I work for a company that maintains servers for one of the major cloud service providers at their Data Centers. Let’s call them company Em. Company Em requires all employees and contractors (like me) to wear safety toed shoes inside their Data Centers at all times. I have a letter from a doctor stating that this exacerbates my knee injury, and causes me unnecessary pain. I normally work in the US, and this letter is good enough for the company Em management there.
I’m in France for a month training new technicians. I sent this letter to the local Company Em management thinking it would be the same, especially in a country that has famously strong worker protections. I was wrong.
Company Em management cancelled my access and had security escort me offsite in the middle of a repair task for one of their very expensive AI nodes.
So I bought a pair of safety toed shoes and started wearing them to work. As I knew it would, my injury is getting worse, and it’s gotten to the point where I can’t fully extent my leg, and I’m in constant pain. I brought this up with Company Em management and asked why my doctors letter was not enough. Their response was that this is for my health and safety, and without form XYZ (which takes weeks to process, longer than I’ll be here for) they have no choice but to revoke my access, for my own safety. Oh, and there is nothing in my work environment that is a crush risk. It’s a fully constructed, complete Data Center.
I asked the company Em manager who had me removed why they think they are a better arbiter of my own health and safety then me and my doctor are, and I got that classic answer:
“I’m just following orders”
Sorry for the rant.