Awkward questions you've always wanted to ask someone who works in a specific job...

[PinocchiosLeftNostril]

I thought this would be a good way for us to get answers to those awkward questions we would never dream of asking someone to their face in their place of work.

These are questions relating to my life that i would love honest answers to.

Hairdressers - When someone with bad dandruff/psoriasis sits on your chair, do you shrug it off, or do you quickly have a look to make sure it's not lice? Are you able to tell the difference right away or does it need investigating? And do you really want to know what my plans are for the day, or would you rather work in silence?

Teachers - do you get annoyed when parents write in homework diaries that a specific piece of homework was too tricky for their child? Do you take it as an insult to your teaching skills?

Waiter/waitresses - do you expect people to offer to clean up their children's mess before they leave, or do you just shrug it off as part of the job? If you're busy and haven't had chance to clean a table yet, and a new customer came up and asked for a cloth to clean it, would you be offended?

I'm a trainee SLT so not quite sure if I'm qualified to answer any questions regarding that line of work yet.

But i have experience working in a Subway sandwich store, a library, a gym and as a cleaner. So i can answer any cleaning, book or sandwich questions that are burning away inside you all.

[Ezza1]

I'm a health care worker - I can deal with all bodily fluids without batting an eyelid except snot and phlegm < vom...

Podiatrists - Why? Just why would anyone want to be a podiatrist? Little babies feet are scrumptious, anyone elses are foul.

[YoniBottsBumgina]

Unfortunate having just done an international move, double walled YES, and better if you can afford. Quite a bit of our stuff got broken being in cheap double walled boxes from amazon.

Also stuff as much padding as you can in there!

[YoniBottsBumgina]

Not quite a bookshop, but I used to work in WHSmith and I judged if people bought those crappy magazines with blurry photos of celebs in bikinis on the front with comments about them being too fat or thin. Also "lads mags". I judged.

[unfortunatedischarge]

grrrr yoni

ezzr wouldn't it be brilliant if you could specialise in baby feet? Wouldn't be much work abut I suppose though.......

[unfortunatedischarge]

so you don't recomend amazon for boxes? We were actually going to get them from there..

[swannylovesu]

i can confirm snot and phlegm are far worse that wee and poo.

[YoniBottsBumgina]

These are the ones we used boxes

The breakages were probably more down to bad packing than the boxes themselves, but a few of the boxes themselves did rip slightly in transit. One we think was opened and closed again. A couple of them looked like they'd been under a pile of other heavy stuff.

We had 15 boxes full and the breakages filled a "bag for life" plus a slow cooker where the base got bent, exposing wires (but this was not padded by anything). So overall didn't lose too much stuff, and we did pack in a hurry.

[YoniBottsBumgina]

(Under heavy stuff, read: Could have done with stronger walls.)

[SummerRain]

AndThats When I was having one of my tattoos a couple of lads came in looking for chinese symbols. The artist told them he didn't want to tattoo them.

Once they'd gone after whining for a while he explained he refused to do tattoos on people who were just getting a tattoo for the sake of having a tattoo, either they wanted a piece of artwork or he wouldn't do it.

[Lalunya85]

(ex) music teacher here.

It's pretty easy to tell whether a student has practiced during the week or not. Any practice at all - even a half hour spread across seven days - will have made some kind of a difference, and an attentive teacher will probably be able to tell.

One clear sign that someone hasn't practiced at all is when they come to a lesson, either not remembering what song we were playing last - or not remembering which page it was one. That's an easy giveaway

[BalloonSlayer]

Midwives - how much does the mother's weight affect being able to gain information about her baby? Eg with scans* and manual checks in later pregnancy. Also does being overweight make it more difficult to put in an epidural?

• a friend of mine had a private scan and I noticed a disclaimer on it in very small print that the image was affected by "adiposity" which I thought seemed like a very coy way of putting something that they didn't like to say.

[BalloonSlayer]

Oh and re the "why do men become gynaecologists" question, I'd imagine that during medical training you get to experience every aspect of medicine, find particular areas of the profession you enjoy and are good at, for example you discover that you find it easy to remember the parts/workings of, say, the kidneys than any other organ, your exam results for that part of the course are much higher than others, thus you find yourself steered towards being a kidney specialist.

Or you discover in yourself a hitherto unnoticed talent for speaking kindly and sympathetically to older people with dementia, so you end up going into gerontology.

Same with gynaecology.

Personally if I were lucky enough to be a doctor I would like to work in a field where the patients were not dying or seriously ill, and that's one of the reasons obs and gynae would be attractive to me. I always thought it must be fab to be Robert Winston - all the women he has helped to have babies - how wonderful. I can't imagine why anyone wouldn't want to do that, if they could.

[PinocchiosLeftNostril]

Thanks all for answering mine.

Books - I had a 15yo boy come into the library I worked at and asked to reserve 50 shades of grey for his mum. He was mortified! I definitely judged the mum and wondered if it was some sort of alternate punishment for teens these days. And whenever someone rather posh borrowed a book I always mentally added those books to my must read list so I could become posh too...

Cleaner - the only time I judged was when a little boy's bed was covered in dog hair and fleas. Thankfully it was just a one off deep clean so I didnt have to back. I mentioned my findings to the owner of the house and she said she'd just given her son's bed to the pets for the holiday because her son was at his dad's but that she'd sort it.

Asides from infestations, the messier the better! There's nothing more boring or awkward than cleaning something thats already clean especially when the client is in the house with you. I liked to be busy.

[PinocchiosLeftNostril]

Thanks all for answering mine.

Books - I had a 15yo boy come into the library I worked at and asked to reserve 50 shades of grey for his mum. He was mortified! I definitely judged the mum and wondered if it was some sort of alternate punishment for teens these days. And whenever someone rather posh borrowed a book I always mentally added those books to my must read list so I could become posh too...

Cleaner - the only time I judged was when a little boy's bed was covered in dog hair and fleas. Thankfully it was just a one off deep clean so I didnt have to back. I mentioned my findings to the owner of the house and she said she'd just given her son's bed to the pets for the holiday because her son was at his dad's but that she'd sort it.

Asides from infestations, the messier the better! There's nothing more boring or awkward than cleaning something thats already clean especially when the client is in the house with you. I liked to be busy.

[SummerRain]

Oh, and the waitresses being asked for a cloth one, I used to waitress and it depends really, if I was obviously run off my feet and a customer made a point of coming up and asking for a cloth I used to assume its was pointed request that I drop whatever I was doing and clear their table tbh.

A few customers managed to do it with managers watching and the waiting staff got reprimanded. I worked in one bar/restaurant in which the manager used to have lunch himself in the packed restaurant every day so he could 'observe' what we did. It was a huge and busy premises with too few staff to provide the level of service the management insisted on (they were insisting on restaurant style service in a bar which happened to serve food) and he'd sit there having a nice casual lunch and reprimand us later for not emptying the ashtray between courses, not stopping at each table while they're eating and asking if the food was ok, not having the tables cleaned an reset within 2 minutes of people leaving. We had 10+ tables each and might not even have had time to notice the empty table within 2 minutes, much less clean and reset it whilst other customers' food went cold in the kitchen

[TunipTheUnconquerable]

I worked in a bookshop. I didn't judge, except I judged the parents who used to make faces at the books their teenage kids were buying. Just let them buy what they want ffs, even if it is about true crime or witches.

I have also worked in museums if anyone has any questions related to that.

Am v happy to hear waitresses like it when you pile the toddler-chewed food onto the plate because we always do that.

[BeaverAbroad]

Am a counsellor, if it matters.

I always wonder- teachers, how long do you remember the stuff kids tell you? DS will be going to DD1's school, and two years ago she made a drawing and labelled it 'mum farting' so am a bit worried!

[ElephantsAndMiasmas]

Checkout people - do you ever play "Ready Steady Cook" like I do when I'm queueing and try to imagine what they're making with 18 courgettes, a packet of wotsits, shaving foam, pate and chocolate sprinkles?

Anaesthetists - do you ever worry that your patients are "secretly" awake? I have a friend who does this and I think it's a terrifying and quite creepy job really (though v important of course), would never tell them though

I'd love to ask a tabloid jouro, specially a DM one, whether someone goes through and adds in sexism, bigotry etc if they've forgotten to put enough into their original article.

[ElephantsAndMiasmas]

And as an ex-waitress yes i hugely appreciated when big chunks of pre-chewed gunk were put somewhere like on the plate, rather than left bedaubed around, especially things like beans and cheese, urgh.

[GwendolineMaryLacey]

Oh yes worked in museums here too so can also answer questions.

Waitresses, my children seem to get through 700 wipes per meal. Is it ok if I pile them on my plate or should I continue to guiltily put them in a nappy bag and take them home?

[GwendolineMaryLacey]

Oh and shop types, does it boil your piss if I let my 5yo pay for her magazine or do you think it's ok?

[Mrsmorton]

I'm a dentist. Grotty teeth don't even register to be honest. It's the lies/excuses that go with them that piss me off "oh I brush and floss three times a day" you definitely do not do that. "Oh the last dentist said this" I was your last dentist and I've never said that in my life.
I enjoy making dentures and am secretly quite good at it but once they've been in your mouth, I will retch if I see them moist.
My nurse usually whisks them away and cleans and dries them so I can look. That makes like tough sometimes!!

[GwendolineMaryLacey]

I don't suppose you're in surrey mrs m? I need a dentist who doesn't care about my grotty teeth!

[TunipTheUnconquerable]

Painters and decorators, plumbers etc - do you judge a messy house, as long as the place where you're supposed to be working is clear?

[MardyBra]

Dentists. Does your heart sink when a nervous patient (like me) comes in? I have a massive gag reflex and get into a panic.