Have you ever experienced a "knife incident" at your place of work?

Many, many years ago I worked in a customer support center for a large retailer. On my lunch break I pulled my SAK Tinker from my pocket, opening the “large” blade to cut my apple. A female coworker, who I had known for quite some time, and who I never thought would have had an issue with it, got all weird. Her face turned to utterly appalled, and she started counseling me about having brought a “weapon” to the office. I never stopped carrying it, and HR never bothered with calling me. C’est la vie.
 
desmobob said:
Never had an incident, but worked in a place where you weren't allowed to carry any kind of knife (but the rule wasn't enforced). You could literally take five steps to the break room, which didn't even have a door, where there was a big jar sitting on an open shelf with three or four big kitchen knives standing in it, tip down, ready to be drawn. :rolleyes:

I pointed out that fact to the one person who questioned why I had a Benchmade Mini-Barrage in my pocket and that led to an end of the conversation, satisfactory to all parties.
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Haha that happened to my wife. She used to keep a little benchmade griptillian on a lanyard around her neck, until someone complained they were scared of her :rolleyes:. She's 5' and 110lbs. So she went to the kitchen and brought back this 7 inch kitchen knife and said she would just use that instead. They just left her alone until she quit that crappy job.
 
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No incidents to date. My one boss ( best boss ever) asked me the first time "do you just always have a knife on you?" to which I said of course I do, and from then on whenever a special order package went directly to her desk she'd ask to use my knife to open it (usually had excessive packaging). Even when I worked retail and would open boxes in the aisle with customers nearby, I had no issues.
 
I used to manage night shift at a large plastics plant. I fired one of our temp workers mid shift and he was not pleased. Cursed and threatened me all the way to the door. He was waiting in the parking lot at 7am when we got off work, knife in hand. Luckily others that he was friendly with went across the lot first and advised him that the pistol in my bag beats his knife. He proceeded to not so peacefully hang around and spit on my truck.........then the cops came. Problem solved

That count?
 
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desmobob said:
Never had an incident, but worked in a place where you weren't allowed to carry any kind of knife (but the rule wasn't enforced). You could literally take five steps to the break room, which didn't even have a door, where there was a big jar sitting on an open shelf with three or four big kitchen knives standing in it, tip down, ready to be drawn. :rolleyes:

I pointed out that fact to the one person who questioned why I had a Benchmade Mini-Barrage in my pocket and that led to an end of the conversation, satisfactory to all parties.
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It is an interesting quirk of the human psyche that many people aren't the least bit bothered by the presence of big kitchen knives, but yet the idea of a person carrying a knife, even a much smaller one, can freak them out a little (or a lot). I guess the idea of a person carrying a knife, rather than the mere presence of a knife, implies some sort of threat in their mind. Like a person who actually carries a knife is somehow dangerous because they carry a knife.

As for myself, I can't think of any "knife incidents" at work, other than using them, talking about them, sharpening them, etc. But most of my jobs have been hot, sweaty, manual labor, either working outdoors, in a metal box-oven of a warehouse, or on construction sites, where nobody had anything negative to say about our knives (including openly carried fixed-blades).
 
Mistakes were made, ended up hitting a live electrical line with a Buck Vantage. Left about a 1/8 inch circle hole in the blade but didn't shock me.

Centermass said:
Many, many years ago I worked in a customer support center for a large retailer. On my lunch break I pulled my SAK Tinker from my pocket, opening the “large” blade to cut my apple. A female coworker, who I had known for quite some time, and who I never thought would have had an issue with it, got all weird. Her face turned to utterly appalled, and she started counseling me about having brought a “weapon” to the office. I never stopped carrying it, and HR never bothered with calling me. C’est la vie.
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This REALLY annoys me, people are too sensitive and ignorant. If one was available I would have put it the SAK away and gotten the largest, most menacing kitchen knife I could find from the drawer and used it instead. Unless you were expressly forbidden to use it, they really can't say anything if you found it in their drawer.

In any case, I have a feeling that even if she took it to HR they probably would have told her to drop it and grow up.
 
A long time ago I was driving onto a federal air base to do some work and I was the lucky person to get randomly searched.

Now, my dad always kept his USN Mk2 under the driver seat of his car, and I followed suit with a USN Mk3 under the driver seat of mine.

Upon tossing my car the security officer found the knife, held it up, and asked the other security officer (standing at the shack watching my car get tossed) if that was a weapon. He walked over, looked at it, looked at me and proclaimed that it was not a weapon. I was allowed to put my car back together and head in to work.
 
I’ve had a couple self inflicted incidents, one comprised of arterial spray and stitches.

Once two of our visa truck drivers(Oracio and Angel) got into it in the boarding house over dinner or washing dishes or some BS. Later that night Oracio held a knife to the Angels throat while he slept once the commotion started a few of the others threw a couple blankets Oracio, drug him outside and beat the shit out of him then burned the few possessions he had. Oracio was gone by the time we got to work the next day.

Another time two of our truck drivers got into it at the fuel station. Grasshopper and King Cobra (I told you they were truck drivers) over who would load first because they both slept on the yard. Grasshopper said he was first because Cobra left in the middle of the night. He pulled, if I remember correctly, a trapper and told Cobra he’d cut him if he tried to get in front of him. Cobra pulled a Haskel .45 and told him he had better put the knife up or he’d drop him where he stood. (I still believe there was a 98+% chance that POS Haskel would not have fired) Grasshopper backed down, they both were fired. Cobra OD’d about 6 months later.
 
Not really an incident, but work related. A few years back I reached the 25 year mark at the company I work for. My boss and the VP both knew I was a knife collector and I had mentioned one I saw at a locksmith store. At the obligatory cake-in-the-break-room, Boss and VP gave me a gift card with enough on it to buy said knife. And that was how I got my Buckmaster Survival knife!
 
Not very exciting but the mine I worked at had a strict no knives policy. The only ones allowed were plastic ones you could get at the camp. This was strictly enforced and if you got caught with one you could be terminated on the spot. The other policy that was strictly enforced was the drug and alcohol policy. You obviously don't want the guy driving the 400 ton haul trucks popping pills or getting loaded in camp. Any pills you brought in had to be in the original packaging so you couldn't just have a baggie of Tylenol in your desk.

Just to give you an idea how strictly enforced these rules were security could spot check your bag on a whim and they would check the camp with drug dogs every week or two. The camp was fly in fly out so everything was pretty controlled at the airport.

One day in the office we were going about our daily morning tasks before we went out to the field for the day. I went to the storage room to grab my gear and on the way back I saw my new coworker with his knife out busting up pills on his desk. I told him that what he was doing was an extremely bad idea and he argued with me that because it was just a vitamin and a "little buck knife" no one would care. I'm not his mommy and it's wasn't my ass so I let him do his thing. Coincidently, a minute after this the head of security happened to walk by and saw the knife and half of a broken up white powdery pill on his desk.

Security dragged him to the medical center and immediately made him do the drug/alcohol tests, confiscated his knife and vitamins, tore apart his room looking for drugs, and notified our management. They found out it wasn't drugs and was actually just vitamins but he got chewed out by security and a few levels of management before he could come back to work.
 
cheeseit123 said:
Not very exciting but the mine I worked at had a strict no knives policy. The only ones allowed were plastic ones you could get at the camp. This was strictly enforced and if you got caught with one you could be terminated on the spot. The other policy that was strictly enforced was the drug and alcohol policy. You obviously don't want the guy driving the 400 ton haul trucks popping pills or getting loaded in camp. Any pills you brought in had to be in the original packaging so you couldn't just have a baggie of Tylenol in your desk.

Just to give you an idea how strictly enforced these rules were security could spot check your bag on a whim and they would check the camp with drug dogs every week or two. The camp was fly in fly out so everything was pretty controlled at the airport.

One day in the office we were going about our daily morning tasks before we went out to the field for the day. I went to the storage room to grab my gear and on the way back I saw my new coworker with his knife out busting up pills on his desk. I told him that what he was doing was an extremely bad idea and he argued with me that because it was just a vitamin and a "little buck knife" no one would care. I'm not his mommy and it's wasn't my ass so I let him do his thing. Coincidently, a minute after this the head of security happened to walk by and saw the knife and half of a broken up white powdery pill on his desk.

Security dragged him to the medical center and immediately made him do the drug/alcohol tests, confiscated his knife and vitamins, tore apart his room looking for drugs, and notified our management. They found out it wasn't drugs and was actually just vitamins but he got chewed out by security and a few levels of management before he could come back to work.
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Damn, I wouldn't want to work there, no matter how well it paid. Sounds more like a prison camp.

It's one thing for a company to have a "no knives" policy, maybe I could accept that, but it's another thing to know that my belongings could be searched at any time.
 
I know meat cutters, woodworkers and carpenters who have cut themselves badly in the course of their work.
 
Back when I'd just got out of the military (and was therefore well accustomed to all kinds of knives ) and started working as an electrician , I used my Gerber DMF to do something in the bosses office and he went pretty bug eyed . I took the hint and carried smaller folders, haven't had an issue yet. That said, some places I've also been wise enough to leave the knife in the pocket-prison, mental health facilities, schools etc. Time and place. However, using my Swiss army knife has prompted some great conversations on a few jobs , and I've preached the gospel of being prepared as well :)
 
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killgar said:
Damn, I wouldn't want to work there, no matter how well it paid. Sounds more like a prison camp.

It's one thing for a company to have a "no knives" policy, maybe I could accept that, but it's another thing to know that my belongings could be searched at any time.
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Yeah that's understandable. We always joked that it was a prison camp.

For what it's worth no one ever actually had their bag checked at the airport or at the mine. I never saw or heard about anyone getting checked either. It was the only time in my life I flew without anyone checking me at all. Just show your ID 30 minutes before the flight and hop on the plane.

It was really different. The roads in the mine were legally considered a provincial highway and the security would get out radar guns and check speeds and hand out actual traffic tickets. They could ticket you for going 1 km/h over and a few people had their tickets framed for going 2 or 3 over. 10 km/h over the limit was grounds for termination.

It was strict but it was such a dangerous environment it's understandable. When your driving your F-350 through the mine and each haul truck is a million pounds fully loaded it doesn't take much to get turned into a pancake.
 
killgar said:
Damn, I wouldn't want to work there, no matter how well it paid. Sounds more like a prison camp.
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I did a couple of summer hires up on Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, where I lived in the base camp. It was more like a college dorm than anything, but the food was far better and the pay was good. The company had a strict no weapons no fighting policy because after you work 12 hours a day 7 days a week and then live with the same guys, there can be clashes for no real reason. One time I did 30 days straight and earned enough to pay for most of that year of college, but boy was I not right in the head for while.

This whole weapons vs. tools argument has been going ad nauseum lately, but it all comes down to individual perception and views are unlikely to change no matter what is said. What it boils down to me is this... I used to work jobs where we were required to have a knife at work among our tools and usually on our person. It was no big deal, but we all know that one guy who shouldn't be trusted with an unwound paperclip, much less a blade. Maybe that guy was fine at the job, but had anger/drug/mental issues that meant that you paid a bit of extra attention if he had an open knife. The OP is snickering about how he nearly got caught with a 6 inch "harakiri" knife and how he wriggled out of it. I think the woman may not have had a problem with the knife as much as she may have had a problem with HIM having a knife.
 
Back when I was in college I worked in a convenience store. One day a fellow threatened to jump over the counter and kick my buttocks (he used a different word, of course), and take all the money. I had a medium Cold Steel Voyager (old style, pre Demko) in my front right pocket, hand on it. In my back right pocket I had a Benchmade/Emerson. My plan was pretty simple, had the chap followed through on his bad idea, but he was dissuaded by other means.
 
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