Who else learned hand signals backwards from a bad mentor?

I ran a tower crane in Austin for 2 years. My first mentor taught me that a closed fist meant 'stop', but last Tuesday an ironworker yelled at me because I almost swung a load into him. Turns out the standard is an open palm, and that fist is 'dog everything'. How do we fix bad habits when no one calls them out on site?

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charles_baker2817d ago

You said no one calls them out on site, but that's the part that gets me. Who exactly is supposed to call it out? The guy running the crane can't see his own hands, and the ironworker on the ground might just think you're an idiot instead of someone who got taught wrong. Did you ever ask the older guys on your crew to watch your hand signals for a week and correct you every single time, or was it just silence until someone almost got hurt?

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