Hmmm, it's tricky to describe why and how this sort of stupidity happens. First off, we have DAILY safety meetings. Before you even get in the shipyard on your first day you have a safety orientation. This applies to mining operations, refineries, tank farms, and any highly dangerous operation where things can and do go wrong sometimes. Next, there's always going to be someone who barely passes a safety test and is at best, a marginal type person who's just smart enough to get through the gate but out on the job can be as dense and obtuse as a retarded pig. Often you can kind of pick up on which guys are really mentally below par because they will be stubborn, set in their ways, uncooperative, vindictive, childish and make dumb ass mistakes that a normal person won't make. I have made it a practice to avoid working near such people. It's bad enough when they make mistakes that contribute to a poor product or interfere with your job but they also are usually the guy that can get you or themselves killed because they lack the ability to think things through to a logical conclusion. I could write a book on all the stupid stuff I've seen and some of it from supervisors. Like the supervisor who came out to a repair job on an ore hauling ship we were working on. So we're down in the ballast tank excising rusted out frames and stiffeners and laying the sections on the gangway at the bottom of the ladder leading up through a hatch that accesses the tunnel under main deck. The supervisor is about ready to leave after looking things over and tells me that I'm wasting time going up the ladder empty handed. He wants us to carry a section of removed metal up with us every time we leave the tank. Right, so I'm supposed to just tuck a jagged crusty section of steel weighing 20 or 30 pounds under my arm and climb up a 30 foot ladder. I looked at him in stunned silence for a second wondering if he was joking. Nope. He was serious. We normally do a two man removal team. Guy at the bottom ties a rope to the scrap steel while a guy up at the hatch hauls it out. That's according to OSHA standards and everyone knows that. Even our bucket of tools we all carry around go in and out of a tank like that. We're working in sub zero temps on this ship but getting things done in record time. So the same supervisor came by a week later to show his support and give us an uplifting message of praise and rewarded each of us with a nice new pair of coveralls. As soon as he left the foreman told us to toss our new coveralls in the trash bin. "Why!??" we all said in unison. He called us over to the steel trash bin and asked for a pair of coveralls. Then he took a lighter and put to the cloth. It instantly lit up like it was made of oily rags. Every single guy instantly tossed his new coveralls in the trash bin. WTF??? We're welders doing hot work all day long. Why on earth would the guy bring us this crazy stuff. On ship repair jobs you're not required to wear fire proof clothes but you are strongly cautioned to NOT wear synthetic fibers like polyester or nylon. On one job I was asked to go up in a man lift to tackle an overhead job. Turns out when I inspected it (as required by the OSHA and shipyard standards) the controls didn't work properly. Some didn't work at all. I tagged it off and went to my foreman to report this. Not gonna go on that assignment till they bring out another man lift. Foreman asked some young kid to take my place and gave me another assignment. I reported to safety inspector. No, not the dumb ass with the wooden foot. Safety inspector comes out and red tags the lift herself and refused to remove the tag or allow the machine to be used. They fired her. Now you see why this shit goes on? At a mining operation we're working on the kiln project. During a lull in activities we notice a foreman messing about with an oxygen cylinder. He doesn't have a pressure regulator. Now, in case you didn't know, those large green cylinders have pressure in the thousands of pounds. One dial shows cylinder pressure while the other shows your pressure on the outflow which should be just a few pounds of pressure depending on what you are cutting or burning. So, foreman is busy as a beaver on meth over there but we still have no idea what he's doing. After much activity we finally see that he has attached an oxygen hose directly to the cylinder by using various fittings and adaptors. My buddy and I look at each other and ask, 'what the hell is he doing?'. Then Mr. Einstein opens the oxygen valve. 'BANG!" hose just blew up. I look at my buddy and just shake my head while murmuring, "What the fuck was he thinking?" Shit like that makes you wanna go find him a regulator and squirt some oil in it before handing it over to him. But then, we're not murderers so we don't actually do it. Thinking about it gives a fellow that warm glow.