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!!!!!

The markup on some (most?) designer items is insane, including makeup. An item that costs less than £50 to make all in selling for over £400. Nail varnish, which was a “low margin” item, costing about £2.50 and selling for £27.

I’m a commercial disputes lawyer which means I get to pick over the inner workings of many companies. I think many would be surprised at how shoddy a lot of corporate governance is at some well-known institutions. Multi-million pound deals done via a one page document full of legal holes, corrupt practices, lack of control over employee IT, vindictive decision-making, etc. I cannot go into specifics but I have seen a lot that has opened my eyes over my career.

People often think illustrating children's books is easy, a hobby, or a bit of a frivolous career - they have no idea what hard work it really is and how much skill is involved. And how poorly paid it is. The wages vs the hours worked are terrible. Often you get paid a flat fee agreed at the beginning but you can't really know how many hours the book will take until you are halfway through it, and often it works out that you are paid way less than minimum wage. My worst experience was on a lift the flap book where I was averaging about 104 working hours a week (around 15 hours a day), for three months without a single day off, and when I worked out the hours vs the fee I was paid it worked out at about £4.60 an hour - this was for a very well known publisher. The upside is that the design teams are usually lovely to work with and the moment the finished book is in your hands or you see it in Waterstones you feel very proud. That doesn't pay the bills though. And those hours are shockingly bad for your health and eyesight.

When I used can a fast food restaurant many years ago now (possibly even 30 😱) the "fresh" orange juice used to come in frozen and you'd have to add it as a block to water and mix it and we used to do it with our hands because it was the only way to get it to work efficiently 😨 really grim because you used to have to stick your whole arm in for that.

I stopped eating out years ago as a result of getting very very ill after a steak and salad.

I worked for a well known ice cream company and they were excellent regarding hygiene. It was not possible to go to the loo or anywhere else without walking past the hygiene station and there were cameras everywhere. If you walked past and went into the production floor, it was a sackable offence no matter where else you had been in the factory.

I would eat out again if I knew this level of hygiene was the norm.

A ridiculously high number of politicians engage in sex acts with each other / their staff in their offices, in cupboards, in toilets. They also consume cocaine in the toilets but I guess everyone knows that.

I used to work for BT as a 999 operator (putting calls through to the relevant emergency service). The amount of creepy old men that would call during a night shift asking what shoes you were wearing, or if they could have your undies etc was grim. This was 30 years ago so imagine it’s got a lot worse!

Public infrastructure funding (flood defences): the most and least deprived wards in England are only 3 miles apart.

(It’s been over a decade since I had to use these raw stats, the bottom position may have changed, but I’m pretty sure the top position remains the same).

No surprise - given that most men don't wash their hands after going to the toilet - it's obvious, they are doing up their flies when they leave the toilets, and you never hear a hand dryer, whereas women get dressed in the cubicle, then most wash and dry their hands.

Yup.
If it goes hard over time, it is a cake. If it goes soft, it is a biscuit.

Would it have helped her if the celeb had falsely declared his earnings to be lower than they really were, while they were going through the divorce process?
Could she go back to the solicitors with that info?
Just wondering how it works.

I worked on a Rape Crisis Helpline, and a Domestic violence Helpline, you would not believe the number of men who would phone both to just to try to talk dirty to the women who answered the phone, just too cheap to pay for their grubby porn line hobby. Beyond gross.

Just avoid any ‘country vegetable soup’ in a place with young trainee chefs 😉

That a high proportion of men who rape are or have been police officers, prison officers or soldiers.

That there are more paedophiles about than you can ever imagine.

That’s there’s a lot of interesting infrastructure underneath cities that nobody admits to.

Oh nooooooo 😱😱. Where are they hiding? Where should I avoid 🫣

I have had many jobs in both public sector and private sector offices.

In the private sector, at junior / admin levels, you work your socks off. If they can possibly make your role redundant, or just not replace you when you leave, they will, and expect the rest of the team to pick up the work.

In the public sector (civil service, local authority, and FE college, but I expect the other organisations are similar), you can work at about 2/3 of the pace or less, and 'empire building' is rife: this means that every manager tries to get as many staff under them as possible. A manager with a team of six will moan to his superior how everyone is flat out and overworked, they need another person. The manager is happy to agree, because he has no idea of the actual workload, and then he also gets more people under him.
So there are hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of under-employed people working at half-speed paid for by our taxes.

Teapots in the hotel rooms I cleaned were often mistaken for a loo. I assume that’s why you don’t get them any more.

Smarties used to be made in huge sheets like bubble wrap and then ‘tumbled dried’ to smooth them (saw that on a tour about 35 years ago).

There are a lot of weird behaviours with bodily fluids in the workplace than you would ever expect. People are gross.

They just haven’t been caught yet. I’ve seen multiple people caught in workplaces.

The local paper court report seems to have someone caught with indecent images every week.

Haha, I certainly will. I think I've subconsciously done so anyway as there were always rumours about it not being fresh and made of leftovers. But not peas from someone's gob! 🤣

That doesn't surprise me one bit. Men in positions of power. Rapists seek those positions and people in those positions can turn rapist as they think they can get away with it.

They’re everywhere, especially in the changing rooms. They are mainly only out when the pool is shut.

We took over an all-singing all-dancing coffee machine including the finance when we bought a B&B. As soon as it was paid off I sold it on eBay precisely because there were about 15 elements that needed cleaning every day (which I promise I did!). It was the bane of my life and I don't even drink coffee.

My previous employer invented something that is vital to national security but I'm not allowed to tell you what it is or what it is used for.😎