this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2025
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Most people don't actually want to hurt their coworkers. But the reason lockouts are actual physical locks, is because people can get confused, make mistakes.
You give everybody doing the dangerous work a physical key to a specific lock on the device that can kill them, so they all have to come back and unlock it individually before you can enable the machine again.
Prevents issues like a work crew leaving a site piecemeal, and then the first guy thinks the last guy is done, but the last guy ran back to grab something....
And if this industrial panel doesn't have the ability to be locked out, you lock out the f****** electrical panel and cut power to it.
Yeah. And you do NOT fuck with LOTO locks. We had a crew come from out of state for maintenance overnight, and they went home one of them forgot to remove his lock.
After we spoke with the worker on the phone the next morning to verify he wasn't in danger, we still didn't cut the lock. We made him get his ass on a plane and come remove it.
Great story.
Sends a message to all who hear it, reinforces the culture, prevents maiming/death due to miscommunication… lots of good stuff.
Nice!
On every plant floor I've ever been on, tampering with a lockout was grounds for instant firing without appeal, and the tags said as much.
I suspect in this case it's neither the operators nor maintenance men who need firing; some asshole in management is probably forcing them to work on the machine at the same time it is in some kind of partially operational state in order to keep the line going in a moronic attempt to avoid downtime.
There are quite a few plane crashes where one important factor was the flight crew getting on the airplane and seeing an "INOP do not use" sticker and figuring "IDK, seems like it's working fine" and using it anyway.
Basically what I'm saying is, yes. There's a reason they started making physical locks for this, it wasn't because they were just sitting around one day in a corpse-free office and decided it would be a fun project to undertake.
I believe a lot of rules are written in blood, but some people think they're too smart for chesterton's fence.
Here is a fun minigame
The op note is dated 4/2/24
You come into your shift on 4/3/24 and the note is still there. What do you do?
Find out why it's been there for a month
And then continue to figure out how I got sent more than 2000 years in the past
(YYYY/MM/DD for life!)
I favor this for sorting purposes.
Guys I found the European
It's even more confusing when you're Canadian and both formats are supported
Even worse that we're one of the few countries where all three formats are used.
Seriously, I don't know how we get anything done. It's gotta be pure luck
Rip it off and hit the button. Obviously. Someone must have forgot.
You make an amendment to the complaint letter you are writing to your local workplace safety regulator
Implement proper LO/TO procedures
"lock out, tag out"
Any serious machinery needs to use it
Glad LOTO is the top comment on this post. You're doing God's work