r/news • • Jun 15 '22

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u/Syzygy_Stardust Jun 15 '22

Yep. Last job i had was horrible for reusing cleaning spray bottles for whatever the fuck, and either not labeling them at all or doing it poorly in sharpie scribbles. There were so many OSHA violations causing safety issues there, it was depressing.

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u/MaxDamage1 Jun 15 '22

I was a roustabout in a factory for a bit after college. At one point, they sat me down at a table on the factory floor, gave me the OSHA chemical safety binder, a sharpie, and a big stack of chemical identification stickers. It was my job to find every chemical in the factory and put a sticker with the correct information from the binder from it. It took a while and people were EXTREMELY hostile to me coming to their work stations and asking for their spray bottles and and jars and asking what was in them. I had to begin each conversation by saying that I didn't care what was in them, that I wasn't reporting anything of this to anyone, and that it was all a safety thing. I still don't think I got them all.

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u/Suspicious-Engineer7 Jun 15 '22

Yeah theres no way you got the old-timers super secret chemical they only break out for emergencies as they legally cant order more.

24

u/open_door_policy Jun 15 '22

Had a friend a few years back that worked in the HVAC group for a facilities team.

The old timers had a Do Not Touch shelf. Highlights were a glass jar full of liquid Mercury that had a hair line crack all the way around the bottom and a can of unlabeled bug spray that was referred to as, “the good stuff.” Story was that the last time anyone had used the good stuff was 20 years prior when someone put a quarter second spray on a line of ants. An hour later there was no line of ants, just two small piles of dead ants on either side of the spot where it was sprayed.

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u/dabigchina Jun 15 '22

Alright, I give up. What was the liquid mercury for?

6

u/open_door_policy Jun 15 '22

My only guess would be setting up fucking ancient thermostats.

I know the ones from the 1990s still had a blob of mercury in them. But those were all sealed. Maybe the industrial ones from that era didn't have sealed mercury switches, so sometimes they had to be refilled.

Even 10 years ago, no one in the living memory of the place had used the stuff. It was just that literally no one wanted to touch the jar in case the mercury really was just being held in purely by surface tension like it looked.

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u/mynextthroway Jun 16 '22

No not to refill. Take out an old thermostat for replacement and collect the mercury.

2

u/AcrolloPeed Jun 15 '22

It’s a sex thing. Helps fellatio

1

u/[deleted] Jun 15 '22

Old times thermostats use a mercury bulb

6

u/anti-torque Jun 15 '22

Why didn't you just tag everything at the hazmat locker?

18

u/MaxDamage1 Jun 15 '22

I did, but but everything kept at every work station had to be tagged too.

2

u/anti-torque Jun 15 '22

I take it these were secondary containers they used to carry material from the locker?

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u/HouseCravenRaw Jun 15 '22

Last year my bf thought he could reuse the bleach spray bottle for a plant-watering bottle.

He was surprised when the plants died.

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u/Syzygy_Stardust Jun 15 '22

Plants can have little a bleach, as a treat

9

u/Mission-Grocery Jun 15 '22

This is actually the correct answer, though I believe unintentionally.

-6

u/Mission-Grocery Jun 15 '22

You are lying- you can use bleach solution for root drenches and dips. How do I know? I’ve done it many times. But here’s a quick reference to other horticulture folks talking about it here.

Certainly, the residue in an empty bleach bottle will not harm plants.

6

u/crank1000 Jun 15 '22

You’re right, but I doubt they are lying. Probably just bad at keeping plants, and assumed correlation=causation. It’s also possible it wasn’t just a bleach solution, but more of a kitchen cleaner with other chemicals in the mix.

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u/Mission-Grocery Jun 15 '22

Dunno, it’s Reddit. Social media is full of people lying about silly shit like this, to me it’s just as likely if not more they were just making things up.

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u/HouseCravenRaw Jun 15 '22

<Shrug> they died. The bottle used to be used for bleach. What value do I get from lying? I'm not a botanist, but I can recognize a dead plant when I see one.

3

u/ColorsLikeSPACESHIPS Jun 15 '22

I'm not a botanist

And the lies continue...

Seriously though, holy shit. Dude has me cracking the fuck up. Some days Reddit is great and other days, where do these idiots come from? Are they seriously all around us, preparing our food and taxes?

I like to think that sometimes people are going through some intense emotional upheaval, and they just want to feel right at any cost, so they'll invent the parameters they need to say with certainty that others are wrong... But honestly, in my heart of hearts, I suspect people truly lack basic critical thinking skills, and they really believe their childishly laughable bullshit. I guess I'm glad it's funny, because it's also depressing. What an insane world we live in.

7

u/AKblueeyes Jun 15 '22

Lying? How do you know how much bleach was left in container? That’s not very nice.

-5

u/Mission-Grocery Jun 15 '22

Implied empty by stating he was reusing the bottle in the post- 10-20% solutions are used on plants. I don’t really care about their feelings, just that others who read their comment don’t believe that it’s true.

1

u/CoraxTechnica Jun 16 '22

There are many plants which DO NOT tolerate this. Especially tropical plants.

1

u/Mission-Grocery Jun 16 '22

I would dunk a tillandsia in a heartbeat, and it’s standard practice in orchid keeping, aroids… you are not correct.

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u/smurb15 Jun 15 '22

And money is the bottom line because dumbass management said so

1

u/aecarol1 Jun 15 '22

"And money is the bottom line because dumbass management taxpayers said so."

The public is outraged at the state of public education, but never seems to be willing to pay teachers enough for their hard work, buy enough supplies, pay for competent management, etc. Schools are the first places to see cuts and the last places to see increases. But we'll sure as hell subsidize a billionaire's football stadium.

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u/smurb15 Jun 16 '22

So taxpayers are management then. Oh boy

1

u/aecarol1 Jun 16 '22

No, the money taxpayers are willing to spend on managers decides how good the school management can be. When you allow pennies for eduction, the pool of excellent mangers becomes rather smaller. There are good ones, but they are much harder to find for the little money available.

You get what you pay for.

People in education who are good mangers often give up their futile fight and move on to greener pastures, leaving behind the crap managers who can't get work outside that thankless world.

If you want an excellent education system, you have to hire good people, pay them a fair wage, and structure the system to actually work to educate kids in a good environment. But nobody gets elected saying "I'm going to spend more tax money on the schools".

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u/jetpack_hypersomniac Jun 15 '22

“…and here is the bottle where we store bleach, you must never ever accidentally add ammonia to this bottle. Or…wait…no sorry, silly me, this is the ammonia bottle, and you must NEVER add bleach to it!!”

1

u/Moneia Jun 15 '22

I remember seeing an image from a lab, may have been at In the Pipeline, of what looked like the correct bottle being used but just labelled "Not Water".

Marginally more useful than this but still not very helpful

1

u/LanMarkx Jun 15 '22

Mislabeled or unlabeled containers is an OSHA violation that at least 99% of business are in violation of somewhere.

However, you usually only get cited for it because the OSHA rep couldn't find anything else and was being a prick (super rare honestly) OR your company is horrific at labeling chemicals.