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!!!!!

Enjoying reading all these responses they are fascinating

Adding another- a lot of crime in the food industry in general, minced meat is just one small example, being advertised as say 'lamb mince' which isnt cheap but the reality is it contains many other undeclared ingredients, perhaps not necessarily harmful but false advertisement, many businesses get away with it as due to funding and lack of staff we dont regularly sample and send to a laboratory to check the contents its an easy crime to get away with.

Also many people dont realise that there are many 'food businesses' that are fronts for money laundering and are not legitimate businesses. I have seen this particularly in the two larger cities I have worked in, less so in the smaller borough I now cover.

I agree with another poster I would not eat out if I had a severe food allergy it is generally managed VERY poorly across the board

A lot of people in quite senior roles are just figuring it out as they go along. I suspect this is the case across other industries, but mine is financial services.

I worked at a Russell Group University and discovered that the exam marks were kept on Excel spreadsheets. It happened more frequently than it should that marks would end up misallocated because someone had sorted a table and not included all the columns. People graduated with the wrong classification.

I also learned about 30 years ago so it may not be true any more, that all universities get all the A Level results for every single student in the country, days before they are issued to students. This is so that the universities can work out which offers to make.

One very senior employee went to the IT department and asked for his daughter's results even though she did not apply to that university. He was given them.

I can confirm this, I worked for an energy supplier, in SME debt and we had Premier League football teams, well known ateliers, WAGs beauty salons and yes, even the cafe at a certain Norfolk estate all ignoring their bills.

I've worked in banking for 30 years and this is correct. It's basically all held together with copy and paste by staff who have no idea what the excel formula they are relying on actually calculates. Also the majority of customers do not understand how the interest is worked out on their credit cards, overdrafts or loans; and the bank profits from that ignorance

Absolutely this. I have worked in social housing and the amount of money that is spent on tenants that kick off complaining all the time. I remember one woman complained so much her whole kitchen was replaced to shut her up. There was nothing wrong with it, just a different colour. That was thousands out of the councils pocket. But like you say, it’s abuse proof to those who don’t see these things day to day.

I've also worked in hotels and whilst we did use towels to polish the mirrors and sinks, all used crockery was stacked on your trolly to take to the pot wash and you had a shelf of clean crockery and glassware for your clean room.

You can see how using a towel that had been used by someone with norovirus to polish a door handle, a bathroom counter, the tap or sink could be problematic though?

One of my jobs while studying was cleaning at a hotel. During my introduction the mentor scraped poo off the toilet with her NAIL! She said I don't expect you to do this, there's a knife there to use. And no, gloves weren't used. I was in disbelief, especially as she went on to prepare breakfast...

Absolutely true story, something I will never forget.

And sometimes the evidence doesn't end up being disposed of securely. Ask me how I know...

For anyone who's interested in this sort of thing, I thoroughly recommend Andrew Duncan's book Secret London, specifically the chapter on The Subterranean City, which talks about the government's "Citadels". Military citadels under London - Wikipedia

Also, in 2009, the Guardian published a series called Secret Britain - here's one of the introductory articles https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2009/apr/04/travel-britain-iain-sinclair-books

I can't remember where I read it, but when the Jubilee Line extension was being built in 1999, the planners had to reroute it multiple times from Green Park to Westminster and then Waterloo, precisely because there's so much secret underground infrastructure in that area. So they'd submit a route and it would be refused, but no explanation would be forthcoming. Kind of like playing Battleships in reverse.

As a teen I worked the summer in various cafes on the local seafront.
Nothing was wasted. Any salad left on a plate was rinsed and reused.

Although we do all know this to a certain extent ( i think!) I think it would be useful to understand the true extent of bots, fake accounts, algorithm manipulation etc
I have seen some studies but not overall conclusive data ( the irony)
The film Brexit: the uncivil war was fascinating. I am sure its not all true but conversely I am also sure manipulation has exploded since then!

If I told you anything I knew from work, I would have to ... [you know the rest].

Not my current career, but I worked in PR years ago.
1 - most mumsnetters know this one, and some celebs are quite open about it these days, but if you ever see a weird story about a celeb like "XYZ buys a new car!" and you think "who cares?" it's usually because they're hiding something bigger. They've given a few small things to stop (or delay) a really big thing coming out.
2 - nearly all papparazzi pics are staged (again, this tends to be common knowledge) but especially since the dawn of social media, most "in the wild" paparazzi shots are staged and it's super cringe
3 - the 'my day on a plate' type articles are mostly written by PR teams and completely made up. Some are true if the celeb has a particular investment in food and nutrition, but they're mostly BS
4 - reality tv shows film the same shots and conversations multiple times. even the arguments.

NHS training was always different. It was a job from the moment you were training, and treated like it. It wasnt "education", it was work training often done in the same places others were in education at.

Ah, they do at our hospital. You can have back what you came with but we cannot dispense anything new. You'd have to go to the GP.

does that happen even if they are prescribed new drugs while in hospital?

Ours (Occupational Therapy) was not like that, and I believe still isn't. We weren't trained in a hospital but in a college, same with physios. Now it happens in universities which are mainly the colleges, now linked to existing Uni's. We did blocks of clinical practice in many different hospitals supervised by qualified clinicians who were also qualified clinical supervisors and these were interspersed with terms of college attendance.

Yes, the policy is if they're going against medical advice, they go on the understanding we will not be prescribing new medication. We literally cannot override the system once that box is checked, TTOs are greyed out.

I am able to hear the difference between pitches up to one single hertz (Hz) apart, in all the registers a grand piano encompasses. This might sound like Japanese to some, but a great deal of my working day is spent detecting and correcting those little differences in pitch that are as small as a hertz.

For perspective, the first two notes of Happy Birthday are approx. 60 hz apart (the two notes being “happy” and “BIRTH”-day) In my job, we are able to hear up to 60 different sounds between those two very close notes. People don’t realise that singing or playing “in tune” is a matter of tiny, tiny, mili-distances.

Won’t specify my role, but I work in the arts & entertainment industry - not with grand pianos though, nor with an over analysis of happy birthday intonations as my main focus!

oh yes, self discharge is different. Its a while since I was working now but when patients did want to leave, if we knew they would not stay, wherever possible it was managed so that the discharge would be safe and not happen under the self discharge route. It was quite rare though.

My friend is a published author and has a substantial following, but she was the ghost writer for a celeb. It's a job!

Are you one of those people who corrects minor off key moments in live performances? I can't remember the name for it....something like "autotune?"

That’s good to hear @Happyjoe. I’m in Sussex and my DH and DS are big fans of Uncle Sam’s!