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“We All Froze”: 30 Job Site Incidents That Still Give Workers Chills
Article created by: Gabija Saveiskyte
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
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#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.
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#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.
#3
Not me, but my buddy fell off scaffolding and died. I quit the job and refuse to do it again.
#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.
#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.
#8
Working with high voltages, a person ceased to exist( literally no trace of him left ) because he switched a lever in the wrong direction.
#9
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.
#10
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.
#11
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.
#12
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.
#13
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 😐.
#14
Not a blue collar worker, but my job deals with the aftermath of asbestos exposure. It is not fun…
#15
Went inside a combine harvester to clean it and it started closing. thank god the model i have closes slower than usual.
#16
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.
#17
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.
#18
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.
#19
Scaffolding without any safety because wearing the safety belt will slow us down, and we are still working the same way.
#20
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.
#21
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.
#22
Getting electrocuted on a cell tower while installing an antenna almost a 150ft in the air.
#23
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.
#24
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.
#25
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.
#26
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.
#28
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.
#29
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. 💀💀💀💀💀💀
#30
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.
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