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

unwisefool said:
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 craopy job.
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Similar story. I worked for a large company with a strict "no knife" or gun policy, including your vehicle. Good luck getting permission to search mine. Anyway, I printed the policy out, and when a senior executive retired, in the kitchen, with HR cutting his cake, they pulled a 10 inch serrated knife out of the drawer. After everyone left, I took the knife and the policy into HR and they stammered and stuttered. It was great. I should have videotaped it.
 
I have looked up knife policy in employee handbooks in my office jobs. Both times it was stated that there is no restrictions on what would otherwise be a legal knife under the local law.

The biggest issue I ever had was guitar related. I picked up my electric guitar during my lunch break from a shop after getting it worked on. It was housed in a standard hard case (big, long rectangle shaped). I took it to my desk so as to keep it out of my hot car. Some upper management guy that had never stopped my my desk before dropped by and asked me if it was a gun :confused:.

I told him that it was a guitar and asked him if he wanted to see it. He said that’s OK, but at that point I was a bit irritated and insisted that he look. Made him stand there while I told him way to much about my guitar, none of which he was even slightly interested in.
 
Hide in plain sight.

I work in Silicon Valley in new technology development. I keep a Spyderco Tasman Salt with yellow scales in my office to open the shipments of prototypes we receive constantly. This could be one carton or even a pallet. The billhook design is really useful for cutting tape and nylon straps and I'm always using the Tasman Salt.

I has become such a common tool that some of the ladies in the office will ask me "Can I borrow that yellow knife?"

Of course they haven't seen the Spydie Civilian I used to carry, or the Spydie Yojimbo 1 that I carry now.
 
I was a parent chaperone at my daughters school field trip. One of the kids got their shoestring caught in a bike chain and couldn't get it out. All the other chaperones just stood around, I pulled out a Spyderco and cut the lace. I was sure I was going to hear about it, but never did.
 
3fifty7 said:
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.
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Dayum! Whew!
 
flbandit said:
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!
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That's very strong... Good on both of them...
 
BitingSarcasm said:
I did a couple of summer hires up on Prudhoe Bay, Alaska...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.
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"...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..."

Nope. Your rude judgement is inaccurate. She was a long-tenured, problem employee who loved to stir things up (sadly, not an uncommon quality.) I think at first she was intrigued with how sharp the knife seemed to be. Then it became a matter of making an issue out of it, where she out-and-out lied. Nice try though. ;)
 
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Before my time, there was a difference of opinion between a contractor and a visiting member of the HR team, who probably shouldn't have been anywhere near the contractor, anyway.

The result was a rule requiring any knife brought on to the property to be folding, and less than 3" in blade length.

I was trying to like a Spyderco Cara-Cara, and used it to open a blister pack in the presence of a supervisor, who opined that the knife was "a little big". How he knew the difference between 3 and 3.5 was a new one to me, but I left it at home, from then on.
 
I sliced about 3/8” off my finger with a router once on a trim job. Surprisingly, it grew back with full function over 4 months.

You’re thinking “not a knife incident”. But really, what is a router bit but a small funny shaped knife with a carbide edge? And a motor.

Today I had lots of tools out on a bathroom remodel. The knives were the smallest and least “weapon-y” of all. My chisel was sharper than any knife in that house. Good thing I work mostly alone.

Parker
 
SanLuisObispo said:
"...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..."

Nope. Your rude judgement is inaccurate. She was a long-tenured, problem employee who loved to stir things up (sadly, not an uncommon quality.) I think at first she was intrigued with how sharp the knife seemed to be. Then it became a matter of making an issue out of it, where she out-and-out lied. Nice try though. ;)
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Wait you mean you running out to your car, hiding your knife and bag & moving your vehicle, and concocting a cover story wasn't lying?

Really?
 
I've never worked in an environment where it would be an issue. Once at a small social gathering, someone needed to cut something, I pulled my knife out and cut whatever it was. Someone asked, "why would you carry a knife around?". I was a bit taken aback seeing as he had just witnessed the reason I carry a knife.

I find it very aggravating that there are so many people who see carrying a knife as deviant behavior. If someone can't be trusted to carry a knife, they are a liability to the company and society, and I wouldn't want to work with them.
 
In a former career, law enforcement, yep, a number of knife incidents, though not like employer-employee stuff but more like people you were arresting having knives concealed in unusual places. That was a time in my state when there were carry and blade length restrictions, which have since been repealed, so knife carriers could potentially be charged with a crime.

The most amusing was this old drunk carnie (literally, a carnival worker) who another officer had arrested for being drunk. This guy had like an 8" butcher knife tied by a loop of string to his belt, hanging down inside his pants leg. The arresting officer had missed it during a pat-down (the guy was a really nasty stinky old drunk - you would not have wanted to pat down the guy's pants either) but the jailer found it during the intake search. I was in there with my partner at the time processing a different arrestee.

Guy claimed that his job was to run the "guess your weight" attraction where you win some cheap prize if he's wrong. My partner said "Ok, guess my weight!" The guy said something like "160" - my partner was a big guy and weighed about 220. He said "Man, you're way off!" The guy comes back with "Well take your damn prize". We laughed our asses off.

In my current situation, my work place is my home, so no incidents. :)

When I was still working from an office with my current employer (regular corporate gig, not law enforcement), the facility I work in has metal detectors and a no-weapons policy. I do occasionally need tools and am considered somewhat exempt, so I keep a couple of Leatherman tools and a small SAK in my bag, but mainly for the screwdrivers and pliers.

About a decade ago a person for whom I was fixing a computer was looking askance at my Leatherman Juice - I was using it as pliers and screwdriver - and actually commented about me not being allowed to have it. The person was a contractor, not even an employee of the company (I am), and I was using it to fix a problem SHE HAD CALLED ABOUT, which was part of my job at the time. Nothing ever came of it, but it is amazing the types of things people have been conditioned to be sensitive to.
 
Different kind of "knife incident " at work :

I was sweet 16 , first job outside home as dishwasher at a semi-fancy restaurant .

The worst part of the job was called "busting down the pots" . Hard manual labor compared to using the huge dishwasher conveyor system .

It was supposed to be done on a scheduled rotational basis because it was an unpopular task .

A fellow dishwasher came to me one shift and ordered me to go do his job on the pots when it wasn't my turn . I refused and he pulled a knife and made threats .

I punked out and did his job that day . But it didn't sit well with me .

I asked the French assistant cook to help me sharpen the biggest old butcher knife I could find in the kitchen . Stashed it near my normal work station .

Next time the bully came at me , he got a big surprise . I was "ready to die " seriously PO'd and he was bluffing . Plus mine was WAY bigger !

No blood was shed and we reached an new understanding . Eventually became somewhat friends .

A formative event in my young life , and maybe part of why I prefer to carry big .
 
That's the nice thing about being the boss. I actually expect my employees to bring a decent knife/multi tool with them if at all possible. It makes work so much easier if no one has to bum a knife.

Even 20 years ago when I worked at Target in college, I carried a MT. Not only did it open boxes bit it also came in handy fixing a few things around the store and break room.
 
There were knife incidents everyday when I worked in logistics, everytime you left your knife on a pallet, forklift or cabin office it would mysteriously go missing almost instantly, forcing you to walk to storage and get a new one.
 
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