So before I started my business I worked for my old boss for 10 years. He would always talk about being careful about stuff “because OSHA could show up” like they were some type of boogeyman. In those 10 years I never once saw anyone from any type of regulatory body.
So was my boss just being paranoid? What are the odds someone from OSHA actually would be around? have you ever dealt with them?
Before I was managing the business, we had an incident. The complaints were really strange if it were a former employee. They were minor, surface-level things that someone might notice at a passing glance, but there was no mention of major issues that only an employee would know. Although OSHA said it was an employee I think it was an anonymous tip from another contractor we did some work for.
For example, there was no mention of the fact that our shop restroom was literally a bucket in a closet full of glass, or that there was no safety, or clean up protocols in place for stripping lead paint. Instead it was things like “no safety glasses or hearing protection for power tools”, when only the owner and myself ever operated them anyway.
A friend of mine had a major incident recently, over some not quite large enough tie-off points for scaffolding. He was also working on the rooftop directly across the street from the OSHA office, though