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!!!!!

Someone at my school got pregnant and this was the rumour going around.. I’m sure it was just vindictive and not real.

Please, stop, this is salt to my wounds, I am re-living it as I read it. This was us. Being tutored, I mean. And practically every pupil (in the subject relevant to university entry). And nobody admitted it - oh, no, all the parents kept schtum.

I agree with this. At private school your not paying for the education your paying for the network

The Guidance Dept told me they were thinking of spreading a rumour that only salt and vinegar flavour worked..

Sorry. :(

That sounds judgmental. Even if you are vigilant and are identified with very early stage breast cancer, a third of patients go on to develop metastatic cancer. Spread to skin is also well known, and those skin lesions can fungate, and there’s very little that can be done about it. I have breast cancer in my skin. I started out as stage 0, not even cancer.

I did think that it was pretty rotten: those of us in the state sector were providing extra tuition to our pupils for free. I recall thinking that private school parents were being had.

Yeah my friend got pregnant this way too!

In the independent schools I've worked in, the typical expectation is that new unqualified teachers work towards qualification in their first couple of years. There is extensive mentoring, observation, etc.

Equally, while the considerable majority of colleagues are qualified teachers, I have worked with some truly excellent and highly experienced unqualified teachers, who took/take a deep interest in education and good teaching.

The average U.K. reading age is between 9 and 11. As a dentist you realise most people cannot understand the written information eg medical history forms, consent forms , letters etc given to them and a large percentage of the U.K. population is functionally illiterate .

This is not about understanding medical jargon it’s about being able to parse the meaning of a “your appointment has been moved” letter etc.

I am a midwife and I can assure you that not all maternity care is awful like you read on here and the media. It’s also nothing like One Born Every Minute and I hope the new series is more realistic!

That’s good to know @MrsW9. Sounds like that was not the sort of experience @Feis123 had, but good to know it’s the case in some places.

You have no idea how 'pre-loved' we were. I am a state school product myself and thought I was buying something special (makes sense, does it not, when you paying this much). So we were scammed by the school firstly and then by the sneaky bursary applicants who pleaded poverty and got away with it. Then we, mugs, who paid full fees, could not afford to send our children on school trips, whilst bursary recipients went on most school trips (extra payment). I wrote to the school's finance department, no avail. They don't even do proper due dil. We had a BA pilot's child on a bursary.

from buying them, im guessing its because of how the foil folds around the egg that makes it difficult for the barcodes to scan at times

many years ago (more than 30) I volunteered with Adult Literacy, not sure if its still called that, and this is what were were told then. We were told that the Sun Newspaper is deliberately written to have a reading age of 10 years old. While I think this is not by any means a happy fact, I think it means that its essential that letters from hospitals, and so on should be written to take this into account. We can't improve the level of literacy any time soon but we can try to ensure that people can use what they have.

I don't think the post you've quoted was judgemental at all. Fungating cancers are a very memorable sight and smell (the poor woman with one I encountered early in my career will also stick with me for life), but we know it's no fault of the poor person suffering the disease. Cancer sucks, and fungating lesions are something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.

I'm in theatres now, and I can eyeball how much blood a person has lost from the colour of the swabs and (in thankfully rare occasions) puddles on the floor.

Most people??

Screenwriter here. You put on the TV and there seems to be so much to watch. But it’s very, very, difficult to get most dramas made. Films are even worse. Projects often knock around in development/pre production for years (sometimes even decades) before they are anywhere close to being onscreen.

This may be your experience, but isn't true across the board in the public sector. Many teams work with skeleton staffing, and people often aren't replaced when they resign.

My exhusband was an accountant. He had many clients who were one payment failure away from the whole house of cards collapsing. From the outside ( private schools,flash cars, lovely homes, lovely clothes,nice holidays) it all looked fabulous but it was all smoke and mirrors.

Filling in a personal tax return is piss easy so I don’t know why people bother paying us to do it for them

Dog trainer here.

Famous “trainer” Cesar Milan uses inhumane methods and spouts absolute rubbish about how dogs think and learn.

Ditto Graeme Hall, the twat with a cravat. He’s known in the industry as an absolute charlatan whose “people” often contact proper trainers in whatever area he’s working in, to ask them for their expertise since Graeme hasn’t got the first clue.

And no - proper trainers aren’t “jealous of his success”. In fact by rights we should thank him and his ilk; we make a lot of money fixing the dogs whose owners have made worse by following his advice. But it’s crap for the dogs who have to suffer.

Ofgem does not require electricity supply companies to prove that their '100% Renewable' electricity is purchased from 100% renewable sources. They only have to show Ofgem that they have bought an equivalent quantity of REGO (Renewable Energy Guarantee of Origin) certificates to use '100% Renewable' branding. However, REGOs can be bought on a secondary market, after the electricity they relate to has already been sold to a different customer (maybe an industrial user). That means you can pay your supplier for '100% Renewable' electricity and they can buy it from gas, nuclear or coal generators to sell on to you. It is still legal for them to then say 'all our electricity comes from solar, wind and hydro'. Insane!

Yes , most people , including many with jobs you would have thought needed good literacy skills .

You need to limit amount of information , length of written communication, vocabulary and even then many will not be able to fully get the meaning .

It’s important because it’s the reason so many medical history questionnaires are filled out wrongly or incompletely and need verbal confirmation.

This. absolutely this.