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!!!!!

This is interesting. I’ve been to Club Med on the final week of the ski season so mid April - and there was a real party atmosphere among the staff, who had worked together all season and were preparing to say goodbye. It was quite touching to see and can’t say service was low as a result.

More info please! What sort of things? And why won’t they admit to them?

Having worked for many years in education, I can tell you that some teachers are too stupid to understand the Examination Boards' Specifications.

You don't admit to something you don't want the enemy to know about. Especially not its location.

Since self checkouts became a thing I reckon everyone knows that one!

Driller said ‘I’m on services’ but the engineer told him to keep going as there was nothing marked on the utilities plans. Up came a big tangle of wires. Cue lots of hasty phone calls to the kind of organisations who might have comms cables, who all said ‘let me read you this prepared statement’.

Can only agree with you - I thought it pretty normal, but my Nigerian fellow-student almost fainted when we went to our local deli for a sandwich back then - a lady made a sandwich for us with no gloves and with the same hands handled our cash, gave us change and proceeded to pick up ham slices, with the same unwashed hands, for the next customer. 'How are you all not dead?' she asked me.

I was a food safety EHO for 19 years.....

The wash hand basins bone dry even though food handlers had been on site for several hours.
To save space, food containers stacked on top of each other with no lids so the underside in contact with the foodstuffs below.
Cooked ducks hanging outside pegged on a washing line.
When asked to provide 'adequate ventilation' in a pub kitchen, the landlord got his shot gun out and fired 3 holes through the kitchen windows.
The number of food businesses cooking/prepping food to customers with active cockroach infestations.
I could go on.....

The ins and outs of covert policing and intelligence gathering techniques.

I have a work colleague who is ocd/germ phobic. She refuses to use any other mug at work - even a brand new one - rather than her own, even though she could wash it up multiple times herself, before using, if needed....but seems to have no qualms about eating out or getting takeaways...which, imo poses so many more risks!

Not from work, but from ordinary life. I was surprised to find out that private school teachers are not special, they are not chosen from a 'special pool', they are employed from the same pool of teachers and they, on average, do not give a shit about teaching children properly. They care about their wages, work conditions, sick leave, etc. Basically, it is a scam.

I was surprised to find out, again, from life, that private doctors are not special, they are not drawn from a special pool (like private teachers are not) and that most private hospitals are just rental arrangements - i.e. there is no multidisciplinary hospital team, obliged to provide input in patient care. That an ortho consultant, say, rents a consultation room and theatre per hour, that they are lone operators who pay the private hospital for facilities and it is truly scary.

I was surprised to find out that in one private hospital the outcome for post-surgery patients wholly depended not on an anaesthetist (as I had previously thought) and not on a surgeon, but on a strapping physio therapist, with his physio team - i.e. he was only in on Thursdays with his team and when patients went into cardiac arrest, they survived on Thursdays because he and his girls and lads were in (physically strong, could go on and on doing CPR properly), and had literally no chance of survival when only 3 nurses were on the ward post-op on other days (they did not have the fitness level to do it properly until the arrival of a state-funded ambulance).

P.S. I wish I did not find out the latter though.

Ah I see. Weapons, bunkers and suchlike?

I don’t fully understand this answer, but thank you for answering!

I knew how much money some famous people had as I worked for a stockbroker.

True 😂

@Feis123 Yes, any teacher can seek a job in state schools or private schools. In fact, for a long time private schools were often employing people who weren’t qualified teachers (but were experts in their subject). I don’t know if that’s still the case, but certainly in the quite recent past there have been teachers in private schools who, despite knowing their subject well, have never qualified as a teacher, so they have received no education on theories of learning, how to teach children with SEN etc.

Military sites were not shown on UK ordnance survey maps until fairly recently.

I haven’t checked the old maps to see if it was true but it was said that the Post Office Tower wasn’t shown, as it was a defence site.

IVF - specifically donor programme. Most of the guys donating sperm were under the assumption that it was going to husband and wife (hetero) couple where the husband was infertile. Most of the time it was used by same sex couples and second were single women. The “heterosexual couples” were not even 10% of cases.

Oh and a good chunk of men giving samples (donor or for their own treatment or general testing) didn’t wash their hands after doing the deed.🤮

The variety of items that people who claim never to use cotton buds in their earholes use to try to dig out earwax.

Ummm… I think you have extrapolated wildly on teachers there.

Obviously there is no ‘special pool’ of teachers just for private schools 🙄…. But not sure why you think that they only care about working conditions and wages, and it’s a scam.

Just like state school teachers, there will be good and bad ones!

I don’t know if this would be surprising to anyone, but I am a fitness instructor and a great many of my instructor colleagues are ND- perhaps even the majority. From discussions in instructor groups online, I don’t think this is just a quirk of where I work- instructors with autism and/or ADHD are everywhere!

Interesting @SabrinaThwaite, thank you.

so do I

There is a awful lot of duct tape used in aircraft manufacturing 😬 at all stages

I used to be a funeral arranger and fortunately never had to do the back of house stuff with the bodies (apart from checking their condition daily). I did however once watch the guys prepare a body before it was dressed and put into the coffin for a viewing. The deceased was treated very respectfully (honestly, they were talking to them all the time - sorry Mr Jones, we just have to do xxxx etc), but plastic caps had to be put under eyelids to keep the eyes closed and to retain their rounded look. The individual is usually placed in an adult nappy before being dressed (in case it purges fluids) but the body can also purge via mouth and nose too, so the throat had to be blocked off. It was one of those OMFG! moments.