While everyone has a horrible boss story, there are unlucky souls out there who can truly claim to have the worst ones. Because no matter how bad your day is, most of us don’t expect to deal with possible deaths while going about our 9-to-5.

An employee shared his experience about learning that a coworker had died on the job and then being told to just continue working. Instead, he and many of his colleagues decided to walk. Readers shared their own tales of cruel and inhumane jobs and managers and debated why in the world working conditions have gotten so bad.

While jobs can be hard, there are still some things most people will find unacceptable

Image credits: karrastock (not the actual photo)

One man was told to keep working when a colleague passed away on site

Image credits: drazenphoto (not the actual photo)

OP reported the entire thing to OSHA

Image credits: Sgt_Dirty_Dan

Workplace safety is often overlooked by many companies

While burnout, stress, and depression might all be the results of a bad job site, manual labor like the lumber mill OP works in does need to have some real safety standards. In the US, this is why agencies such as OSHA (the Occupational Safety and Health Administration) exist. While in a perfect world, workplaces would self-regulate to ensure that employees are not overburdened to the point that they die on-site, experience (and stories like OP’s) show that this won’t just happen naturally.

This is why, over a hundred years ago, the US government set up certain workplace safety guides to help limit workplace injuries and deaths. Industrialization and the need to build tanks, weapons, and ships during the Second World War led to an increase in injury, as people had to work around massive amounts of machinery. Injured workers were obviously bad for productivity, particularly if they possessed some valuable industrial skill. However, it wasn’t until after 1945 that labor unions began to more aggressively push for worker protections.

This culminated in the creation of OSHA in 1971, which not only set workplace standards but also allowed people to report unsafe workplaces and provides training. While it’s not hard to guess that many managers might dislike OSHA for telling them how to do their job, it has been proven to reduce accidents. A 2012 study that its random inspections helped reduce injury rates by almost 10% and reduced injury costs by 26%. OSHA also has a habit of “naming and shaming” workplaces that aren’t up to code, which has been shown to decrease injury rates in other facilities that want to avoid making it on their list.

Management has to be forced to care about workers

So OP was absolutely in the right for reporting this particular workplace. While we don’t know the whole picture, it’s hard to not see how this amount of strain caused his coworkers to collapse on the job. And this is not a case of this person simply not being up to such physical work, commenters suggested that the weight was simply too high, something management did little to nothing to fix. Fortunately, workers are becoming more aware of just how poorly management takes care of them. One study found that around half of the people who voluntarily quit their jobs blamed management for a bad working environment.

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While this often refers to toxic practices like unpaid overtime and verbal abuse, OP’s story is a solid reminder that there are workplaces where a greedy boss can and will cause serious bodily harm to employees. Remember, until it was made Federal law in 1916, there were no laws around the length of time a person could be “made” to work. Management won’t ever do the right thing unless there is significant regulatory pressure.

One of the other more effective methods to get a boss’s attention is by not being at the job. Stikes, walkouts, and simple resignations might be scary, but it’s always vital to remember that management almost never really does the real work. Without employees, the whole venture, including its profits, falls apart. OP and his coworkers had the right idea. If you want to read other’s reasons for quitting the job on the spot, look no further, Bored Panda has got you covered. Check out our article on 50 things people saw that made them quit their last job.

He also answered some reader questions

Commenters shared their disbelief at management’s decisions

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Others shared their own stories

Later, OP gave a small update

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