What Happened?

Key to understanding how injuries happen, and the toll that they can take on your personal life is hearing about them in first person. We have asked our coworkers to tell us about their injury stories, so that everyone can learn from them, and learn how important it is to avoid getting hurt at work. To submit your own story , please contact us here. 
​Thank You.

I didn't know I was injured.

I honestly thought that I had slept wrong on my shoulder for a few days. But it didn't ever stop hurting, and it finally got so bad that I couldn't stack bags anymore. When I went to the clinic, they took me off the clock to go to a bone doctor. The problem was, I had waited for too long to report the injury, so they told me that they couldn't know for sure if I had hurt myself at work or not. They ended up sending me back to work. This was back in 2002, and my shoulder still hurts when I use it wrong. 

Bin Injury

I used to never wear kneepads. One day, I woke up and my knee was swollen up like a grapefruit. Seriously, it looked like I had a kneepad inside my skin. It was bursitis, and I had to have fluid drained off of my knee. It didn't hurt, but it made me want to wear my kneepads from now on. 

Short Staffing

I was working my pier in the BMU, which was pier 29. At that time, it was NRT and LIM in the morning. There were only four people assigned to that pier, and usually at least one of them would be OR. We would lose one person every few minutes to go run bags. That left only two people who really knew what they were doing. Wide body on one side, and narrow bodies on the other, so we had to split up to work the pier. 

One day, my right leg just stopped working right. It had paralyzed partially due to a disk injury in my spine. 

FIS

I am always sore after work, so it was normal when my wrist was hurting for a week. I didn't go to the clinic because I didn't want to miss my vacation - I wouldn't be able to travel, so I decided to wait and see if my wrist felt better when I got back. But the problem was that my wrist just wouldn't lift up. I could not bend it backwards no matter how hard I tried. It hurt, and I couldn't bend it back at all. This scared me when I noticed it and I went into the clinic. They kept me out for three months because they said there was a problem with my tendons. I had hurt it because of the way that I pulled bags out of the carts at FIS all day. 

Share your story

If you think that your story could help prevent an injury, or could help someone navigate the OJI process, please share your experiences with us. You don't have to give your name or any personal information. Thank you for speaking up.
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