If you’ve never encountered a brain-dead compliance process, you’ve had an extraordinarily lucky career.
Even good and thoughtful regulations get interpreted into nonsensical bureaucratic nightmares by some companies’ compliance departments. The implementations that add disproportionate friction usually don’t achieve the intended benefit either. It’s not people choosing a convenience vs. safety tradeoff. It’s just people who don’t understand the subject matter at all.
Having worked in a lab environment heavily subject to OSHA regulation, I think you are both correct. I've been personally subjected to brain-dead interpretations on multiple occasions, but I'm also absolutely certain that in the absence of any regulation the environment would have been absurdly dangerous. On the balance, I'll favor the regulation.
Even good and thoughtful regulations get interpreted into nonsensical bureaucratic nightmares by some companies’ compliance departments. The implementations that add disproportionate friction usually don’t achieve the intended benefit either. It’s not people choosing a convenience vs. safety tradeoff. It’s just people who don’t understand the subject matter at all.