I just need to get this off my chest. I work as a house painter and today we needed to sand an entire room, top to bottom to get texture off the wall. The electric sander stopped working today (of course) so my foreman decided we needed to sand the walls by hand. I have asthma, and I knew this was going to cause a problem for me without a mask. So i grabbed one from my car. I started sanding a wall and after doing this for about 40 minutes my chest starts to ache. the doors had to be closed because the homeowner said we were making too must dust in the air. it was so bad you couldnt really see in there.
I told my foreman that my chest was hurting a lot and i have asthma. He LAUGHED at me. thinking it was some kind of joke. i went outside, took 2 puffs of my inhaler and waited 30 minutes. nothing. so i tried to just suck it up. all the more while i kept saying i might need to go to urgent care its hard to breathe. he kept chuckling at it. So i drove myself to urgent care that was less than 2 minutes down the street and admitted myself. they had to give me steriods and sent me home. it was in fact, an asthma attack. For some reason my foreman decided to tell my boss that i left to go home but i looked fine. EVEN THOUGH I TOLD HIM I WAS GOING TO THE URGENT CARE FOR AN ASTHMA ATTACK. (i called my boss on the way to the urgent care btw, he didnt pick up).
After my care visit I called my boss again and he said “sorry this happened to you, are um. you going home?” like no jackass im going to go right back to working in that unsafe environment to cause further damage to my lungs.
For those of you who don't know, OSHA prohibits employees from working in such conditions. my boss could get major shit for this.
TLDR: I had an asthma attack at work because my boss doesnt like to follow OSHA protocols, and apparently my foreman doesnt know what asthma is either.