[cloacaFaec]

  it wasn't op's job to examine it

Your brand of narrow minded thinking is... Well? Let's just call it pathetic.

A brain dead employee, following the letter of the law, by the book, to the bitter end, is, by many orders of magnitude, a greater liability than one that assesses risk and adopts personal responsibility to further investigate a hazard, before taking additional action.

Let's say you have an employee, and they smell smoke, but they aren't the fire warden so they ignore it. Not their responsibility. Instead, they go on lunch break. The fire spreads. The building burns to the ground. Would you be happy that they stayed in their little box, kept their head down, and avoided engaging with a potential hazard?

Before you answer, I bet you're already locked and loaded to distinguish "fire" as a completely different class of circumstances. And you know what?

You'll be completely fucking wrong about that, no matter how you try to twist words and wriggle out of the truth.