Secrets of your trade.

[Confusedfornow]

I have worked in my current area of expertise for the last 20 years or so. It's in Aviation, can't say exactly what or for who as it's a relatively small community (for my role) and it would be VERY outing. Before this, my only other "job" that I did for a few years was dancing (yes, that kind ). So I don't have massive experience of the world of work.

But I was chatting with some people in a bar over the weekend and conversation turned to jobs and then to my role. I was telling them about some stuff which is perfectly normal to me, but was absolutely news to them.

For instance . .

When a plane is "parked" and everything is switched off, the aircraft is referred to as being "Cold and dark".

If a helicopter has engine failure, it won't just fall out of the sky. The pilots are trained in a procedure called "autorotation" and can usually land safely even if the engine isn't running at all.

All British Airways flights use the call sign "Speed Bird". It's unique and no other airline in the world uses it.

Last one . .

Pilots can't wear polarised sunglasses. They make the electronic displays on the flight deck appear black, and you can't read any information from them.

So, what do you know from your jobs that is mundane for you but which most people wouldn't have a clue/be surprised by?

100% @useralice working my hours out I doubt I even got paid minimum wage. I was paid 9-5 but was expected to come in at 8.15 and didn’t get to leave til 6pm most nights, then I spent most of my lunch catching up on paperwork or seeing customers cause the managers were so obsessed with figures they couldn’t turn anyone away!
It was a horrible toxic environment where you have to know exactly where someone’s first deposit for opening a bank account is coming from, the source of these funds etc. If your credit card or loan gets referred we have to phone our underwriting teams based abroad who we were usually on hold for about 45 minutes to, and after that they were useless!
Even if someone came in to report a bereavement you’d be picked up if you didn’t try and speak to them about another product E.g. a credit card! Horrible place to work and ruined my mental and physical health.

@UserAlice a former colleague of mine came to our workplace from a high street building society. She said she'd been pressured to sell products to elderly clients which were totally unsuitable, just to keep her targets. She left.

PICNIC

My mother left her high street bank job for that very reason. Had worked there for years and years but said it had got too much at the end and she wasn’t a sales person

It costs publishers additional £££ to have books displayed 'on tables' at Waterstones/WHS, as well as placed in the charts on shelves.

Authors are paid 8.2p per library loan of their books based on a sample taken from local authorities over the course of a year, up to a maximum of £6,660; this is called the Public Lending Right payment.

I have also worked in a high street bank as a auxiliary cashier on and off for 7 years from age 16-23 whilst doing a-levels, uni, post-grad etc., so mainly during school holidays. I would work at all the branches within my area (5 at the time, now down to 2), covering staff shortages. I loved the money as I actually got paid by the hour instead of 9-5. For a 16 year old getting £1000 a month was amazing.
But I hated the sales. If I was going to work at the same branch for longer than a couple of days I would be given targets for those days. I would have ask customers about credit cards, loans, mortgages etc. I usually tried to tailor my conversations based on a customers accounts but would sometimes have to ask old ladies who would come in multiple times a week if they want a credit card. Some regular customers got annoyed but we had to. If I didn't offer products I wouldn't get offered the hours as I worked on a week by week basis.

@HappyStripper I need to know where you buy your heels!

Obviously named changed for this one...

I used to work in a PIP assessment centre. (Boo hiss baddy in the thread!!) Contrary to popular belief assessors do not get paid extra for downgrading a report. The turn around is massive and they get paid peanuts. We're all health professionals (nurses/physios/paramedics) who are used to caring and doing our best by the patient, so the switch over to harsh, mean, assessor is too much, it's highly stressful and most only last around 6 months max and that only because the private companies will charge you the training fee if you quit early (can be in the £1000's).

We only had 45 minutes to speak to the claimant and 45 minutes to write up the assessment. If a claimant wanted to talk about things that they thought relevant but weren't in line with the questions we were told to move them along (hated this part as background information is important!) my hours were supposed to be 9-5 but it was more like 8-7 with no overtime payments.

All of our reports go to an impartial auditor who criticises everything we have said and done in the assessment with a fine tooth comb - often changing our wording or report completely. Our name is still written on the report, I believe this is where most "lies" accusations come from. I certainly did not lie on any of my reports.

The ONLY positive I have taken away is working back for the NHS no matter how underpaid and short staffed we are is a million times better than working for the PiP centre!

To all those wanting stripper heels, the official shoe of the stripper is a 'Pleaser'

They're priced anywhere from £40-150 and are, as Happy said, ridiculously comfortable. Don't buy knock off if you're going to buy them, knock off will disintegrate quickly and are usually not well made or as comfortable.

You can buy them with a smaller heel and a thin platform so they don't look like the giant perspex monstrosities we wear at work

amadalily I was trying to think of a good auditor one, but yes, that is a good one that people don't realise and usually can't get their head 'round either. I'm a public sector auditor, some things work a bit differently for us, but basic materiality is the same.

fdhvdn I disagree. That there weren't any significant problems was in a large part due to an awful lot of effort being put into identifying whether there were any issues in operating systems and software. Some more modern software may not have any issues but you wouldn't know unless you investigated all the date fields. Some software may have had no issues with non-millenium-proof date fields as they were not relevant in a processing cycle. Some software may have looked on the surface to have no issue with their data fields, but may have relied on firmware or operating software that was old(er) and would have issues, or bits that were 'copied and pasted' from libraries that were older and would have issues.

Bottom line: you don't know you will not have an issues unless you've investigated. Which takes time and money. And yes, I'm sure some companies have taken advantage of this (similarly to GDPR last year).

@IDrinkAndISewThings

Re your client that is missing the door bell and her deliveries.

If she has family that could set it up for her, new technology would be perfect for this.
A Ring doorbell and an Echo show means she would be able to see people on the Echo screen when they rang her door rather than having to hear it.

DinaCaliente It doesn't even have to be that complicated. A simple flash doorbell that Deaf poeople use would do the trick. They've been available for ages.

@CurcubitaPepo it could be yes, dopamine is your feel good hormone, making you feel positive and buzzy, and also 'lubricating' the neurons involved in movement. So by taking ropinirole, a dopamine agonist, you're increasing that happy, care-free feeling as well as easing movement.

Good to know boredwthbrexit

@DinaCaliente she has a phone that has a flashy lightbulb on it, but unless she's in the room she doesn't know it's ringing/flashing. We're trying to get contact with her family to get a key safe installed at her front door, as our drivers are allowed to enter a patients home if they give us permission and the key safe code. They're not expensive to fit and such a benefit to vulnerable adults living alone. It would allow my driver to let himself in and find her (usually watching telly in the living room with the volume up to 100!). We only have two drivers in our store so our old dears know them and regularly bake them cakes and give them presents at Christmas, so it's not like there's random strange men coming in their house and alarming them, they appreciate the weekly visit. Sometimes it'll be the only person they see 😢

Thank you @onlinealienator I wondered why someone would even post such a horrible thing, its highly contrary to the spirit of the thread and just nasty...and untrue. Thank you for your post and care for our animals.

Also disagreeing with the 'millenium bug' being a completely wrong portrayal of what actually happened, checking each and every piece of code for its y2k capability, across platforms and hardware.

VelvetPineapple

I did an HNC in my mid 20's via evening classes and while I passed everything else with flying colours and got an A in my graded unit, I really struggled with the accounting module. I failed an assessment and struggled so much with the resit the lecturer finally stood over me and asked "are you sure?" when I wrote a couple of answers.

I've since gone on to complete a degree and I'm doing a masters so it really was just that one assessment I had issues with

I work in a school.

The troublesome, disruptive children are often secretly our favourites. We love them just a little bit more.

The staffroom is full of judgement towards parents. And I mean full of it.

"Purple dragon has landed" - codeword for lockdown. Get all children barricaded in the classroom and all pupils and staff to take cover under the tables. 'Playing' hide and seek with very little children during a lockdown was probably one of most heartbreaking things I've ever had to do.

The troublesome, disruptive children are often secretly our favourites. We love them just a little bit more

That is rarely true in my experience.

Own a wine merchant/school and restaurant, a few wine tidbits for you:

In a bottle of wine sold at £5 the money paid for the stuff you actually drink (i.e. the wine) is around £0.30. Most goes to the gvt, with the rest going on logistics, bottling, marketing and to the retailer.

When you get a taste of wine you aren't checking whether you like it but whether the wine is faulty - e.g has cork taint.

It's been known - particularly with large cheap commercial Aussie wines - for vineyards to spray the vines with water just before being machine harvested so they collect the water along with the grapes and thus increase the yield.

@TimeIhadaNameChange

Look up “Pleasers” online, they’re the best brand. There are quite a few sites that sell them and they have quite a bit of variety so a lot of them look like normal heels rather than the obvious pvc ones with huge platforms.

staffroom is full of judgement towards parents. And I mean full of it good to have that confirmed, when its very much the sense that comes across from some. However, have to nod to some of the amazing professionals that have been instrumental in DCs school progression, working with us as DC with nothing but the best of intentions and zero attitude.

www.alternative-footwear.co.uk/womens-shoes-and-boots.html?brand=pleaser&heel_height=5-inch-heels

5 inch ones are probably the best for normal wear as they don’t have a platform, but you can also explore other bits of the site. Though definitely filter it down to “pleaser” under “brands” when searching as they do others as well that aren’t anywhere near as good.