engineers
none of us know what we are doing, and everything is bashed out almost at random, as long as it "looks about right"

tip: don't go over any bridges, into any large buildings, use roads etc. etc.
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Mon 1 Oct 2007, 10:25, Reply)

secrets of everyone who's not an IT administrator

We're actually not that much in awe of your 'awesome powers'.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Mon 1 Oct 2007, 10:12, Reply)

'creative' industry
I work in the 'creative industry'. People who work in this sector are 'cool', 'individual', 'free-thinking' and 'don't give a damn about the Man'.

Au contraire. I've never met such a bunch of slavish, paranoid drones enslaved by the latest trend or phrase; terrified of professing support for the 'wrong' band; ridiculously earnest in their pursuit of the 'cool' t-shirt; as geeky as IT people when it comes to cultural references (Seinfeld rather than Red Dwarf)... and utterly spineless when it comes to brown-nosing 'the Man'.

Makes you want to be a brickie.
(frankspencer, Mon 1 Oct 2007, 9:04, Reply)

Mental Health
Having worked in Mental Helath Nursing for over 7 years I can wholeheartedly say that EVERYONE who works in the field of mental health is at least as insane as the people they call patients. On most in-patient wards the staff are far worse than the people they should be looking after.
Where's my Clozaril?
(goulash51 Lurking with intent since, Mon 1 Oct 2007, 7:30, Reply)

Seeing
.
That I'm no longer in the country I suppose I can tell this one. You know when you're wandering around London, idly scanning for unsecured wireless networks so you can pick up your e-mail? You ever come across networks with the SSID of SOAPYTITWANK?

That was me that was. 30 and rising.

Secure your fucking router fuckwits. And change the admin usename and passwords. Default passwords are so yesterday....

Cheers
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Mon 1 Oct 2007, 4:06, Reply)

Bindun...
.
Yup, us IT admins have access to everything on the network. And I mean *everything*.

Now one place I worked actually had an Internet Security Officer. His job was to check the logs of the firewall (one of the first versions of Checkpoint if anyone’s interested) and then to come around to your desk and ask you why you were on a particular site.

The thing was though that the guy was a dickhead. A non-technical dickhead. All he knew IT-wise was how to download the logs from the Checkpoint server and even that had been set up for him by a techy. So, in my first week working there as an Uber-Geek, this guy turned up at my desk and introduced himself by saying.

"Hi, I'm the Internet Security Officer and I want to know what you were doing accessing the site www.lottery.co.uk on Thursday morning at 7.05am?"

WTF? So I looked at this beanpole and said:

"Checking my fucking lottery tickets. What do you think I was doing?"

So he went into his spiel about how the Internet wasn't for personal use and I could only use it for work purposes blah blah blah. I let him finish and told him to go and annoy someone else as I was busy. He gave me a look that clearly said:

"I've got you marked and I'm going to drop you in the shit as soon as I can."

And off he beetled.

So, acting on the premise that the best defence is a good offence, I looked up his username, located his workstation and logged on remotely as local admin. Found his cache directory, cookies etc etc and downloaded them onto my machine. Then I ran a couple of sorting programs and looked at the results. And smiled.

A few days later, dickhead scuttles up to my desk again and asks, with an oily smile:

"Why were you accessing Hotmail, B3ta, Deja-News and the BBC website? I'm afraid that, as I've already warned you previously, I'm going to have to report you to the IT director and disciplinary action *will* be taken"

Then stood there bouncing on his toes waiting to see me crumble and beg him not to report me. I smiled at him.

"OK. Let's go up and see him together shall we? But before we go, I just want to ask you why *you* were accessing the following websites. And why you spent so much time on them. I mean this one - you spent 4 hours in the chatroom on Monday."

And I clicked on a link and brought up his last 6 months of web usage.

www.trannychat.com
www.gaydar.com
www.scat.com

And so on. ( I can't actually remember exactly the real names of the sites, just that they were all hard-core Gay and transvestite sites.)

He went white.

"Err. I was on those sites as part of my job. I have to check out the sites that appear in the logs to make sure that they're not work related before I take action."

"Really? I mean you have to check these sites *every single day*? Just in case they've changed in the last 24 hours? But, that being the case, perhaps you'd like to explain these chat logs as well?"

And showed him fragments of his online chats. And pretty explicit they were too. Well, more brutal than explicit. Well, with that he caved in. After a little more talking by me he agreed that he wouldn't bother me, or indeed the rest of the IT department about what and where we went on the Internet. And, just to make sure, I put myself and the rest of IT in the exception list on the firewall so that none of our future Net usage was logged.

So you see people. I've said this before but never, ever, piss off a techy. We know where the bodies are buried.

Cheers
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Mon 1 Oct 2007, 3:47, Reply)

Wow, this feels like confession - and I'm not even catholic
Okay, so a few jobs ago, I was working for a company called Excell in Paisley. The job involved cold calling (i.e borderline harrassment) to sell life insurance. And, yes, it was exactly as fun as it sounds. Oh, and to anyone who hates cold callers, don't worry - we hate you twice as fucking much.

Lets see, dirty secrets...well, the business was 'regulated' by the insurance company - you would get a mystery shopper call every week, someone from the insurance company pretending to be a member of the public. Only the managers knew which call it would be, so for that call you would do everything by the book, and then you would return to promising the world if they took this insurance policy out.

Some cracking 'promises' included being entered into a prize draw to win a car/holiday/speedboat if you took the policy (there was no prize draw), being able to cancel the policy at any time with no charges (complete bullshit), and I even heard someone tell the customer that, under new government regulations, it was compulsory for them to take this policy out (if you can't tell whether this one is bullshit, then can I interest you in an invisible hamster? Only £500.49).

I wasn't quite as devious - I would generally try and get them talking about something completely unrelated, make out as if I'm only phoning up for a chat, and then mention the policy casually, as if it wasn't a big deal. Surprisingly, this actually worked (albeit not that often), and, seeing as the manager's expectations were pretty fucking low, after you'd got 1 or 2 sales you could generally ignore the rest of the calls and surf the web.

I also happen to know that the policies were pretty useless, and were full of loopholes to stop the company paying out. They would only come in useful if you ran out of toilet paper and didn't have the Daily Mail to hand.

I suppose I should feel kind of guilty, being at one time part of such a reviled industry, but I genuinely don't have that many morals. After all, I got paid, so fuck it.



P.s Oh, and there is a happy ending - not long after I left for a slightly higher paying job, the company closed down amid rumours of dodgy financial dealings. The bunch of crooked bastards

Apologies for length, but seeing as you've listened to me for so long, perhaps I can interest you in our new critical illness cover...
(Pavlov's Frog figures no-one really reads sigs anyway, Mon 1 Oct 2007, 3:22, Reply)

Motorcycle trade
I work in and around the Motorcycle trades, mechanic and parts dealer. The truth is people can't ride their bikes to anywhere near the bikes limit yet we still sell them loud exhausts which they think will make them faster and race tyres which they think will make them handle better and be more attractive to the opposite sex. Fact is the profits are large on these items and the tyres wear out quicker so they come back and give us more money more often.

Still ugly twunts as well.
(Sickpup, Mon 1 Oct 2007, 0:47, Reply)

Unholy Hovis
I used to work in the large Hovis bakery in Avonmouth, moving bread about and order picking mostly but I did see some interesting things...

Firstly you may as well pay as little as possible for your bread because it's all pretty much the same- Hovis=Tesco Value. Branding means nothing.

Secondly all those who think wholemeal/granary bread is better for you are being as mislead as a five year old Blue Peter viewer: All flour milled in this country is white and bleached-The wholemeal/browness and granary bits are just additives put in afterwards...Go for white bread its been messed around with alot less!!

Thirdly-Ever wonder why sometimes your bread goes off really quickly?? I will tell you: If a shipment of bread doesn't get sent out all they do is take off the use by date label on the packets neck and put a new one on...So your bread could be at least 2-3 days old by the time you take it home!!
(archstanton The gold is next to me....leave me be, Mon 1 Oct 2007, 0:13, Reply)

When checking the logs for bad stuff.......................
We sometimes read your email!!!!!!!!!!

Aw, its bindun :(

My favourite occassion for doing this has to be a happening with the first line tech support guy (50 years old +), fat, lazy and most of all fekkin useless. He's been in IT for who knows how long and yet last week I had to write him a step by step guide to installing Windows XP and putting the computer into a Domain etc etc.

One day he starts flapping and panicking so we ask whats wrong "Computers crashed, dunno whats wrong' he mutters and starts flapping even more. System continues to lock up on reboot and we notice network traffic going mad from his IP......hmmmmmm............investigation, clickety click click.

Doing what 2nd Line do best, we start to troubleshoot and find out what he was doing and why this 'infestation' is trying to communicate with the rest of the network.

Then the word 'email' is muttered under his breath so we go looking at the logs. The stoopid fekker had only released an email with the subject line of 'Naked Pics of Britney Spears', complete with an executable attachment from the spam trap to his email address and double clicked the attachment.

Length? Probably too long for this QOTW and two days to rebuild his PC from scratch :)
(indigo_prime, Sun 30 Sep 2007, 23:44, Reply)

Footie inside info
Forgot this one - I used to write almost the entire contents of the programme each fortnight for a Scottish Premier football team (albeit we weren't in the top level then; we were languishing in the lower leagues at the time). While doing this I was having a hot and very vigorous extramarital affair with another supporter of the club who was somewhat younger than me and I thought very cute.

One of the things I had to do for the programme was to write the manager's thoughts on the past week. His forte was not the skill of writing (in fact his forte turned out not to be football either given he was more than a bit lazy and liked to let players away early so he too could have the afternoon off) so he left the task to me.

He always only ever said to me 'Just don't make me seem stupid son' and let me have free rein over his thoughts for the week but he was too thick to realise I was taking the piss most times as I tried to make the column ever more cliched - even one week sneaking in an "over the moon" and a "sick as a parrot" without him thinking it was a little over the top. It just got more and more bizarre as I tested out quite what I could get away with.

So one week I sent a message to my lover on the terraces via his column - the first letters of each sentence in his matchday message if read in order said something like (memory fails me for the exact words) "Hi Margaret. Meet me after the match for a hot fuck you gorgeous thing." No one could ever notice it but I was amused by my self indulgent joke. The small things that one does to keep the boredom away.

Which team? Well we got beat again this Saturday past by a bunch of highlanders - it wouldn't take you long to figure it out. Programme collectors go look for it!

PS One other dirty secret I found out about - there are more - about the same time another (then) 1st division Scottish Club were taken over by a bunch of West Coast criminally minded people. The rumour was that they used the cash rich game of football to launder drug money back INTO the game by pretending more people came to the matches than actually did - the past habits of Scottish corrupt directors in football being the opposite taking money out rather than putting it in. Football is one of the last places in business where money is still handed over as notes in great quantities - clever of the scummy drug dealers really to make their money white again and the club was always losing money so they didn;t even pay tax on it. There's a good novel in the last story for someone by the way (send me a free copy).
(beaverwastemanagement a real company. I want to work for them!, Sun 30 Sep 2007, 22:13, Reply)

Old skool photos
Used to work in a branch of a large national chemists which may or may not have something to do with shoes.... on the photo counter

We looked at all your pics, and the amount of pron was incredible (esp to a 16 yr old naive little boy)

If some of the pron was a little 'out there' it would be designated as 'no supply' for the whole film - we had to give the negs back as they were the customers property. The prints went in the bosses desk, presumably for 'further use'

If you turned up for the prints and you were female (usually depserately sad, obviously abused unhappy wives) we'd get a female manager to take you to a private place and gently explain why (mind you I always worried what their 'man' would do to them when they came back) - if you were male we'd get the most attractive person to give you a dressing down about how we weren't a sex shop in front of as many people as possible...

I also got sexually harrassed by my manager, but as she was a 25 yr old uber babe I didn't mind whatsoever....
(Chevron71 is oscillating wildly...., Sun 30 Sep 2007, 22:06, Reply)

half price fruit
Supermarkets put "HALF PRICE" on fruity items like strawberries, melon and the like - but actually they are not half the price they paid for it - they are half ther price they were a month ago. This is how it goes with fruit - it is seasonal and you get gluts sometimes so the price goes down . they could do us all a favour and when there is a shortage of said fruit put "DOUBLE THE PRICE!" on it.
(themothers, Sun 30 Sep 2007, 21:42, Reply)

Liverpool
I work on a board promoting the cultural delights of Liverpool. In fact, the city is a sewer of job-shy dole scroungers, thieves, pikeys, slappers and general morons. It's the one argument I know in favour of genocide.
(frankspencer, Sun 30 Sep 2007, 20:24, Reply)

Well the only paid job i've ever had is as a teacher
And it didn' go well

I know that there are many ideas of what teachers get up to- and there are some fantastic stories about such wonderful things as student/teacher affairs, drinking and drugs problems and other such wonderful things.


Sadly I worked in a small village school- where there were 5 teachers including the head teacher, and a vast number of teaching assistants who all worked odd hours. Oh and I was the only bloke.... and bar 1 of the other teachers (who was a hippie) the youngest teacher by at least 30 years

In schools you kind of expect there to be a certain element of sillyness, the calling of names, the hiding of property and petty acts of vandalism

maybe from the kids...but you don't really expect it between the teachers.
Basically I was the "new kid" and so got picked on by a group of grumpy old women who found delight in making children feel as horrible and meaningless as they could- and so felt the need to lash out at the new "cool" teacher who actually cared about teaching the children and teaching them to be good people.

So everything I did was seen as being "wrong" and "inappropriate" Funny that when i was the one who made sure of n bodily contact with the kids,compared to the scary old woman who would hug kids all the time *shudders*

I had my mark book and lesson plans stolen or defaced, resources sabotaged and plans changed for my class (oh...your taking half the class out to do singing practice....when I'd set up a science experiement that you knew full well about...thanks)

Luckily I was the only one in the whole school who knew how the computers worked- I sadly had to leave due to health problems- but would have done the following things on my last days at the school:

Change all the computer passwords for everyone
Hide the backup tapes for the server
Move (hide) all of the school's date in weird places
Hide the desktop on all the computers so that it appears as an image (all the icons appear there but can't be used)
Change all the mouse-speeds to the lowest settings
Add interesting auto-corrects to most of the computers (Name of school gets a few profanities added)
Gently loosen all the cables so none of them quite connect, but all look like they are
Removed all of the mouseballs from the school


I'm sure there would be more

hmmm....I might still have the password and login for the school website somewhere
click I like this if you want me to find them and maybe post them ;)
(bignutter, Sun 30 Sep 2007, 20:24, Reply)

You
don't actually need to be able to put one word after another in any kind of meaningful order to make a decent living as a professional writer, thanks to the existence of magical creatures known as subeditors* (such as wot I am). One of the titles I work at occasionally has a full-time feature writer who is barely literate, and regularly displays a complete inability to grasp the most basic concepts of their supposed field of expertise. But you'd never know it to read anything that appears under their byline.

* We also basically write the horoscopes, by the way.
(Wong Fei-Hung - now with added flickr.com (see profile), Sun 30 Sep 2007, 19:36, Reply)

I work for Nuts
Every issue, whenever we can't come up with anything good (that's most the time) I just log on to this website called bee-three-tee-ay and nick a couple of the funny pictures off the front page, without even asking the artists' permission to print them. LOL!
(I have a face also had a sig on, Sun 30 Sep 2007, 19:36, Reply)

The data protection act?
Ignored by companies all the time. A company I used to work for would scour the web for information on important people ("key opinion leaders" in a certain subject area, scour for dates of birth, qualifications, papers, collaborations, grants they've held, anything. And sell a system they'd developed to present that and the data to other bigger companies.

The thing is, when I suggested that we do the same for medical journalists, that was suddenly a very bad idea.

Perhaps because if journos got a sniff of that, they'd be demanding to see the data we would have had on them (but not told them about like we should have) ASAP.

Still, if you host the data offshore... then you make a mockery of that legislation! Ho hum. I wonder if big supermarkets do that to the general public?
( drunkenoaf, Sun 30 Sep 2007, 19:12, Reply)

On the subject of programmers,
It often pays to do a shit job with next to no documentation, it can result in becoming a consultant and pave the road for early retirement.

Quite common in government projects apparently.
( Slippery Mick ‏, Sun 30 Sep 2007, 18:35, Reply)

I'm a programmer
... and at least 50% of all programmers are egregiously incompetent.

It would be OK if that was because you could get a job as a programmer with no programming skills but only an adequate grasp of personal hygiene and a range of topics of conversation that extended beyond Red Dwarf. But it isn't.
(><(((">, Sun 30 Sep 2007, 17:49, Reply)

Jazz Saxophone
When playing jazz, the most kudos can be earned not by creating an interesting and logical solo filled with carefully planned harmonic tricks and skullduggery and beautiful phrasing, but by just playing up and down the relevant blues scale as fast as you can until you can stop playing and sink back into a fug of self-loathing at your own fraudulence.
(WarneMarsh My priority for frivolity begets quality jollity, Sun 30 Sep 2007, 17:32, Reply)

When I use to write for magazines..
As a hard up grad student I use to write for a few magazines , but your now thinking thats cool... no I use to write for girls "teen" magazines specically the letters section. I wrote both the letters and responses every month for 2 years... now you know why your children are screwed up. click I like this and I will scan in the secret messesage I planted in the mag...

Mod Edit: OK - so where's the scan?
( Super piat I am the owl, Sun 30 Sep 2007, 17:08, Reply)

I work for myself.
As a writer and comedian. The easiest thing to do is trn on the tv and pic a serious "itv drama*" and then rewrite the plot in a funny way. I was once told "we can make a tv show about a singing paedofile , thats just too absurb" , I sharply replied " well you had gary glitter on top of the pops"
( Super piat I am the owl, Sun 30 Sep 2007, 17:06, Reply)

And the rest...
You can buy cheese slices for around £1.50 for 500 if you know where to go. And since it's been processed it'll last forever in the cupboard under the fridges.

The biggest profit margin from food vans is tea. Ordinary cups of tea:

Catering tea bags: 0.7p (sometimes used twice if people ask for a "weak" tea)
styrofoam cups: 3p
hot water: 0.00001p
sugar and milk: 1.2p
plastic lids and stirrers: 0.2p

Cost of a cup of hot fresh tea: 5.1p (rounded since I am lazy)

Sale price: £1 upwards.

Just bring a thermos flask instead. At least then you won't be stuck with tesco value tea bags and 6 month old milk.
(guyie failed to be witty on, Sun 30 Sep 2007, 16:34, Reply)

Our customers are far dirtier than our staff..
I work for the metropolitan public transport authority in a city in Australia (not mentioning which..). I do work in the information line call centre as well as do ordinary officey type things, but the call centre is always the most interesting.

All of the nutters we have call... makes you really grateful there are laws preventing them from driving. This one kid calls atleast once a day, "letting us know" that such'n'such a bus is 3 minutes late, thinking he's doing us a favour. He also has an oyster card (travel card) and calls about that every day too checking up on the fares he's been charged. And myth in the office says he’s got a two way radio or something tuned in to depots wave length and listens to the drivers talking about the routes they’re doing all day. I’d believe it. But the saddest thing about this kid isn't his complete obsession with buses; it's his name - Julian. *sigh*

I was recently abused by a woman demanding to know where the baby bonus in her tax refund was.. when I informed her that she had in fact called the wrong number she blasted down the phone that thats what the thieving piece of scum she spoke to last time said, but she was onto us and was going to get her money whether I liked it or not and that A Current Affair would be very interested in her story and that I'll be sorry.

Suckers also call demanding a refund of things like an 8 cent overcharge on their oyster card... then call back in a few hours to check its been done.... then call back a few hours later to make a complaint about it taking so long to be done. We do remind them that every phone call is costing them at least 30 cents, but they maintain that it’s a ‘matter of principal!’. Usually it turns out they're calling from their work phone though..

Also, all the lazy derro kids who call to find out when their bus is coming, and you can tell its always the same people, calling from their mobiles. As soon as they bark their demand for info down the phone without saying please I turn into a blubbering idiot. "Oh sorry.. so it's a bus time you're after? Oh, ok, and what time was it? I mean, what bus was it? Oh.... just let me look to see if I have that one... Could you spell that street name for me? Ohhhh you want Main St! That one can be confusing.. And you want to catch it now do you..? Oh, really, ok, maybe if I just type "Bus" in here.. oop no, sorry.... I hope this isn't costing you too much...premium call rates this is you know.... *tapper tapper, type type*.. my computer is just playing up today!" Where as the second the word please crosses their lips it's as simple as "Your next bus is at 3:10, so in around 14 minutes. Goodbye"

At the train stations there are information boxes with timetables and ticket info as well a button to press that announces when the next train is due. Right next to that button is one that connects the passenger with us at the call centre, but it's just for emergencies - all of the info passengers could need is written in front of them. At night especialy on weekends people press the buttons just for a laugh.. entertainment while waiting for the train. When the call comes through and there's no one answering at the other end we like to say things like "The button doesn't press itself... I can see you.. Look up and smile for the camera" But one of my friends (afterhours, when management has gone home) like to shout to the stations "HELP ME! IM TRAPPED INSIDE THIS BOX, GET ME OUT!!" and then wait for the sounds of the drunks who pressed the button to start kicking at the machine. Works every time!

Working in the public sector is fantastic only because of the idiocy of the public. The things people leave on busses. Old people often leave groceries then remember a few days later that they bought a frozen chicken and a box of Cadbury Favorites and three navel oranges and call us to find out where they can pick them up from, and always find it really hard to understand that they can’t have things like that back....

I make no apologies for length.... this is only just scratching the surface.
(jubilantjeremy yes please, Sun 30 Sep 2007, 16:29, Reply)

Food vans
Another massive profit margin surely has to be cheese?

Beefburger = £2.00
Cheeseburger (in reality, a beefburger with one slice of value processed cheese at a cost to the burger man of 0.5p) = £2.50
(d371ght back again since, Sun 30 Sep 2007, 16:23, Reply)

The Hot Food Trade
I have worked various mobile hot food establishments in my time, mostly just on a day to day basis for a friend of a friend of a friend who was desperate for work because his Polish immigrant has been caught by the police again and is due to be deported. Through these employments I have managed to gleam valuable insights that would make sure I would never, EVER visit the humble snack wagon at the local fair/racetrack again.

The "Quarter pounder" burgers that are usually offered for £3 at any good fair usually have the following qualities:

1) They are typically only 80% beef, which *does not* mean that they are made of 80% beef. Oh no. That usually means that the beef they use is 80% beef, 20% other mechanically recovered meat. This is then pressed, usually with onion and wheat to fluff it up. Its almost as bad as using sawdust as a filler. At any rate the burgers usually come out to be anywhere between 45-55% beef.

2) The burgers are very rarely cooked and served within an hour. Usually they are cooked the night before and slipped onto the cold half of the griddle when nobody is watching, then warmed up as required. This process is basically the same for bacon and sausage too. And anything else that needs cooking before eating.

3) The bread baps that your 50% beef patty is wrapped have usually been frozen just after their use-by-date, and have been defrosted by sweating it out in a cardboard box underneath a boiler. And they are loaded with sugar too, but I have no idea why.

4) The complimentary sauces you have access to once you have purchased your food are very rarely what they claim to be. Some people reuse top brand (He*nz) ketchup bottles by filling them with... out of date freebie sauce packets from high street fast food outlets. These things seem to be in limitless supply and its not uncommon to have all the annoying little kids from the local area sat around cutting open sachets and emptying them into bottles for a free burger or hot dog.

And the big trick with mineral water...

It's actually (usually) purchased at close to sell by date for about 7-8p per bottle, then resold at events for £1.30-1.50. We used to understock the pop bottles and overstock water because the profit margin was so much greater.

And counters would often be cleaned by emptying the remaining hot water from the boilers onto them and wiping them down with their hands. Although I have seen people cleaning the inside of the food warming cabinets (used for storing sausage rolls and such) by spitting onto the glass.

So play it safe, and if you really need to eat something, buy the chips. They are always stupidly overcooked and after eating one or two you don't feel like eating any more anyway.

And my dad used to be an ice cream man, and would ring his chimes even if his van was empty, just to get the kids to come running to his van asking for things he didnt have. At which point he would sell them all the bubblys from the bottom of screwball cups. (Those things never, ever went out of date)

And yes, it is true. ALL ice cream men, without exception, hate having to use juice. Its awful, 99% sugar, expensive (since its given away) and gets everywhere. And its a complete b*tch to clean too.
(guyie failed to be witty on, Sun 30 Sep 2007, 15:54, Reply)

Ha ha!
Yes, if we have to eat our lunch straight after cleaning up a necrotic leg ulcer then why should anyone else enjoy their food?
(Mary Mandolin still had it on, Sun 30 Sep 2007, 13:38, Reply)