Unscheduled maintenance

I finished a big project at work and immediately came down with a cold. I overworked the last two weeks and I think I was more vulnerable to picking up an illness as a result. I haven't overworked to this level in years and had to relearn my lesson, I guess. Schedule time for maintenance or the machine will schedule it for you applies to our bodies.

You might have seen one of these warning signs, or at least a photo of them.

A warning sign from Creative Safety Supply.

I thought about buying one for myself to stick in my home office as a reminder for the next time something seems so damn important, and then I thought, well, wait, is "Warning" the right level here? Or, to use the official parlance, is "Warning" the right signal word?

See, there are standards ^[1] for when you use which signal word. I don't write hardware manuals or workplace safety manuals as part of my job, so I'm not fully aware of all the standards but I know they exist. What I see cited a lot is versions of the ANSI Z535 standard for safety labels. And it goes kind of like this^[2]:

• Danger: Indicates a hazardous situation that, if not avoided, will result in death or serious injury. The signal word "DANGER" is to be limited to the most extreme situations.
• Warning: Indicates a hazardous situation that, if not avoided, could result in death or serious injury.
• Caution: Indicates a hazardous situation that, if not avoided, could result in minor or moderate injury.
• Notice: Indicates information considered important but not hazard related.

According to this very helpful Choose the Right Header decision tree for ANSI Z535 headers, you would use "Notice" if the only likely problem was equipment damage. Danger, Warning, and Caution are only for when life or health are at risk.

However, I found another article, The Difference Between Life and Death: Choosing the Right Safety Signal Words that included property damage as a consideration even for danger!

All in all, I think the slightly joking maintenance sign for equipment should be at most a "Caution."

A caution sign I created. Sorry if it's not up to ANSI or OSHA standards.

However! If the sign were to be used metaphorically and actually be about health, then "Caution" is the right signal word. But then, is it appropriate to risk being metaphorical when health and safety are on the line? I think not. Metaphors might be misunderstood. Better to go with a more direct sign:

Finally, a standards compliant caution sign!