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Another thread has brought up the 'blame game,' which seems to follow nearly every mishap.

In it's purest form, a supervisor directs a man to do something .... then denies giving the order when things go bad. These are, of course, the same folks who will question the competence of an electrician who doesn't want to work hot.

A more subtle form is the automatic conclusion "only an idiot would do THAT." Sometimes, this is institutionalized as automatic disciplinary action against anyone who gets hurt.
Both are really bad approaches; they only result in concealing accidents and inhibiting the free discourse that would allow all to learn from the event.

Finally, there are contradictory pressures on the job that often mitigate against safety. For example, on a prison job it simply "wasn't possible" to kill the power until someone actually was electrocuted; now, convinced of the danger, the administration suddenly figured out a way to let the power be killed.

Yeah John,
Isn't it strange how a supervisor who may have no electrical competence what-so-ever, can direct an electrician to do work that is dangerous, I've been in that boat before, in an industrial situation.

But, when things turn to custard, the guy will conveniently forget what he said.

I've always had the idea that I never get anyone to do something that I wouldn't personally find safe or do myself.



Actually, parties like OSHA have caused this somewhat, there is often a knee-jerk reaction from management, so that they can be seen to be "doing something" after an accident, even though they may have caused the accident in the first place, with things like restrictive down-time policies and "work-hot or not work" rubbish.

That's one of the main reasons that all the trademen who worked with me at one of the Ford plants had AVO books with them at all times.
When they were told to do something, they were more that happy to accomodate you...so long as you wrote it down on his pad (along with your name, date and time).
It ended the guys doing so many odd jobs while not getting their assigned work done, because we now knew who kept snagging them to do stuff that was not on the official to-do list.
Turns out that almost 100% of our problems were the Supervisors/Managers who thought these guys had nothing better to do than their tons of little jobs.
Once that was implimented and the guys knew that they wouldn't get in trouble so long as they could tell the boss what they had been spending all day on...and who told them to do it...that most of the timewasting sidetrack jobs stopped.
A great system, but a real shame that it was the only way to control the people who thought they knew everything.

AVO - Avoid Verbal Orders

Yeah ghost,
But it shouldn't have to be like that.

I can see what you are saying and yes 9/10ths of the time, Management causes these problems.

Oddly enough, all the "little" jobs happen to be the most dangerous, like "change that lamp in that 500W halogen that we had installed last week, you might not be able to lean your ladder up against the pole because it's only 1" galv pipe and it's also 6ft above the roof, but have a go anyway, see how you go with that"

In a situation like that, I would hand the lamp back and say, "see how you go with that one, sweetheart, I like being able to walk"

Actually, the fitting this clown was talking about was a 500W Metal Halide fitting that had a bad ballast.
I cut the mast off and welded a new one on, the other one was far too high, the roof was 50ft off the ground.

When they can't deny having given the order, they call it "malicious compliance", saying that the subordinate shouldn't have complied because said subordinate knew it was going to go wrong!

Isn't that what they call a vicious circle?

Then again, here we have a multu-billion pound "safety" industry that has balooned beyond reason in Europe to ludicrous levels of stupidity, linked to an increasingly public willingness to call in the Lawyers.

Examples just this week:

The Post Office refuses to deliver to a house after a mail-lady got savaged by......a kitten!

UK Teachers are issued with a five page long list of safety measures to be implemented when kids use...wait for it!...Prit Stick paper glue!

A UK school ordered adults and children to wear....
HAHAHAHahaha! .... goggles when using Blu-Tack!

A Clown can't wear giant shoes in case he trips over!

At one primary school, a three-legged race was dropped from sports day because it was "too dangerous".

A ban on children being sent out of the classroom to "cool off" was implemented..... "because it is a fire hazard."

Wet grass stops PE lessons.

Children told not to eat sweets for fear of choking.

And then having gone to all that cackamany lunacy... a Headmistress is sacked after... she insisted on finished her lunch and delayed for 10 minutes the call for medical assistance to.... a boy with a broken leg! The mind simply boggles!

...and what about this for utter idiocy...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopi...ty-reasons.html

I used to write down the work order when it involved hot work and got the person who made the decision to work hot to sign it. Once they were faced with responsibility I almost always got the OK to turn off the power. It was almost always to change 347 volt ballast hot. Our OSHA rules require written authorization from the board to change a ballast over 150 volts to ground hot. They almost never give authorization which suits me fine. Any building with 347 volt lighting has to have an annual maintenance permit and agreement with an electrical contractor so we can at least discourage janitors from making ballast changes.

his whole ballast issue goes away when you install the disconnect added to the code a couple cycles ago.
I hope that upgrade is part of any ballast swap.
Now if we could just get NEMA to get the manufactures to standardize a plug ;-)
I could foresee a standard receptacle with different wells for the common voltages and the ballast wired appropriately so whatever you plugged in would end up properly tapped.
Single voltage ballasts would only have pins keyed to the right socket holes.
Inventors, start your CADs