Health and safety...really?
In my last job we used to be able to do odd jobs if we needed to, rather than bothering the maintenance guys. We'd just go and borrow a ladder and change a light bulb or whatever. Until the health and safety police introduced the working at height training.

I didn't get to go on the training course (so it's only a tenuous link to the question). But from that date only those who'd been on the course were allowed to go up a ladder, and all the ladders were padlocked up.

One day soon thereafter, I had a need to run an ethernet cable to a new PC, temporarily, and decided the best way would be to take it from the socket, up the wall, pop it above the suspended ceiling tiles, then drop it down where the PC was. A five minute job. But without a ladder, a virtually impossible one, and the IT bods decided (correctly) that it wasn't really a priority job so they weren't going to do it for a week or two.

So, what did I do? I put a chair on top of a table and climbed on.

The introduction of the health and safety course therefore made things more dangerous.

Admittedly, had I fallen off and broken my neck, I'd have been a contender for the Darwin awards.
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Mon 19 Mar 2012, 18:11, 6 replies)

You also wouldn't have been covered by insurance
so no compo.
(Misery McUglywife an attention seeking sociopathic fuckstain., Mon 19 Mar 2012, 18:56, closed)

Wouldn't have made much difference to me
if I'd been dead.
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Mon 19 Mar 2012, 20:45, closed)

But..
if you hadn't died by falling off a chair on a table - it's not that high. You'd have no job, and lots of medical costs & probably be unable to work again.
Patience and/or getting a key cut & doing your "working at heights" training are virtues.
tl;dr
Standing on a chair on top of a table isn't risky, it's stupid.
(Misery McUglywife an attention seeking sociopathic fuckstain., Mon 19 Mar 2012, 22:18, closed)

On the other hand, locking away safety equipment to those that haven't done the course isn't safer
it's stupid. it just means the people who don't know how to do things safely are now forced to do it in a fundamentally unsafe way to begin with.
( Tedium Alduce me to interlow myself., Tue 20 Mar 2012, 16:38, closed)

Yes, you're quite right.
Patience would have been the correct way. But using a stepladder would have been an easier route. And although I didn't get to go on the course, I am aware of how to use a ladder correctly.
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Tue 20 Mar 2012, 18:16, closed)

Short-arse.

( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Mon 19 Mar 2012, 19:50, closed)