The silliest "over the top" H&S story that happened to me is tame by comparison - one of our clients has a TV screen mounted about 8ft up a wall. Behind it is a mini-PC device, about the size of a paperback book. I need to re-set this, but to reach it I need to go up a ladder. Now... when I say "up a ladder", what I mean is up 3-4 steps of one of those fold-out stepladders.
Oh, no, can't let you do that, unless you've got:
- A valid "working at height" certificate (basically a piece of paper telling them I know how a ladder works!!
- Hard hat
- Hi-viz jacket
- Steel toe-caps
- A couple of hi-viz cones to prevent others from entering the "work area".
FFS. I'm a computer programmer. I haven't got any of that shit. I tell them if they can hang on a bit, I've got an orange flashing light (the type you stick on a van roof with a magnet), I can strap it to my head if that helps. And there's loads of traffic cones out on the motorway, I'll nick a couple of them... They were not amused. I told them if I could stand on a chair instead... they politely suggested I leave site & they'd sort it. Oh well, gave me time to have a nice cup of coffee on the way home...
Any H&S type would have had kittens if they'd seen me a few weeks back, 20ft up a rickety wooden ladder taking a security camera off my old workshop. It scared the bejeezus out of me too, the ladder is only about a foot wide, wooden sides & rungs with rusty steel supports (which, thanks to the rust, are probably weaker than the rungs), it wobbles all over the place. Got the job done though, and I hardly died at all. Scariest time was a few years back, I had to re-route a 440v cable from one end of a warehouse to the other (it went up in the middle, and turned left... I needed it to turn right). Same rickety wooden ladder, only this time it had its equally rickety extension piece attached as well, 30ft above some very pointy looking things on the floor, that could have been very nasty if I'd fallen off.
Dunno about you, though, I find that if the danger level is high enough, I take WAAAY more care and pay lots more attention to what I'm doing, than if it's "easy peasy".
IMHO - H&S, or OH&S or OSHA or whatever your regional brand is called, is basically attempting to legislate for common sense, then enforcing it with zealots who have no common sense themselves... I was watching one of the "Making of Dr Who" episodes a while back, so imagine a large cast & crew all wandering about the site location (a school yard IIRC), 2 people wearing hard-hats and hi-viz... yep, the H&S reps. They were also the ones fretting about making the monsters "too scary". FFS. It's Dr Who. The kids are supposed to be crying behind the sofa!