To ask for the scandalous secrets of your industry?

[Iwasjustabouttosaythat]

Or just dirt?

Mine isn't very interesting, more just sad. My background is in immigration and I have never worked with so many racist (and stupid) people.

A boat of refugees when down and the guy who told us the news was laughing about it.

Endless racial stereotypes and visas refused because "as if a French person would go out with a Japanese person" etc.

Then there was the chap who said amnesty are evil because they provide money for abortions to rape victims in the Congo. He's the same guy who refuses to assess any applications from homosexuals because he thinks they should all be denied visas. He doesn't get fired for this.

There are probably more but they are the stand outs.

What's your industry gossip? I'd especially love to hear from nannies and cleaners but I'm interested in all dirt!

Someone should investigate the UK education system. I think it might be built on lies.

Most large accountants firms are basically knocking shops where people sleep with anyone to advance their career. A lot of talk about diversity and yes you won't be discriminated against for your gender, sexual orientation, religion disability etc, but god forbid you don't conform to the private/public school mentality. The main thing that gets you promoted is being a sycophant (regardless of skill level)

NHS here. Current hospitals are damn good though I say so myself. 20 years ago I worked for a MH trust and one of my jobs was to publish the waiting times for outpatient appointments. I typed up the accurate list of waiting times, between ten to forty weeks. 'The required standard is six weeks, publish that' was the response from my boss.

I worked in McD's as a teenager and have to agree with PP it's sparkly clean.

I also worked at Pizza Hut and it wasn't so good. The food handling itself was fine but it was infested with cockroaches. Another PP mentioned a coffee vending machine backing up with them. In this case it was orange juice, one of those clear plastic ones. They got inside. I'll never forget the sight of black bits of crushed cockroach floating in orange liquid. Please note, we did NOT serve this to the customers. Still disgusting though. I left before they ever got rid of the problem.

My best friend's ex husband was an obstetrician. Went through the whole court case / custody hearing with her when they split. She was trying to restrict unaccompanied access because of his drinking (their DC was only 2 when they split).

The GMC were aware of his drinking. Their idea of 'treatment' was to give him a weekly blood test (always the same day and time so he knew when to stop / cut right down). That stopped after three months - and he was allowed to continue working all the way through. The thought of him being responsible for the lives of women and babies makes me feel ill.

I've never known teaching staff at school to gossip maliciously or routinely. Yes parents get talked about but that usually because one member of staff is looking for advice/support/background from another member of staff.

HA! Hahaha! I call bullshit, I've worked in tens of schools and every single day there was at least one teacher bitching about a parent/pupil with others joining in. They aren't looking for advice, they're blowing off steam. I don't blame them a lot of the time!

I got accidentally copied in on an email between SEN and teaching staff that was bitching about me . That was a shocker.

@Wando1986 Your experience is dreadful and makes me feel very sad that your and your family had to endure this. I can't imagine what your MIL felt. I hope you have had a more than satisfactory response to your complaint. Your MIL was obviously very sick and needed specialist care not humiliation. As a nurse, there are times when I feel despair with the nursing profession.

Aviation.

Working for a low cost carrier is about as glamorous, aspirational and sexy pauldacreisacunt as working in Greggs.

Don't let your food come into contact with the seat-back tables. They are invariably filthy.

Aircraft develop minor technical faults all the time. They 'go tech' in the jargon. If the captain and engineer are satisfied that the fault doesn't constitute a safety risk, the fault will be logged to be fixed later and the aircraft will operate your flight as normal.

I should add that flying really is very, very safe. Safety is taken incredibly seriously throughout the industry. Incidents are bad for business, but more important we all want to get home to our loved ones, too. So don't worry.

Two of my friends (a couple) work in air traffic control. The stories they've told me would make your hair curl. Still, they fly everywhere so they can't be too bothered!

One of the milder stories was a colleague having to get a taxi to work because she was still drunk from the night before. Then having to land the planes while vomiting into a bucket. She was the only staff member on shift (smallish airfield) no back up!

Like most work environments here, it really is each to their own..

regarding the kebab and owner licking his fingers comment, lots of stuff like this is unavoidable in hospitality.. we never seem to think about the chefs (who do not wear gloves, ever, unless maybe marinading raw chicken for example) , i've seen chefs plate a gorgeous plate of food with their black dirty fingernails...

my industry is hospitality too. i remember i was sixteen working in a very busy center restaurant where the little packs of butters and biscuits you didnt use with your tea and toast would be thrown into the bucket of dirty water with all dishes then put back out for next customer..

i work in another restaurant now and the waitresses prepare stuff like rice, etc, and we just grab 2 fist fulls of rice from the large bucket and put it into a dish and heat it up.. in the kitchen you don't have time to wash your hands before doing everything unfortunately

i work in a mexican take away too and surprisingly this is the most hygienic place i've ever worked.

Secondary schools are hotbeds for sex amongst the teachers. In every school I have worked at, there has been a constant stream of affairs, shagging, relationships...Friday nights at the pub, when everyone starts drinking at 3.45pm are a major factor in this.

Education. Staffroom chat can be a shocker. Not as big a shock as when I could out where some of the pupil premium went.

I'm a Web Developer, a.k.a. Web Programmer, usually shortened to Developer or Programmer. I create databases, write stored procedures and write the code for applications you see on the web. I also create the user interfaces and worry about UI / UX. I work in a small team so have to do a bit of everything, including support. I spend most of my time programming which is why I usually refer to myself as a programmer as opposed to a web applications developer. The latter is more accurate.

Disclaimer: this is only my experience (have spent 10+ years in the field now). Others in my field may disagree with my observations.

Programmers are a surprisingly moral bunch who care. I think there's this idea from TV etc that we're all just a bunch of corrupt hackers, which isn't true at all. The hackers I know hack for good. Some are known as 'Security Specialists' or 'Penetration Testers'. We are taught about ethics, not just about the technical stuff. Some of us write software for cars, robots, the finance industry, etc and it has to be robust else someone might literally die.

We don't go into programming for the fame, glory or the money. In fact, I'd say we're one of the most unrecognised and unappreciated groups because, for the most part, people just don't understand what we do (including, oftentimes, our managers).

Sadly, there is still a huge imbalance in that the vast majority of programmers are men (I'm obviously one of the exceptions). I go to conferences at least once a year and there you'll find swathes of men in jeans and hoodies, living up to the stereotype. Because I don't fit the stereotype, people often don't believe I'm a programmer, it's assumed I work in admin (#everydaysexism). I am always correcting people - yes I work on the web, no, I'm not in some kind of editorial role, I built that site. Yes, I'm the architect if you like.

In terms of scandal, I'd say that we're always pushed to cut corners by managers / project owners. We hate doing this because a large part of why we do what we do is because we get satisfaction from producing something good; no-one likes to release a pile of crap, but that's often what we're asked to do which means mistakes happen. I'd also say that in every organisation they'll be at least one mission-critical legacy system that is running on ancient technology and no-one knows anything about, so no-one wants to touch it.

In every project I've worked on, UAT (user acceptance testing) is usually the phase that's cut short, meaning that when the application goes live you can be sure that more bugs crop up than should because it wasn't tested properly.

I deal with support, which means dealing with the public sometimes. I'm third-line support which means that requests go via other, less technical people before arriving at my desk. Yes, occasionally we deal with people who aren't very computer literate, but actually, the most frustrating people are those who come to us with a work request who want it done yesterday. We call these people the 'moon-on-a-stick' crowd and they make us angry.

Our jobs can be stressful so there's often quite a lot of creative swearing that goes on. I couldn't work in an office where swearing was banned, I'd implode.

Not much scandal I'm afraid.

I used to work in a cafe (long closed now - 20 years ago!) where the manager used to spit on the bread before placing it in the toasty machine with fillings for a particularly rude regular customer.

When I told the owner he told the manager and I was sacked for something supposedly unrelated 3 weeks later. I wish I'd phoned the council food inspector. I hope that person doesn't work with food now.

Studentmum92 You can call bullshit all you want but I have never seen it routinely. I've worked in a tad more than 10s of schools. Blowing off steam because of an incident is not malicious gossip and it is still an attempt to get advice. People don't generally start with 'I' d like some advice' unless it's really serious. Mostly it's 'Christ, I've just had x' s screaming at me because of this'

Answers could include, 'yeah she can be a bit over the top' 'actually you really should make sure you have someone with you because something happened last year' 'oh dear, she has a lot on her plate because of (insert reason)'. Often it is the only way staff find out family background as not everything can be passed on during class handover.

Malicious gossip and bitching within school is almost entirely reserved for other staff, staff from other schools, LEA staff.

Education, secondary - Shagging is absolutely rife, doesn't matter if they are married or not. Staffroom chat is absolutely a thing, but it depends on the staff.. some people are just nasty regardless.
Accountants - A huge amount of favouritism and bribery; if you like the customer, it's amazing what loopholes you could exploit. I lasted 3 months and couldn't hack the backstabbing, bitching, shagging and basically doing anything to be top dog.
Builder's Merchants - Very little that you wouldn't expect. The guys salivate over the very rare appearance of any women but they're nice blokes and it's a decent place to work

Years ago I worked in some of the top 5 star hotels in London on reception. Pretty much all the receptionists were shagging the porters at various times. In the 1990s it was mainly antipodean staff and there was a continuous flow of hot 20 somethings to choose from.

But the main scandal: - we used to get lots and lots of very famous film and pop stars who would stay for a week or 2 at a time. Pretty much all of us (smallish boutique 5* hotel) would look through their underwear drawers, look at and test all their expensive creams and perfumes and look at their medicines etc. They had zero privacy. One American male film star wore a brand new pair of white y-front style pants every day, discarding the previous days pair in the bathroom bin. The chambermaids would bring them down to the staff areas below and show them off laughing at the skids, yellow wee-stains and all.

RE my developer / programmer post, I actually HAVE remembered something that could be considered scandal.

Most programmers are hyped up on caffeine (coke or coffee) as what we do is pretty brain-intensive and I've known someone in my department do 22 hours straight without even a lunch break, working through the night and into the next day (he's what we call a 'single point of failure' - no-one else knows enough about the systems he maintains). Caffeine has obvious disadvantages, you're gonna crash and burn eventually.

There's a new drug on the block called Modafinil. Seen the film 'Limitless'? The film was inspired by the drug Modafinil. The drug is pretty incredible - gives you great mental clarity and focus without behavioural changes. You can't tell someone is on it, they just look like they're having a really good, productive day. I know of at least one person in my department who takes it daily. It's typically used in the treatment of narcolepsy, sleep apnea, hypersomnia and ADHD amongst other things. It's popular with students taking exams too. Because it's a new drug, little is known about the impact it might have if taken long-term. Doctors aren't actually clear on how or why it works, it just does. I don't really take it, but I can see the appeal. I think it'd be easy to become dependent on it too - why would you want to be anything other than at your best, mentally?

Oh, and the other thing I remembered whilst in the bath - most kids want to go into computer games development but it's a horrible, cut-throat industry. Long hours, short contracts, poor pay (because everyone wants to do it) and no job security. I've known plenty dip into it for a while and then bail, totally burnt out. Would not recommend.

I've known someone in my department do 22 hours straight without even a lunch break

That reminds me of a colleague (IT manager in this case) at the time of the so-called "Millennium Bug"

Since he was the only one who knew what he was doing with computer stuff, he was able to put the fear of God up management about what might happen if he wasn't endlessly slavering over the equipment for a couple of days ... I don't actually think a plague of locusts was mentioned, but just about everything else was

He screwed a couple of thousand out of them over that ...

Once worked for Walls and their 'special' Christmas sausage meat stuffing was exactly the same as quicksave sausage meat stuffing.... only difference? Bags and price.
Also worked for a very large privately run day nursery where children were roomed according to age.
when there was an inspection four or five kids from each room would 'go for a walk' with one of the nursery nurses as they were so overcrowded they wouldn't have passed the child/adult ratio or a fire inspection.
Apart from that it was a great nursery who had a baby room and took babies from 8 weeks old. Best run place I ever worked and the children loved it!

Not really a scandal but I work on the railway and every day we get showered with shit from the trains.

I used to work internationally for a large energy company, i was shocked at the amount of prostitution and the number of guys who used them. They were everywhere in hotel lobbys, knocking on the doors of serviced apartments etc. Most of the guys in the industry are alcoholics. I quit to come back to the UK as i didnt want my life turning out like theirs.

I once worked in a burger chain type restaurant - this was around 35 years ago - it was my first ever saturday job whilst at high school..
They stored the burger buns (which were seaked in big plastc bags) inside the staff toilets - as in the cubicle. Old fashioned outdoor toilet block so really really rank.

(Very) long story short, CEO of a small charity paid for sexual favours on his company credit card. This and shagged his secretary whilst wife was pregnant... also hired his mates for roles they had little or no qualifications for and gave them fantastic pay rises.