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!!!!!

prescription meds can't be given in larger amounts than are prescribed in the UK. Its important whern its things like antibiotics because misuse can make you ill and its not good for the long term viability of antibiotic therapy

You don't have believe me.

I used to investigate claims arising from death at work. I was surprised to find that men leading double lives with secret families are more common than you would expect.

Well there’s the difference then. It’s not that Brits are idiots - it’s that things like 100 paracetamol would be used to kill themselves. And tramadol etc is addictive. Huge MH issues in this country on top of a lot of people with additional needs, addiction issues, memory issues, low literacy.

I don’t know where you live but it seems an incredibly lenient system with a lot of room for litigation to happen.

That's only a problem if people are stupid enough to take more than what is prescribed

I'd assume if it was turning out to be an issue they'd change the system, so if it remains the same, then there can't really be much of a problem with people overdosing (which people can do very easily in the UK anyway as you just need to go to a few different shops to get enough to kill yourself - here you can't get any medications outside of pharmacies, not even paracetamol so already less opportunity)

Only around 50% of prescription medications are taken correctly , ie the right amount, at the right time , in the right way.

people miss doses , then double up , increase or decrease medication, don’t read instructions so take at wrong time , or in wrong way (eg crush tablets that shouldn’t be crushed , with food when should be on empty stomach etc) or hand over to others who haven’t been prescribed it or buy over internet for inappropriate use.

I did door-to-door canvassing in the 1970s-80s. Even then, the number of households with couples having the same surname was surprisingly low. It seemed really common for similar-age couples with different surnames to be living in the same house.

Did a bit of a search to see if I can find similar stats for my country but hard to search for in my 2nd language. Did find that around 81 million euros worth of medicines are returned to pharmacies every year which means there is a lot of waste still (66% of that is prescription meds so a big chunk is over the counter stuff) but also shows that many many people are returning unused meds properly.

Also from 1970s-80s working, you really could see the Earth's curvature from the windows of Concorde. And even in daytime, up there it's dark outside.

But Long Covid was a complication not known about. There are over 2 million of us in the UK alone. Many of us are unable to go back to work....

I work in an education sector where we get very disadvantaged students and students with Sen but the "teachers " in this sector have no requirement to be trained as teachers.
The utter crap that gets slopped out to students is shocking ,and there is no accountability.
They get away with it because unfortunately the parents are absent or assume it's how this place is and they don't complain. Also poor management let's poor standards go on and on.

It would appear to be a world wide problem

Regional Variations: While adherence is often poor globally, studies show that in the European Union, only about 48% of people use prescribed medications properly in a given two-week period.
Hospitalization Rates: In the United States, roughly one-third to two-thirds of medication-related hospitalizations are caused by poor medication adherence.

I worked as a housekeeper in a premier inn once years ago during the summer i was at college.
And it was the same there too, we were told to use the dirty used towels to wipe down the toilet, the sink, shower in the bathroom.
Then we’d use the used pillowcases off the beds to dust everything in the bedroom area. It was bogging!

Years ago, back in the days when Gregg's used to sell loaves of bread,I made a remark to the woman who served me with an (unwrapped) French loaf,that she had just been handling money prior to touching the bread. Her response was 'Oh but I'm wearing gloves'. Yes gloves that touched the money then the bread! I wonder what parallel universe some people live in when they think that wearing latex gloves prevents bacteria being transferred from one thing to another!

All I found for my country was that a third of people on long term medication occasionally miss doses, but obviously someone on a long term medication will have a better understanding of how to take their meds (so missing doses might be due to things like not getting a refill in time, something that I occasionally do, or then struggling to get into a regular routine with taking them) but nothing about general misuse (well AI suggestion said 1-3% error rate but I'm going to assume that's wildly wrong) but considering literacy levels are very high here and the majority of people apparently read through the information leaflet that comes with their medicine before taking it, I don't imagine it would be as much as 50%.

That’s right! It was inspector Sands

I used to work in a dining hall at university, at one point they decided we needed to wear gloves when serving food and I pointed out that it was actually less hygienic that way as when we didn't wear gloves we washed hands frequently but we did not change gloves anywhere near as frequently.

If the utility used to be state owned decades ago, it will still have that public sector vibe and slowness. Culture takes a looooong time to change.

In the early 90s, when I was looking for a graduate job in process / food engineering, I was interviewed by the man who had invented the fish finger! (Birds Eye Foods, Unilever)

I once had the most delicious vegetarian tomato soup in a golf club. It was so nice every time I went in I had a bowl. I eventually asked the chef if he’d give me the recipe, which included CHICKEN STOCK!!!! Hmmmmmm. Was still lush though 🤣

I've worked for vets for decades and some of the stuff I have seen and had to deal with has been utterly insane. Not the animals, although I could write a book about the owners, it's the vets. Shocking stuff.

Talking of vets ... horses front legs aren't attached to their bodies by anything but muscle, tendons and ligaments, no joint.

Horses can vary by several inches in height throughout their adult lives because of this.

It's Mr Sands in the theatre for an emergency backstage I think, and I was once at Kings Cross underground station when they put a call out on the tannoy asking for Inspector Sands. That is the TFL code for the fire alarm. I knew what it meant so I left the building by the nearest exit. I wasn't going to hang about waiting to see if it was a false alarm or not.

Indeed. They have no collarbone so this is correct.