Things people probably didn't know about your job

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Falcon

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This is NOT a rant thread.

So I've discovered since switching careers that there were things I didn't realize about my new job. Things I either hadn't thought about, or had taken for granted.

What are somethings you find interesting, or facts the surprise people about a job you've held?

Mine:

  1. On an average 5 hour shift in a grocery store deli (according to my pedometer) I walk about 6,000 steps or aprox. 2 miles

  2. Shaving meat not only takes a lot of time, but can be physically painful if you slice enough of it. I was not expecting that.

  3. A hose, a deck brush, and a squeegee is a surprisingly efficient way to mop a large area of flooring.

  4. Sunday is the busiest shopping day of the week.

  5. It takes on average 7 good interactions to make up for 1 bad one

  6. Sweep the floor enough times and it becomes a great core workout. Or at least feels like one

  7. An industrial dishwasher is the best thing ever.
 
It's okay to squish people's packages at the shipping company I work at (a popular one most of you would know and use). I was trained on the forklift a few months ago and was given the advice from a few different people that when you are stacking pallets and and the bottom one isn't leveled enough I should push the forks down so that you can squish the packages down and make a more leveled surface. I still feel a bit iffy about this advise...
 
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That it freaking SUCKS BALLS in the back where all the products are stored in those dollar stores. @____@ It's hot and not usually well ventilated. And when the truck comes with all of the stock, it's NOT the truckers unloading all that shit it's the employees. Even the cute miniature girl employees that can barely lift boxes, Everyone's ass is in the back unloading that truck. D:
 
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1: You don't have week ends.
2: You don't have holidays except Christmas and Thanksgiving.
3: Deep fryer grease build up.
4: You will stand and run around for eight hours straight.
5: Free food.
6: Good and fast paced.

That's one job.

The other is housing projects and remodeling which is all around fun until you you're careless and get your thumb to close to the table saw that one time.

@Free-range Falcon Oh yeah, shaving meat is hell on your dominant arm. After what has to be one thousand strokes on a slicer, I have to say, my right arms muscles up to the entire shoulder feel like rubber for a couple hours. But my favorite part about that job was the occasional taste test to make sure the brisket has good flavor. Mmmmm. Slow smoked brisket.
 
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Graveyard shift security officer? More like glorified building babysitter and official door unlocker. I do jack shit all night and get paid just to sit behind a desk in the lobby watching shit on my laptop or reading or looking at stuff on my phone. My 8 hour shift contains about 2 hours of actual work versus 6 hours of sitting around doing nothing. The stereotype about security guards being big lazy pieces of shit isn't just a stereotype, it's fucking built into the job for some shifts and buildings.
 
List for ECE (Early Childhood Educators)

*Note this is from what I've seen in College and my 4 Placements.
Around the end of the last semester I decided this, or anything close to it wasn't a field I wanted to be practising.
Partly due to a lot of the stuff I'm about to list below*

1) Even at Child care centres, if they're licensed stuff as simple as what toys are in the room are planned out far in advance. With factors considering such as child interest, skills being developed etc.

2) If you as a Parent get a call of suspected abuse, don't freak. ECE's are required to make such a call to Protective services on the even tiniest suspicion, because if they don't they can get fired for negligence.

3) Child Care centre's have a totally different approach to education than Schools do. School's focus on sitting children down and having classes, worksheets etc. Child Care prefer's play to learn approaches generally.
3a) Child Care centre's are actually trying to teach/educate your child. They're not just letting the children fool around all day while supervising.
3b) At least in the GTA Area, part of the reason you see "Play to Learn" be so popular is behind the door business deals. Most ECE's are trained almost solely/specifically on one approach called "High Scope" because the college's ECE program made a deal that by doing so students could easily advance into a High Scope specific program at graduation. This ends up drilling that one approach into ECE's to the point that they see it as the one and only way to raise children, which often times makes them close-minded to any other approach.
3c) Note this means topic's like Math or English only get officially covered 15 minutes a day tops (total, not each). Everything else is only if the child chooses/wants to be involved in something related to that topic. And even in those 15 minutes the only prompts they'll get is observational statements like "I see you have blocks, can you tell me how many?". If they have difficulty with the subject ECE's 'might' try to give them extra attention, but only in those 15 minutes... You can imagine how well prepared this leaves children for Grade 1 and onwards.

4) Not directly in the field itself. But in the college stage mentalities such as "Men are violent ass holes", "Video Games are bad for children", "Super Heroes are bad for children", "Anything competitive is bad for children" are actually taught in class like it's an academic fact. So if your child ever get's in trouble for playing a gameboy, pretending to be batman, hell for even playing musical chairs at times that's not just one paranoid instructor... The College actually took time and effort to make the Instructor that way. >.<
4a) In College they are also told they are just as qualified with special needs children as specialized therapists are... So if your child has Autism, Down Syndrome, ADHD etc. and your Centre starts trying to dictate/control how the treatment/therapy goes? Once again the college took time and effort to make them that way.
4b) If issues begin to pop up such as Increased Class Sizes, ECE's will protest against it. But they won't protest it as a children's issue or an education issue. But rather as a woman's issue.

5) A lot of Kidergarten Classrooms are now being ran with a Kindergarten Teacher and an ECE partner. Though because of their conflicting teach styles detailed in #3 they rarely get along. As a result the ECE's are trying to get the Kindergarten teacher replaced by a second ECE.

6) ECE focuses on an approach called the "6 Steps" to resolve any conflict or argument between children. And with all respect it is an actually decent approach that allows topics to be solved civil like. I even had to use an older version of it among friends of a mine a while back. However, ECE relies on solely this. And it has weak point's as a result. For example it depends on the children who refuse to talk about it getting fatigued. However, both children are expected to stay put during this duration, so what usually happens is the instigator refused to communicate to the point the other child goes "Screw it. This isn't worth my entire recess" and runs off. ECE's are then required to see that child running off as "The conflict clearly isn't an issue any more" therefore, letting the instigator get away scot free.
6a) Secondly, no physical restraint is allowed. And no I don't just mean hitting the child. I mean something as simple as wrapping your arms around a child if they're trying to run away or hit another child. This essentially means another cop-out a child can use on the 6-Steps is to continually run away. ECE expects you as an Educator to stand firm, and order the child to come back... But the issue here is it expects all children will ultimately respect your authority and return. But when a child figures out you standing there telling them to come back is all you are allowed to do? They suddenly have no reason to listen to you... Authority lost.
6b) Blame cannot be assigned. So if I was an ECE see a child walk up and push another child down. What I am supposed to do is sit both children down and talk to them equally as if there's a mutual disagreement. Granted, this can be good in the case the teacher missed something, what if that "push" was a reaction to an incident the teacher didn't witness? However even after investigation the teacher isn't ever allowed to take sides. Which means no matter how clear it becomes that one child is simply picking on another, we have to stay neutral. We can't stick up for the child being picked on and tell the other one how what they're doing is wrong.
6c) Lastly, the solution to this 6 Steps (assuming you reach the end) is where both children need to fully agree to how to solve it. Great, when both children are actually willing to co-operate. Bad however when a child learns that this means they can continually say no to anything until they either get exactly what they want, or the other child gives up entirely.

I'll add more later if I think of anything else and/or if people are curious about it or any of the things above.
 
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Biggest thing I discovered in my job: people who flush tampons, pads, grease, paper towels, and anything that isn't piss or crap and toilet paper is an asshole who is slowly clogging up their service pipe and local sewer main. Then they complain when the sewage backs up the pipes and starts flooding their homes. And I don't feel bad at all, because if it's the service pipe that's blocked, the home owner and not the municipality is responsible for maintenance so it's literally their fault their basement is flooding with shit.

Moral of the story, your toilet isn't a magical portal that removes things forever. It fucks up the treatment process when you flush shot that shouldn't go down the toilet and give it enough time and you just might be seeing those feminine hygene products you tried to conceal sooner than you thought.
 
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Biggest thing I discovered in my job: people who flush tampons, pads, grease, paper towels, and anything that isn't piss or crap and toilet paper is an asshole who is slowly clogging up their service pipe and local sewer main.
Does this include vomit?
 
All real IT work is done by Indians and Asians. The white folk just have meetings and send emails reiterating their philosophy.
 
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  1. I generally get between 11,000 and 15,000 steps through the course of a day if I have a shift.
  2. When cashiers don't have enough to keep them busy, they get mean.
  3. When cashiers have too much to do, they will be mean during the brief amounts of time they don't have customers.
  4. Cashiers are just mean, man.
  5. My boss is super great about giving us time off if we ask in advance, but she will passive-aggressively punish us for it later by either not scheduling us enough the following week or by not letting us have a day off for a week or more after.
  6. Grocery stores are not very profitable.
  7. Customers are generally nicer to the workers in smaller, less busy stores than in big, bustling ones.
  8. If a customer wants a hug, I am basically required to hug them (as long as the hug remains just a hug) even they're perverted, old men because we can't afford to lose customers over the offense of my wanting my personal space to remain personal.
  9. Not wearing make-up does not stop men from hitting on me, asking for my number, or otherwise implying they want something more from me than conversation.
  10. People should pay more attention to their personal hygiene.
  11. Teenagers have better style these days than I have ever had in my entire life.
  12. My kindness is often perceived as flirting.
  13. I am often asked if I'm LDS because I somehow "look" I belong to the religion for some reason.
  14. People are nicer about my lack of faith than my grandma feared they would be when I moved to Utah.
  15. Even though I really enjoy our customer base, I prefer solo activities like the paperwork aspect of supervising the front end or throwing product for grocery than the actual customer interactions part.



@Free-range Falcon Where do you live that Sundays are the busiest? I live in a religion-run state, and Sundays are usually the slowest for us.

@Kirra That's just a slight squishing, right? Nothing too squished?

@Diana, that sucks so much. At grocery stores, at least, the truckers who deliver are supposed to help. Sounds like those guys doing your deliveries are lazy a-holes.

@SlamifiedBuddafied Did you lose a finger?

@Jorick Man, I bet you get all of your reading done! Maybe I should become a security guard... =P

@Gen. Gwazi Senpai It sounds like there are some major flaws in ECE training and teachings. Is it relatively new, so they just need to work out better practices as time goes by, or is this something that's been this way for a long time? I think early education for kids is important, but I almost feel like, despite the pros to ECE methods, there are some serious drawbacks.

@Dervish Encourage the use of menstrual cups! Also... grease? Why are people flushing grease?

@Asmodeus, what's your role in all of it?

@Razilin, I don't imagine anyone working in a hospital can predict how/when a person will react to a specific wound/illness. Sounds stressful. Are you a doctor or a nurse, or is your role more administrative?
 
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7. ECE is tell their student's they're one of the fields most at risk of back injuries. And have a unit on how to bend down properly when picking up children or toys (yes picking up children for stuff like affection is fine, just not anything involving discipline... At all) to minimize the damage. My Electrician friend got a laugh out of that one.
@Gen. Gwazi Senpai It sounds like there are some major flaws in ECE training and teachings. Is it relatively new, so they just need to work out better practices as time goes by, or is this something that's been this way for a long time? I think early education for kids is important, but I almost feel like, despite the pros to ECE methods, there are some serious drawbacks.
In all honesty the history of ECE isn't something that program has talked much about.

Though from my understanding ECE has been around for a while.
But it's only been given much professional credit such as joining Kindergarten classrooms recently.

I fully agree that early education for children is important.
Though I find the field of ECE's greatly flawed.

To the point I legitimately think, as a Graduate of a Program (and technically an official ECE if I paid the 100$ license fee) that most children would be better off just having a stay at home parent, seeing their grandparents or something instead. That is of course assuming said family are actually decent human beings, and not abusive.

And as much I might criticize ECE at times there are some good things to get out of it. Like the 6 Steps mentioned above, as along as you make those 6 Steps a tool in your arsenal, and not your only tool.
But there's so much bad stuff, restrictions and biasm that comes with it that if the parents really want the pro's of ECE they should honestly just research the approaches a bit themselves, and implement it in their home life without all the added baggage.
 
I had to quit a few months ago, but some things about working in boarding at a vet clinic.

1. It is not all playing with dogs and cats (and the occasional other animal such as rabbits, ferrets, and miniature pigs). Most of the time working is spent cleaning. Laundry, floors, dishes (by hand at my job), kennels, windows, walls, EVERYTHING 0.0

2. Indoors is a fun place to use the bathroom. We were able to open a garage door and let the dogs run around the outside kennel. Do you think they would choose to go potty outside? Nope. Male dogs are especially bad. They stare at you as they run around marking everything.

3. A spray bottle is your best friend. It is amazing how many dogs come in (large breeds especially) that are not trained and will jump on you every chance they get. Although it backfires when a dog enjoys being sprayed. There was this one rottweiler that loved to attack the water. It was pretty cute.

4. The most unlikely dogs will enjoy playing together. Picture a boxer and a small white fluffy dog (can't remember what breed it was). The little dog would bark at the boxer while the boxer would jump in place. And then there was a time when five dogs were playing with one toy. It was a long rope and they would all have a hold of it at the same time. One of the dogs was a pit bull and if another dog went off on its own the pit bull would go over and try to bring it back to play. She was such a sweetheart.

5. It can be boring. On slow days when there are only a few dogs and not much to clean you may end up sitting there for hours with nothing to do.

6. It can be extremely dangerous and bad stuff happens. Not sure if this one has to be said but oh well.
I walked one dog and after he had finished his business I tried to take him inside. He did not want to go back and became very aggressive. I eventually had to call one of the vets to come help. Then one time someone boarded a german shepherd (that we later learned cornered one of the vets before being brought down to boarding). He ended up not being so bad, but needed medicine and no way in Hell were any of the kennel staff going to shove a pill down that dogs throat.
There are also dogs that will seem extremely dangerous, but it is only kennel aggression and once you open the door to the kennel the dog is completely fine.

I have too many stories so I shall quit now.
 
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@Thought Manifest - Sundays where I'm at are the busiest because of the after church crowd. Everyone seems to want to go get groceries once the sermon is over. And later in the day anyone who went camping comes in to get their stuff before the week starts.
 
Air Conditioners are useless to install working at a Dry Cleaning plant.

You can spend 5000USD on a system and it breaks within a week because Dry Cleaning just generates far too much heat.

Also, touching any Dry Cleaning machine in a spot not designated to be touched burns you quite bad quite immediately.

-----

Drawing doesn't put enough food on the table unless you are recognized enough. For 90% of artists, this is probably the case.
 
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@Kirra That's just a slight squishing, right? Nothing too squished?
That is true for most of the packages but it's common that a few boxes are crushed when the pallets are stacked.

Pack your shit up good guys!
 
  1. I generally get between 11,000 and 15,000 steps through the course of a day if I have a shift.
  2. When cashiers don't have enough to keep them busy, they get mean.
  3. When cashiers have too much to do, they will be mean during the brief amounts of time they don't have customers.
  4. Cashiers are just mean, man.
  5. My boss is super great about giving us time off if we ask in advance, but she will passive-aggressively punish us for it later by either not scheduling us enough the following week or by not letting us have a day off for a week or more after.
  6. Grocery stores are not very profitable.
  7. Customers are generally nicer to the workers in smaller, less busy stores than in big, bustling ones.
  8. If a customer wants a hug, I am basically required to hug them (as long as the hug remains just a hug) even they're perverted, old men because we can't afford to lose customers over the offense of my wanting my personal space to remain personal.
  9. Not wearing make-up does not stop men from hitting on me, asking for my number, or otherwise implying they want something more from me than conversation.
  10. People should pay more attention to their personal hygiene.
  11. Teenagers have better style these days than I have ever had in my entire life.
  12. My kindness is often perceived as flirting.
  13. I am often asked if I'm LDS because I somehow "look" I belong to the religion for some reason.
  14. People are nicer about my lack of faith than my grandma feared they would be when I moved to Utah.
  15. Even though I really enjoy our customer base, I prefer solo activities like the paperwork aspect of supervising the front end or throwing product for grocery than the actual customer interactions part.


@Free-range Falcon Where do you live that Sundays are the busiest? I live in a religion-run state, and Sundays are usually the slowest for us.

@Kirra That's just a slight squishing, right? Nothing too squished?

@Diana, that sucks so much. At grocery stores, at least, the truckers who deliver are supposed to help. Sounds like those guys doing your deliveries are lazy a-holes.

@SlamifiedBuddafied Did you lose a finger?

@Jorick Man, I bet you get all of your reading done! Maybe I should become a security guard... =P

@Gen. Gwazi Senpai It sounds like there are some major flaws in ECE training and teachings. Is it relatively new, so they just need to work out better practices as time goes by, or is this something that's been this way for a long time? I think early education for kids is important, but I almost feel like, despite the pros to ECE methods, there are some serious drawbacks.

@Dervish Encourage the use of menstrual cups! Also... grease? Why are people flushing grease?

@Asmodeus, what's your role in all of it?

@Razilin, I don't imagine anyone working in a hospital can predict how/when a person will react to a specific wound/illness. Sounds stressful. Are you a doctor or a nurse, or is your role more administrative?

I used to have room mates who would flush dinner scraps down the toilet unless I stopped them, so you'd be amazed.

But a lot of grease comes from the kitchen. People just wash their greasy stuff down the sink instead of putting it into a container and throwing itnin the garbage. Probably should have specified on that one, since toilets and sinks all go to the same place. Grease build up is probably the biggest cause of sewer back ups and it looks like something out of a sci fi movie with a sewer camera.
 
An ambulance is not for stubbed toes. Or coughs. Or sore throats. Or drunk people. A skin rash. Infected pimples, ear ache, or you sat on your TV remote four hours ago and your ass is still "a little" sore.

However, if you receive traumatic injury to your left testicle during kinky sexy time with your wife's sister PLEASE call for an ambulance, it will make the crew's day.
 
I'm currently not working, but here's a few things I learned from my last job.

1. The simplest solutions are almost never considered.

This is an exchange a client and I had a few years back.

Him: I can't connect to the other computer in the office.
Me: Dumb question, but is it on?
H: It should be. It's always on.
M: We had some storms last night, and the power may have gone out. Do me a favor and give it a look?
H: (a minute later) It was off. I'm turning it back on now.
M: Cool. When it's up, check and see if you can connect.
H: Problem solved! Thanks for the help!

2. Most clients expect you to have the ability to transcend time and space, preventing computer problems before they ever occur.

3. If you fail at transcending time and space (and trust me, you will fail), those clients will expect the solution to be quick, easy, and inexpensive. ProTip: Problems are rarely solved in ten minutes, no matter how much money you throw at it.

4. Some clients have no cooncept of what "system requirements" are, what they mean, or that it's the fact their computer doesn't meet those that is causing them all their problem with a particular piece of software (or hardware).

Yes, I managed to get Windows 95 installed on a computer with a 286 processor (6MHz) by tricking the Windows installer into thinking it was a 386 by activating the turbo function (14MHz). It didn't run very well, but it installed. In that instance, I ignored the system requirements to see if something were possible. That doesn't mean you can install a game that requires a high performance graphics card on your laptop with an Intel graphics device and expect it to work. This is a hard lesson quite a few clients learned. Not with games so much, but with other software. Sure, you might be able to install that accounting software that requires 8GB RAM on your server, but if your server only has 4GB RAM, good luck making it work effectively.

5. What the customer wants and what the customer needs are often two very different things.

My boss used to say "The customer doesn't want fancy, the customer wants cheap." So, he would sell really cheap computers to his unsuspecting customers. This used to work for a while, because the software available didn't really have high system requirements (see above). He started doing little things though, like selling system configurations that wouldn't work with their software. For example, a 64-bit version of Windows will not work on a 32-bit processor. 4GB RAM is the maximum amount of memory a 32-bit operating system can support (regardless of whethre you have a 64-bit processor installed). Having to explain to my boss why our clients were complaining was painful.

6. Self-replicating viruses are truly the worst thing to ever happen.

I had one system on my table that was so bad, it took a solid week to clean it up, with well over five million files deleted.

There are others. Lots of others. However, hockey is now on, and I must go watch.
 
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