It can be truly aggravating when a hired peon (moi and others) can point out actual problems and get ignored but BS from OSHA or your own business
is slavishly adhered to.
As a lowly blue collar serf I was one who was especially galled by that.
The last three occasions when out of town safety inspectors strutted up to
me and queried me on safety I answered and then brought up real
safety questions and started interrogating THEM. That was really fun.
I worked on the last one for 20 minutes. After that I later found out that
the bosses warned them to avoid me.
They left me alone for my last 14 years. :<}
Believe me, if someone brings up a safety issue, I do my best to find a fix for it. If something happens that I should have caught, but didn’t, then I am in trouble. Plus, if someone is injured or killed, that is really bad.
Once, I opened up a lab refrigerator and found a bottle of ether in it. The refrigerator was not rated for flammable chemical storage. I was a little upset—there is a real potential for explosion in that situation. We bought a new flammable liquids storage rated refrigerator for that lab and everything turned out fine.
Refrigerators that have exploded because flammable liquids have been placed in them make for very dramatic pictures for safety briefings. I never show pictures of injured people, just equipment. People can use their own imaginations from there.