walls so people could look out the massive windows … heard a yell and then had a lady hit the ground so hard after jumping from the mental ward. I was covered head to toe in gore, brains, teeth- had to stay for hours doing bloodwork, talking to the cops, head honchos you name it. You bet they made those walls full walls because the lady took a swan dive. Had to do bloodwork for 6 months.
#32
saw someone slipped inside a septic tank.
Binky Melnik 2 months ago
This is my biggest fear. When I was a kid, my uncle’s buried septic tank gave way, or rather the earth covering it caved in. Rather than getting it repaired, he threw a barrel into the hole. My dad made sure we were TERRIFIED to go near it. I just learned five years ago that the reason the septic tank was eventually repaired was because my dad went to his brother and said that if any of us diеd falling into that hole that dad would k**l him. I’m STILL aghast that someone thought having an open pit into a septic tank was okay when kids were running around! I’m still terrified of septic tanks, and especially the ones I can’t see; it’s worse than my fear of sinkholes, I guess because of what septic tanks contain. 😰
#33
When I landed airplanes, the ear protection was so good I couldn’t hear the engines running. One day I put a pylon in front of an engine that was still running. I couldn’t have been more than a couple feet from getting sucked in.
Anthony Elmore 3 months ago
Serios risk and a horrible outcome. My boss's daughter was in the d**n news earlier this year I think it was. Sky diving photographer. Taking photos on the ground, backs up but does so too close to the propeller of a running plane. Dude had just went to see his daughter. Hadn't even gotten back home before he was called about the accident.
#34
My brother works for a food distribution warehouse like (Safeway) but not that specific store in the freezer at the top of the door big ice blocks formed on top of the door and once in awhile one specific employee climbed up a ladder to go cut them down (he did regularly) it was not work safe btw he ended up falling off the ladder 20-30 feet high and landing on the freezer floor he was alone my brother herd the ladder fall and went and looked and found him on the floor my brother took off all his jackets covered him called for help they brought him more blankets and covered him up ambulance took 1 hr to arrive (we live in Canada it’s a whole thing about ambulances prioritizing patients) he ended up being okay.
#35
Pulp and paper mill. was up round 500 ft on an elevator (a belt with a sq ft to stand on, strait drop to bottom) and bro above me starts yelling. I look up, and he is trying to throw on his gas mask as a cloud of green chlorine gas was just above us. 💀💀💀💀💀💀
#36
Was pouring a silo about 90ft off the ground and the scaffolding fell apart, luckily was still on top of the silo but 2 guys passed.
#37
Working in confined spaces with flammable liquids around a 75 pound jack hammer. used to clear the shot tanks under national steel car in Hamilton Ontario.
Nikki Sevven 3 months ago
I understand every one of those words, but the paragraph makes no sense.
#38
Had a 72’ 18,000 lb beam come in head level and missed my head by a few inches. If I was one step to my left my head would’ve trapped in between the beam on the hook and the beam my partner was standing on and popped it like a watermelon.
#39
Not blue collar personally but my cousin was, he was crushed by a slab of metal because the crane line broke and on instinct he tried to catch it. Traumatized everyone there and his whole immediate family is forever scarred.
#40
Had to build a full on appartement in a haunted basement worst month of my Life and let’s not Forget the girl who lived there went missing a couple months later.
#41
Some random billionaire made us build some sort of underground armory under his mansion.
#42
ain’t a blue collar worker but I used work at a steel factory. There was metal particles in the air everywhere, no masks, latex gloves. After every shift you could feel your lungs burn and tiny metal particles in your skin bothering you in every slight movement of the fingers.
OneHappyPuppy 3 months ago
Can factory worker, the metal dust is everywhere, in your eyes, nose, not to mention the sound of the machines that make you deaf in due time
#43
I was taking down scaffolding and I had to carry a 80lbs platform in one hand and climb down the ladder with my other hand and u would have to let go of the step and grab the next one well I had the peice hanging down in my other hand “I had to do it with every peice”.
#44
Doing all the power infrastructure and powering everything at space x , lots of rain , humidity and things went wrong all the time super sketchy and fun.
#45
The most dangerous job was working new construction in a skyscraper building on the rooftops without having the option to wear a safety harness there wasn’t any place to tie off and I had to throw off all garbage cut off material scrap into a bucket on a crane on the tallest buildings in Calgary Alberta Canada which they call sky scrapers . I tripped 3 times on the steel cable lines with debris. The closest the crane could safely get the bucket was 6-12 feet away from the building with high winds any closer and it could swing into us. I was the only man fearless enough to do the job of 4 men that wouldn’t dare come close to my level even the foreman was terrified. The interesting part was that if I refused I was getting fired if I fell off the 40 story building I was fired these conditions went on for 2 months in a row . The job agency didn’t realize how I was being bullied into such Dangerous work environments that later compensated me with $25 ,000 in cash on top of my wages at $5.25 per hour as temporary helper rates that was 30 years ago to this day I never met anyone alive in person face to face that was brave enough to work in those environments especially in dangerous conditions*….!!
Mel in Georgia 3 months ago
Brave or careless? Never agree to do jobs that don't protect your safety.
#46
Collecting crocodile eggs in the Northern Territory, not a bad gig , one afternoon we dropped by helicopter onto a nest and very soon a freak storm blew in from nowhere, grounded the helicopter and we were stuck on the nest for 2 hours the water in the swamp rising , lightning hitting trees close to us , not a good time to be standing in an aluminum cage. Good times.
#47
Decided to stay out until midnight by myself doing fencing around a 18 acr property and starting hearing people srreaming my name.
#48
Our mine is located on indian grounds and theres and old cemetary and during night shift our shop is right near and you hear some crazy stuff coming from it.
Plentyofoomph 3 months ago
You should document it. Proof of ghosts / spirits etc would win you a Nobel prize. You'd be the most famous scientist in history. Weird how that hasn't happened yet.
#49
Coal mining we only do the minimum requirement for safety that every time we hear long cracking sounds we all at the same time stop and just hope for the best that it stops.
#50
Running conduit in a hospital basement. We were working down the hall from the morgue. Cargo elevator would randomly reach our floor with nobody on it, footsteps with nobody around, and doors would open and close. Don’t believe in ghosts but it was strange.
#51
Janitor at a crematorium........
saturated with spirits..........
only worked that job 1 week.....due to the high strangeness at night.
StrangeOne 3 months ago
Why would spirits hang around the crematorium? Their bodies were not alive when they got there. It's not even a familiar place for them. It's a deepening question in the paranormal field.
#52
Girl idk, I accidentally cut my clients cuticles sometimes 😭😭 that’s scary okay?
StrangeOne 3 months ago
This is why I refuse the cuticle nipping. You gotta also respect the dangers of the Dremel drill, as using too harsh of a file and/or too high of an rpm can easily tear through the nail into the nail bed. This is why nail techs take nail tech courses and practice on dummy hands.
#53
Construction Foreman here. It was one of the hottest days of the year and I had to roll down my drivers side window in my truck and i let some a/c out.. so I could hear what one of my guys was going on about having no water. Still remember it like it was yesterday.
Explore more of these tags
What do you think ?
Marnie 3 months ago
My sweet and tough and manliest-of-men farmboy cousin found himself with a job painting water towers in the US. Fell off the water tower one day. Had a sore neck. It continued to hurt and he swallowed his pride and went to the doctor. Doctor said all was well, just take it easy. Kept hurting. Went to a chiropractor who thankfully took an X-ray. And told him, "Do NOT move. I'm calling an ambulance." Turns out he had broken his neck and was walking around with it for more than a week (2-3 weeks of memory serves). He ended up making a full recovery, because of course was the manliest of men. (He really is very sweet, though.)
Shayna 3 months ago
Guess not all chiropractors are quacks like people on here seem to think. (I am not one of them)
Load More Replies... sofacushionfort 3 months ago
Cut the ghost stories. Hundreds of workers dying every year from already-identified and preventable reasons is disturbing enough
StrangeOne 3 months ago (edited)
I work in production at a thrift store, tagging and organizing clothing. To save time, we just let our bullet stems fall to the floor as we change the bullets in our swiftach guns. Since our managers don't consider sweeping the floors as "productive". Debris tend to accumulate, and it makes it harder to move the racks. I've brought it up as a safety concern for a long time. I had just finished organizing a rack. A teammate was behind me tagging a rack. When I finished, stepped away to grab a hanger we use as a signal a rack is ready for rolling out. My teammate moved her rack up to make space behind her. As she did, her rack jammed on the debris on the floor, causing it to fall forward. Since then, the managers have been a bit more understanding why sweeping is important, but they still stop us.
Marnie 3 months ago
My sweet and tough and manliest-of-men farmboy cousin found himself with a job painting water towers in the US. Fell off the water tower one day. Had a sore neck. It continued to hurt and he swallowed his pride and went to the doctor. Doctor said all was well, just take it easy. Kept hurting. Went to a chiropractor who thankfully took an X-ray. And told him, "Do NOT move. I'm calling an ambulance." Turns out he had broken his neck and was walking around with it for more than a week (2-3 weeks of memory serves). He ended up making a full recovery, because of course was the manliest of men. (He really is very sweet, though.)
Shayna 3 months ago
Guess not all chiropractors are quacks like people on here seem to think. (I am not one of them)
Load More Replies... sofacushionfort 3 months ago
Cut the ghost stories. Hundreds of workers dying every year from already-identified and preventable reasons is disturbing enough
StrangeOne 3 months ago (edited)
I work in production at a thrift store, tagging and organizing clothing. To save time, we just let our bullet stems fall to the floor as we change the bullets in our swiftach guns. Since our managers don't consider sweeping the floors as "productive". Debris tend to accumulate, and it makes it harder to move the racks. I've brought it up as a safety concern for a long time. I had just finished organizing a rack. A teammate was behind me tagging a rack. When I finished, stepped away to grab a hanger we use as a signal a rack is ready for rolling out. My teammate moved her rack up to make space behind her. As she did, her rack jammed on the debris on the floor, causing it to fall forward. Since then, the managers have been a bit more understanding why sweeping is important, but they still stop us.
You May Like 50 World’s Weirdest Jobs That Pay Out Quite Well We Rounded Up Some Absurdly Funny Job Titles For Your Entertainment Pleasure Employee Denied Time Off After Covering A Crisis All Weekend: “The Stupidest Person Alive”
Aivaras Kaziukonis
Saimonas Lukošius
Dominyka Proškėnaitė
Related on Bored Panda
