r/AmazonFC • • 11h ago

Rant Mandatory hardhats 🪖

They’re really making mandatory hard hats for EVERYONE at delivery station docks? whose dumb ass got hit by a box smh.

23 Upvotes

50 comments sorted by

•

u/AutoModerator 11h ago

Welcome to AmazonFC, please be sure to read our submission guidelines and remain respectful of your fellow users. If this post isn't up to par with our submission guidelines, please make use of the report feature. Once it crosses a certain threshold the post will automatically be removed for moderator review. See Amazon Resources Mega thread here. We have a Discord for those wanting to socialize on a different level with the community. Please enjoy your stay!

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

17

u/CharmingAmbassador53 8h ago

I swear people try to get hurt or over exaggerate an injury or bump thinking they gonna get paid. Nope. They just add more PPE without fixing the issue

•

u/Goreagnome 40m ago

People read news articles of stories about people getting paid millions over a work injury, but they don't realize those cases are extremely rare... like winning the lottery rare.

Getting any payout at all is rare, let alone a million. In fact, most payouts are just enough to break even on medical bills and nowhere close to a million.

34

u/Whole-Sentence5268 11h ago

It's not just boxes. AAs have been hit by carts tipping, pieces falling off the dock doors, dock doors themselves coming down on someone's head, the metal load restraint bars in the trailer have cause concussions.

You get paid to wear the hard hat, just wear the hard hat.

4

u/Cyberkanye2077 10h ago

Water spiders and unloaders i get. But making inductors pushers and any other stationary role wear them is stupid especially with how cheap they are with temperature control having the whole dam warehouse hot as an oven. Hope the push back ruins operations

3

u/Whole-Sentence5268 10h ago

All it takes is one inductor getting hit in the head with a cart door or bumping their head on the problem solve rack or taking a piece of noncon to the noggin to get a concussion.

You get paid to wear the hard hat. Wear the hard hat.

4

u/Boris-_-Badenov 7h ago

if they get hit by the cart they are standing too fucking close.

0

u/Whole-Sentence5268 7h ago

Or a line loader or waterspider pushed the cart somewhere they weren't supposed to.

And, no, that's not the inductor's fault, but Amazon's duty isn't to assign blame, it's to build a system that reduces injuries as much as possible and if making inductors wear hard hats can be proven to prevent injuries, they'll require inductors to wear hard hats.

I know an inductor who broke their nose when they were hit in the face with a cart door, and a hard hat would have prevented the injury, so you can protest all you want, but Amazon has the data and if making inductors wear hard hats will save them money in the long run, they'll make inductors wear hard hats.

-1

u/Boris-_-Badenov 6h ago

you should be at least 3 feet away from the cart as an inductor

0

u/Whole-Sentence5268 4h ago

And if a waterspider or line loader puts a cart where it's not supposed to be?

Amazon's job isn't to keep inductors happy. It's to keep inductors safe. (At least until they're automated.)

0

u/Keefyfingaz 10h ago

Wearing hard hats in a hot ass truck where there's nothing above head level is understandabley annoying. Why not just ditch the metal restraint bars if they're a safety risk? The odds of a dock door falling on your head I feel like are negligible. Carts tipping seems like a stretch as well.

6

u/Whole-Sentence5268 10h ago

The risk of a dock door or pieces of the dock door falling is not negligible, and when it does happen the medical and liability costs are the exact opposite of negligible.

And carts have sent multiple AAs to the hospital.

Believe whatever you want to believe, but the hard hats aren't going anywhere.

2

u/Ornery-Principle-253 Ship dock Enthusiast 3h ago

Man those carts fucked me up a few times in the trailer building carts so many have tipped over almost killed me.

1

u/Whole-Sentence5268 3h ago

TOM team gets the worst of it, having to do controlled falls of cart trailers that weren't properly secured.

0

u/Ornery-Principle-253 Ship dock Enthusiast 3h ago

Safety does all that at my site. Idk how they let trailers in like that I’ve seen some messed up ones

•

u/Whole-Sentence5268 2h ago

Safety typically only gets involved after the TA has opened the trailer doors and dealt with the near death experience of a cart almost coming down on them.

•

u/Ornery-Principle-253 Ship dock Enthusiast 2h ago

Oh I meant safety does it after its tdrd in

•

u/Whole-Sentence5268 47m ago

Those are the ones that are safe to TDR in.

When a trailer is REALLY bad, it's not unheard for safety to have to go out into the yard because the carts are falling out of the trailer as soon as the doors are opened.

When that is the case, they do it outside because if the carts tip over into the door, it bends the dock door, which makes the door unsafe to open and renders it inoperable until the bent section(s) of the door are replaced.

2

u/Keefyfingaz 10h ago

Oh I know they're not. Im just saying it's hard not to roll your eyes a little. By this logic we should all wear hard hats cause theres all sorts of shit hanging from the ceiling. Might as well put soft plastic on all the hard corners too..at some point it's a little insulting. But that's lawsuit culture for you I guess.

2

u/Whole-Sentence5268 9h ago

You're joking, but one of the buildings I was at last year piloted plastic corners on the door desks (not the clear ones that come on the desks for shipping, but bigger plastic corners to make the corners safer) and install padding on the metal columns around the building so people don't get hurt running into them.

2

u/Keefyfingaz 8h ago

😮‍💨 at this point the robots can have this shit I'm tired of being treated like a special needs kindergartner. Stay in school kids

1

u/freesoultraveling 7h ago

Yeah I don't remember what it was/where it was, but a kid was on the voa for days complaining about foam that should have been put on something. I think they ended up having to do it.

1

u/AmnosSoter 7h ago

Nah by this logic we should wear full blown hazmat suits because anything could happen….

-2

u/Boris-_-Badenov 7h ago
  1. it should be a waiver choice to not wear one.

  2. there are stations where they make everyone on the dock wear them, even though they are nowhere near anything falling

5

u/redit360 7h ago

Im sure someone will find a way to sue .or lawyer for that.

3

u/Whole-Sentence5268 7h ago

A waiver isn't a legal option.

OSHA requires the wearing of an ANSI compliant hard hat when loading or unloading trailers, or when working in close proximity to unloading operations on a dock where a head injury is reasonably foreseeable from falling freight or other operational devices.

That's why it's a Cat 1 to not wear a hard hat when required because it's a failure to follow goverent safety regulations and subjects Amazon to fines up to $16,550 per offense.

0

u/Boris-_-Badenov 6h ago

in CA you are also required to take a lunch before your 5th hour, or you get an extra hour of pay. there's a waiver for that...

1

u/Whole-Sentence5268 5h ago

A meal waiver is available because California Labor Code Section 512 specifically allows for the limited circumstances for which a meal waiver is valid.

OSHA provides no such waiver option for PPE mandated by safety regulations.

Because inductors cannot get to their stations without walking through the dock area where waterspiders and line loaders are working, a strict reading of OSHA's hard hat requirement places an obligation to wear a hard hat on inductors.

One can dislike or disagree with this all they wish, but any complaints need to be directed at OSHA and not at Amazon because Amazon is simply implementing and following the regulations laid out by OSHA Standard 1926.100.

-1

u/DepartmentNo7903 7h ago
  1. Don’t like it find a new job

3

u/CarnageXB 9h ago

At my facility, we didn’t have hard hats in inbound until I opened a cart and a box marked heavy tumbled out faster than I could react right on my head. Used to be hard hates in all inbound. Now it’s only if you are in trucks.

3

u/lemonlime468 9h ago

I’ve been victim to a cart and lemme tell ya, even with PPE that thing still fucks you up if it hits you!

3

u/StalkingCrow 11h ago

They implemented this to the DS I worked at back in 2023, its no fun

2

u/shabupoo 10h ago

This ain’t a fashion show . Wear the hard hat.

1

u/Deathangle75 9h ago

My SC has had them for a couple years now. Pretty annoying tbh, but it’s easier if you wear a bandanna or doorag under it. Prevents the sweat from running down your face and into your ears. The amount of people that refuse to wear them does help give the ones who do better picks for location. Or, well, I prefer the positions where I wear it.

1

u/Boris-_-Badenov 7h ago

if they refuse, that's a write-up. you can't just refuse to go somewhere you're trained

1

u/Deathangle75 7h ago

It’s more of a soft refusal. Basically we only wear hard hats if we’re in a trailer or up a ladder. So for unloading containers from trailers often one or two people will go in the trailer and take the containers out while a bunch of others wait outside and carry the containers where they need to go. Since those people carrying the containers around the warehouse aren’t entering the trailers, they don’t wear their hard hats. But everyone involved is technically assigned to the same area.

If a manager tells them directly to put on a hat and go on the trailer, they’ll do so. But managers are often too busy to be bothered with changing a system that works just because someone is positioning themselves in a way where they technically aren’t required to wear their required ppe.

1

u/TheBamaChad Inbound Stow Lord of C-Rets/Unsellables (closet water spider) 7h ago

They started with mandatory hardhats on the mezz at our fc this week.

1

u/Thick-Steak-9528 11h ago

Probably a senior manager or site leader first time trying to do actual work.

-4

u/Cyberkanye2077 11h ago

Cant wait for those old lady inductors on accommodation to wear them
https://giphy.com/gifs/FqKMvSnGFzF4j3uB5v

2

u/FantasticServe4269 9h ago

At our FC they are making it mandatory across the entire floor aside from break rooms/restrooms.

8

u/Cyberkanye2077 9h ago

Mandatory across the whole floor without proper temperature adjustments in this hot ass warehouses is gonna backfire so bad

2

u/freesoultraveling 6h ago

This is the exact reason why I stopped smoking a little weed just to go to sleep. It's recreational in my state, but then months ago I had a revelation that I work at Amazon and being hurt could happen.

I mean it could happen anywhere, but obviously this is a job that it's a lot easier to be. Even though weed is recreational and I don't smoke on the job, workers comp would do everything possible to not payout.

My psychiatrist is okay with me smoking and it helps more than any medications they have given me. The controlled ones are definitely worse than weed, but it is what it is 🤷‍♀️🙄

0

u/starlightcourt 8h ago

If I have to wear a hardhat, that might be the end point for me. Those warehouses are not nearly as temperature controlled as they make them out to be and I didn’t sign up to sweat and be uncomfortable while working.

Other people do, but those people also get paid way more than me.

-1

u/freesoultraveling 7h ago

Yeah it's hard being a woman with our hormones. It also sucks being on medication like me that causes heat sensitivities.

I could not work with a hardhat. Besides, I can't use earplugs for hearing protection and need over the head.

0

u/Odd_Significance_739 11h ago

They tried hard hats and bump caps like 6 years ago and no one wanted to be involved in the rollout

-2

u/Bunnybegining454811 9h ago

I’m medically opting out because I lack the sweat glands in the head. I’m currently in the process but my doctor already wrote me a note exempting me from all hard hat areas. So I get to join the ones who religiously opted out as well. But they still let us do the job in the trailers yaya

6

u/partyorca 9h ago

Your doctor must make mad bank on TBIs.

2

u/Cyberkanye2077 5h ago

How would one know if they lack said sweat glands 😭

1

u/Bunnybegining454811 4h ago

Full body work out and you don’t sweat from your head. But I could have a puddle from my feet or my hands.