Wearing a uniform for your job is important, but it shouldn’t come at the cost of your health.

What would you do if your supervisor insisted you wear full safety gear, even inside a metal box during a brutal heatwave?

Would you push back to protect yourself?

Or would you follow orders and see what happens?

In the following story, one security guard complies exactly as instructed, only to suffer serious consequences that his company definitely didn’t see coming.

Here’s how it unfolded.

The work uniform is mandatory no matter what. Fine.

This happened a few years ago, I no longer work with this company because this MC isn’t the first time where I thought my personal health and safety was taking the backseat to the requirements of the company.

I worked for a security company, and my assignment was the vehicle depot lot for the gas company.

My duties were to sit in an aluminum trailer shack in the corner of the lot and monitor for suspicious activity.

In Philadelphia, many of these areas were targeted by catalytic converter thieves.

I was also supposed to make a patrol every hour to ensure the security of the site.

The job came with a few very specific rules.

Other than my patrols and to use the bathroom, I was not permitted to leave the box for any reason.

My uniform was my usual long sleeve button up shirt and long pants, but also I was required to wear a boiler suit and hardhat for safety from things I might encounter on my patrols.

Originally, I only wore the boiler suit and hardhat to do my patrols because it was July and the air conditioner in the box didn’t work.

However, my site supervisor came for inspection and threatened to fire me if I wouldn’t wear the boiler suit and hardhat while sitting in the box as well.

So I did.

With no AC in the box, he suffered a heat stroke.

The end of July/beginning of August 2022 was one of the worst heat waves in Philadelphia history.

On a good day, it was 140°+ in the box as it was made of aluminum and sitting in direct sunlight for the duration of my shift.

Three days in and I passed out standing in the men’s room from advanced heat stroke.

The gas company staff called an ambulance for me. I was airlifted to the hospital (traffic in this part of the city was notoriously terrible late afternoon/early evening and every second counted.)

At the hospital, my body temperature was 105.6 and my pulse was a blistering 147.

It took doctors TWO DAYS to get my temperature back to normal and address all of the damage the excessive heat had done to my body.

While I was getting lifesaving care at the hospital my “abandoned post” was infiltrated by three men who stole the catalytic converters from 18 vehicles.

They wanted to know why he wasn’t at work.

The parent company was LIVID and when I was inquired as to why I wasn’t at my post when the theft occurred, my doctor at the hospital took the phone and informed them of my condition upon arrival at the hospital.

In the aftermath, I was reassigned.

The broken air conditioner in the box was replaced by a 40,000 BTU unit that required a separate generator to power.

A few weeks later, my security company lost its contract with the gas company after my replacement fell asleep in the box while the thieves returned to steal another 20 catalytic converters.

Wow! Surely, the uniform wasn’t that important.

Let’s check out what the people over at Reddit have to say about his experience.

Here’s advice from an expert.

This person would’ve called OSHA.

Here’s some solid advice.

Great thoughts.

No job is worth your health.

He needs to be more careful next time because that could’ve ended very badly.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.