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?

*not

Ok call me thick, but what is the ref to Athena?

And thanks smother 💐

I'm guessing your force isn't one of the ones who have signed up to the Athena computer system, my force is and it's... challenging!

@hellenback

My friend said her one is called "NICHE". I might have that wrong though. Doesn't make any sense.

when employees say they’ve got a solicitor, I know that you’ve been talking to your mates brothers’ wife, whose likely told you, you’re in the wrong

Not me. When my work treated me shoddily and I asked to be paid to leave, I really did have a solicitor. I assume the shit HR people at my old employers realised that, because they paid up with no arguments.

what are the worst and most common things you have to deal with staff in trouble? I think HR sounds fascinating!

@ASauvignonADay I actually love my job and I fulfilled my DM’s wishes that I find a job that I enjoy and pays the bills. It does that and more. I’ve worked really hard it and love making a difference.

Worse things - dealing with death in service and all that comes with it. No matter what CIPD qualification or training you’ve had, nothing prepares you for sitting with a next of kin (or family members) and discussing money.

Most common - as PP said, depending on your discipline in HR will depend on your day to day dealings. I’ve had heavy recruitment and Employee Relations (ER) roles and I’ve had managers blatantly lie about things to my face about procedures they’ve broken (fraud, money missing in retail branches, theft of stock) and then get caught out.

Most common for me these days are 1) mental health issues and 2) conflict resolution:

Mental health issues are on the increase because of the awareness and it feels sometimes as though everyone has a mental health issue. I take it with a pinch of salt when I see a sick note with “depression” or “stress” on. If you have even an ounce of acting ability, you can get a sick note with that on.

The ones with the real mental health issues are the ones that don’t realise it. Those are the people I help the most and get great satisfaction from when in 3 months time they’re a brand new person and back at work nailing it. Those who claim depression and anxiety but can’t clearly explain the symptoms they’re suffering or have done nothing to review their current lifestyle that might make a huge difference to how they’re feeling (eg sleep, food, alcohol & exercise), I have little time for. If you’re going to eat takeaways and do zero exercise, you’re going to feel shit. That doesn’t automatically mean you’re depressed. May be harsh but experience shows me in most cases a slight tweak in lifestyle makes so much difference to your mental health.

Employees don’t always get on and it becomes a management issue when they’re sniping at each other or arguing and generally not doing getting their job done. I honestly think sometimes supervising a playground of 7 year olds is easier, when I hear complaints like “he asked me to do something and I didn’t like the way he asked me” or “she’s had my stapler off my desk and not put it back” 🙄

@DarlingNikita sorry you had to deal with shit HR people. They’re out there and they make me angry. I’ve dealt with one this week who quoted “law” at me and it was wrong. She’s useless and thankfully doesn’t work for me.

Snuggle, depressingly, in my (quite long) working life I don't think I've come across a good one. Although I'm not saying they don't exist! Mine 'restructured' my job away on the most dubious of rationales. And one of the team complained that in the Equality Act there are eight protected characteristics and 'we can't champion them all'

In the fashion industry you use one or more "fit models" make sure a certain size fits correctly on that person (who meets your size criteria) & then scale up &/or down to make patterns for the other sizes.

Obviously, one "size 12" woman can be vastly different to another "size 12" woman, despite their waist, hip & bust measurements being the same. Equally dresses that fit perfectly in the morning may fit very differently after a big lunch.

Badly fitting designs can often be a case of a rubbish Garment Tech not taking note of the 2 litres of water the fit model is drinking throughout the day/her shoulder width/leg length/arm measurements etc.

Also, I once worked with a garment tech from M&S who believed that when you scaled up and down, all size measurements scale in the same way. I.e. of you take 2 inches off the waist circumference to go from a size 12 to a 10, you can also take 2 inches off the upper arm circumference, despite me trying to tell her otherwise.

Some of those design "blocks" today are still used as a basis for new styles & I can tell if this woman was the garment tech of the original design by the way the sleeves fit.

Targets seem to be the plague of every industry. We had an initiative to reduce pedestrian road deaths. A spread sheet was issued of deaths the previous year and given a target for the current year.

We did wonder, if we underachieved our target, whether we should appoint one of the team to speed through the borough in order to achieve it. One area had ‘Deaths in previous year NIL’ target. For current year 1.

sausage I have tried on one of those garments! It was a dress that fitted perfectly everywhere but had strangely narrow and tight upper arms. I still remember being bemused by the cut.

I have a question for police officers.

I was once falsely accused of something and removed from the scene in a police van.

They put me in the back of a small van that had no proper seats and no seatbelts. Just bench type seating .

How is this allowed ( no seat belts) ?

They put hand cuffs on me but I was easily able to just slip my hands out. ( I don’t have tiny hands) . What’s that about ?

There was a male and a female officer and they were both really kind to me.

@claremcnam That'll be one of hers, she was one of those people that just could not be told she was wrong, even though there was clear evidence in front of her!

I never used niche, my force used CIS then latterly, Crimefile. Athena is a whole other level of pain, especially case.

Oh I know of niche but we use another shit system.

No idea jasper
All our vans are
Like mini buses with seats and seat belts and a cage or double cage in the back.

Some people can get out of cuffs. I can. I have minute wrists so even in the smallest setting I can slip my hands out of cuffs.

Think all police systems are designed to be useless - clearly not designed by anyone using them on a daily basis .

When I started we had paper files. You did your MG forms in word and printed them and you rang crime recording to crime a job. Now we have laptops (often with no signal) and all our tech is obsolete before we even get it. The show is clearly run by incompetent buffoons.

sausage was this person the same one who seems to think if you are fatter then you must be taller e.g. size 16 trousers medium length at least 2-3 inches longer than the same trousers medium length in a 12?

@allergictoironing oh yes, she assumed as the waist measurement grew, so does leg length 🤦‍♀️

hellenbackagen
Thanks for this.
So your force wouldn’t hold anyone without a seat belt?

How can it be legal to have put me in the back of a van without one ?

Random drug and alcohol tests are very seldom random.

I heard Noel (Martin ) Supervet was a twat too, Curtains77. My own opinion of him is that much of what he does is unethical and narcissistic.

I've worked in some truly disgusting eateries. There was a bucket of ancient gravy in the cold storage, and each Sunday I had to "freshen it up" ready for the carvery. The chef once took a shit on the prep surface whilst high on coke, instead of closing the kitchen down and dealing with it properly, a quick swipe with disinfectant was deemed sufficient. The cleanest place I worked at was a Chinese restaurant, once a week the entire kitchen was scrubbed, ceiling to floor.

When working for a high end shoe company at a concession in Harrods, if the customer needed a bigger shoe size and we didn't have it, we were told to take the shoe in the stock room and stretch the fuck out of it with a broom. Present to the customer saying, "I've found another one in the same size, see if this one's a little bigger." Same with too big - rip up the insole at the toe end, pop a half insole in and ask customer to try this one "because it may come up a little smaller".

Jasper there are exemptions for emergency services and it depends when this was , how far you travelled and why etc. I can't answer your question. Were you being a knob? Was the wisest decision to remove you quickly from an escalating situation? Why were you coming to police attention in the first place?

I'm nearly 50 and have never been put in a police van on a night out pre or post job....
Police vans used to be different to how they are now. It doesn't mean the police acted unlawfully because you were put in one.

This has been a fascinating read!

I’m a biomedical scientist in an NHS lab, and I don’t know that any of this is all that interesting, but:

• like the rest of the NHS, we’re very short staffed. We receive thousands of samples every day and everything is prioritised. Low priority stuff like nail clippings for culture gets pushed so far to the back of the queue that an already long test (up to 3 weeks) can take much longer. Spinal fluid from someone with meningitis? We can have a result within an hour of receipt.

• If you’re told that the lab lost your sample or your result, chances are it was actually ward staff/your GP/you under your GP’s direction not labelling it correctly or requesting the wrong thing. We do make mistakes, but we also know that we get blamed for others mistakes. We have a very good incident reporting culture and will own up to anything we do wrong.

• Not only can we not give you (as a patient) results over the phone, we also can’t confirm that we have received your sample. We don’t know that you are who you say you are, and the consequences of telling someone else that yes, we have received your GUM clinic swabs to screen for gonorhoea and chlamydia, would not been good.

• If I see you in the hospital as a patient while I’m not supposed to say “hi” until you acknowledge me, for confidentiality reasons because you may not want me to know why you’re there.

• I think almost everyone in my profession has felt undervalued at some point. What we do in pathology labs has a massive impact on patient care, but most people wouldn’t know what a biomedical scientist was. Doctors, nurses, HCAs etc do a fantastic job and deserve all the thanks and credit they get, but then so do we. And the pharmacists, physios, cleaners, radiographers, porters, theatre technicians, admin staff.

Fascinating thread! I don't think I have anything interesting to add.

I worked as a call centre agent for a TV provider( technical help). We could see the title of the pay per view (porn) films you or your partner ordered and used to have a good laugh at the titles.

I work in HE. I am yet to find an A* student who deserved their grade at A level! Yet so many A students stood out...

You can fail a degree but it would be extremely hard to, i.e you would have to not turn up for exams or not hand something in. Otherwise you are pretty sure to pass... Whether passing with a third is worth much is another matter.

Yes we have favourites and no they aren't necessarily the most academic students.

If you have a buy to let that you let to students and are worried about rent not getting paid, let to Chinese students- they will pay the whole year upfront!

Waitressing- I have seen lots of food dropped on the floor and put back on plates. There was a clear correlation between how rude customers were and how likely that was to happen.

Summer camps- I have seen some real safeguarding issues ( which I reported). Would definitely never send my kids to one. I am sure there are plenty of great camps but would not run the risk. Felt like people got away with things because of the short term nature of the jobs.

Wow,