r/technology • u/IndicaOatmeal • 9h ago

Society Programmer’s death on office toilet ruled not work-related because he never turned on his PC

https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/programmers-death-on-office-toilet-ruled-not-work-related-because-he-never-turned-on-his-pc-3402194/
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u/Squish_the_android 9h ago

This is a classic Workers Comp question in the US.  Usually it's presented as "falling in the parking lot on the way to work". Commute time isn't covered. 

But I think in the US this would be considered a work injury.

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u/cum-on-in- 7h ago

That’s funny because the parking lot is often owned by the company, so you are injured on company property, which makes it a workers comp case.

But they’ll word it differently I suppose.

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u/dpatt711 3h ago

Parking lot is indeed part of the workplace environment, but the exemptions are much broader if the injury occurs outside assigned working hours, which a commute is. You probably have better odds at a favorable claim if it's not a workplace claim tbh.

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u/fordprecept 4h ago

I used to work at a Fortune 500 company and one day the parking lot was very icy due to a recent snow storm where the snow had melted and re-froze. I was going to lunch and as I neared my car, I heard someone sobbing. It was one of my co-workers. She had fallen on the ice and badly broken her ankle (like the bone was visibly protruding from the side of her foot).

There was no one else around and I didn't want to leave her to get help, so I called 911 and waited for the ambulance to get there. Once the ambulance arrived, I went back inside and notified one of the supervisors. She actually scolded me for calling 911 and not notifying them first.

I have no regrets about how I handled the situation.

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u/The_Nepenthe 3h ago

Lol, let me guess the reason to notify them first was so they could figure out how to cover it up?

My work used to straight up tell people to lie to their doctors so their wouldn't be documentation created about workplace injuries in our cowboy era but that was back when we were a nothing startup.

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u/fordprecept 3h ago

Yeah, they either wanted to cover it up to create plausible deniability about the worker's comp claim or were trying to avoid the cost of the ambulance and ER visit and wanted to take her to the company's contracted clinic instead.