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Before I returned to Veterinary medicine, I was in Cabinetmaking and wood technology, and there were times I wondered why the fuck half the regs we had needed to be written down, why our safety briefings needed to be so damn long, I just wanted to build... then a kid the year behind me in trade school decided to skip a push stick on the jointer 7 months into his training, rushing through his spring project. Kid lost all function in his left hand, severed his FCU Tendon, lost part of his triquertum bone and required 58 stitches in his hand and wrist and a blood transfusion. The stain on the concrete never quite went away before I finished my program. Peroxide, concrete stripper... it wouldn't fully get rid of the brown stain at the base of the jointer. The next week we all had to go from a 10 hour OSHA certification to a 30 hour OSHA certification. Thankfully, he only fucked himself up ignoring safety regulations.

I've seen kickbacks fly at people operating equipment behind the tablesaws, had my own close call while running a CNC router table when someone else had a tablesaw throw a piece towards me, ruin a cnc bit and a $150 rough sawn price figured maple slab, but it got caught up in the running CNC and not me by about 7° difference in its trajectory angle at takeoff and about 18 inches from my face. The other woodworker didn't get impaled or lose a finger because they followed all their OSHA regs, I was following OSHA regs for the CNC router, but there still could have been a really dangerous incident there because of the routers location behind a tablesaw.

OSHA regs are just the tip of the iceberg for work safety, because our shop was set up for compliance, but having seen some of the shit I've seen, there are layout changes I would have made to our shop to be mindful of the fact that there were 20-40 people working in the shop at a time. I've had saws run away on me when their primary switches failed in the on position (part of why all tools need fail safes and backup power cutting options) I've had saw kicks and throwbacks, the dangerous shit that will happen to every woodworker if they work long enough, I haven't had any injuries from woodworking beyond splinters and blisters because I follow my OSHA shit.

Keep an eye out for safety problems on site when you're interviewing

Read up on your industry's safety standards

Read your material SDS sheets

Walk if your employer tries to shame or pressure you out of OSHA compliance

Keep up to date on industry safety briefings and case/post incident studies

Seriously WALK if your employer is trying to shortcut safety

I know the safety compliance/osha man is the brunt of a lot of jokes in the trades, mostly because a lot of them have forgotten that their job is supposed to protect the worker rather than the profits, but in theory, they are there to protect YOU and YOUR life, cut the fucker some slack.

"It doesn't help your credibility to exaggerate, most employers wouldn't literally work you to death" like, I used to work in distribution. If booking a truck driver for back to back shifts until they fall asleep at the wheel, crash, and die counts as being worked to death, I have personally met employers who've worked employees to death and gotten away with a slap on the wrist. It may not be universal, but it's a hell of a lot more common than a lot of us would prefer to think.

CAROLINA HERRERA Fall/Winter RTW 2024 if you want to support this blog consider donating to:ko-fi.com/fashionrunways

Highs and Lows This Week 🩵

Highs: girls night tinis and the return of a man I sent away to go do the work on himself who, shocking everyone, has been doing the work, and my dogs got to go on some good hikes.

Lows: I'm in a mask for the next 2 weeks because he then popped a fever after spending all day with me Monday. Olive got into some drywall dust in the stairwell where I'm storing my renovation supplies for the clinic. Hannibal fell into the toilet not once but twice and required baths.

Corner

If any of y’all didn’t know, there’s a free online library, aka

https://openlibrary.org/

and I found like, twelve ebooks I’ve been wanting to read on there, and blasted through like three of them during the course of a boring-ass shift.

Weekly Date Night

I'm pet sitting for my "Bonus Parents" (the parents of one of my oldest friends) this week in a lovely 1700s farm house and had permission from them to bring BoyToy over for date night this week. We cuddled into the couch after chatting about the features of the house we'd like in our own future farmette and watched the Lord of The Rings extended editions. As it got colder in the evening, we snuggled in with my dogs and the dog I'm dog sitting and built a fire in the great room. It was absolutely lovely. We got takeout barbecue from the honkytonk we met at and just generally had a great time having a lazy night in with the dogs.