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!!!!!

I had an argument with an assistant in a pharmacy when I told her I had a reaction to a drug they’d sent me so needed a different manufacturer. She argued as they were both drug X they must be the same so I was talking rubbish. One was pink, the other white…

0800 phone banking operator here when it first launched.

Lots of grubby men would call. WE CAN SEE YOUR PHONE NUMBER.

The nice side was the Christmas Day / New Year’s Day calls that came the military over seas. Nobody needs a balance check on those days but it was lovely to have a chat with them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_British_politics

also

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/21/just-what-does-the-uk-russia-report-say-key-points-explained

Essentially yes, it's happened a lot and since the start of the invasion of Ukraine it's massively greater. One rather good way of working out who's a troll is to ask if the poster thinks that Russia is at fault for invading Ukraine. The bad-faith posters tend to try to do anything to avoid answering that, or come up with a "Yes-but-really-it's-NATO's-fault" answer.

But how do you tell on a thread that's tangentially on a subject a bad faith actor might like to influence . Say the ones about Keir Starmer. If they want to destabilise the government

It's difficult, honestly. Which is partly why the bad-faith actors are so successful.

It's clear that many years of drip-drip-drip can influence how people feel about a whole range of things, so the Russian (and Chinese, and probably US interference in some countries) is not unsuccessful. I am sure that while some people genuinely believed leaving the EU was a good thing, the relentless anti-EU agenda of the Murdoch press over 30 years also molded people's thought.

If people, when you engage with them, refuse to acknowledge sensible points; if a number of posters make the same point using exactly the same language; if there seems something false or 'off' with them, then it's quite possible they are not real posters. Sometimes the bad-faith actors are set an agenda, for instance in America at one stage a lot of 'Americans' suddenly started pushing for Texas to secede from the US. A few weeks later, this idea suddenly vanished.

Being aware of the goals of the bad-actor states (eg breaking up unity within the UK; amplifying anti-immigration narratives; pushing far right wing agendas) also help with keeping in mind that not everyone is what they seem.

But 100% certainty is very hard to achieve.

Presumably to make the process quicker and due to a lack of care for basic hygiene.

I've known my hygienist for nearly 30 years, she told me.

Well according to Lollygaggle it matters as dentists didn't get enough support as they and all their staff were self employed and got no financial help. It isn't true as some hygienists are employed and so are other staff.

Not just the fact that most hygienists/therapists/dentist are self employed but also for most private practices there was no help in paying mortgages on businesses , loans on business equipment , other fixed running costs so there was every reason for them to keep open and running as otherwise bankruptcy would follow.

Of the practices I helped during lockdown at least two the owners remortgaged their houses for 6 figure sums to keep the practices running as , there was a much decreased income because of the increased cross infection measures and the cost of cross infection measures .

Therefore there were very few practices which “closed for 18 months “ as you say yours did , although many had to reschedule routine check ups and hygiene visits as instead of being able to see 25 or more patients a day , they were only able to see 6 to 8 even working longer hours and more days .

It took a couple of years for things to go back to normal and to catch up with the backlog the restrictions on working caused during the covid years (2020 to 2022) .

This is what myself, my staff and the other practices in our area were wearing all day , every day for aerosol generating proceedures . The cost in time , energy and money was enormous but if we didn’t work we would have gone bankrupt.

The same happened with mine. She decided to leave after the practice was amalgamated with another, after being taken over by another firm.

ETA The problem was that the firm decided to save money by quitting the old building and moving our practice in with the other practice in another town 10 miles away meaning that it was almost impossible for older non-driving patients to reach easily - they now need to take two buses, given the local bus routes.

What about long Covid? Is it then unlikely to affect most people who get Covid?

Not me - but my friend has a Senior Finance role and can see if you have a mortgage, your bank balance, phone contract information, spending habits etc etc

Urgh.

What shocks me is that the top number on the food hygiene rating only equates to 'good' - is that because very few would achieve an 'excellent' rating?

Probably similar to a role that I used to hold. It definitely makes you protect your own personal information more than most.

All that information on any random?
This is not usually a perk of senior finance positions.
Does she work for MI5?

There were ants in the coffee machine at work.

We'd been drinking ant parts for weeks.... as we were initially told it was the drink mix not blending properly ...... 🤢

There should be a 'bona fide reason' to access the information - but yes, everyone's information is out there.

Flashback to working in a kiosk at the zoo and the first drink from each flavour in the fizzy drink machine would come with ants. Obviously didn't serve those ones to customers!

A lot of infections, like flu, epstein-barr and shingles, cause post-acute infection syndrome (which is what 'long covid' is). It isn't in any way a new thing. The fact that covid itself was new meant that more people were getting infected at the same time, which obviously inflated the total numbers of people struggling with post-infection issues. There are greater number of documented cases of PAIS post-covid than post other infections but that's likely due to the fact that the connection isn't made by healthcare professionals. If someone has flu and turns up weeks later with fatigue, they don't necessarily dig in and find out the cause - surveillance was much higher with covid than with other infections, again because it was new.

It's an obvious fact that most people come through covid with no issue - you only have to live in the world to know that.

Well, I know that information is out there, that’s hardly news to anyone 😁
It’s not accessible by your usual company finance bod, good reason or no good reason.

Bromine?

I’m a foster carer. I telling a child’s SW that 10 year old had started her period. I commented that it was very young and she told me studies have been done that show on average girls in care will start their periods at a younger age than their peers.
I have no idea why this is but it’s sad, they have so much to cope with already.

I worked at a firm of chartered accountants. The first thing they made me do on my first day when I walked in the door was to sign an NDA.

10 is not very young, the average age is much younger than a generation or 2 ago. Probably mix of better/ over nutrition with obesity lowering the age, and likely environmental differences (plastics/ pollutants etc). I hadn’t heard about the link with being in care though.