Nursing (again)
We actually DO enjoy putting people off their lunches by talking about bodily fluids/wounds etc. Its often done deliberately. 'Cos we can.
(kitescreech still here, Sun 30 Sep 2007, 13:26, Reply)

Unsanitay Towels
I worked in a factory that made sanitary towels.
Sometimes the machine got jammed and fanny pads would start shooting out all over the dusty fag-end floor.

If you thought that those ones would be rejected and binned, you'd be wrong.
(Charlie Chops is getting stoned for adultery, Sun 30 Sep 2007, 13:08, Reply)

Ice cream Van
We often ring our chimes when we are out of Ice-cream.
100% fact.
(kitescreech still here, Sun 30 Sep 2007, 12:38, Reply)

In Store Technician
A few years back I worked as an in store technician for a, (well, the only), high street retailer man that was a great job!

If I was on the late shift, I'd spend the first half of my morning smoking pot then when I finally got to work I'd spend the day pretending to install RAM, getting the key timers to do my bidding.

I once wiped the restore partition on some fuck wits PC for trying to act smart in front of his girlfriend.

We used to steal peoples MP3's and movies whilst checking over the PC.

I'd sell people upgrades they didn't need.

Basically we'd spend the day doing bugger all and getting paid more than anyone else in the shop.

God I miss that job sometimes.
(gabe.uk, Sun 30 Sep 2007, 12:35, Reply)

I helped run a scheme for the disadvantaged
designed to give them greater independence and a higher sense of self-esteem. Basically, we got them to quit their jobs.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Sun 30 Sep 2007, 12:28, Reply)

secrets of the lawnmowing trade.
Just play Marilyn Manson at the grass, until it starts cutting itself.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Sun 30 Sep 2007, 12:23, Reply)

When you phoned up
If you ever phoned me to enquire about boat engine bits and I told you I'd check on the computer........

The noise you though was me typing into the keyboard was just me hitting the pad on the calculator. We didn't have a computer and mostly I was too lazy to go and check in the stockroom.

We might have had the bits you urgently needed but I couldn't care
(ElGatodeBarco, Sun 30 Sep 2007, 11:52, Reply)

You think its just your trade?
I've not read all of these yet, but I'm already terrified. I am assuming that no trade is exempt from these secrets, so there must be drunken brain-surgeons, coked-up pilots, imbecile nuclear technicians, et cetera.
Makes you wonder about the half-wits and malicious cnuts that will no-doubt administer a national ID card or DNA database scheme. :-(
Apologies that this post is not funny.
(Rich T has a clever and witty sig, Sun 30 Sep 2007, 10:20, Reply)

secret of the bossa nova musicians: they're all totally jealous of originality.

how else to explain that I got fired from Lito Rambucco's Lords of Latin Rhythm *just after* previewing my masterpiece?

Tall and pale and sad and whiny
the girl from Evanescence goes walking
and when she passes everyone she passes goes
IWAAAANTTODIE!

and that's without the rap-metal bit in the middle.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Sun 30 Sep 2007, 10:05, Reply)

It's only a matter of time
The dirty secret of my trade is that every oil refinery, power station, chemical works and storage depot in the UK is on the verge of a major incident along the lines of the Buncefield depot explosion due to a combination of maintenance cutbacks and a reluctance to shutdown the plant and stop production. you might remember about 6 years ago a refinery on the banks of the Humber had an explosion due to a eroded pipe( it's on the BBC website, i would have posted a link but i'm clueless tbh) the thing is it happened on a bank holiday Monday, if it had happened 24 hours later, 1800 contractors (including yours truly) would have been on site for a main unit shutdown and overhaul, the majority 80 to 100 feet away from the blast. I managed to get a glimpse of the internal investigation report and the estimated fatalities would have been between 400 to 700 men.
I still work on there and there is a squad of inspectors who do thickness tests on pipes and i replace the bits that are fucked, honestly some of them are no thicker than a tin can. Since the shit in these pipes can ignite off something no more hazardous than a trucks warm brake pad it's no wonder i'm a complete pisshead. So pay attention at school kids or you will end up working on one of these shitholes. I have tons of stories that will make you wish the industrial revolution never happened so i will post more.(oh and if you think you're safe because you don't live anywhere near one of these places bear in mind that there are nearly 8500 miles of export lines carrying aviation fuel buried all over the UK. sleep tight y'all)
(studdley ruffrod no crack too slack, Sun 30 Sep 2007, 9:51, Reply)

I did my work experience at an electronics shop for emos
Although our batteries went on and on, they also kept complaining that they weren't included.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Sun 30 Sep 2007, 8:54, Reply)

I used to be Nick Griffin's personal assistant.

My main duty was buying his favourite drink - white whine.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Sun 30 Sep 2007, 8:52, Reply)

Not a trade as such.
More a sneaky way of making a few quid.A guy that we knew before he died a few years ago,shared some of the schemes he'd used in the past.One of them was to put a small advert in the back pages of a tabloid newspaper.Bear in mind this is probably 30 years ago.The advert would say something along the lines of "The must-have book for all newly-weds.Everything you need to know.Sent under plain brown wrapper."Obviously,the aforementioned couple thought they were getting some red hot stuff,which in a way they were.They feverishly unwrapped their package to find a copy of Mrs Beaton's Cook Book.
(archroy Get down wi' yer bad self., Sun 30 Sep 2007, 8:11, Reply)

Want credit.....
...on that HD Ready flatscreen LCD?
I work for a mildly prestigious High St electronics retailer who's name might rhyme with Tony.
If you come into our shops and are interested in our TVs and want credit...here's what NOT to do:

1. Have bad breath/bad hygiene (I'm sat next to you remember)

2. Be completely unable to control your stupid kids, because if they knock something over....your finance might go through, but i'm adding the damage to it.

3. Take a personal call, as i'm sat there doing nothing while your chatting to your mate about the bird you knobbed last night.
(Your finance will fail)

4. Lie to me about your age (It'll fail anyway)

5. If it doesn't go through first time, you can try again later that day, or week if you like, but it won't go through....and you're fucking up your own credit rating as far as i know.

6. State to your partner/mother/brother/whoever that "if this doesn't go through, I'll bung it on the credit card".....well guess what happens next.....it's less hassle for me to put a credit card through a PDQ machine that handle all that dumb paperwork, post shit out etc.


There's more secrets....but this is a test the waters first post and all that.
(Temper, Sun 30 Sep 2007, 8:09, Reply)

I used to intern with a psychiatrist

One of his patients was a woman who 'stuffed' her bra with tissues in the false belief that her breasts were too small. In every other way she was perfectly rational and logical, but she absolutely couldn't be convinced that her breasts weren't smaller than average, despite us actually tracking down statistics on bra sizes etc.

That's how we discovered false mammary syndrome.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Sun 30 Sep 2007, 6:39, Reply)

I'm a computer technician...
...enough said?
(bazboy69 making it up as he goes along, Sun 30 Sep 2007, 2:19, Reply)

When I worked for a big bookstore/newsagents...
WHich wasn't Borders or Blackwells... the best seller charts were made up of new releases that everyone wanted (Sharon Osbourne, Dangerous Book for Boys) and the rest was stuff that we couldn't flog (Alan Titchmarshes Gardening Bollocks etc...) and had very little relation to books that were actually popular.

I stopped working for this newsagent/bookstore 2 years ago and recently went back into it to buy a paper... they still had the same books in the chart. Amazing.
( rjmrjm, Sun 30 Sep 2007, 0:42, Reply)

Not so dirty secrets of a librarian.
1: As a librarian I hate (HATE!) when people ask for books WITH an author. So if someone asks for "the new novel with Dan Brown", I won't give it to them (I'll give them something equally shitty though, I don't want to ruin the statistics).

2: I do quite often get bored with the fact that everyone wants to read Marian Keyes, Dan Brown and Harry Potter. So I tell them that there is a long cue and give them something by Paul Auster or Douglas Coupland instead.

3: If you are a cute guy I just might make your fines for overdue books disappear.
(Saratron, Sun 30 Sep 2007, 0:11, Reply)

Here's mine...
I am a fashion model. And the big secret here is that pretty much any tall girl can be a fashion model. Seriously. If you're over 5'7" they'll probably sign you. You can have the face of a monkey, it doesn't matter. Also, all that stuff about models having to learn how to walk is a load of crap, we make it up as we go along, and to be honest, walking isn't *that* difficult. We eat chocolate. We have cellulite and flabby bits. We look completely boring without makeup on.

Interestingly enough, the most important thing that gets Photoshopped away is excess body hair. Not in my particular case (blonde etc), but with most of the girls in my agency. Just a hint of arm hair is horrifying (and harder to shop away than the roll of fat I have around my thighs).

So there you are: modelling, far less exclusive than we pretend it is.
(howcomehoney, Sun 30 Sep 2007, 0:04, Reply)

I work for the Police in Portugal...
We've got a really big case on at the moment and to be honest, we haven't got a fucking clue so were trying to pin it on the parents.
(Cerne Big in Dorset, Sat 29 Sep 2007, 23:59, Reply)

Dirty secrets of a cleaning lady.
I used to work as a maid in a hotel. It was a lovely place but the managers were complete wankers. For the first weeks I was cleaning the rooms just like it should be done, but after a while I started doing what ALL the other house keepers did. We should change the sheets every day,but often we'd just iron them a little. We stopped hoovering and just picked big bits of dust from the carpets. Worst of all: we used one of the guests dirty towels to clean the cups. Some maids would use a dirty towel to clean the toilet, use it on the cups and glasses, flatten it out and hang it up for the guests again. After this I'll never use the coffe and tea stuff in a hotel room and I'll always make sure to hide away or completley soak the towels so they'll give me new ones.
(Saratron, Sat 29 Sep 2007, 23:58, Reply)

I work for a record company
Sometimes, right, we (and all the others) release albums even though they're shit.
(yo_daniel feeling good, Sat 29 Sep 2007, 23:26, Reply)

I am a housewife
married to a wonderful Polish guy. I have no interest in learning Polish despite my protestations to the contrary. I already speak four European languages and I am too old to learn a new one. Plus my ignorance means that on family holidays in Poland I can sit blissfully daydreaming instead of joining in boring conversations with his relatives.

He never reads this site.
(housetits is channelling Natalie Cassidy - then, Sat 29 Sep 2007, 22:43, Reply)

Nursey clarification:
Several have asked me what items are "appropriated" for home use. I'll tell you.

On the peds ward, (paeds? peads? paedo? shit, I don't know) when the littlies have a lot of goo in their lungs, we hold a 7 inch vibrator against their back to shake the crap loose, then thwock them on the back with a soft rubber cup so they can cough it up. Seriously. The supply closet cannot keep them in stock. They absolutely FLY off the shelves and out the door hidden in our pockets.

Ahem. Those items. (The vibratey ones.)
(TDub Nunc id vides, nunc ne vides on, Sat 29 Sep 2007, 22:27, Reply)

More aviation stuff
Interestingly enough, I spent a couple of years working for a company heavily involved in aerospace communications.

This company runs a messaging system for the aerospace industry that's meant to be wonderful. So good, in fact, that this company used it for internal communications itself instead of 'unreliable' normal e-mail systems.

Trouble is that this company would do anything to make a profit, which included woefully underproviding hardware to make this messaging system work.

Which was why any time a potential client was being shown how good the system was, the company staff would be quietly asked not to use it. Once the punter had seen the smooth running of this system and gone off, we'd be back to messages taking a day to arrive, arriving 200 times in an hour, or simply getting lost in the ether.
(uncle whippity, Sat 29 Sep 2007, 21:48, Reply)

I'm a Maid
Well... I WAS a maid. Thank god I'm not any more.

We keep a list of what embarrassing things we find in people's homes. Usually it was things like bottles of lube next to the beds, porn in the bathrooms, condoms in some of the strangest places- both unopened and used. We compete for best thing found

I won when I found a camera on a tripod set up next to the bed in the master bedroom.

It's not like we went looking for this stuff- people just left it out!
(dragonrose, Sat 29 Sep 2007, 21:47, Reply)

T'Internet
The whole Internet is held together (only just) with string and glue that's been applied by pissed bastards. Fact.
(Muxton it was an accident, Sat 29 Sep 2007, 21:34, Reply)