Depends on their relationship. If my mate did it to me, its funny as hell (but im still going home to change), if someone im not a fan of at work did it, the its a shitty thing to do
Problem is, you'd quickly run out of people to hire.
I don't know exactly why, but construction workers are all like this. Bad taste pranks and OSHA violations as a way of life.
I don’t know a single construction worker that would do this. You'd get fired and sued instantly. Maybe in deep redneck country you'd get a guy like this, and then he'd be right back in jail for the 3rd time that year. Every operator I've met takes safety more serious than anything else
Yeah, even if you do everything perfectly because you’re the best operator of all time, other factors can change. Maybe he stands up at the wrong moment. Maybe there’s a wild animal in front of him and he needed to jump back to escape, but the equipment is in the way. Maybe there’s freak mechanical failure in your rig and it malfunctions to do something other than what you told it to. You can’t know, but you should do everything as though you expect the equipment to break
A kid was just recently killed like this. His friend thought it would be funny to bump him with the bucket, but lost control of the swing and crushed him against a car.
And they act all incredulous as you're shoving them off the work site saying "What'd I do? It was just a prank man. Are you really firing me over that? What the hell?"
Yeah a prank like this got a young father killed earlier this year. He was pinned between the bucket and rock box, and was only supposed to be “tapped” as a prank.
Don’t do this. I have 7 folks who do on-site work for developers daily and one of my biggest fears while I was boots on the ground and for them is getting struck with a large machine. There are enough accidental strikes a year, let’s not push it any further.
A friend of mine lost 4 fingers from a "prank" similar to this.
He was on the ground stabilizing a load on a forklift, the operator thought he'd give him a scare by jerking forward, ended up crushing his hand against a steel beam.
Had a similar experience. I was working in a 'work basket'? about 2m up at a manhole. Operator fumbled with his helmet and pushed the controls forward and pinned my arm against the manhole cover. Needless to say i pulled him out of the forklift after i got down. It was an accident but could have been prevented.
When I worked in a tool and die shop a coworker had a story about a prank where someone cut the power to an electromagnet while their coworker was moving a large plate of thick steel. The plate bounced when it hit the ground and chopped/crushed the guys legs between the knee and ankle.
I’m sorry that happened to your friend. I had a friend break his whole hand bc a driller told him to grab the hammer rods on a drill rig so he could feel that they’ve hit refusal. The rod bounced, rig bounced off of the rod, and the hammer came down on his hand.
He considers himself lucky all things considered for our line of work. Witnessing someone turn on a high pressure air hose without anything attached as a prank also resulted to one of our guys having the back of his skull sewn up. And that’s just an air line. Heavy equipment is not a toy, despite how fun/cool it is to operate and be around.
Almost lost (at least) four fingers in a similar accident, but it wasn't a prank
I was at the scout camp. Me (16) and a dude (14) were cutting down a tree. We both turned around after hearing a whistle. I then put my hands on the trunk and said "I think we should cut here".
The dude most likely didn't hear it, as he turned around and planted the axe 1-2cm from my fingers. I legit felt the air passing near them.
We both freaked out, but on the moment I didn't really think about it. Ten years later, I get shivers thinking about how I could have lost a significant portion of my hobbies (writing, rock climbing, calisthenics) just due to an idiot doing idiotic things.
I still see him around. We're not close friends, but we climb together sometimes. I don't think he even remembers that accident.
At my primary school (junior school) a kid I lived down the road from put his hand in the hinge of an auto closing door as a dare or something (call of the void maybe) and had all four fingers on his right hand crushed. They had to be amputated at the second knuckle.
When he was in hospital he spent the whole of his recovery learning to write and draw with his left hand and when he got back to school he was pretty much fully proficient. Not trying to diminish your near-accident at all but you wouldn’t necessarily have lost all three of those hobbies (I’d say rock climbing would be the one most at risk).
As an H&S dude for a company that does excavation and site servicing the struck by equipment incident anxiety travels hand in hand with the buried alive anxiety.
Too many guys get complacent around heavy equipment and dirt. It's important to remember that 1 cubic metre of wet compressed soil can weigh upwards of 1500 kg . If you have a machine designed to move multiple cubic metres of soil, it'll wreck your day right quick if you get hit by it.
Either way, slow down the work and focus on getting it done safely and with quality. The risk vs reward simply isn't worth rushing work.
If they fire the operator who did that they'll be fine but would likely just settle out of court. It could be a vehicular assault change for the operator of the machine. Pushing someone with heavy machinery has to be some kind of assault
Any reasonable foreman would tell you to go home, have a hot shower, get changed and come back. Or if it’s toward the end of the day, just take off early, and you’d be paid for a full day for either of these.
We’ve got labour laws and the guy giving orders very typically wouldn’t prioritize safety over a little bit of work because it’s his ass if he does, plus bosses and foremen might be dicks sometimes but everyone has at least some sense of being reasonable. Every boss I’ve ever had would agree with me.
The guy in the excavator is getting a fucking strip torn out of his ass by the foreman if they find out he did that though.
This sort of hazing shit is the reason I never wanted to work in this kind of all male environment. Construction, factory work, armed services: they're all rife with it. I just want to go to work and do the job without a lot of hassle and fucking around, y'know?
(For context: I did a summer in a bottling plant back in the 90s which was enough to fill me in on how things were.)
EDIT: I'm aware that all female environments are no picnic either but, by definition (I'm a bloke), I've never really worked in one of those so can't speak from first hand experience. The closest I ever got was a technical recruitment secondment in an HR team - all female - in a bigger company. HR had its own enclosed office, but they were all very nice to me and there was never any hazing or bitchiness.
A coworker once lost his grip on a load of lumber we were carrying, and it smashed two of my fingers, obliterating one of my nails and embedding it into my skin. I had the poor judgement to offhandedly mention that my “nail was broken” and for the rest of my time there people would be like “oh you gonna break a nail again?” constantly. Bro it was that dudes weak ass limp grip that caused it why am I getting flak for 8 months.
I feel like they're conflating someone complaining about a fake nail breaking off, vs someone breaking their actual nail (far more painful, and pain that's actually long lasting).
All that is to say, I think the flak you received was unfair, and you have my sympathy, that must have really hurt and was a valid complaint.
Omg, one time my husband and I had just started a hike and I somehow caught my nail on something and it got ripped half way down my nail bed, was dripping blood, and the nail was still hanging on my finger. We decided to just not do the hike so I could cut the nail off and wrap it properly. A guy we saw on the way up who was camping asked why we were done soon. My husband just says “she broke a nail” and then offers no further context. I was furious and thought it was pretty funny.
It's also why I imagine I was never able to maintain friendships with groups of guys, cuz I am 100% not the "ha ha I treat you like crap cuz I like you" type of person that seems to be necessary to maintain those kinds of friendships. I get reminded of this whenever I pass by the "guysjustbeingdudes" subs and its type. Being mean to each other is seen as normal and funny for many men.
I've found that the best way to keep people from pranking you in thise environments is to either not react at all, or violently overreact. And don't engage with pranking others, at all.
This is a valid strategy but it only works if you have the mass, strength, and technique to follow through. I lacked all of these back in the 1990s. Even so much as threatening violence without any capability to follow through is a sure fire way to get your ass kicked, or worse.
Many years hence I did discover that being huge and jacked does very much change the way people treat you (as well as doing wonders for your own confidence), and as a result I did - for a while - nurse some regrets that I hadn't dedicated myself to strength training in my late teens and through my 20s.
I knew a guy who grew up in the Phillipines, and he used to get bullied by a bigger kid. Tried to fight back, got his ass kicked. One day, he got so pissed off that while the bigger kid was holding him, he bit him. Like full on sunk his teeth into the dude's side and tried to chew on his kidney. Didn't get picked on after that.
Not to mention that excavator blade could have easily smeared that guy into a bloody pancake if the dipshit operator accidentally pushed just a little too hard on the stick while playing his "prank".
Just like guns, heavy machinery are not fucking toys.
I think what you are looking for isn't unreasonable. In fact, I'd say that most people feel the same way.
I've been in a all-male environment (landscaping supply) and it was awful. I was def out of place, but I was desperate for a job. Most of those guys didn't even have a HS diploma and I had a degree and certifications. We didn't have much in common, at all.
However all that said, all I want is to come into the office, work alone and leave. If 95% of my day is being by myself, I consider that a win.
I worked for a company that has a big warehouse. New guy starts either that day or the day prior. New guy is doing his thing on a forklift when he sees one of our big big bosses crossing the walk zone ahead. The new guy thinks how funny it'd be if he suddenly zoomed the forklift at big big boss and then brake suddenly at the last moment. So he did. And he laughed.
The boss tore into this guy, fired immediately, yanked him out of the forklift, cursed him out and escorted him to his locker to get his stuff. New guy wasn't laughing anymore.
I didn't see this unfold because I was upstairs but I heard ALLLLLLL about it straight after from the other techs who saw it all and then having to sit through many safety courses afterwards.
Our bosses were pretty chill guys and gals but safety was always number 1.
People drastically underestimate how powerful heavy machinery can be. Terrifying how many people I've seen looking/playing with their phone as they walk inbetween the backside of a forklift and a wall as the lift is moving towards the wall. Like they want to become human pancakes.
not just that but zooming a forklift and not watching where you're going, hell just zooming in one is just dangerous. The driver is probably focused on the boss so anyone or anything could have stepped out in front of him in his "blind spot"
I used to work the truck gate at a warehouse, workers would try and use the truck entrance as a exit so they could bypass the required screening when exiting the facility. They'd trundle out, face in their phones, and walk right in front of trucks. One night I almost knocked a girl's teeth out when I closed the gate and she whips around the corner looking at her phone, got the arm up just before she got chopped. Didn't even look up.
I did that for five years, and the fact that I never saw an injury is still amazing to me. People have no idea what danger actually is.
Oh no doubt, the whole operation was assclowns and dipshits, it was ridiculous. Lots of great stories, and when that client fired me it was the greatest day ever.
The amount of momentum a forklift carries is unreal. It's not a car hitting you at 15mph with its nice crumple zones and designs to avoid human damage.
A forklift is basically an immovable object travelling at high speeds, it does not budget even a millimeter if you happen to stand near it while it whips around.
People at work joke at me because of how wary I am around the fork trucks but after 10+ years of being near them, I have a healthy respect for how much damage they can do. I keep my distance. I know what it looks like when you hit the gas instead of the brake and suddenly panic as you smash into something.
Had a guy just like the story the other dude told in here where a coworker hit the gas as I was crossing and I had to jump out the way.
He laughed, and I should have reported his ass immediately but I think I was too shaken at the time. People are fucking dumb.
They were great bosses! I worked there for many years before moving away and they were happy to be references for me and one even would text me every few months to check I'd settled in to the new house/city/job etc okay. Just real nice people. Unless you were a safety hazard.
I bet you 1000$ that the guy being "pranked" has some kind mild cognitive disabillity and "pranksters" bully him because he doesn't know how to fight back.
You're being down voted but I have seen this at places I worked.
Reporting it gets you into trouble because generally the perpetrators are good employees and it will never happen in front of someone who matters.
The person with a cognitive disability was even fired when an expensive piece of equipment broke but it wasn't his fault. It was the "valuable employee" who's negligence caused its failure.
I am a former welder/fabricator. The last place I worked was filled to rhe absolute BRIM with shitheads. I mean honest-to-god racist nazis, sexist domestic abusers, and pedophiles.
I have stories man ... christ do I have stories.
But ...... I have to say there IS one thing I miss about working there.
I never felt guilty about taking my frustrations out on them. Like, it was an actual joy to be able to tear a coworker's head off(figuratively speaking, of course) for the stupid shit they did, knowing I would never suffer any consequences for it.
Every time I see a dude taking shit about how dumb white collar workers are for taking out loans and how the trades will never be automated, I think of videos like this.
Blue collar guys in these forums always brag about being degenerates who haze new guys but when their industry is flooded with mature workers with leadership skills, they lose their jobs to them. Why the fuck would an employer keep pieces of shit who can’t keep their hands and machines to themselves when there’s new people to hire?
The ultimate perk of white collar jobs is that we are not exposed to dozens of potential accidents each day and we don't have to endure years of inhaling/touching hazardous materials. Living longer is the good part.
No shit. If someone even touched me with their bucket on accident, I'd drag their ass out of the cab. Its so easy to get hurt or killed by a dumbass operator who doesnt take their job seriously or realize how dangerous for people around them their equipment is.
Operators get cocky and over confident too easily, and forget that they can literally kill a coworker in half a second , even in a little machine like this.
I've seen this exact thing play out on a construction side across the street to where I went to school. Foreman was called and broke both arms of the excavator man with a claw hammer. Police came, ambulance was called, it was a wild fucking ride.
Must've been 13 years ago by now, it was wild. We could see the whole thing from our classroom windows, november, early afternoon, mild rain but cold. I'll never forget the screaming of the excavator man when the claw hammer went to town.
He was sitting inside the excavator, foreman climbed in and immediately went ham on him. We all could hear the screams, he couldnt really run since he was in the seat and the foreman was hunched over him.
As far as I know jail for assault and, unconfirmed but I do believe it, he's out and working again due to good behavior (In Jail, not in the cockpit of the excavator that is)
He went to jail but at least from what I heard he's out due to good behavior and may even work in the construction field again?
I mean yeah its psycho to go claw hammer on a dude but he was looking out for his crew.
A claw hammer is very common around homes. You probably use nails a lot, and for most other hammering needs you can still use them. So to you they probably are a "regular hammer".
I'm not sure that there actually exists a "normal hammer", but claw hammers are specifically designed for small nails.
Edit: This is probably true for every tool that has existed since antiquity. The only variant of the hammer that is truly unspecialized is the humble rock. Every hammer we've made since has been made for a particular purpose.
This is grounds for termination and that excavator operator would get the shit kicked out of him. I've seen cops show up to construction sites many many many times due to fights. There's a quick FAFO ratio with construction guys
In the commercial union construction world that I belong to, this would get that operator instantly fired, blacklisted from working for the contractor, and probably drug tested too.
As a heavy equipment operator. This isnt funny.
This is you’re immediately fired, black listed in the field, and depending on the crew.. probably gonna catch a beating or charges.
Dont screw around with heavy equipment on a job site.
This one made me laugh because there's no real harm done and it's not really dangerous. But pushing someone into a puddle is just taking it too far. It's way being just being a joke. There's no way anyone would be ok with this happening.
I have seen that too there's a reason you should never be underneath any of that stuff or why if you are, barriers have to be erected. A lot of people who have never done anything in construction see a prank video and don't realize how many people die a year from someone doing some "prank" with heavy machinery.
As our lifelong heavy equipment operator it's the stupidest thing on earth to play around like their toys, one wrong move. And you just broke that guy's back. You slip and you push the bucket down and you crush him to death. It takes literally nothing. The amount of injuries I've seen is terrifying over the dumbest little things.
And it's documented? On my site the operator would be fired and the company would try to reach a settlement with the worker so he doesn't sue. This is very very illegal.
I worked construction for about 4 months when I was 18. One time we had an extra escavator operator on site, where I was supposed to be in the hole where he was digging, making sure he was at the right depth. Nothing odd about it, I had done it many times before.
This new guy, accidentally tapped my right leg with the bucket. I didn’t think much about it. Then I hear my foreman yelling from across the building site. I’ve never seen someone get that verbally fucked before
Its shitty all round, but i think the thing most construction workers would be pissed about is the use of the excavator bucket to push him. One wrong move and the guy's lower leg could have been crushed into ground meat. If there's one thing anyone in that industry knows it's do not fuck around with the heavy machinery.
At least, in a professional environment anyway. You'll see dumbasses doing stupid shit with excavators all the time. A lot of them end up getting beat with hammers for fucking up and injuring someone.
That’s a nice and easy report to fill. The excavator operator wouldn’t be working with the company by the end of the day if that happened where I work.
Doesn’t even have to be misuse of large plant to cause an injury. We had a guy on site who lost all his legs and an arm when he was deliberately handed the wrong size handsaw.
So many people here really don't understand Scottish humour lol
If you're good enough mates, this is bonding
If not, you're getting your chops slapped aboot
Our humour is very similar to viking culture of embracing death, darkness and sadness and laughing in its face ... hence how in Scotland, this "prank" is still dumb and shitey but can get a real genuine laugh and bond out of because of our cultures humour
I'm all for workplace banter. In fact I normally advocate it. But....you don't fuck with heavy machinery, ever. Operator needs a savage bearing, final warning and forced to do a full ticket (no refresher for him) again. If he's got form, fired on the spot.
I dropped a bucket load in the back of truck once and in doing so the hydraulic line burst and the arm just dropped.
Now imagine that happening in this situation...
Yeah this is a "prank" that becomes "enjoy being a man down I'm going home".
[removed]
i'd wait for that operator to take a shit in the dixi and shake the living hell out of that thing
Push it on it's door
restrain the door from opening with a lot of tape and then push it down a cliff
A whole company down when osha shows up and the law suit hits
Ya this isn’t even funny. I’d be throwing hands.
Depends on their relationship. If my mate did it to me, its funny as hell (but im still going home to change), if someone im not a fan of at work did it, the its a shitty thing to do
Thats silly, you'd lose every bit of leverage you have in this situation. Control yourself better.
Instead of throwing hands, pretend to be hurt and enjoy the paid time off.
Three, the one holding the camera needs some time off as well.
I honestly am surprised that didn't happen. Different culture I guess.
If there's a foreman on site he needs a slap. You don't fuck with heavy machinery
Right? I was thinking I would go home for the rest of the day if that were me too. This is too much for a “prank” at work.
This is a blatant safety violation, id take the lawsuit
Guy doing this should absolutely be fired frankly. I would not feel safe to work with them.
Problem is, you'd quickly run out of people to hire.
I don't know exactly why, but construction workers are all like this. Bad taste pranks and OSHA violations as a way of life.
I don’t know a single construction worker that would do this. You'd get fired and sued instantly. Maybe in deep redneck country you'd get a guy like this, and then he'd be right back in jail for the 3rd time that year. Every operator I've met takes safety more serious than anything else
also a few hundred dollar hole in the pocket to replace his phone
“And getting dull pay for the day without using PTO!”
All fun and games til it's you
Or someone gets hurt. Job safety is rule number 1 at all times.
This. Never ever screw around with machines like this.
I worked in heavy industry for several years when I was in my early 20s and I’m so thankful I made it out with my life and all my limbs.
What’s crazy is it was always the adults that were like “yea let’s do this unsafe thing cause it’s faster.”
Time= money in their eyes. Gambling doesn’t only happen at Sportsbooks and casinos
Yeah, even if you do everything perfectly because you’re the best operator of all time, other factors can change. Maybe he stands up at the wrong moment. Maybe there’s a wild animal in front of him and he needed to jump back to escape, but the equipment is in the way. Maybe there’s freak mechanical failure in your rig and it malfunctions to do something other than what you told it to. You can’t know, but you should do everything as though you expect the equipment to break
One slip on the wrong lever and his leg would’ve been amputated
Yeah, all the way up until the push actually happened, I was expecting that bucket was gonna pin his leg and/or break it.
Shake hands with Danger
A kid was just recently killed like this. His friend thought it would be funny to bump him with the bucket, but lost control of the swing and crushed him against a car.
Ok, this is the comment that made me stop thinking this video was funny. Holy shit. Poor kid
I would fire one of my men for doing something like this
It wouldn't even be a question, they would instantly be gone
And they act all incredulous as you're shoving them off the work site saying "What'd I do? It was just a prank man. Are you really firing me over that? What the hell?"
20+ years running excavators and other equipment.
If I saw this as a supervisor they'd be fired.
Job safety is rule three till something happens, then it's the only rule
The same people that think doing this stuff is funny are the first to bitch and cry when someone does it to them
https://www.wbir.com/article/news/local/knoxville/24-year-old-man-killed-west-knox-county-construction-site/51-82b94c97-cefa-4035-8795-dc978752927f
Yeah a prank like this got a young father killed earlier this year. He was pinned between the bucket and rock box, and was only supposed to be “tapped” as a prank.
Don’t do this. I have 7 folks who do on-site work for developers daily and one of my biggest fears while I was boots on the ground and for them is getting struck with a large machine. There are enough accidental strikes a year, let’s not push it any further.
A friend of mine lost 4 fingers from a "prank" similar to this.
He was on the ground stabilizing a load on a forklift, the operator thought he'd give him a scare by jerking forward, ended up crushing his hand against a steel beam.
Heavy equipment should never be used for pranks.
Had a similar experience. I was working in a 'work basket'? about 2m up at a manhole. Operator fumbled with his helmet and pushed the controls forward and pinned my arm against the manhole cover. Needless to say i pulled him out of the forklift after i got down. It was an accident but could have been prevented.
When I worked in a tool and die shop a coworker had a story about a prank where someone cut the power to an electromagnet while their coworker was moving a large plate of thick steel. The plate bounced when it hit the ground and chopped/crushed the guys legs between the knee and ankle.
I’m sorry that happened to your friend. I had a friend break his whole hand bc a driller told him to grab the hammer rods on a drill rig so he could feel that they’ve hit refusal. The rod bounced, rig bounced off of the rod, and the hammer came down on his hand.
He considers himself lucky all things considered for our line of work. Witnessing someone turn on a high pressure air hose without anything attached as a prank also resulted to one of our guys having the back of his skull sewn up. And that’s just an air line. Heavy equipment is not a toy, despite how fun/cool it is to operate and be around.
Almost lost (at least) four fingers in a similar accident, but it wasn't a prank
I was at the scout camp. Me (16) and a dude (14) were cutting down a tree. We both turned around after hearing a whistle. I then put my hands on the trunk and said "I think we should cut here".
The dude most likely didn't hear it, as he turned around and planted the axe 1-2cm from my fingers. I legit felt the air passing near them.
We both freaked out, but on the moment I didn't really think about it. Ten years later, I get shivers thinking about how I could have lost a significant portion of my hobbies (writing, rock climbing, calisthenics) just due to an idiot doing idiotic things.
I still see him around. We're not close friends, but we climb together sometimes. I don't think he even remembers that accident.
At my primary school (junior school) a kid I lived down the road from put his hand in the hinge of an auto closing door as a dare or something (call of the void maybe) and had all four fingers on his right hand crushed. They had to be amputated at the second knuckle.
When he was in hospital he spent the whole of his recovery learning to write and draw with his left hand and when he got back to school he was pretty much fully proficient. Not trying to diminish your near-accident at all but you wouldn’t necessarily have lost all three of those hobbies (I’d say rock climbing would be the one most at risk).
As an H&S dude for a company that does excavation and site servicing the struck by equipment incident anxiety travels hand in hand with the buried alive anxiety.
Too many guys get complacent around heavy equipment and dirt. It's important to remember that 1 cubic metre of wet compressed soil can weigh upwards of 1500 kg . If you have a machine designed to move multiple cubic metres of soil, it'll wreck your day right quick if you get hit by it.
Either way, slow down the work and focus on getting it done safely and with quality. The risk vs reward simply isn't worth rushing work.
That's messed up.
https://preview.redd.it/ao9ou5flyd6g1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fdd7fd4a0a9860a891c97b8ec3e7204a1b7edd03
I may have gotten my ass kicked but we are definitely fighting at this point.
This picture got me laughing hard, damn
workplace bullying. He's soaking wet in the cold weather.
[deleted]
I'm getting full days pay or they can fire me.
Damn right. Lawsuits to follow if they object.
If they fire the operator who did that they'll be fine but would likely just settle out of court. It could be a vehicular assault change for the operator of the machine. Pushing someone with heavy machinery has to be some kind of assault
No joke. That bucket could easily break a leg if the operator handled the controls wrong. This is not even a little bit funny.
Yeah every safety manager I've ever worked with would have grabbed that operator, escorted him off the job site, and told him to never come back.
Any reasonable foreman would tell you to go home, have a hot shower, get changed and come back. Or if it’s toward the end of the day, just take off early, and you’d be paid for a full day for either of these.
We’ve got labour laws and the guy giving orders very typically wouldn’t prioritize safety over a little bit of work because it’s his ass if he does, plus bosses and foremen might be dicks sometimes but everyone has at least some sense of being reasonable. Every boss I’ve ever had would agree with me.
The guy in the excavator is getting a fucking strip torn out of his ass by the foreman if they find out he did that though.
Where I live the operator no longer has a job.
This sort of hazing shit is the reason I never wanted to work in this kind of all male environment. Construction, factory work, armed services: they're all rife with it. I just want to go to work and do the job without a lot of hassle and fucking around, y'know?
(For context: I did a summer in a bottling plant back in the 90s which was enough to fill me in on how things were.)
EDIT: I'm aware that all female environments are no picnic either but, by definition (I'm a bloke), I've never really worked in one of those so can't speak from first hand experience. The closest I ever got was a technical recruitment secondment in an HR team - all female - in a bigger company. HR had its own enclosed office, but they were all very nice to me and there was never any hazing or bitchiness.
A coworker once lost his grip on a load of lumber we were carrying, and it smashed two of my fingers, obliterating one of my nails and embedding it into my skin. I had the poor judgement to offhandedly mention that my “nail was broken” and for the rest of my time there people would be like “oh you gonna break a nail again?” constantly. Bro it was that dudes weak ass limp grip that caused it why am I getting flak for 8 months.
I’m obviously over it though.
One of the worst pain I ever experience as a kid was a broken nail being pushed in my skin. Much much worse than breaking my wrist.
I feel like they're conflating someone complaining about a fake nail breaking off, vs someone breaking their actual nail (far more painful, and pain that's actually long lasting).
All that is to say, I think the flak you received was unfair, and you have my sympathy, that must have really hurt and was a valid complaint.
Omg, one time my husband and I had just started a hike and I somehow caught my nail on something and it got ripped half way down my nail bed, was dripping blood, and the nail was still hanging on my finger. We decided to just not do the hike so I could cut the nail off and wrap it properly. A guy we saw on the way up who was camping asked why we were done soon. My husband just says “she broke a nail” and then offers no further context. I was furious and thought it was pretty funny.
It's also why I imagine I was never able to maintain friendships with groups of guys, cuz I am 100% not the "ha ha I treat you like crap cuz I like you" type of person that seems to be necessary to maintain those kinds of friendships. I get reminded of this whenever I pass by the "guysjustbeingdudes" subs and its type. Being mean to each other is seen as normal and funny for many men.
Once a friend shot me with a airsoft gun after I stated that I did not want to participate. He had a bloody nose afterwards. Did not happen again
I've found that the best way to keep people from pranking you in thise environments is to either not react at all, or violently overreact. And don't engage with pranking others, at all.
> violently overreact.
This is a valid strategy but it only works if you have the mass, strength, and technique to follow through. I lacked all of these back in the 1990s. Even so much as threatening violence without any capability to follow through is a sure fire way to get your ass kicked, or worse.
Many years hence I did discover that being huge and jacked does very much change the way people treat you (as well as doing wonders for your own confidence), and as a result I did - for a while - nurse some regrets that I hadn't dedicated myself to strength training in my late teens and through my 20s.
I knew a guy who grew up in the Phillipines, and he used to get bullied by a bigger kid. Tried to fight back, got his ass kicked. One day, he got so pissed off that while the bigger kid was holding him, he bit him. Like full on sunk his teeth into the dude's side and tried to chew on his kidney. Didn't get picked on after that.
Which is to say, you're absolutely right.
Not to mention that excavator blade could have easily smeared that guy into a bloody pancake if the dipshit operator accidentally pushed just a little too hard on the stick while playing his "prank".
Just like guns, heavy machinery are not fucking toys.
I think what you are looking for isn't unreasonable. In fact, I'd say that most people feel the same way.
I've been in a all-male environment (landscaping supply) and it was awful. I was def out of place, but I was desperate for a job. Most of those guys didn't even have a HS diploma and I had a degree and certifications. We didn't have much in common, at all.
However all that said, all I want is to come into the office, work alone and leave. If 95% of my day is being by myself, I consider that a win.
Assault with a deadly weapon.
One wrong bump of the controls, and this man turns into a meat crayon.
I worked for a company that has a big warehouse. New guy starts either that day or the day prior. New guy is doing his thing on a forklift when he sees one of our big big bosses crossing the walk zone ahead. The new guy thinks how funny it'd be if he suddenly zoomed the forklift at big big boss and then brake suddenly at the last moment. So he did. And he laughed.
The boss tore into this guy, fired immediately, yanked him out of the forklift, cursed him out and escorted him to his locker to get his stuff. New guy wasn't laughing anymore.
I didn't see this unfold because I was upstairs but I heard ALLLLLLL about it straight after from the other techs who saw it all and then having to sit through many safety courses afterwards.
Our bosses were pretty chill guys and gals but safety was always number 1.
People drastically underestimate how powerful heavy machinery can be. Terrifying how many people I've seen looking/playing with their phone as they walk inbetween the backside of a forklift and a wall as the lift is moving towards the wall. Like they want to become human pancakes.
not just that but zooming a forklift and not watching where you're going, hell just zooming in one is just dangerous. The driver is probably focused on the boss so anyone or anything could have stepped out in front of him in his "blind spot"
That's a really great perspective I hadn't considered until now either! Anyone else could have been in a blind spot.
I used to work the truck gate at a warehouse, workers would try and use the truck entrance as a exit so they could bypass the required screening when exiting the facility. They'd trundle out, face in their phones, and walk right in front of trucks. One night I almost knocked a girl's teeth out when I closed the gate and she whips around the corner looking at her phone, got the arm up just before she got chopped. Didn't even look up.
I did that for five years, and the fact that I never saw an injury is still amazing to me. People have no idea what danger actually is.
This is also baad design and culture.
Oh no doubt, the whole operation was assclowns and dipshits, it was ridiculous. Lots of great stories, and when that client fired me it was the greatest day ever.
Its like crazy what kind of operations exist
I hope the fired guy learned a lesson that day and got his head screwed on and went on to be a productive employee somewhere else.
Guys like that often don’t
The amount of momentum a forklift carries is unreal. It's not a car hitting you at 15mph with its nice crumple zones and designs to avoid human damage.
A forklift is basically an immovable object travelling at high speeds, it does not budget even a millimeter if you happen to stand near it while it whips around.
People at work joke at me because of how wary I am around the fork trucks but after 10+ years of being near them, I have a healthy respect for how much damage they can do. I keep my distance. I know what it looks like when you hit the gas instead of the brake and suddenly panic as you smash into something.
Had a guy just like the story the other dude told in here where a coworker hit the gas as I was crossing and I had to jump out the way.
He laughed, and I should have reported his ass immediately but I think I was too shaken at the time. People are fucking dumb.
Sounds like a good boss.
They were great bosses! I worked there for many years before moving away and they were happy to be references for me and one even would text me every few months to check I'd settled in to the new house/city/job etc okay. Just real nice people. Unless you were a safety hazard.
Massive idiot, That’s crazy. A forklift going 5mph will open you like a can opener.
This is a top notch safety video about forklifts. Should be mandatory to any forklift drivers. Or actually to any person ever.
What kind of mindset goes through a person like that, ESPECIALLY if they are new. Big boss was right to fire him.
Not to mention all the crap that just went up his nose when he plunged into the “water”
Yeah this is fucked up
I bet you 1000$ that the guy being "pranked" has some kind mild cognitive disabillity and "pranksters" bully him because he doesn't know how to fight back.
You're being down voted but I have seen this at places I worked.
Reporting it gets you into trouble because generally the perpetrators are good employees and it will never happen in front of someone who matters.
The person with a cognitive disability was even fired when an expensive piece of equipment broke but it wasn't his fault. It was the "valuable employee" who's negligence caused its failure.
He will be allowed one (1) slap without any repercussions
god I'm glad I don't have to work with a bunch of assholes for a living
I am a former welder/fabricator. The last place I worked was filled to rhe absolute BRIM with shitheads. I mean honest-to-god racist nazis, sexist domestic abusers, and pedophiles.
I have stories man ... christ do I have stories.
But ...... I have to say there IS one thing I miss about working there.
I never felt guilty about taking my frustrations out on them. Like, it was an actual joy to be able to tear a coworker's head off(figuratively speaking, of course) for the stupid shit they did, knowing I would never suffer any consequences for it.
I miss that.
sounds horrendous, where everyone is doing that all the time....
It was. I left the industry entirely for a new career, because of it.
I miss the actual work. But none od the people.
Every time I see a dude taking shit about how dumb white collar workers are for taking out loans and how the trades will never be automated, I think of videos like this.
Blue collar guys in these forums always brag about being degenerates who haze new guys but when their industry is flooded with mature workers with leadership skills, they lose their jobs to them. Why the fuck would an employer keep pieces of shit who can’t keep their hands and machines to themselves when there’s new people to hire?
The ultimate perk of white collar jobs is that we are not exposed to dozens of potential accidents each day and we don't have to endure years of inhaling/touching hazardous materials. Living longer is the good part.
Excavator dude is lucky, most people i know would have broken all his fingers for that shit.
No shit. If someone even touched me with their bucket on accident, I'd drag their ass out of the cab. Its so easy to get hurt or killed by a dumbass operator who doesnt take their job seriously or realize how dangerous for people around them their equipment is.
Would the operator have done it to somebody he knew would retaliate? Hell no. Typical bully behavior.
Operators get cocky and over confident too easily, and forget that they can literally kill a coworker in half a second , even in a little machine like this.
I know a lot of people for whom finger-breaking would have been an underreaction.
Depends how much of a fight he puts up getting ripped off that machine and violently thrown into the same water
You gotta get outta the box sometime or another and when you do puddles mcgee is going to be waiting.
I would have given him a nice big hug.
I'd have thrown a rock at him like a MLB pitcher. Probably more than one.
Looks like a freezing day as well
I've seen this exact thing play out on a construction side across the street to where I went to school. Foreman was called and broke both arms of the excavator man with a claw hammer. Police came, ambulance was called, it was a wild fucking ride.
Now that's a construction site HR intervention
Must've been 13 years ago by now, it was wild. We could see the whole thing from our classroom windows, november, early afternoon, mild rain but cold. I'll never forget the screaming of the excavator man when the claw hammer went to town.
yikes. kind of traumatising for a kid to see that.
OrAnd a great lesson of possible consequences when you antagonize the wrong personDude the guy just stand there and take it ?
He was sitting inside the excavator, foreman climbed in and immediately went ham on him. We all could hear the screams, he couldnt really run since he was in the seat and the foreman was hunched over him.
Did you hear what happened to foreman?
As far as I know jail for assault and, unconfirmed but I do believe it, he's out and working again due to good behavior (In Jail, not in the cockpit of the excavator that is)
Oh damn that’s crazy lol what the fuck
Probably sacrificed his arms to protect his head.
I very much hope that foreman is in jail because he sounds like a fucking psycho
He went to jail but at least from what I heard he's out due to good behavior and may even work in the construction field again?
I mean yeah its psycho to go claw hammer on a dude but he was looking out for his crew.
Trying to justify the foreman doing something like this is fucking wild.
You can call out the excavator guy for being in the wrong, but what the foreman did was even worse.
No, talking a clawhammer to someone over messing about is nit "looking after your crew"
Is a claw hammer just, a regular hammer? I am confusion.
Regular hammer has blunt ends on both sides, claw hammer has claws on one side.
I'm sure you are technically correct but a regular hammer to me has the claws.
A claw hammer is very common around homes. You probably use nails a lot, and for most other hammering needs you can still use them. So to you they probably are a "regular hammer".
I'm not sure that there actually exists a "normal hammer", but claw hammers are specifically designed for small nails.
Edit: This is probably true for every tool that has existed since antiquity. The only variant of the hammer that is truly unspecialized is the humble rock. Every hammer we've made since has been made for a particular purpose.
Pretty sure hammers were invented before nails were even a thing. :-p
https://preview.redd.it/swmhnqisce6g1.jpeg?width=1420&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c469ecc345a44773242f5ce9ed31c998cc1977c0
Onathems for pulling nails.
This is grounds for termination and that excavator operator would get the shit kicked out of him. I've seen cops show up to construction sites many many many times due to fights. There's a quick FAFO ratio with construction guys
edit: excavator operator, not crane operator
Fuck out find around?
Health and safety are pretty strict in Scotland. This must be a small firm, or they would never post that. Could get the site shutdown.
Where do you see a crane
In the commercial union construction world that I belong to, this would get that operator instantly fired, blacklisted from working for the contractor, and probably drug tested too.
What about the guy filming?
A lot of people commenting in the thread have clearly never worked construction because contacting someone with equipment on purpose is a big no.
Hands
Thats mean
Funny way to spell assault
https://preview.redd.it/d6bhg5nhhh6g1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=36774c729480584b2c2d580c08f3ceff974fa422
I mean, dude shoukd get to go home with pay at that point. Fuck working outside while youre soaked
Why would you do that? That's just a jerk thing to do and isn't funny.
More like it sucks to be crane guy cause im going straight to HR
you think they have a HR department? that's cute.
As a heavy equipment operator. This isnt funny. This is you’re immediately fired, black listed in the field, and depending on the crew.. probably gonna catch a beating or charges. Dont screw around with heavy equipment on a job site.
With a guy filming this, this is the type of thing where I'd fire the whole crew if this was a sub under me.
It's clearly not a one-guy problem.
People who think cruelty is funny need to be studied.
Assault (intent to cause fear/discomfort), battery (physical contact), aggrevated assault (deadly weapon), criminal endangerment (substantial risk of serious injury), workplace safety violation, criminal negligence (OSHA/HSE), harassment related offenses (workplace bullying)
Seriously, don't do stupid shit like this. You'll ruin your life over a prank that's not even funny.
There's a video of an excavator driver using the bucket to tip a bit of mud down the exposed ass crack of another worker:
https://youtube.com/shorts/BR4NgAeHUbc?si=Z1MdtSmOlW6B0VLj
This one made me laugh because there's no real harm done and it's not really dangerous. But pushing someone into a puddle is just taking it too far. It's way being just being a joke. There's no way anyone would be ok with this happening.
I’ve seen buckets fall straight off of machines before, even that is super dangerous and stupid.
I have seen that too there's a reason you should never be underneath any of that stuff or why if you are, barriers have to be erected. A lot of people who have never done anything in construction see a prank video and don't realize how many people die a year from someone doing some "prank" with heavy machinery.
I’ve seen this fuckery escalate on job sites until it’s mo longer funny … to anyone
Dude was inches away from serious head injury among other things.
I'd be a lot less calm than. Him and he bouncing that operators head repeatedly off the controls before he knew what hit him
Fuck the operator, he should be fired immediately and the guy filming it.
You don’t fuck around with powered machinery, power tools, really anything on a jobsite.
Someone please tell me the operator suffered serious consequence of his action.
Id imagine theyre probably still all laughing about it over beers years later
If someone hit me with a fucking excavator on purpose I would pull them out of that cab and catch a felony.
Not if I was on the jury.
As our lifelong heavy equipment operator it's the stupidest thing on earth to play around like their toys, one wrong move. And you just broke that guy's back. You slip and you push the bucket down and you crush him to death. It takes literally nothing. The amount of injuries I've seen is terrifying over the dumbest little things.
And it's documented? On my site the operator would be fired and the company would try to reach a settlement with the worker so he doesn't sue. This is very very illegal.
Funny.. but the risk of it going wrong... Pff
I'd be fighting mad. After knocking the living shit out of the operator I'd be going home for a hot shower. See you all tomorrow.
Sure he picked the weakest guy on the job to do that to.
I worked construction for about 4 months when I was 18. One time we had an extra escavator operator on site, where I was supposed to be in the hole where he was digging, making sure he was at the right depth. Nothing odd about it, I had done it many times before.
This new guy, accidentally tapped my right leg with the bucket. I didn’t think much about it. Then I hear my foreman yelling from across the building site. I’ve never seen someone get that verbally fucked before
Who ever did this should have been fired immediately. This could have ended really bad 🤦♂️
No phone or wallet in pockets, end of shift, and change of clothes? Fine. Other wise, that sucks SO bad.
that's a lot of ifs, and I still don't think I'd be fine with being pushed into a random muddy puddle
Its shitty all round, but i think the thing most construction workers would be pissed about is the use of the excavator bucket to push him. One wrong move and the guy's lower leg could have been crushed into ground meat. If there's one thing anyone in that industry knows it's do not fuck around with the heavy machinery.
At least, in a professional environment anyway. You'll see dumbasses doing stupid shit with excavators all the time. A lot of them end up getting beat with hammers for fucking up and injuring someone.
Nah, it’s never fine to do this shit with machinery.
That's a paddllin.
I recently finished a health and safety course for construction, and it warned against horseplay.
I assumed it was common sense, I was clearly wrong.
Toxic work environment.
Intentionally hit a guy with a bucket on my projects and you might as well leave.
Looks like someone gets to go home early.
Bro OSHA would have a field day with this shit
Thats so fucking unsafe wtf. I'd lose my shit. That man would be out of a job.
Never prank at work sites many lost their life😞
Now you force a man to work the rest of the day in cold soaking clothes. How cool of you
Ah the whole "how to lose my licence to operate heavy machinery prank"
That’s a nice and easy report to fill. The excavator operator wouldn’t be working with the company by the end of the day if that happened where I work.
Doesn’t even have to be misuse of large plant to cause an injury. We had a guy on site who lost all his legs and an arm when he was deliberately handed the wrong size handsaw.
So many people here really don't understand Scottish humour lol
If you're good enough mates, this is bonding
If not, you're getting your chops slapped aboot
Our humour is very similar to viking culture of embracing death, darkness and sadness and laughing in its face ... hence how in Scotland, this "prank" is still dumb and shitey but can get a real genuine laugh and bond out of because of our cultures humour
... ask any glaswegian for a joke ... go on ;)
Kinda fucked up unless he was leaving soon being wet and cold working in nasty conditions is never good.
the operators probably the same type that complains why there's a shortage of apprentices
Naw, we fighting.
"It's just a prank bro"
People forget that sometimes, coworkers are legitimate friends who like to fuck with each other sometimes in good fun -especially in blue collar work.
This is not that.
The places I’ve worked in the past- operator would have got his ass kicked and wouldn’t run equipment again if he didn’t quit.
All fun and games to you get ripped out of the cap and made drink that water.
Looks cold too
Bullying is pathetic. Sad little men.
Some absolute dorks in this thread. Get outside
No adult should find this funny.
I'm all for workplace banter. In fact I normally advocate it. But....you don't fuck with heavy machinery, ever. Operator needs a savage bearing, final warning and forced to do a full ticket (no refresher for him) again. If he's got form, fired on the spot.
You'd be stupid not to fire the guy who did this. That is what we call a liability.
You're getting a rock down a vent pipe for that. Enjoy your blue water
I dropped a bucket load in the back of truck once and in doing so the hydraulic line burst and the arm just dropped.
Now imagine that happening in this situation...
Not funny, just plain stupid. Control your intrusive thoughts. Next in line could be you
I would went home, call in sick for a week and lawyer up for harassment at work. Money 💰
Unfunny.