An employee engaged in unsafe horseplay at work. He got warnings, including a final one, but was caught once again on videotape. He was fired, and the case eventually went to court.

Thomas Ayres worked at Wal-Mart. The company has a policy prohibiting “practices that may be inconsistent with ordinary and reasonable common sense safety rules,” such as “horseplay.”

Ayres engaged in an activity he called “surfing” — riding on pieces of cardboard on gravity roller conveyors.

A manager warned Ayres this was against policy. Ayres acknowledged this type of conduct was an “unsafe procedure.”

He was issued warnings several times for rules violations, and eventually received a final warning. A worker at Wal-Mart who violates any policy after a final warning is automatically terminated.

Sometime after receiving that warning, Ayres reported that he had dropped a wooden pallet and injured his toe.

While investigating, Wal-Mart managers viewed a videotape of Ayres’ work area on the day he was injured. On the video, Ayres and several of his co-workers can be seen trying to jump over two stacks of wooden pallets.

Ayres started running toward the pallets from about 20 feet away and then tried to jump over them. He attempted this three or four times and then did a cartwheel off the side of the stack of pallets. This happened about an hour after Ayres injured his foot.

Wal-Mart fired Ayres for engaging in horseplay.

The state determined he was ineligible for unemployment benefits because he was fired for misconduct.

Ayres appealed, with the case eventually going to a state court. He argued that his actions didn’t amount to employment misconduct.

The court rejected Ayres’ argument. It ruled the horseplay he engaged in did amount to employment misconduct — unemployment benefits denied.

Ayres v. Wal-Mart Associates Inc., Court of Appeals of Minnesota, No. A09-2125, 8/3/10.

Yes, you shouldn’t shave while driving — especially below the waist.

Florida Highway Patrol troopers say a two-vehicle crash on Cudjoe Key was caused by a driver who was shaving her bikini area while her ex-husband took the wheel from the passenger seat.

The car driven by Megan Barnes — with some help from Charles Judy — slammed into the back of a pickup truck.

Barnes allegedly drove another half-mile then switched seats with Judy. Then Judy claimed to be driving when the crash occurred. Barnes was driving with a suspended license.

The burns on Judy’s chest from the passenger-side airbag indicated he wasn’t driving. The driver’s airbag didn’t deploy.

Barnes faces multiple charges including reckless driving and the possibility of a year in prison.

Passengers in the truck were treated by minor injuries.

Trooper Gary Dunick, who responded to the crash, told The Citizen, “I’m really starting to believe this stuff only happens in the Keys.”

One of those so-called reality shows takes too cavalier an attitude about safety, according to a blogger in the general media. If that’s the case, we want to take the issue one step further: Do the media’s messages harm attempts to increase workplace safety?

Marc Hirsh blogs on National Public Radio’s Web site that CBS-TV’s Survivor has been “dangling … the prospect of people getting hurt as enticement to watch the show.”

The evidence he presents:

• A recent episode description: Injuries threaten to send two castaways home.
• The first injury took place just 17 minutes into the current season during the first round of the first challenge. Stephanie LaGrossa dislocated her shoulder.
• Host Jeff Probst’s comment about LaGrossa: “We have our first injury.”
• Later, Probst “gleefully” recounted the injuries suffered in the challenge.

And all the challenges on Survivor happen without safety gear required in professional sports — or in the workplace.

Hirsh also opines that “injuring yourself on the show stopped being a sign that you were stupid or clumsy or just plain doing something wrong and turned into a badge of honor.”

So there you have it: bodily injury as a badge of honor mixed with an attitude of “come on, tough it out.”

And that brings us to workplace safety. Have you ever encountered this situation? One worker, a “tough guy” with an “I-don’t-need-safety-gear-it’s-for-wimps” attitude, discourages others from using PPE.

Unfortunately, safety pros tell us that type of worker isn’t as rare as they’d like.

And, as the title of Hirsh’s article puts it, it’s “all fun and games until someone loses an eye.”

How do you counter the “tough guy” attitude when it comes to getting employees to wear PPE and follow safety rules? Can we do better, at work and at home, to encourage better safety attitudes? Let us know what you think in the Comments Box below.

According to its Web site, “The Darwin Awards salute the improvement of the human genome by honoring those who accidentally remove themselves from it.”

Among this year’s awards:

• The man who thought it would be fun to use a pressurized hose for an inappropriate purpose
• A ski lift operator who did pull-ups on a piece of moving equipment
• The building demolition worker who hadn’t considered his own fate while tearing down a structure around him, and
• The man who found out the hardest way that body piercings and electronic control testers don’t mix.

You can read these and more 2008 Darwin Award winners (losers?) here.

A drunk construction worker jumped off the 36th floor of a building in Lower Manhattan into protective netting one floor below.

He wasn’t injured, but the unidentified worker was fired immediately, according to the Downtown Express. No word on why he jumped.

As the worker made his way up the building, his boss told him to put on a harness. The worker yelled back that he didn’t need one.

Police may charge the worker with reckless endangerment.

The incident happened at the W Hotel construction site. The building previously located at the construction site was damaged and contaminated during the 9/11 attacks and had to be demolished.

Trent Sack suffered multiple arm, leg and vertebra fractures while using a propane torch to thaw ice from inside a mechanical foot at a BNI coal mine in Center, ND.

The torch went out, and gas leaked. The gas exploded after Sack moved the opening cover of the mechanical foot aside and oxygen rushed in, according to the Bismarck Tribune. No fire resulted from the explosion.

The company reported the incident to the Mine Safety and Health Administration, which conducted an investigation. No word on whether the company will be fined.

It’s fired an employee of almost 30 years who was found with an open can of beer while driving a snowplow.

Police stopped the 57-year-old worker after receiving a call from a passerby.

Officers found an open can of beer in the plow, according to CBC News.

The driver passed a breathalyzer test, however the officers issued him a ticket for $438 for possessing open alcohol in a motor vehicle.

The city suspended the worker with pay. Then the downtown borough council of Ville-Marie voted unanimously to fire the employee.

The city has fired other municipal workers for drinking while using city equipment over the years.

In 2003, a worker was fired for driving his snowplow through a red light and hitting another vehicle.

The union and the borough are negotiating the terms of the man’s dismissal.

The makers of the Whizzinator have pleaded guilty in federal court to two conspiracy counts, putting an official end to their product.

The company owned by George Wills and Robert Catalano, Puck Technology, sold the device that helped men pass drug tests.

The Whizzinator is a prosthetic penis that comes with a heating element and fake urine. It was sold from 2005 through this year.

Federal prosecutors claim the product helped people circumvent federal workplace drug-testing programs. They cited customer testimonials on the company’s Web site, including one in which an employee bragged about using the device to pass a drug test required by Department of Transportation regulations.

The men will be sentenced in February and face up to eight years in prison and a $500,000 fine each.

The Whizzinator entered public consciousness three years ago when former Vikings running back Onterrio Smith was caught with one in an airport.

The device made news a second time when a couple asked a convenience store clerk in McKeesport, PA, to heat one in a store microwave so the fake urine would attain body temperature. The store clerk called police. The woman, who wanted the fake urine to pass a pre-employment drug test, pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct and agreed to pay to replace the store’s microwave.

OSHA regulations prohibit use of microwaves to heat food once bodily fluids have been in them.

But that’s exactly what Australian forklift driver Matthew Ward did.

Ward set up a video camera at work to record his exploits, which included some wheelies, burnouts and crashing into a stack of concrete pipes.

He must’ve been proud of his forklift maneuvers because he posted them on YouTube.

Word spread, and his employer, a Melbourne-area company that makes pipes, turned him over to police and fired him.

A court has fined him the equivalent of about U.S. $800. He lost his license to drive forklifts.

He pleaded guilty to a single count of failing to take care of his own health and safety. He also has to take a week-long occupational safety course and perform 50 hours of community service.

Oh, and his YouTube video? It’s been pulled

If a similar incident happened in the U.S., an employer could go after him for damage to the pipes he drove into. But the possibility of fining a worker for such safety infractions and requiring him to attend safety courses doesn’t exist in the U.S.

Do you think it should? Let us know in the Comments Box below.