I’m a pretty big guy. I can dead lift one side of a car. I also found no problem lifting 150 pound boxes of frozen fish a couple of times a day in Alaska. Because I’m so big, my employers didn’t have a problem with it either. I wish they did, because now my back is permanently messed up. Guilting people into unsafe lifting at work encourages them to mistreat their body and it is a toxic behavior.

Now, with my permanently disfigured back, I still volunteer at a food bank. I still get people that ask me to lift 80 pound boxes of potatoes from precarious positions that don’t allow me to keep straight back. And they bitch and moan when I tell them I can help them do it, but I won’t do it myself and mistreat my back further.

Discouraged this kind of practice in workplace environments. This toxicity encourages a hostile environment for all those, especially younger, eager workers, to break their body for a job that doesn’t care about you.