Thread: is common sence dead?

yes i do have some scars, and thats from being careless and not listening to my common sense.

i cut my finger off, i came to teh bench and my common sense told me to drop the table down but i was lazy and didnt want to spend 5 seconds so i used it how it was. bad idea.



most workplace health and safety rules have come in due to teh lack of common sense.

i have a mate that works in a slaughterhouse, they just put in a new bone grinder, the OHS guy came in and said they couldn't use it until the opening had bars or mesh so that a persons hand couldn't fit. now how do you get leg bones and the like into a grinder that has mesh over the opening. they cant rely on common sense to tell workers NOT to stick there arms into the machine that is made to grind bones.

"i have a mate that works in a slaughterhouse, they just put in a new bone grinder, the OHS guy came in and said they couldn't use it until the opening had bars or mesh so that a persons hand couldn't fit. now how do you get leg bones and the like into a grinder that has mesh over the opening. they cant rely on common sense to tell workers NOT to stick there arms into the machine that is made to grind bones."

Simple, make it a batch process rather than continuous feed that way the hopper is filled while the machine is locked out and then activated by dual switches like a machine press... no human limbs involved.

We get this kinda crap all the time at my work engineers think by saving $2 in build/maintenance/running cost she'll be Jake, something simple that might be costlier or harder to design in the long run will save the company money.
Common sense does not come into it in this situation, no fool would do that they think its human nature to take short cuts to get the job done faster or cheaper... No amount of common sense or PPE can protect you from bad engineering!

Originally Posted by weisyboy

yes i do have some scars, and thats from being careless and not listening to my common sense.

i cut my finger off, i came to teh bench and my common sense told me to drop the table down but i was lazy and didnt want to spend 5 seconds so i used it how it was. bad idea.

most workplace health and safety rules have come in due to teh lack of common sense.

That's all well and good, after the fact, claiming it was lazy of you and a bad idea. But what happens when someone removes a guard that shouldn't be removed and the next person that uses the machine, that has always had a guard in place, suddenly finds that the guard isn't there?

What happens if he just trips as he is walking past, and falls into the machine with the guard removed?

It wasn't his laziness or bad idea, but the criminal negligence of someone else. All the common sense in the world is not going to help him.

If he's lucky, they can put all the bits back where they belong and maybe they will work, if he's unlucky, they ship him out in a pine box.

If you think this is fanciful, it happened in a printing plant last week in Sydney. The person involved is being shipped out in a pine box.

yes i do have some scars, and thats from being careless and not listening to my common sense.

The point I'm trying to make Weisy is that sometimes things happen that are either outside your control or that you didn't plan for, so having guards in place is for those times - not to stop you deliberately sticking your hand into the blade. Wearing boots instead of thongs is to protect your feet if you drop something on them, not so you can drop kick lumps of steel.

When I set off in my car, I don't plan on having something break. If I have thought of it as a possibility, I might have a roll of fencing wire in the boot, but a lot of people wouldn't even think of it. It doesn't mean they lack common sense or are stupid (your words), it means that they have never driven around the outback in an old Holden with their Dad and had something like it happen and had to fix it. Most of them have an NRMA/RACQ/RACV membership instead. A friend of ours drove to Wilcannia in his new Pajero only to have the cylinder head crack. He was a bit like you, thought he could fix anything that went wrong - so he wasn't in the NRMA. Had to pay over $1,000 to have it towed. It was either that or leave it on the side of the road. So maybe being in the RACQ wouldn't be such a bad idea.

Putting a roll of fencing wire in the boot "in case" is no different to having a guard on your angle grinder "in case". Can't you see that? What's the difference? Taking the guard off would be seen by many as against common sense. Some might even call it stupid. Others consider it a calculated risk. It all depends on your perspective.

It's very subjective to refer to it as a lack of common sense. If you went to the city, do you consider yourself "street smart"? Would you like it if the people you met called you stupid because you don't know how to use the public transport system or stay out of trouble?

Like I said, if you could help someone out, I think the noble thing to do is to be glad you could help, not go and post on an Internet forum how stupid you think they are. Especially fixing the spring with a sapling. That is quite ingenious.

Originally Posted by weisyboy

yes i do have some scars, and thats from being careless and not listening to my common sense.

This is deep and meaningful.

Well, deep in any event, perhaps painful rather than meaningful
Greg

Wow - this has livened up again I see.

Carry on.

Honestly I know nothing about cars and I am not touching that yucky car engine and getting my hands all dirty.

Originally Posted by Wongo

Honestly I know nothing about cars and I am not touching that yucky car engine and getting my hands all dirty.

I agree.
Whilst I can fix engines I choose to pay to have a relatively new car that is reliable rather than have to worry that the car may not be reliable and need fixing.
I get my hands dirty in other ways.

I do hope you wear gloves, Terry

I think anybody who was born before the 80's will have grown up with an old Ford or Holden that you could fix just about anything on yourself - let's face it you had to because the bloody things had a habit of breaking down. Modern cars are a different story. How do the gap the points or set the timing on a modern motor?

Originally Posted by silentC

I do hope you wear gloves, Terry

I think anybody who was born before the 80's will have grown up with an old Ford or Holden that you could fix just about anything on yourself - let's face it you had to because the bloody things had a habit of breaking down. Modern cars are a different story. How do the gap the points or set the timing on a modern motor?

VT running rough: I told the dealer I thought the needle & seat were stuffed.... they understood the symptoms from that - of course it was sensors in the cat converter telling the EMS something or other. Scott and Terry have it right - being unable to find the bonnet catch isn't necessarily fatal these days

Most work sites don't comply with 100% safety, so a dash of commensense is generaly required .in the case of what Wiesy wrote about first, the people in the broken down car should not have left the road.to leave the road and wait elsewere was truly a lack of commonsense .but the bones being ground in a grinder, to feed the grinder and expect never to have an accident by the virtu of being super careful, is asking for trouble, the batch hopper idea is the way to go remember it not how fast the job gets done is the only consideration it's that the employee gets to go home uninjured and alive after work .

Originally Posted by silentC

I do hope you wear gloves, Terry

I think anybody who was born before the 80's will have grown up with an old Ford or Holden that you could fix just about anything on yourself - let's face it you had to because the bloody things had a habit of breaking down. Modern cars are a different story. How do the gap the points or set the timing on a modern motor?

I have a big box of gloves that gets emptied regularly.

Had to edit this a bit but I'm sure you get the drift.