45 Times Workers Decided To Throw Safety Regulations Out Of The Window

Occupational safety is not something to be taken lightly or messed around with. For instance, you’re only making things worse for yourself if you’re fixing a piece of equipment on a ledge of the 28th floor without a harness. We are talking about colossal risks, people. Not only can you make life-threatening decisions, but you also end up with your picture in the subreddit group named “Safety First!”

This corner of Reddit has around 725,000 loyal members who upload images of such instances and remind people to follow the safety regulations at work. We’d say it’s a good thing to do since it seems to work pretty well. On that note, here are 45 such disasters that will astonish you and make you super-conscious about workplace safety!

Flamethrower?

That looks like a flamethrower, but let us tell you that it’s not what it seems. It has a specific purpose, and if we can be a bit delicate here, we’d say it’s a foolish purpose. They’re using this setup as a heater for a job site!

Well, we’d say that that’s the worst equipment you could use to set up a heater where you’re working. Just look at how combustible it is! Anyways, what could go wrong? Almost everything could go wrong here! We can’t understand why people take such steps.

I’m alright!

Pulling off a stunt like this at your workplace requires much more than courage. If you look at how this guy is pulling it off, it’s almost like he does those kinds of things daily. It’s unbelievable, and it’s dangerous.

The guy on the roof holding the ladder also looks like someone with a lot of experience under his belt. If there’s one thing that we could all learn from this picture, it is to never pull off stunts like these.

Cost-cutting

There you go. That’s what you call cost-cutting at its best. We think something like this would come in handy when tow trucks are too expensive to reach. But, carrying a car that way is a bit touch-and-go, if you will.

Also, tow trucks being expensive is one thing, but what about all the other damages in this situation? After this, there’ll surely be a need for a paint job and other repairs. Even the truck would have to be serviced. Wouldn’t that cost a pretty penny?

Cost-cutting part-2

Just right now, we saw how cost-cutting could go horribly wrong. Many of you would’ve imagined that things just couldn’t get worse than that. But, it turns out that they do. Here’s an image that simply takes it to the next level.

This time, it’s a little forklift lifting a van! Well, “little” seems like the wrong word for this forklift because it’s raising a van that’s way heavier in comparison. That’s one strong vehicle. But it’s risky, and the van could tumble down.

We have a situation

Let us explain what’s happening here because all those signs are confusing. This is an exposed thermostat in an office. Around five to six people have already walked past it unknowingly and ended up cutting themselves as a result.

After many such incidents, the employees decided to raise a complaint about the situation. The next day, they learned the problem had been solved. But, when they came to work the next morning, they realized this was a lame solution!

Near miss

Sheesh! It’s good that this guy was alert enough to see that screw poking out. He also took a picture and made a little joke about it on the subreddit. Had he been a few more inches tall, the story would’ve been entirely different.

This is really dangerous, though, and he needs to be super careful. He shouldn’t ever think of getting his head scratched by that thing when both his hands are busy. Last but not least, who puts a screw in the wrong direction?

Dedication

That’s what you call a group of men who are dedicated to their job. It looks like they’re ready to go to any extent to fix that chandelier, and it doesn’t matter to them if they end up risking their lives in the middle of the process.

We can finally see that it takes many men to fix a light bulb in reality! Also, we’re not chandelier experts, but we think these kinds of chandeliers are mounted on a cable system, which means they can be lowered. We wonder why these guys took the other route.

Just regular work

The way this ladder has been kept, it’s almost like it’s telling us to move along and not stare at it because there’s nothing unsafe or unusual going on over here. Well, in reality, there is. Everything about this image and the ladder is hazardous and unusual.

As people who are viewing this image, it makes us feel uncomfortable. Also, if there’s something that’s a bit too alarming in this image other than this ladder, it’s the fireplace on the left side that’s fully made of wood.

Larger than life

We don’t know what these workers are trying to accomplish with those huge cones. They’re so huge that they could come in between a person using the footpath! The size of these cones must be changed. Take a look for yourself.

On a serious note, though, we’re no experts, but we think these cones need to be bigger. These are the kind of cones we see being used for those remote-controlled car races. Well, technically, they’re still cones.

Doomed

Imagine that you’re working at your office. It’s a typical day, but out of nowhere, there’s a fire or any other kind of immediate emergency that requires you and all the other employees to evacuate the building. You decide to use the emergency door since that’s the safest way out.

But, when you open the door, you see this. Now that’s a horrible situation. This is no prank. It is the emergency exit in an office building. What are the employees of this office supposed to do during emergencies? Sit and cry?

Convenience on point

You’re about to look at an image of how convenient things could be during emergencies. Well, we’re not talking about the lives of the people in emergencies. We’re talking about the people responsible for specific tasks that help during emergencies.

As you can see in this image, things won’t be convenient for people during emergencies here. Instead, it will be convenient for the people who installed this telephone and those responsible for its maintenance. Great job, guys.

Daredevil-ish

Can you take a guess at what you’re looking at over here? Here’s a hint. It’s not what you think at all. That building is a college, and that thing is the fire exit for that college! It’s simply outrageous.

Well, we’re confused about this college now. Is this a college for cats? Because cats could be the only creatures, who’d be able to use that fire exit safely. How are people even supposed to get down from that thing?

Regular things

Yup. This is just another day at the office for this bear. He’s taking a stroll, supervising the employees, checking out the machines, and ensuring everything is going as per the planning. On a serious note, a bear is the last thing you’d want at your workplace.

Those guys are meant to be in the forest and not at work. We wonder how this guy ended up here? Also, since we have an image, that means that someone was actually courageous enough to click a picture of this bear on its morning walk. That’s crazy.

Mowing

This is probably one of the most unorthodox ways to mow your lawn. It also looks like one of the laziest ways to do that. It requires a lot of effort, too, since there are two vehicles involved in synchronization here.

We have the before pic here, with the lawn mower and the crane. But, we need an after pic to see what happened after this experiment. We doubt that it would’ve gone well. It looks like a picture taken moments before a huge disaster.

Hypocrisy?

This poster is excellent and conveys a legit message, but we can’t help but notice the amount of hypocrisy in this case. So, the poster does talk about thinking about safety first, but that’s not what this guy is displaying in this situation.

That guy seems to be risking it all by putting up a poster about thinking about safety. It would surely pay off well, but the risk in this situation looks super unnecessary. A ladder can pretty much do the job here. We don’t need to tell you that.

Innovation

It’s said that we only use a tenth of our brain, but that’s a myth. Here’s what happens when you use 100% of your brain. These glasses are obviously built for a person to protect their eyes from the harmful chemicals they’re exposed to while working in a lab.

But, an intelligent person thought of putting these little holes in for proper ventilation. Firstly, since when do you need ventilation for something that just covers your eyes? Also, now that these holes exist, how helpful are these glasses?

Maintaining the image

The person who posted this image on the subreddit captioned it by saying that this fire alarm is from the hotel they stayed in. The hotel has kept the plastic covers on their fire alarms. It’s almost as good as new.

By not removing these plastic covers, it seems like the hotel is trying to make it look as if their fire alarms have been recently bought. We don’t know what they’d accomplish with that, but we can only suggest one thing. Remove those covers!

Creativity at its best

Although he has a little ladder backed by a plank of wood with its two ends supported by a stair and, well, the ladder, he’s balancing on a thread! Firstly, let’s talk about the setup. There’s a giant ladder on the bottom stairs.

We don’t know how well that ladder balances, but the plank has been placed on the ladder and a stair at the top. Then there’s this tiny ladder balancing on it. Then, there’s our genius clamping the broken railing with one leg on the ladder and the other knee practically ON the wall!

Going all-in

Man. This guy is aggressive. It looks like he needs to get the job done as quickly as possible so that he can take care of other responsibilities. This is an aspirational but dangerous image of this man working in Peru at the time.

Well, if you think about it, it could be used as a pretty good meme template. If not, it can be used as a perfect poster for a parody movie. To be more specific, an action parody where there are a lot of power drills.

Necessity

We hope you all have come across the saying, “Necessity is the mother of invention.” If there is one saying that could describe everything that’s going on in this image, it would definitely be that. These guys are putting in a lot of effort.

It looks like that’s what you have to do when the crane can’t reach the height to send that piece of equipment above. When that can’t happen, you put a crane on the crane to do the job. Voila! It all makes sense now.

Playing with life

This worker’s job isn’t fixing those wires or anything close to that. By the looks of it, his job is to risk his life for no reason. We say no reason because he’s risking it all when there are clearly safer alternatives!

And, instead of going for those safer alternatives, this guy actually thought of making his friend hold a massive ladder and balance it while he’s on top of the ladder! He’s at least ten meters in the air. That would be a catastrophe.

One last climb

Here’s some information about what’s happening in this image. The guy you see works at a church; this photo is taken from the inside. Basically, he looks happy about the fact that he’s climbing to the heavens on a ladder.

Firstly, we hope he doesn’t get hurt with whatever he’s doing because he could have a pretty fatal fall. Secondly, we have no clue about what he’s doing up there. What is he even trying to fix that couldn’t be done more easily?

A symbiotic relationship

We call it a symbiotic relationship because all the ladders are helping each other, and so are the humans in the image. There are two guys. One on the bottom, providing the support, and one at the top, doing the job.

Apart from the guys, there are four ladders. The first ladder at the bottom is huge. The second ladder is tiny, but it is somehow balanced and helps the first ladder stand. The third is horizontally ledged for the guy to stand on. The fourth is useless.

Chopping it down

Take a look at this image of a guy casually chopping down a submerged tree from a boat while another person holds one half of the tree by tying it with a rope. Oh, and while that happens, there are two bystanders looking at the act.

It looks legit, though. But what could go wrong? Let’s think about it. Well, for starters, the guy on the boat is using an electric chainsaw, which could be the worst thing to use for himself and for the fish in the water.

No hat

If this guy chose to wear this bucket on his head, although he looks stupid, it might have been the only option that was left for him at that moment. He might have forgotten his hard hat since those are important for such tasks.

When you forget your hard hat, you end up wearing a bucket on your head. We don’t know how well they’ll do the job, and they’ll surely reduce your range of vision. But, it’s better than wearing nothing on your head.

A lot of danger

This image has perhaps the highest amount of danger as compared to everything that we’ve seen and will see later on. Let us explain first. This guy thought of working with the lights on because he couldn’t find the breaker to cut the power.

Firstly, he’s working on live electricity while he’s on a metal ladder with one end immersed in a swimming pool. Electricity and water are not something you’d wanna mix. Also, he won’t have a safe fall in the water if he falls. He could break his neck if he lands on the lane ropes.

Why?

Why would you form a human ladder to paint the walls? Understandably, the stairwell could be a bit tough for a ladder, but putting your foot on your buddy’s head and standing on him sounds more challenging than standing on a ladder on the stairwell!

There would have been some other way for these guys in this situation. They could have applied an extension to the paintbrush and made things work. Although that would’ve been difficult, it’s at least the safe thing to do.

Crash landing

First, if a person falls down this hole, they’re going down. The cone is useless here since it won’t be visible from above the ground, and it’s still just a cone! If they don’t go down, they will have an awful landing anyway.

That’s probably a sinkhole that looks to be protected by a cone when in reality, it isn’t. We’re surprised as to how the cone is still there! Maybe the concrete isn’t worthy of the cone. Also, the shape of that circle is too perfect for a random sinkhole!

For the photo

We seriously have one question here. Did these people create this mess just for the photo, or is something serious happening here? Also, what’s the purpose of hauling the bulldozer on that rubble? It’s gonna be tough coming down from that.

Instead, the bulldozer should’ve worked on clearing the rubble. Oh! We completely forgot the guy at the top! Out of everything that’s happening and out of the people involved here, he’s the guy pulling the biggest stunt. We’re genuinely in shock.

Messed up

The employee must’ve thought it would just take a second, so they don’t need to clock out. But, he didn’t know what was there for him when he opened the doors of doom. Now, the mess is so huge that he can literally take a nap in it.

If you notice, a sign on the right side of the image reads, “Do not operate if under the age of 18.” From the looks of it, it feels as if this particular person isn’t 18 since he clearly did a terrible job operating the machine.

Heights of stupidity

Nope. This image isn’t of a contestant performing a stunt on the reality show Fear Factor. It’s something very different. It’s an AC-repair guy who’s fixing an AC compressor. Can you guess the height in this image? We are shook!

Well, here it is. The guy is fixing the compressor on a ledge on the 28th floor! Even looking at this image gives us chills. So yes, viewer discretion is advised. We don’t know what would happen if there’s a little slip. We hope he’s insured.

Disgusting

This one has to be one of the most disgusting images we have ever come across. It’s true that this guy is somehow using a weirdly creative but non-slip and non-conductive approach. However, it’s quite sad for the dead fish.

Nobody is buying those fish now. The fisherman who caught those fish caught them for nothing. Also, this loser probably crushed the fish that were exactly underneath his feet. Let’s not forget that those shoes are nasty. Please, take this as a lesson of what NOT to do.

A modern solution

We can imagine what could’ve happened here. The employers told one of their employees that they have to empty a certain piece of equipment every five minutes if the amount of rain passes a certain level. And then, this happens.

The smart guy decided to use a vessel for help. We can only imagine how many times he’d have to empty that little vessel to make things work. Also, because there’s a switch in the center, how about just turning that thing off?

To put your head in the lion’s mouth

Putting your head in the lion’s mouth is a saying that refers to deliberately landing yourself in a perilous situation, like this gentleman over here. This guy is sleeping inside a wood chipper. If you have seen those gory movies or played those video games, you know how vicious these things are.

It’s cool if he’s the guy with the control and the access to the wood chipper. But again, we don’t think it takes much to operate one of these things. He really shouldn’t be doing that. All it takes is the push of a few buttons.

In the danger zone

When will people stop risking their lives for tasks like these? From the looks of it, this lady is cleaning the glass windows on her balcony from the outside. We’re pretty sure that she must have had options that were better and safer than this one.

Also, according to the subreddit, this lady is twenty meters above ground, which is quite a long way to fall. But, here’s the big question. Is this risky window cleaning a one-time thing or an occasional thing? More like once a month or a few times a year?

No harness? No problem.

That’s probably what this guy might have said when he was asked to put those walls up. We surely don’t think that the employers asked this person to do these dare devilish deeds. To be honest, so much could go wrong here.

These risks should certainly not be taken, but we can’t refuse that this guy is stupidly courageous. It seems like the other person is looking out for him, but what good can he do from that position if things go wrong?

Before technological advancement

What’s happening here is pretty risky, but it’s also something that couldn’t be avoided in most cases. You are looking at a cameraman doing his work. He’s filming. In this case, we’d say that drones would do just as great a job.

And if that’s the case, why does the cameraman need to risk his life with such a stunt? Well, here’s the thing. This image was taken before drones could help with filming stuff. So, there’s not much that they could do here.

Little help from a friend

Maybe after taking that big of a risk and putting in so much effort, all this guy needed to finish his task was a little boost from his friend, which is what he got. But, that still doesn’t change the fact that this is pretty dangerous.

The friend over there is literally withstanding the other guy’s weight and the ladder. Talk about being strong, huh? Those ladders easily weigh above 20 lbs, plus the weight of that person could be anywhere from 140-200 lbs. It’s an impressive weight.

Easy fix

The person who took this image and posted it in the subreddit group came across that telephone pole when they were going for a run. It looks like the saying about duct tape is legit. The saying is that duct tape can fix everything!

We don’t know if duct tape is fixing this telephone pole and preventing a potential threat in that process, but it’s certainly trying to do something. It’s certainly not effective, so something must be done to fix this poor telephone pole.

Paint job

Well, nothing special here. It’s just an image of two people who do not care the slightest bit about their skin or their respiratory health. Spray-painting what appears to be a cycle’s body into a neon-green shade is what matters the most.

The guy painting must be getting paid for it. But, we wonder how much the guy holding the thing is getting paid? He should be compensated, right? He’s being painted green as well! He’s also risking his skin and health.

Take care of yourself

This sign has to be one of the most useless but sympathizing posts of all time. Those guys are literally telling you to fall down carefully if you slip. These guys are so caring about the people walking on their floors!

Honestly, that’s just evil. How about upping the safety measures and making sure that the floor doesn’t make people walking on it slip at all? Nope. They’d rather put up a sign that asks you to fall carefully if you slip.

As high as possible

Firstly, what is this guy doing up there? Is he trying to find something, fix something, or is it just for the sake of the photo? Secondly, how did he even get up there? Yes. He is on a ladder, but a skinny pole uncomfortably supports it.

How he got up there is still a mystery. Irrespective of all the questions and no matter what he’s doing, it’s a risky and stupid thing to do. Also, the angle of the photo makes it look like a vertical roof, but we’re pretty sure that it’s sloped.

Extra support

Till now, we have seen quite a few images where people are trying to support the ladder for the person on the top of it. People are doing their job this time by holding a ladder, but another ladder has joined the scene.

It looks more dangerous than those times when the ladder just has the support of one person. How are we supposed to trust a non-living thing that has just been planted at a spot? Well, unless there is some precision. It’s still dangerous.

The art of balancing

Let us give you some backstory here. This guy is a carpenter who was hired to replace the top deck of the house by the house owners. But, when the owners came out to find him, he was seen balancing over those rusty nails, as you can see below.

He’s also smiling in this picture, so we don’t really know what’s going on in that mind of his. Is he trying to contact tetanus, or is he so proud of the fact that he got a tetanus shot that he’s willing to risk it?

High-risk maneuver

Seriously, no matter how hard he tried, this guy just couldn’t find a single thing that could support that ladder. There’s no object in this world that’s riskier than that. From the looks of it, it has a 99.999% chance of falling.

So, it makes this guy a fortunate person to be in the 0.001% of the people who could make it happen in such risky conditions. Or, maybe it just looks dangerous, and in reality, the legs of the ladder are locked between the rollers? You never know.