What is something you know because of your job, that would surprise others? (My example is gross, thread warning!)

[Mrmen1100]

It can be anything!!

I will start..

I am a food safety inspector (local authority) and have been for over 15 years, working in two large cities, and my current job in a smaller local authority. The same theme...

Food handlers do NOT wash their hands properly after using the toilet / before preparing your food.. lack of antibacterial soap in a toilet cubicle or in a kitchen is common place.... even when I am there, hands are not washed, it is an absolute bug bear of mine.

Preparing with raw meat then handling food ready to eat.. not uncommon

Handling cash / touching screens then handling food.. not uncommon.

Yes it does put me off eating outside of my house unfortunately 🙃

I have come across a LOT worse but this example irritates me.

Your turn!!!!!

People who spend crazy amounts on a suitcase and it then gets lost or damaged will likely never get enough compensation to cover their missing / damaged items from an airline as there is a (relatively low) maximum liability. I once had a frequent flyer with a missing suitcase and he actually didn't even get enough to replace the suitcase, let alone the items inside.

That there is sometimes only 2 response Police Officers to cover an area of 76-77 sq miles, 113,000 people, with a crime rate of approximately 88 to 112 crimes per 1,000 people, which is slightly above the national average. The most common offences are violence and sexual crimes. The Duty Inspector is sometimes covering this and the neighbouring county.

Yep.
I used to be able to type it into the till with my eyes shut 😁

Work in psychiatric wards.

A lot of people don’t realised patients who are sectioned under the mental health act are allowed to leave the hospital and go home, go shopping etc for a certain period of time, or even over night. This has to be signed off by a doctor and is called Section 17 leave.

I used to work in ground investigation
and had to decide where to dig trenches and drill holes to characterise the ground for foundation design or clean up contaminated land etc.

We used to get drawings from all the service providers, but they are “indicative” and a lot of stuff inset marked. The type of stuff we tried to avoid:

Sewers, water mains, culverts
Fibre optics, copper cables
Gas pipes
North Sea Oil transfer pipes
Heating oil pipes
Railway/metro lines
Caves and tunnels under Nottingham (and probably other places I don’t know about)
Increasingly, basements
Subways
Data cables
Air shafts
Land drainage & French drains
Landfill liners

Mineworkings/adits

I’ve inadvertently instructed contractors to dig/drill through several of these. I put the power out to several offices in Sheffield one day. My colleague went through a private gas main and closed a pharmaceuticals factory for 2 days.

There is now a National Underground Asset Register, which is vaguely helpful, but not complete.

edited for autocorrect!

I’m a frequent flier and learnt early on that I was the one responsible for insuring my luggage - both the expensive suitcase, and the contents inside. A fairly standard annual insurance policy covers loss or damage of £3-4k per item.

Veterinary medicine.

The vet who treats your animal really does care & went into the profession for the right reasons. But if she (and the profess now overwhelmingly female) is employed by a corporate which is owned by Private Equity, her employer just sees you & your animal as targets to be monetised as much as possible.

Revenue targets, KPIs, upselling, cross-selling. Your vet is assessed on all of these & more. It really is all about the £££ because corporate vets operate in the interests of their shareholders. The drop-out rate of idealistic young graduates due to stress, pressure & burnout is horrendous.

The mobile numbers, emails and address of a very famous Hollywood couple (not living in Hollywood) as well as very personal family details about them.

GAH THAT FEELS GOOD TO SAY AS I LITERALLY CANNOT EVER DISCUSS IT EVER. These people appear all the time in movies and tv series etc and I see people commenting about them a lot and I can’t ever just be like ‘oh yeah I (professionally) know them!’

for the record, I have an incredibly boring and ordinary job, it’s just quite boring circumstances that have led to this!

It’s the ‘name’ of the celebrity that sells the book.

The ghost writer isn’t famous so despite their talent for writing they don’t have a ready made audience.

Fame sells - think about the amount of celebrities endorsing products.

2006 for me and I still recite it in a sing-song voice 😁

Universities lose on average £3k per year per home student and home student fees are cross subsidised by international student fees - which is the only reason most unis haven’t tanked yet/gone bankrupt. Many are almost there!

Me too!

I wish I didn’t now know that

In 1977, I was a very timid student on industrial release chefing in a south Wales hotel. A much hated customer sent his meal back so the Head Chef pissed in a pot and made the sauce with it. True and it has filled me with horror ever since.

If only more people would bother with insurance! It's crazy how many don't. Including celebrities who check in their incredibly valuable equipment because they don't want to be photographed schlepping hand luggage 🙃

Yes. Final week or so is great. It's the trough before the final push that's difficult. We're like those long distance runners on the second to last lap of the track whose legs go wobbly and look as if they're going to start crying on the last week of the penultimate month...
...but then find new energy and start sprinting happily towards the tape when the last three weeks begin, the, "Chariots of Fire" music playing silently in our heads.

Thanks for the book recommendations - will look those up.

One of DH’s stories is drilling near Drury Lane an agitated shop owned rushed out and said ‘you can’t drill here!’. DH did the standard ‘we’ve got all the permissions, here's the paperwork’ and the shop owner said that he needed to show them the problem. He took them through the back of the shop and down steep stairs and into a vast network of tunnels and vaulted cellars.

Can’t remember if that was JLE or Crossrail.

Yes but don't you feel sorry for their toilets?

Gawd that's horrendous! When I send something back I never ask for a replacement. I guess subconsciously trying to avoid pissy sauce or spit pea soup. I guess they could say it was a typo for 'split pea'?!

Now I know who writes the 'blooper' details for the Prime Video insight panels! I enjoy thinking of hordes of finicky obsessives, frantically writing in with their factual errors 😁

I’m not, and we actually don’t use that feature in my work. However, we may as well integrate it - every day is a constant challenge of avoiding out-of-tune moments…

In the early days of fibre optic cables they weren’t shown and they cost a fortune to repair - nightmare if you cut one. Utility companies often didn’t shown their cables / pipework in the right place - could be several metres out.

British Coal used to have local offices with mining surveyors in charge of the archives that you could contact for information - all that local knowledge was lost when it was all centralised.

Not me, but a friend works at a crematorium. As a pp said they're very respectful to the deceased, and no, you don't get just any ashes, every body that's cremated is very careful collected so that you get your loved one back

The ashes you receive after a cremation are not the result of the burning process, but the ground up bones which remain at the end.

These bones, (usually the large ones are what remains) go into a ‘cremulator’ where they’re ground up to a fine sand like substance.

I think about that whenever I see this comment about sloppy cup & glass cleaning in hotels - you can always have a quick look to see if there are any on the housekeeping trollies!

If I'm not sure, I wash 'em before use. It isn't hard.