Workplace Safety is the third episode of Season 5 of the JonTron Show. It revolves around Jon watching several absurd workplace safety videos that, while their hearts are in the right place, miss the mark in one way or another. The video follows a similar structure to the The Weird World of Drug PSAs.
The video was sponsored by Dollar Shave Club.
Plot[]
Rather than forge some complex plot to segway into the episode's subject matter, Jon just drops right in, giving us a brief synopsis of his own personal feelings towards workplace safety videos. The videos in question were designed to educate adults on proper workplace safety. However often times one finds that said videos speak to their audiences like children who could likely deduce with their own common sense without one such tutorial.
The first video shown is Think About This, which was released in an undisclosed year by ERI Productions. In the blurry, low-quality footage, a woman belts a lyric that could not only shatter glass, but also the glass's seventeenth great grandchild. Jon amusingly pretends to meditate to the sound. The woman sings ominous lyrics over footage of people forgoing simple safety procedures. Among them are a man getting pulled into a sewing machine, resulting in his death and being sewn into a large piece of fabric. Jon pokes fun by suggesting, via skit, that it be sold as a one-of-a-kind item. It's followed by a man being electrocuted, to which Jon suggests acting about, as opposed to simply thinking. After that is...just...a massive dumbass of a man who decides not to wear his hazmat suit because it's hot. He ends up dying when he's inevitably exposed to hazardous waste without an inkling of protection. And finally, we're met by a man who isn't wearing a hard hat. Another worker above him drops a wrench, which punctures his skull and brain, resulting in his dramatically slow demise. Jon proceeds to enact a more realistic scenario, wherein the wrench hits, and the victim immediately ceases function. The clip ends with the woman singing slightly more on-key and cheerfully about being safe on one's job today. Jon reinterprets it as "Don't die." The segment finishes with a skit of Jon, playing a boss, yelling at a dummy (meant to be a dead employee) impaled on rebar.
Next comes a general safety video called Coughs & Sneezes from 1945. In it, the narrator compares people who pull pranks that can cause serious harm to other people favourably to people who sneeze and cough in public. And to demonstrate what they mean, they pick the biggest, most lumbering man with the most obnoxious sneezes to use as a strawman. This man actively enters crowded areas and allows his face to explode upon everyone. The commercial blatantly advocates for the vilification of anyone who suffers spontaneous sneezes in public without a handkerchief. Dear lord I hate this film. At the very least, this video gave us the hilarious visual of Jon snorting pepper to see if it really makes one sneeze like in the cartoons. Pro Tip: It does, and worse. DON'T DO IT.
The next is Food Safety: Food Handler Training Video, which is rife with stilted, wooden acting complemented by a cartoonishly perfect premise. Inspector Roy enters restaurant to do a "regular" health inspection, which makes Jon immediately suspicious, suggesting that Roy might be some sort of serial killer. Roy enters the kitchen to meet Harry, the 'rant's supposed problem child. Harry is a disheveled-looking, slightly overweight, dirty man with a death glare like no other, a dirty shirt and a backwards baseball cap for some reason. As the video goes on, Harry repeatedly trips up. First, he's seen eating on the job, without wearing any sort of uniform. Then, he's washing dishes with the light off, a lapse in common sense so deep, that Jon suspects Harry might be doing something illegal in there. Next up, possibly nothing to do with Harry, in all likelihood, is the fact that food and cleaning products are stored alongside one another. Jon compares it to a disorganized crime scene at Wendy's where barrels of hydrochloric acid are discovered. Next, Harry washes his hands in a prep-sink, contaminating his chicken, which itself has apparently entered Kenny Loggins's Danger Zone. Blood from the meat was spilt into the tray of lettuce, leading Jon to continue with his crime scene joke, stating that there's severed body parts strewn about the produce in the restaurant. Following this, the boss comes by to see what happened. The staff reveals they failed inspection thanks to Harry, whom the boss had no recollection off. We're then treated to the sight of Harry running off with a watermelon, revealing it to be a sham the whole time, just so he could get some free food.