I suspect those guys are on some sort of quota system or that they need to fill out some violation forms to make their way up the OSHA food chain.
Whenever I get a call from my local fire department to give my business of one (Me) a complimentary inspection, I am always out of town and don't know when I'll be back.
Nothing good comes from any interaction with government folks.

quote:

Originally posted by 08 Cayenne:
Totally absurd, another half dozen violations of similar severity. They found expired salad dressing in the fridge. I was told that if 2 or more people were hospitalized due to food poisoning that OSHA would treat it as a catastrophic event, basically the same way as a fatality. 3 of them combed the mill for 6 hours. I really should stop here.

Actually the audit was a compliment, its a fucking steel mill and all they could find were crumbs.

That explains to me why every company I've worked for had rules about the refrigerator being cleaned out by the cleaning crew every month with everything thrown out.

In the 12 years that I was the Safety Officer in a municipal government entity, I saw an OSHA agent only once. They don't just come out, they are undermanned. They came to our facility because a suspended employee made up a lie about the auto lift in the mechanics building.
The Field agent didn't find anything wrong with the lift but wrote us up for not having automatic stops on the overhead doors if someone was walking in and the door was closing, it would stop the door. He inspected our Administration building and when he went into the basement, he found a summer intern standing on a chair to pull a Bankers Box off a shelf while a ladder was 10' away. We had to put the remote stops in the auto shop but got a warning about standing on the chair.

quote:

Originally posted by newtoSig765:
Somebody complained to OSHA that the air in a scuba tank we filled "tasted funny", so we got an inspection of our sporting goods store.

The inspector made about half-a-dozen remarks on her walk from the front entrance of the store to the back room where we kept everything, stuff like not having a lip on the floor of the raised storage area (four-foot railing wasn't good enough).

She got to the back of the room, leaned her hand against the air compressor, and said, "Where is the air compressor I came to inspect?"

Despite her dipshittery, we treated her politely, showed her the logs documenting air filter changes, running hours, etc. Finally she said that it checked out, and left. No reported issues.

Later, we found that (1)The customer who complained had a beef with the store's owner, that being the real reason for the complaint, and (2)The tank had actually been filled at another scuba facility, not by us.

Yes, it's not hard to "weaponize" OSHA to achieve diabolical objectives.

I was involved as on-site manager for a company which for several years in a row was the successful bidder for construction projects at the DOE facilities at Albuquerque. One of the things that drove up our costs and impacted our performance schedule was having to constantly play defense against a local DOE bureaucrat who was pissed off that she was not in charge, so she would use OSHA as a bat to inflict problems on her "peer" bureaucrat who was in charge.

Her husband's company (which she co-owned with him) was one of the unsuccessful bidders for these projects.

Yes, she was using the system against itself as a means to make her peer's life miserable. She didn't give a hot damn about the costs involved; wasn't her money that was being pissed away, and if it made the successful bidder reluctant to bid again then so much the better! And of course she didn't give a damn about keeping anybody or anything safe. All she cared about was punishing her competition.

quote:

Originally posted by flesheatingvirus:
I work on a military base and have never seen OSHA around.

I was in the army and stationed in Germany and they came and shut down our motor pool for 3 whole weeks. All over truck batteries being placed directly on the floor/some other misc. stuff.
They don’t fuck around

Unless a fatality or very serious violation osha couldn't shut you down. I'd probably tell them to fuck off. Their like metermaids, a nuisance and job is to collect revenue. Now the DEP is a different story, those boys have teeth.

quote:

Originally posted by bionic218:
Don't take it too hard, it's their job to find something. Even if it's only crumbs.

Always leave crumbs. My dad had an IRS audit once. In providing backup for his charitable contributions, he couldn't find any for a particular contribution. The auditor was pacified. Then my dad found backup for contributions he made, but had not claimed that totaled 6 times the disputed amount.

Ah OSHA, our Safety Dir and VP had a conference with them over a supposed violation called in by disgruntled past employee. Six months of investigation....nothing
investigation....nothing

I am surprised they don't just follow my teams around....no matter how hard we try they still screw up. My safety guys are good but its hard to watch 30 under 30 riggers every second.