I can’t support this comment enough. My last job was chemical and biological safety oversight but had a lot of overlap with regular safety people. It takes no extra time to ensure a circuit is properly locked and tagged out because anyone working on that circuit should already have their own lock on it, using a gang lock if there are multiple people.

Then you still prove test prove. For those not in the biz, this means to test your sensing equipment on a known live circuit, test the circuit being worked on, then retest the tester as before because breakers get mislabeled and meters break all the time.

On that note, there’s the time an energized circuit almost killed my sister-in-law. She said she understood 120v wiring, so was changing out a light fixture. She asked me for some help with getting it mounted, so I asked her if the breaker was off, and she assured me it was. As I was working on it, it let out a loud pop, slightly zapped me, and blew the breaker.

I’m normally a very nice, chill person, but I was fucking livid. I asked her to show me the breaker she turned off and she pointed to the fucking wall switch. Someone had switched it on, likely out of habit. I inspected the wiring and found she used a cracked wire nut and overtightened it until the hot wire protruded well past the end. I wasn’t grounded but I was holding the fixture… with my left hand. I could have had a heart attack if I had been grounded

It’s a boomer joke, but I was what almost killed her. I had never been so angry with someone before. We still love her, but we don’t let her work on anything with stored energy anymore.

Yeah I’ve seen that one before. I was so glad to have training at my job that explicitly stated “if you aren’t the electricity guy, don’t fuck with the electricity” like I’d fucking argue that I should be allowed to lick the 480v. Nope, I want nothing to do with the spicy cables.

They have it up in their shop at the yard I work in.

Here, hold this cable for a second.

FLASH

That is the correct way but I see so many people skip it cause either a. I need it powered so I can test what’s wrong well it’s already open and I found the problem. Or b. I didn’t know that was a danger. For the example at my last job we created some titanium dust as a byproduct. If you don’t know titanium dust when exposed to a oxygen can and will explode. I had a coworker who didn’t respect that and acted careless cause it was a Saturday on overtime and he had other plans, good news he was already bald bad news he no longer had any hair on his head. No eyebrows, his beard stubble, his nose hair all gone because it flashed.

I had another coworker who tried to “help” me with an operation. I was working on one side of the machine and he tried to help clean the other side. He exposed oxygen into the piping, the dust flashed while my head was 6 inches away from the machine. I jumped back and minorly hurt my back(nothing serious, just like pain for a day) and could not hear for 3 days.

These were both with same company. Both were recorded and reported. So many people I talked to there didn’t even know about the risk of explosion. Yes there was a sign and yes there was a procedure. Most people ignored them till I told these stories and stressed the risk of titanium dust.

Yeah … doing LOTO correctly, it should always be the person at risk who did the locking out himself, putting his own lock on it to which only he has the key.

That way, you’d never find yourself in this situation, having to trust whether or not your coworker did it properly.

The cartoon is from a series for the Navy.

The two guys are in blue overalls and belts that were the typical uniform, back in the day.

They were typically focused on safety or the myriad of silly situations a sailor may face on deployment.

LOTO is a standard practice, but like all electricians, sometimes steps get skipped out of urgency (never an excuse), complacency, or stupidity.

They are just swapping out a piece of gear, so it is 120 or 240.

Old boy absolutely fuckered, he’s about to shake hands with Mr. Lightning with both hands. Worry not, the floor is safely isolated due to his electrical safety mat.

This guy volts!

Because you may not have the chance to do it after?

Well, following the link just below the flag took me to a website that has the answer. It’s a comic strip that was featured in the printed version of the Navy Times newspaper, for the US Navy.

PATRIOTISM 🦅🦅🦅 THIS MEME WAS MADE LOCAL 🙌🏻🙌🏻 LORD GOD PRAISE THE RED WHITE AND BLUE COUNTRY 🇦🇨🇦🇮🇦🇸🇦🇺🇧🇲🇧🇻🇧🇿🇨🇩🇨🇰🇨🇱🇨🇵🇨🇷🇨🇺🇨🇻🇨🇿🇩🇬🇩🇴🇫🇯🇫🇰🇫🇴🇫🇷🇬🇧🇬🇸🇭🇷🇭🇹🇮🇴🇮🇸🇰🇮🇰🇵🇰🇷🇰🇾🇱🇦🇱🇷🇱🇺🇲🇫🇲🇸🇲🇾🇳🇱🇳🇵🇳🇿🇵🇦🇵🇭🇵🇲🇵🇳🇵🇷🇵🇾🇷🇸🇷🇺🇸🇭🇸🇮🇸🇰🇸🇽🇹🇦🇹🇨🇹🇫🇹🇭🇹🇻🇹🇼🇺🇸🇻🇬🇼🇫🇼🇸🇾🇹

Hopefully these two are the electricians for the Epstein ballroom