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In the US spewing all the alarms at the line level employees and fatiguing the shit out of them is a direct (and predictable, but of course everyone who complai

In the US spewing all the alarms at the line level employees and fatiguing the shit out of them is a direct (and predictable, but of course everyone who complained in advance got sneered at by the usual demographics) result of OSHA policy. Same bunch of moronic incentives that result in there being a policy against everything and employees technically violating the rules to work normally. Whenever you see an alarm fatigue workplace there's usually a rule in the rulebook that says they have to stop what they're doing for every alarm until it's triaged and documented. This is how the rules financially incentivize the company to act even if it's stupid and results in more screw ups.

ubertaco 2mo ago
Yeah, if only the government didn't regulate that pesky checks notes workplace safety, then for-profit companies could be free to act for the good of all, like they always do!
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
- bigstrat2003 2mo ago
  Nobody has said that, so you're arguing against a strawman. The parent poster made the argument that there's too much government regulation such that it causes fatigue and ignoring the rules, not that there should be zero.
pjc50 2mo ago
> a policy against everything and employees technically violating the rules to work normally. This is called "normalization of deviance" and generally should be avoided, because it often precedes a serious accident.
- cucumber3732842 2mo ago
  >This is called "normalization of deviance" You don't even need to get to the point of breaking the rules for it to be a problem. This is stupid human factors type stuff. The filthy capitalists don't want their oil rigs going kaboom and their expensively trained workers having injury downtime. There is a natural incentive alignment to some extent here. And then the useful idiots show up, and rather than fostering that alignment they put their thumb on the scale and they change the calculations. The filthy capitalists crunch the numbers and they realize that over the life of the oil rig and a fleet of some number of them they'll make more money spewing alarms at the guys running the place until their eyes glaze over. Sure he'll miss something important blowing up the works with loss of life and limb 2/<big number> amount of the time instead of 1/<big number> if you'd have tuned it right buuuuut, you'll lose less money that way because if you do it the "right" way you'll get dinged by the OSHA people every time some petty accident type happens because you turned the alarm for that one off so as not to fatigue people. A typical example is some industrial facility where policy defines "hot" as anything lukewarm and up and so they implicitly train people to ignore it. People are opening "hot" equipment all the time, getting approvals to do it, ignoring warning lights, etc, etc, so basically no net improvement in actual safety over having nothing at all. And this is fine until one day someone gets killed because they let loose something that was 300deg not 110. You see this goddamn fact pattern all the time. Machinery beepers, hazard signage and barriers, machinery interlocks, etc, etc, it never fucking ends. Great job guys, Mission Accomplished (TM). When everything is a hazard nothing is.

ubertaco 2mo ago

Yeah, if only the government didn't regulate that pesky checks notes workplace safety, then for-profit companies could be free to act for the good of all, like they always do!

deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
bigstrat2003 2mo ago
Nobody has said that, so you're arguing against a strawman. The parent poster made the argument that there's too much government regulation such that it causes fatigue and ignoring the rules, not that there should be zero.

pjc50 2mo ago

> a policy against everything and employees technically violating the rules to work normally. This is called "normalization of deviance" and generally should be avoided, because it often precedes a serious accident.

cucumber3732842 2mo ago
>This is called "normalization of deviance" You don't even need to get to the point of breaking the rules for it to be a problem. This is stupid human factors type stuff. The filthy capitalists don't want their oil rigs going kaboom and their expensively trained workers having injury downtime. There is a natural incentive alignment to some extent here. And then the useful idiots show up, and rather than fostering that alignment they put their thumb on the scale and they change the calculations. The filthy capitalists crunch the numbers and they realize that over the life of the oil rig and a fleet of some number of them they'll make more money spewing alarms at the guys running the place until their eyes glaze over. Sure he'll miss something important blowing up the works with loss of life and limb 2/<big number> amount of the time instead of 1/<big number> if you'd have tuned it right buuuuut, you'll lose less money that way because if you do it the "right" way you'll get dinged by the OSHA people every time some petty accident type happens because you turned the alarm for that one off so as not to fatigue people. A typical example is some industrial facility where policy defines "hot" as anything lukewarm and up and so they implicitly train people to ignore it. People are opening "hot" equipment all the time, getting approvals to do it, ignoring warning lights, etc, etc, so basically no net improvement in actual safety over having nothing at all. And this is fine until one day someone gets killed because they let loose something that was 300deg not 110. You see this goddamn fact pattern all the time. Machinery beepers, hazard signage and barriers, machinery interlocks, etc, etc, it never fucking ends. Great job guys, Mission Accomplished (TM). When everything is a hazard nothing is.