Never doubt it, working in a factory is one of the most dangerous jobs around. Living day to day, completing tasks alongside massive machines with enough power to crush and shape metal, is of course going to make our fleshy, soft bodies quiver with fear. But, if you pay attention during safety training, have a good head on your shoulders, and follow all the rules, you can avoid injury.
Right?
Reddit user, Low_Capital5993, wanted to hear about when things went bad when they asked:
"Redditors who work at factories, what’s the scariest thing you’ve seen a machine do to a person?"
What's the point of all those training sessions about how far away to stand away from the grinding-smashing machine if not to avoid events like this?
Fingers: The Doll
"At a plastic factory a girl reached under a gate to try to pull a part that had got stuck in the mold out while the machine was shooting the next part. Her hand got shut in the mold when it closed and mangled her finger tips."
"Another time that I wasn't there a guy moved a panel off an electrical source to clean around it and got electrocuted. There was a complete breakdown of everyone's safety training. He was knocked unconscious and nobody remembered what they were supposed to do. The supervisor couldn't remember how to dial 911 because he didn't know how to use the phone to get an outside line since the phones were all connected to each other and you had to dial 9+ the number if you wanted to use it like a regular phone. The guy ended up being okay. He shot up after 30 seconds or so and yelled "I'm back". We had to retrain everyone on safety procedure after that."
itzsp3ll3dwrong
Too Late For Boot Day
"saw a coworkers foot get severed by a dock plate that was not secured property. I got red wing safety boots from the company. although I felt bad for the guywhen he came back to work in a wheel chair with his wife to say hi."
merrypooping369
Slow Is Smooth, Smooth is Fast
"I designed a machine that skinned cuts of meat. A guy at the factory we installed it at removed the safety guard so he could work quicker....thing tore his arm off up to the elbow and dragged him in up to the shoulder and held him"
Rumple-skank-skin
"Safety > Speed"
Hour_Wishbone9172
A Smidge Too Far
"I saw an 18 year old use his dominant hand to push dough into a dough slicer. He pushed too far and lost 4 fingers in an instant."
LunchInABoxx
Make The Sense
"Saw a dude slip off a boat, fell about 4.5 feet onto the metal tongue of the trailer and his shin just exploded."
"They drug tested him and he failed with flying colors."
DankJohnson
A Lost Future
"1978, was working in a corrugated paper plant, and there was a young guy my age, summer worker, on his way to a college basketball scholarship in the fall, was running a corrugated paper slitter, think two vertical rollers stacked one above the other with razor sharp knives on each roller, used to cut glued up packs of paper into strips. The infeed had a belt that pulled the packs into the blades and cut them into strips."
"I was not far away from him when I heard crazy screaming, and finally found where it was coming from, he had a couple of layers of the packs stuck together and stalled the machine. Instead of shutting it off, he grabbed the packs and pulled back on them, as he did, the machine torqued back up and pulled his right hand into a pair of the slitter blades, cutting his hand in two lengthwise, and also taking his ring and pinky fingers off. 44 years ago and I can still hear him screaming."
big_d_usernametaken
A body part doesn't have to be lost for an accident to stick with you for the rest of your life.
Next. Next. Next.
"Not a machine exactly but related to the machine."
"A maintenance employee climbed into a large silo that was used to store beverage mix. These silos have nitrogen pumped in on top of the product to achieve positive pressure and maintain sterility."
"The silo was empty of product but still contained nitrogen. First employee climbed in and passed out due to the lack of oxygen. Another employee witnessed this and climbed in to save them. That employee passed out too. I believe a third person did the same thing before someone figured out what was going on and they got help. No one died thankfully."
wrenchandrepeat
Cheap Owners Are Going To Lead To Injuries
"Not sure if this counts but I used to work at a cabinet shop which was an extremely unsafe work environment. Nobody really wore safety glasses since our boss only supplied one pair for the entire shop. Was making a cut on a table saw and this dude who I worked with tossed a piece of wood at the saw thinking it would scare me. Shot up and hit me right in the eye. Almost knocked me out. My iris tore off my cornea causing iris prolapse and now I have what looks like two pupils."
Migitmafia
Tie It Up
"I worked in restoration for a bit and one my coworkers with long hair was using a stationary belt sander. Watched it rip a good size chunk of his scalp right off. Never heard a man scream like that. Still haunts me"
Curiousthrowzone
That's The Sound Of You All Adjusting Your Seats
"A colleague climbed over one piece of racking, went to climb over another and fell with her legs either side of both pieces of racking."
"Her perineum tore."
"Disgustingly, and for me regrettably, she was in a hidden location when this happened, and the manager only found out what had happened when they spotted some blood on the floor and followed it out and to the colleague's car. My colleague was sat crying in her car, unable to reasonably control that vehicle in her attempt to drive to the hospital."
Never Pull From The Bottom
"To this day I don't know why he did it, but we used to have a 7ft vertical stack of heavy plastic boxes for storage."
"Dude wanted something from the bottom box, so instead of removing the higher boxes, he sat cross-legged on the floor just lifting the whole stack with one arm and reaching in with the other."
"I heard a shrill scream and turned and saw everything topple over and bury him."
diggergig
"She's lucky the manager saw the blood trail. She's luckier she hadn't hit her head and died in a corner of the factory which nobody goes near for days on end."
"She spent the afternoon having her notcha stitched up, and a further ten days off."
P0sitive_Outlook
And then, tragically, there are stories like these, the kind we expected when this topic was brought up.
Never Made It To The Hospital
"I watched a guy tip over a fully extended Genie boom. The fall arrest whipped him around like a sling shot and unfortunately he didn't make it to the hospital. On another job (bridge building crew); a foreman tossed a large scrap lag bolt off the deck of the bridge. It hit a man directly in the hard hat 40' below on the ground; he died instantly"
James_a420
Fighting For Life
"Not a factory but a crusher."
"Heavy duty machinery mishap, the guy's head got smashed pretty badly and after 2 weeks of fighting for his life, he didn't make it. I'm still shaken to my core from that."
feisty_throwaway
Gone, Before Anyone Knew
"My father and I worked in a box manufacturing factory. There is a machine called 'the shredder' which is an eight foot wide rotating crusher style blade that pretty much just shreds messed up orders that we can't ship out."
"One thing about the factory it gets super hot in the building. Someone had been working by the shredder and passed out from the heat and had fallen into the shredder and ended up getting chewed up from the waist down. Dead before anyone even noticed he was missing."
huxe-exe
"That’s my current job. We have a shredder not 8 feet wide but has a conveyor part, so much safety around it. About a 8 inch gap to feed board, a little safety wire running parallel to the blades and a pressure plate thing under the belt. That guy was proper unlucky"
Murfiano
Be safe, no matter where you're working. Last thing you want to happen is anything remotely close to what any of these people experienced.
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