Workplace Safety and Following Procedures
Safety items rarely ask you to recite a regulation. They ask what you would do next. That means recognizing a hazard, placing it in the right category, and choosing the response that protects people first.
Concepts to know cold
- Hazard types: slip, trip, and fall; struck-by; caught-in/between; electrical; chemical; ergonomic (lifting, repetition); biological.
- Hierarchy of controls: eliminate the hazard, substitute something safer, engineer a guard or barrier, change the procedure, then rely on personal protective equipment. PPE is the last line of defense, never the first.
- Procedure literacy: read the SOP, use the checklist, follow lockout/tagout steps, keep aisles and exits clear, know evacuation routes and assembly points.
- Reporting: near misses count. Report the condition, not only the injury.
Traps
Distractors describe a plausible but out-of-order action - mopping a spill before marking the area, or repairing equipment before locking it out. Watch for FIRST and EXCEPT in the stem; a true statement can still be the wrong answer. Extreme words (always, never, guaranteed) usually signal a wrong option, and any answer that hides a problem from a supervisor is almost always wrong.
Rule of thumb
STOP, SECURE, NOTIFY, RECORD. Stop the work, secure the area so no one else is exposed, notify the supervisor or the person with authority, then document.
Worked example: You find a frayed cord on a conveyor. You do not tape it, and you do not leave it running. You stop using the equipment, keep others away, tag it out of service, tell your supervisor, and log the defect. Any option that skips the keep-others-away step is incomplete.