I recently read a blog post that told the story of an inexperienced forklift operator whose operational error in the warehouse area of a food bank distribution center resulted in an unbalanced load falling off the forks and onto the feet of an unsuspecting co-worker. The injured warehouse worker suffered several broken bones in his foot and was taken to the hospital for treatment. What’s more, this was his second incident within the span of one hour (no one was injured in the first incident).
It turns out the lift truck operator was getting over a case of the flu and had not believed he was back at 100% yet.
The blog writer – a co-worker of the forklift operator – believes warehouse and distribution center managers must stay on high alert for such situations, and possibly provide less potentially hazardous work in these scenarios.
What do you think? Are your warehouse employees able and willing to admit when they’re not at full speed? Do you have more than “busy work” to provide if necessary? Just how big of a problem do you think this is, and how is your facility dealing with it?
You can read the original blog post here.
