OSHA fined me… for something they can’t explain!

Now, from this whole OSHA thing, I have learned this, and that is when OSHA comes knocking, everyone's gonna get the day off.

Had the morning meetings here on Thursday morning at the Bellingham shop. Really good. We talked about the difference between socialism, communism and capitalism and the pros and the cons about Medicare and Medicaid taxation. That's what we talked about at our meeting. And honestly, to be perfectly honest, today is probably one of the lowest levels of motivation I have had in at least 6 to 12 months. It is tempting to not film on a day like this, I'm gonna be honest. But I also do not want to create the perception that fun and exciting things happen every single day. And it's all great and fantastic. I'm always hiring and building new things and new shops when most of the time, entrepreneurship is just the opposite of that. So I'm gonna try to record on days when I feel very little motivation and it's just a grind. And those videos will not do very many views, but at least they'll be on the record so that when we're doing really fun and exciting things, it'll still be proven that that's not the majority of life as an entrepreneur or it's really just grinding when you really don't feel like it. And that's kind of where I'm at right now.

Now, several weeks ago, we had OSHA come knocking at our door, and we did an inspection because someone reported us over stuff. Then they come to a massive inspection of everything, and everything passed besides one thing, and that is the audio metric testing, which means every single year we have to. We are supposed to be testing the hearing of all of our employees. And we had never done that before. We didn't know we had to do that before. And it is not common in our area. I know a lot of people were like, I've done this for a long time. I worked at a factory. We have to do it every single year. Okay, great. But like lawn care, landscaping companies that have under 50 or 100 employees, typically OSHA just leaves alone. And so anyways, all of that to say we got fined $15,000. We went ahead and appealed it, and they brought it down to $2,000 magically. Then I appealed it again and said, look, I understand that we got in TR for this and we were at fault. But then I wrote them back again and appealed again and said, Look, $2,000, not bad. Thank you for the discount. I appreciate it. Somehow just going from 15,000 to 2,000 because I asked kind of strange, but okay. But I said, I still think that if I'm gonna get a citation, I should have some sort of warning. And I didn't know I was doing anything wrong. And you never told me that I had to do it. And so could you please just asking, could you please just remove the citation? I understand that we have it on our record and I understand that we need to do it going forward. And we can absolutely, in the next 30 days, start having that testing from OSHA at our facility of all of our team. That's totally fine, but can we please not pay the $2,000? Not because the $2,000. It's just the moral of it. It's just I don't want to pay thou $2,000 for something I didn't know I was doing something wrong. For example, if you go speeding down the road and get a ticket for it and you have to pay a fine, hey, look, the speed limit was posted. You knew it was the wrong thing to do. You went against it. But if there is no speed limit sign, how can you blame the person for speeding? They didn' Speed limit was. I didn't know I had to do this audiometric testing, so why am I getting fined for it? Just let me know what the rules are. I will abide by them. Like within 30 days, I will get this all taken care of. So this afternoon at 2pm, I'm going right now for an appeal hearing. I'm going to talk to, I don't know, a judge, I don't know who I'm talking to, probably someone just at OSHA and appealing my case because it's more a matter of ethics, not really a matter of right or wrong. I understand I'm wrong, I'm going to get it fixed. But I don't think I should have to pay $2,000 because you never told me the rules.

Okay, so explain what this is.

So we offer a lot of altar services here, and it's a lot to know about. And so it's important that everybody who works here knows what we offer.

People call in, random people call in.

People call in and ask questions. You need to know what we offer, what our services are.

We made a quiz.

So we made a quiz.

For the employees here, take that are very complicated. You would only know the answers to this if you'd studied mikeannies.com website and looked at all of our offerings.

Okay, so choose a couple of the hardest ones. You think, oh, my goodness. And we'll see if people can get them right. And then I gotta set this exactly, see if I can get them all.

This is challenging. So when.

These are the ones that looked really hard to me.

When did the Business Boot Camp podcast start? Do you know when the first day was?

Let me see this. Okay. I know it's not a. It's not 2021. It's B. 2015. 2015, that's correct. Yeah. Let's go.

Okay.

This one got a lot of people. This last one a great.

Oh, yeah, this one was difficult. A great resource for entrepreneurs is Mike.

Has an MBA course for entrepreneurs.

It would be teachable because that's what's actually available.

It's a teachable. You can do a master class. Little tricky.

So, okay, so there's 17 questions. 17 questions.

We've given this to all the employees here.

$50 if they get it. All right, $50.

The first person who gets all. Perfect score. I've had nobody do better than four.

Wrong. Okay, here we go.

So Mike's gonna try.

All right, let's do it.

Okay, so this is the only one that I'm not sure of. And the reason is. Is. Are you counting lectures or number of videos? Because there's two videos on some of those lectures.

If you go to the home page, the splash page, it's in the marketing blurb that tells you you're going to get access to this many plus videos.

Okay, we're going out on a limb here, Lonnie. You got enterprise pricing wrong, and you're supposed to be in charge of P4P. Come on now. Okay. All right, Brian.

I only really have to ask if the one question is right.

There was 40 plus videos.

Which one did I put? 40, 50.

Yes.

Yes. Let's go. Let's get. Do you think you got them all? Oh, yeah, definitely. 100%. This made my day. He was actually incorrect here. It's actually 11.98. Just wanted to point that out. That is funny. Okay, you ready? We're gonna grade it. Okay, it's gonna grade it.

Okay, page one. You ready?

B.

B is correct.

C is correct. B. Correct. C. Correct. C. Correct. C. Yes. C. There's a lot of Cs here.

B3 is.

The third one is B.

C, Yes. C. Yes. D. Yes. C. Yes. C. Yes. D. Yes. B.

Yes.

V. Yes.

But I just had a phone to pick. That's the actual answer.

Oh, really?

599 times 2. I think it says 11.99 in the marketing.

I based all that off the.

Off the marketing. I have to look. Did they do the math wrong? But Cool. Nailed it. Let's go. That can be. That can be your key.

Was that.

Was that difficult?

Now, from this whole OSHA thing, I have learned this. And that is when OSHA comes knocking. Everyone's gonna get the day off and we're not gonna do any work. And I never had a full inspection by osha. We've had the Department of Ecology for things like fertilizers and pesticides and stuff like that. But this is the first time OSHA and all this stuff. So they're gonna find something wrong. They are funded by their fines. So if they don't get any fines and they don't hand those bad boys out, they don't get any money if they. And I don't want to be the one that has to pay for them. So next time OSHA comes knocking, it is going to be a holiday for Augusta Lawn Care. That's going to be the plan.

Okay, so I had the hearing for the Department of Safety and Health, or whatever it's called, and here's what happened. You're not going to believe it. So they literally use the analogy of the speedometer versus the road sign. For example, if you go speeding down the road and get a ticket for it and you have to pay a fine, hey, look, the speed limit was posted. You knew it was the wrong thing to do. You went against it again. That video clip I just made was before my hearing. In my hearing, he literally said, the way we run our department is not like a speeding sign. Where you see the speeding sign, you look at your odometer, you know you're over. And then when someone pulls you over, you have data. He's like, we're not like that. There is no sort of warning. There is no sort. We cite what we see. In other words, they give a citation for whatever they see in terms of problems. And what's crazy is on the actual hearing, he literally specifically said even they don't understand all their rules and regulations and they have to go look at the book because it doesn't always make sense. And it's not super intuitive. I was like, okay, so let me get it straight. You work there every single day and you are the department, and yet you're confessing to me that you don't understand what the rules and regulations are. How in the world am I, as a business owner who is not my full job, full time job to know these rules and regulations? How am I supposed to know that? And how is it right that you're able to find me for a rule you don't even know without looking at the rule book. We literally called in and the person we got on the phone after our first. The first citation for $15,000, and then they lowered 2,000. But on that very first call, literally, we have to leave a message and someone have to call us back because the person on the phone didn't have another clue what we were talking about. When it comes to landscapers and lawn care professionals having to do audiometric testing, it's very common in industries like mining and manufacturing, but not in ours. So all of that to say in this meeting, the guy that was determining what was happening in the case said, well, I cannot take away this citation. I can only give you a payment plan. Is it okay? But after going back and forth like 30 minutes, I told him, I said, look, how does it make sense to do annual testing on all of our employees when literally 80% of our staff is gone year over year because we're a seasonal business and people leave after a week or two, they don't make it. But, like, literally, I said, all of. Out of all of our crew that you did all this testing on, only one person was here out in the field from a year ago. Everyone else has either gone and started their own business, been promoted, or is now in management and in the office, or they just left or fired or something. I said, how does it even make sense to do audiometric testing on an annual basis? This is not the best thing for the employee. This is simply for you. He literally stated on the call, he's literally like, yeah, we just know these fines is what pays my bills. I'm like. And even said he had a crazy. He literally stated that he had a highly paid job that he doesn't enjoy. On the call, I was like, oh, my goodness. So here, the end result is this. They are not going to find me. For now, he's got to look into whether or not that clause of us being a seasonal business means that they don't have. We don't have to do audiometric testing because what's the point of doing? I said, I told him, hey, hey. I almost said his name. I said, look, if. If it was good for my employees and it was better for their health that they get audiometric testing, I would do it. However, number one, I didn't know about it. Number two, if I'm testing them every year and 80 to 90% of them are not going to be there year over year, what's the point? I'm not helping anything. I'm just Getting like your hearing is good, your hearing is bad, but over the course of the year, I don't get any actual real data to be able to protect their hearing. I'm giving them 27 to 30 decibel reduction ear protection for free and making sure they wear it. And the max that you calculated when you came in practice for a day was 87 decibels, so that puts them down at 60 decibels, which is totally fine. So it was a great conversation. I really wish I could have recorded it, but we'll see what happens. I don't think I'll get it completely waived and taken away. But the point of the matter is audiometric testing doesn't make sense if you're doing it annually and most of your employees are not there year over year over year. And I told him we should be doing it monthly. If this is good for the employees, we should be doing it monthly. And he didn't have a comeback for that one. So let's see what happens and see if we can't get around the fine. I told him, I do not care what's fine. This is a matter of ethics and all the other business owners that don't have the time of day to read your rule book. And why in the world is that? Well, we should. You should be asking us to come out and do a free consultation and then you don't have to do a citation. I said, why in the world would we want you to come on our property and do an inspection? Oh, take that back. A consultation when we know if you ever came back for an inspection, you just find the stupidest stuff to be able to get fines for. Why would I ever be like, yes, please come on my property. So you know the next revenue producing citation is at my property. Because you're gonna find something.

These departments, man.