Secrets of your trade.

EastMids sorry to be a bit thick (generally consider myself as someone who knows their arse from their elbow...) but if you have a pacemaker fitted, and that device is there to 'kick in' if the 'electrics' of your heart stop... then how do you... y'know... die?!?! Medically? Legally?

Puzzled

@slimgin - your employer is in breach of data protection legislation

I'm a teacher. We don't get paid for our holidays although we get paid in the holidays (we usually work in the holidays too). It's called Pro rata pay, perfectly normal and not used to annoy folk. We also don't work 9-3. We also have to account for and justify absolutely everything we do, say, think, plan despite being fully qualified professionals. Shouldn't be a secret but reading the vitriol in the press it seems like it is!!!
Ahhhhh sorry!

I also used to work in the travel industry. In the old days if you had been lovely you got the best seats on the plane, if you had been vile on holiday your luggage was tagged deliberately for the wrong country and customs took a real
Interest in you!!
We also used to go into duty free anytime we wanted and have been known to help unload planes during siesta... (wasn't uk based). The reason the Germans got a better continental breakfast from the Brits was because they paid more for it, same with check in. Though in Greece this could vary depending on the wartime experience of the owners family....
we also made a ton of cash on the excursions we sold people but made more if we organised the trips secretly with locals and shut out the tour operator....

Aero engine testing: there is genuinely a test where frozen turkeys are thrown at into a test engine while it's running to check the effects of a bird strike. Afterwards, the blades are stripped of and imaged under a microscope to determine the type of damage.

There's also a test where an explosive is put at the root of one of the large blades at the front of the engine and it is blown up when running to make sure that all the bits of metal stay contained in the engine (and don't come flying into a prospective cabin). You can see videos of this on YouTube, it's quite impressive.

@velvetpineapple, I did a Btec when I was 16. Stopped attending for the last 3 months and was very shocked when I got an envelope through the post a few weeks after the end date saying I had passed!

I’m a make up artist, no juicy secrets really, but I do despair of seeing others dirty kits, dirty brushes and awful sanitation such as using mascara and lipgloss etc straight from the tube on multiple people.

didn't know that about the call sign. No need to be rude

I didn't mean to be rude. And perhaps many people don't know, but it was posted as if having their own call sign was something special when it's total bog standard.

My job involves a lot of deaths and dark stuff.

I drive an emergency response car in blue lights. You'd be very surprised at some of the jobs I've blue lighted too!

I didn't know that about the call sign. No need to be rude

Work in MH with ex offenders

Empathy, patience, communication and laughter

We laugh a lot at work we have to it’s very heavy at times

All British Airways flights use the call sign "Speed Bird". It's unique and no other airline in the world uses it.

Some secret

All airlines have a call sign specific to them.

I'm sad that books get pulped! 😦

From my retail days:
All the heavily discounted perfumes and aftershaves, usually sold around holidays (Xmas, Valentines, Mother's Day etc), piled high in displays. Have you ever noticed that they’re not usually stocked at any other time of year? They’re just brought in to sell en masse for hols. We’ll put a bottle on a bottom shelf somewhere for a week or two (whatever the required time is, I can’t remember) as you can only say it’s discounted if you were previously selling them at a higher price. Come holiday season, there’s 50 boxes of the stuff all apparently 50% or 75% off. Yeah... no. We never actually sell them full price.

From my charity call centre days:
We didn’t work for the charity, we worked for a separate company contracted by the charity and it’s like any sales environment - the focus is on setting up Direct Debits over the phone, we have targets, and often prizes for whoever gets the most DDs or who reaches the targets first. You move around different charity campaigns, and if you miss targets even for a week (for whatever reason) you’re under monitoring.
We also got scripts from the charity. One included me pretending to have taken part in a very well known charity fundraiser. I’ve never taken part, and I shared ‘experiences’ from locations I’d never been too... (anecdotes shared by the charity, to make it ‘authentic’...).
Also, we had to ask for money three times (you got hauled over the coals if you didn’t, we had supervisors listening in to calls), and let the person respond. If the person you called hangs up on you, that’s counted as a response! (Obviously if they hang up before the 3rd as then that’s okay, you don’t have to ring them back, thankfully).
If the person you call is actually deceased, you don’t automatically back off you’re expected to ask their child/widower/loved one if they would like to support the charity (throw in a bit of emotional blackmail about how much the deceased cared for the cause...).
I got really cynical from that job and didn’t last long!

I’m a teaching assistant - in the past I have specifically been a 1to 1 for early years children with ASC.

The love I felt for those was almost the same as for my own children.

Like my own children they sometimes absolutely did my head in, but I loved them unconditionally, would have taken a bullet for them, and adored seeing them every day.

Someone I know once put 'google chrome' and 'internet explorer' as a skill on their CV 😂😂😂

Wendy & her team who write the HoC library briefing notes are amazing. They make us all look like instant experts.

If you leave a commission bid on the books at an auction for say £30, someone else can still buy the item for £30. It's called wrong footing. Say bidding is going in £10s:
£10 bid in the room, £20 on the books, £30 bid in the room. No further bids, then the bidder in the room gets the item.
If it's going to happen, it's usually at higher amounts when the increments can change as the auctioneer really will try to avoid the situation.

Similarly, two commission bids for the same amount, the first will get preference.

My current job is pretty uninteresting.

I used to work for a high street travel agents. We were told to ask you your budget - say you say £3k, and we find a deal for £2k, we were then told to tell you we had found an amazing deal for you for £2600 and the £600 extra would go straight to the travel agent. I left after a month because I refused to do this!

@VelvetPineapple

I taught BTEC and HND - it’s impossible to fail. The government provides a cash payment for every student that passes, and the college needs that money to pay bills and salaries, so everyone has to pass. If you miss a deadline we falsify the date. If you’re not capable of doing the work we give you the answers. If you can’t even be bothered to copy the answers out in your handwriting we fill out an “observation report” saying we’ve seen your non-existent work. Any teacher whose professional morals prevent them from doing that won’t have a job for much longer. You literally have to choose whether to be immoral or unemployed.

Another library bod here
The one thing that shocks newer staff (and some customers who find out) is the sheer number of books we throw out, pulp or otherwise get rid of. Paperbacks are (a) cheap and (b) badly made and once they start falling apart we chuck them.

We used to have a secret code that looked like books were going into storage but actually meant recycling bin!

@EssentialHummus

The best thing I ever saw on a CV was that they played air guitar as a hobby 😂

I'm not sure it's in the same category as most of the above, but I write CVs for a living (and see dozens daily). Most (at all levels) have spelling or grammatical mistakes. At least a quarter include something wildly inappropriate - today's nuggets included "Married for two years, actively TTC" and "I believe our lord and savour (sic) Jesus Christ has led me to you to make great changes".

Less of a trade secret, more a piece of advice: if you have just given birth: don’t let your baby go cold!! That half an hour of skin-to-skin the midwifes encourages you to do straight after birth is great, but throw at least a couple of blankets over your baby, put a hat on them and don’t let them open the window, even if you are boiling, because your baby will get cold and there is a good chance it will develop respiratory distress and have to be admitted to the neonatal unit! I have seen it sooo many times and it’s a totally avoidable admission.

I work in domestic abuse. I suppose a secret is that there are some mums and kids I support that I know I will still be thinking of in 20 years time, wondering how things have turned out for them.
And that's because some I really hope will have a positive outcome and some I know will not.