I wouldn't say that at all. Chernobyl was so much worse than this. It wasn't a single first line supervisor who asked one worker to do something who said no at first.
They'd asked multiple nuclear plants to perform that test. Been told that it was not safe to perform multiple times. They finally got an upper management individual at one plant to agree to it. Then they had challenges completing the test and due to plant characteristics that were not apparent to the operators (as well as violating other procedures) the event occurred.
The premise of chernobyl is a series of systemic failures of barriers. Not an addition of a single step not specified in a maintenence procedure.
It seems to me to be worse manners to just leave your snot as leaking out or making you sniffle. Better to get it over with rather than make people listen to that for minutes to hours.