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!!!!!

My old workplace had 4 basement levels and on one of them there was a room labelled “cheese room”. Always locked sadly. Why was there a cheese room buried in the workplace of a finance office in central London, to this day I wish I knew 🤔

Bad stuff. Criminal stuff. Up before the beak stuff.

I grew up working class. My family kept their noses clean, went to work and built good clean lives for themselves. As soon as I started to work for vets, I was shocked at their behaviour as I always assumed that middle and upper class people would behave better, be better, do better.

Nope.

@ShizeItsWeegie Not being deliberately obtuse I promise you but I don't really understand your post. What is "Up before the beak stuff" for example?

In front of the judge I think?

Ah - thanks @JumpLeadsForTwo !

Sorry, it's my vernacular. Up before the beak means that their governing body would hold a hearing and remove them from the register and/or the Police would arrest them for their dodgy doings, not necessarily in that order.

It's not just this but the lower level stuff too and the effect that it has had on me over the years. It's been hard to square away at times.

I'm sorry to hear this @ShizeItsWeegie but thank you for explaining it to me x

Gotta keep that cheese safe!

Millions but not all.

A motorbike was cheaper than a season ticket when I lived in London, quicker often too.

I think it really depends on what team and in which public service.
From other posters here, it seems that the NHS is mostly not affected by this under-working. Nor are a lot of front-line "real" jobs, where the outcome and productivity is apparent and evidenced.
I am talking more about back-office functions, like IT, data, finance, HR, or vaguely named 'reporting' or 'administration' or 'coordination' type teams.

I was not being unkind. I was being truthful, based on my personal experience of many jobs.

When I was a mostly NHS dentist we couldn’t have evening meetings on contracts with the heads of the local health board because they didn’t get paid for evening work.

We explained that having 50 or 60 dentists unavailable for work for several hours during the day not only meant that patients had no cover but we were paying hundreds to come as our surgeries, staff etc still had to be paid for even though we weren’t earning. They couldn’t get their heads around that as self employed people if we physically didn’t have our hands in a patients mouth not only were we not earning but if it was a working day we were losing money as staff, utilities etc had to be paid .

To put this into context all the execs at the health board earned way more than any of us…. Way , way more.

They also loved to spring meetings at last minute , not appreciating that patients would have to be cancelled and would not be happy.

However for me the absolute lowest point was during covid , when vaccinations were finally available for those at high risk of infection, but were very restricted . Dentists were around the highest risk because of the aerosols generated and proximity to mouth, we had been working all through and there had been dental fatalities locally.

After a couple of weeks when we had not been notified about when and where to go for our vaccinations it turned out there was no availability because the admin staff at the local health board had bagged all the vaccination spots, people who shuffled paper but had no contact with patients and were , on the whole, working from home . That was shut down but it didn’t recieve publicity but the anger and the destruction of any trust or faith was total.

I suspect in the USA that 'poor medication adherence' includes all those people whose are not insured, or whose insurance won't pay out, and who cannot afford to buy the medicine.
It is lack of access to the medicine, not carelessness on the part of the patient.

The United States is a special case. There is plenty of evidence to show that eg in diabetics quite often medication is missed or decreased because of finances . Diabetic complications then ensue , particularly because many of the populations at high risk of diabetes eg Hispanic , Afro Caribbean communities also happen to be the most socially disadvantaged.

However even in countries where there is little or no cost to medications compliance is , at best , around 50%. There is a variety of reasons for this from general poor understanding of importance of correct dosage at right time in right way to the large elderly cohort for whom , despite blister packs etc , multiple pharmacy and declining cognitive skills make it difficult to achieve compliance. You only have to be in a pharmacy when relatives bring in bin bags of unused medications to see the problems.

I'm surprised dentists worked all through COVID. My dentist was completely closed for at least a year

Makes me understand why people don't (when they should) read private eye.

Maybe they were clinically vulnerable and had no one to cover.
we stayed open all the way through as did all our local colleagues , but with restrictions on who we could see and how we worked.

But again you’re making assumptions and sweeping statements about a lot of functions you clearly know nothing about. I’ve working only in “back office” roles and my teams and I have always worked bloody hard.

Where exactly are you getting your “information” from? Just typical public sector bashing from what I can see.

Who do you think line manages, recruits, performance manages, sets up systems, updates processes on behalf of the front line workers? How would they help you aged mum, unwell dad, homeless brother etc without these back office functions? And who are you to be saying these teams across the country don’t work hard?

And are you really trying to say every HR, IT, finance team etc in the private sector is 100% efficient and effective? Because that just isn’t true.

There are hard workers and lazy gits in all aspects of life - at least most public sector workers do it out of care for other people.

Where exactly are you getting your “information” from?

As I said, from my own personal experience, of many jobs over many decades.

And are you really trying to say every HR, IT, finance team etc in the private sector is 100% efficient and effective?

Logic fail. That is not what I said.

Then why make the distinction between public and private sectors?

My original post had two main paragraphs, beginning 'In the public sector' and 'In the private sector'. It is obviously implicit that I am talking generally, not in absolutes.
My concluding paragraph talked about the public sector.

So where do you get "And are you really trying to say every HR, IT, finance team etc in the private sector is 100% efficient and effective?" ?

You made a leap of logic based on poor reading comprehension.

Stop being a twat. My reading comprehension is absolutely fine.

Stop using hyperbole to claim I said "100%" of something about the private sector when I said nothing of the sort.
I will not answer you again.

Following on from "Inspector Sands".....
I heard a "Code 1" on the Underground today.
Curious what that one means 😬