Re:Bullshit Job Notes
by JoeAltmaier on Friday September 14, 2018 @01:33AM
(#17984923)
This sounds largely like strawman examples to justify being paternalistic. The fridge in the break room has exactly the same risk as the one in your office; injury to the employee is a far, far greater risk than busting somebody's stapler; standardized workspace is one of those pointless conformity things that deliberately ignore differences in job function, personal preference and on and on.
No, I've been tangentially involved in this sort of decision from the management side in Serious Industry. The break room fridge is "known to the corporation" in some sense and can be assigned an inspection or even maintenance schedule if you have the expertise. Has more eyes on it for trouble in any case.
We had problems with people bringing knives in to de-core their apples. Every year there'd a nasty hand injury or two, and we were under pressure from upper management to keep our injury statistics low. Since hand injuries were one of our major problems; knife ban! :D
It was as effective as it was unpopular.
So because of management's lack of imagination (or caring) a solution was chosen unilaterally for the convenience of the party in power and for the inconvenience if the masses to protect them sheeps from themselves.
Or potentially someone could get injured through corporate negligence (eg, if there is a fire and the software engineer sleeping under the desk gets burned; power goes out for 12 hours and someone with a fridge gets food poisoning).
Focusing on GP's comment specifically, if the government (local or higher) discovers that a premise is being used for habitation I imagine there are a whole bunch of rules that kick in that the company does not want to be involved with.
It is much cheaper, easier and more internally consistent to mandate that all employees have a standardised work space. Then not only do you cut your risk profile, you also might find opportunities for efficiencies elsewhere.
Compare personal risk profiles to a company. If I am a bit risk-prone maybe I tolerate a lifestyle where there is a 1 in 200 chance of a near-fatal accident each year each year (so I'm expecting to make it to old age with a near misses or two in life - I've met people who I judge to live to this level of risk). If you try that sort of approach with a company of 150 employees, in a given year you now expect:
1) More likely than not to have a near fatal accident in the workspace
2) To be imprisoned or have your business ended by the government for being a menace to your employees
Corporations can't tolerate risk at anywhere near the level individuals do; because they have to scale everything up to their entire workforce.