On the radio
I've worked at six different 'Red Brick' radio station in my time, and it is the same everywhere..

During competitions, if you don't hear a winner's voice on air, no-one won. Either because no-one entered, or the prize simply did not exist.

If you do hear a winner on air, you can bet your arse that it was the first person to call that was female, that lives in an identifiable suburb outside the main broadcast city, and that sounds hot.

The only time a bloke will get on air is if NO ladies call at all. Entry levels for competitions are typically woeful overall.

We thought all the recent TV scandals may have changed the boss' minds, but no.

Plus I never ever 'won' a top range Nokia, which I certainly didn't sell, nor spend non-existant hundreds of pounds on...well, I'd like to say drugs, but it was council tax really.
( The Lurker Plenty One, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 14:59, Reply)

People in Phone shops
have NO idea about technical problems with your phone and have to wait on hold as long as you do at home, so PISS OFF and ask someone who's job it is to fix phones.

oh and never be nasty to waiting staff, peas can be shot out of nostrils, cutlery coughed on and much much worse.
(kitnel it's probaby infectious, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 14:59, Reply)

Pembrey Race Track - Snack Van.
I spied a secret of the snack van trade at Pembrey racing track one day.

My GF asked for a bottle of mineral water with her reconstituted chicken snack. Snack van man says "pound fifty" as he shiftily hands it to her but twists off the lid whilst doing so, making out that the lids are sometimes difficult to open.

Not until thinking about it later did I realise; I'd bet a monkey it was just tap water that he'd put in a used water bottle. Profit: £1.50 from anyone poncey enough to ask for mineral water.

This was all a few years ago, at a time when the pikey locals were renowned for filling their cars with supermarket vegetable oil instead of diesel because it was cheaper.

I hope the snack van man gets a visit from the environmental health.
(JuanTheMan "hair-color:#FF6600", Thu 27 Sep 2007, 14:56, Reply)

Nurses!
Not my job at all, but I have heard stories socially from various nurses - the 2nd one not from experience!

If you are a fit young man in hospital with a knee injury, you will probably be asked to undress more than is strictly necessary for your treatment. Also you may well find while you are lying there, lots of nurses will pop in to see how you are or get something from the cupboard next to your bed.

If you are a man who gets an erection during a bed bath and the nurse doesn't like you, she may well "accidentally" knock it the wrong way which will be very painful.
(Glen Moranjie, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 14:52, Reply)

I used to work in a pub
and there was an old cunt who came in every afternoon and drank us dry of Smirnoff, and refused to touch the other brand of vodka.

But when we ran out, the landlady didn't want to lose his precious custom, so went down to the cellar and filled up the Smirnoff bottle with the cheap stuff. After pouring him another glass, he laid back and said:

"Ah! Cheers, I know you wouldn't make me drink that cheap shit, you can really taste the difference y'know."

What a twat.
( Mr Gear the gay-maker, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 14:51, Reply)

More science stuff
I too am a scientist, lab coat, pens poking out of top pocket, errant hairstyle et cetera. (quite a few of us on here isn't there).

In my youth we used to nick various reagents from the lab for the most mundane of purposes. For example- analytical grade petroleum ether for use in our Zippos. (Cost about 20p to light a fag).

Pure 100% analytical grade ethanol for drinking purposes (Dilute a lot with orange juice.)

Dry ice was robbed by the bucket load around the end of October, we had some great Halloween parties.

Cylinders of helium cos squeaking like a lemming is always funny no matter how of you hear it.

Any nitrate, oxidant, dangerous reagent to make our own fireworks. November was also a fun time- not many eyebrows, but fun.

The list goes on but I fear being identified and the reprisals
(bugboybeast, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 14:51, Reply)

Its not just magazines
Newspapers also keep hold of the decent prizes and give out to staff/ebay

Whats even worse at one East London newspaper there is one guy who just rings up companys to blag free stuff for competitions by saying they are running a feature on whatever it is he is trying to blag. Once said item has been blagged he then makes up a feature by nicking stuff on the web and comes up with a phoney competition. So not only is he getting free stuff that should be going as prizes he is also getting paid to get the free stuff.
(Long time lurker, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 14:50, Reply)

My brother-in-law is a welder
In a previous job, he did some work at the Walkers Crisps factory. Afterwards he tried to tell me what he'd seen there, but I'm a total crisp addict and I didn't want to know. In the end he just said, "If you saw what I'd seen, you'd never eat another crisp in your life."

However, going from the sheer quantity and variety of similar stories I've heard in my life (and those already posted here), this applies to pretty much all mass-produced food at every stage of its production and distribution.

The editor of magazine I used to work on told me about a previous job he'd had making posh chocolates (you know the kind of thing: shiny boxes, individually wrapped etc.) and what the plebs on the production line got up to ...frankly there's no need to go into detail, just use your imagination.

Ew.
( reallywittyname veraciously conspues lexiphanicism on, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 14:41, Reply)

My friend
used to work at a popular supermarket (One of the top ones in England, anyway).

One evening in the chilled area at the back of the store, they were messing around and knocked over a tub of pizza-sauce, which went all over the floor. Nevermind, they just grabbed the lid and scooped it back in...

Tasty!
(random_monkey Dosadno mi e, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 14:16, Reply)

I've got a good one.
I posted it on the main board, because it's easier to tell with visuals. Take a look.

Think of this the next time you go into a high-end subdivision...
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Thu 27 Sep 2007, 14:14, Reply)

I'm actually
not an ape.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 14:10, Reply)

secrets of my work
where i work (the suposed best social club in swansea) we still have some cans of pop and bottles of alcopop that are out of date by a few months. also the boss once asked me to try and rub out the best before dates on a couple of bottles of reef with a scourer which were about two months out of date. i could se bits floating about in the bottles.

oh take my advice, don't eat our burgers after saturday night, they're same ones from the night before.

if anything is the worse though is the curry place opposite the club (worked out where it is yet). so far i've seen


1. flies in food
2. mould on top of cans of pop (cans were also out of date
3. a wierd funky smell outside at around 11am-1pm

plus i've never ever seen a cat walk outside that place either
(Claude Speed was a Roman called Claudius Speedicus, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 14:10, Reply)

Outcomes
When applying for funding in academia, it is usually necessary to include a time plan for the grant period. This details what you will do and when you will do it, what the research outcomes will be, etc.

We all fill these things in with complete rubbish, then ignore them once the money comes through. Why? Because this is scientific research we're doing. If we knew the outcome before we started, then we wouldn't be doing the bloody research, would we?

Perhaps I should have done a PhD in foretelling the future instead.

_{Edit: Incidentally, regarding the post below, IPA in my language means iso-propyl alcohol. Not very nice to drink but it makes a nice low cost (i.e. free) windscreen washer additive...}
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 14:08, Reply)

IPA
Ever noticed how the IPA in your local pub tastes better towards the end of the week...it's probably had the dregs from the drip trays fed back into it. If you can see into the cellar look for filter funnels ...what other reason would they be down there for?
Oh and of course it's not Premium vodka it'll be the nearest, cheapest supermarket brand.

I'll say no more than it is a popular pub in Cambridge...
(cmouse is pondering about life in other jobs, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 13:57, Reply)

Manufacturing
I work in an engineering company.
The engineering business is riddled with back-handers and dodgy deals. Orders are got by giving money to the person in charge of handing out contracts and the money to be made if you are one of these people is unbelievable.

The car I drive was purchased by my boss from such a chappie who was looking for a quick buyer in leui of a huge contract coming our way.

Quotes are given to companies and the amount is changed by the buyers once they know what everyone else is quoting so you get the job.

Its definatly not what you know but who you know.


*oh! and we sometimes get asked to make grease nipples. 6 years later it still makes me giggle*
( girlinthehole, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 13:53, Reply)

"Buy now interest-free for a year!"
... is what the sign by that washing machine says.

What it means is "Take it home now, Curry's get paid by a third party company to whom you owe the money. The interest rate is extortionate but we won't charge it to you for the first year (unless you ever miss a payment, in which case we'll clobber you for all of that year's interest)".

By law they have to send you a reminder letter before your first payment, when that year of interest-freedom is about to run out. The letter has to be sent at some point between two and four weeks prior to your first payment. They hate this because it means people are more likely to remember to pay.

To my shame, I used to work for a company that held lots of profiling information about pretty well everyone in the UK: your age, marital status, whether you owned your own house, when your car insurance expires, who you voted for, etc. - anything they could glean from any survey you've ever filled in, all cross-referenced and held in one massive database. I kid you not, our database had a field called "DogHasWind".

Anyway, the company who stumps up the cash to pay Comet for your new fridge freezer came to us.

They wanted to use our data to try to predict how likely people are to miss their first payment, dependant on when they receive the reminder letter. If we think you never have anything in the bank, they'll send the reminder letter as late as possible so you'll be most likely to be skint and thus miss your first payment. If we think you're quite forgetful, they'll send the letter as early as possible, so you're more likely to forget to put money by for it and thus miss your first payment.

There are not swear words harsh enough to describe these people.
( teedyay, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 13:52, Reply)

Next time you put money behind the bar in a pub...
...you can rest easy in the knowledge that every time the landlord walks past the till he will add another round of drinks onto it that you didn't order. And that's the reason why when you go to any PR event with a 'free bar' that the 'free bar' has alread closed no matter how early you get there.

Scrotes, the lot of them.
(clockworkkillbot, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 13:50, Reply)

rhymes with...car
I used to work in a food shop and was put on the bakery all the time even though i had no training whatsoever...
If something dropped on the floor, i was told to pick it up and put it back (ergh)
also the hot pasties and things that we cooked in the early morning were kept on the hot plate allllll day until 8pm when they were definatly not fit for human consumption...
but we used to sell them anyway and keep the profits....
oh and if we didnt like someone we used to override the tills and charge them extra :P
(fruity maybe there is a fifth way..., Thu 27 Sep 2007, 13:49, Reply)

More tech support stuff
"This email has been quarantined because of naughty words"

If you ever get a message like that in your company inbox, please don't immediately write to tech support demanding its release because it's vital sales data or something. We *know* it's most likely pointless chat with your friends, "secret" chat with your mistress or grot from the girl you're having a torrid office affair with.

We know. We look. We chat about them.

On one occasion we had grade A filth coming through from one middle manager and his tart. The entire tech department was crowded around my desk laughing at that one. Twenty-odd people, that is.

Further to the reboot stuff other people have posted it depends on the type of equipment you're running and why. Basically if you're running network equipment and moving between sites there's a chance the scripts that connect you to the equipment haven't run properly. On laptops, if you plug in a network cable after booting up the machine, it can hang onto the network information from the last site. Rebooting will make it request new information.

Of course, sometimes we don't have a fucking clue what you're talking about, you sound like a prick and we can't be arsed with you.
( Kroney, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 13:44, Reply)

Supermarkets are no big suprise
but remember that tv programme on a few months ago? where 2 people went undercover and filmed people picking up fish from the floor and putting it on display? Well it is all true, no matter what the companies say like "It is only a few isolated incidents" or "only a few rogue stores or members of staff".....Bollocks.

We regularly got 'direct orders' from the highest level to try and sell out of date meat if 'it smelt ok' and our store manager used to check the delivery for damaged items and try to 'fix' them. His crowning achievement was gluing the lids back onto yoghurt pots that had come off.

Also we had to dispose of bread after a certain time, which meant 100's of loaves and buns, baps, scones etc went into the skip and they were still perfectly fine for at least another week...yet it was fine to sell out of date meat. Also when one staff member asked if the store could donate this bread to the local homeless shelter she was told that this would breach food health and safety (!?!?)

Anyway, my advice don't shop there (it was the first of the big English supermarkets to open in N.I.), or in any supermarket...buy your meat from a local butchers or bread from a bakers.

EDIT: Oh and one other thing...their chicken comes from the local factory just up the road....those chicken burgers are the out of date chicken fillets and breasts sent back to them, mashed up, repackaged and stuck straight back on the shelf.

No length jokes i'm afraid, they have been done to death and were never that funny to begin with.
( Bamboo Steamer, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 13:43, Reply)

Slower than you think.
Ever been stuck behind a lorry doing 40 on a single carriageway? There are two explanations:

1. Lorries are limited by law to 40 on single carriageways. True.

2. The driver is after overtime, as Plod don't give a toss unless you set off a camera. Oh, and it breaks up the day when an overtaking BMW has a near miss. Also true.

Length? 15.5 metres.
(all my scars face forward possesses 2.5% of a hyperalloy combat chassis, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 13:43, Reply)

The highbrow world of academia?
I've been in research in academia for a while now and I know most of the people I work with are supposed to be 'experts' in their field, but some of the stuff that goes on...

Like arming a laser from the control room when people are still moving pieces of equipment around and watching them sh*t themselves on CCTV. Doing this repeatedly until the warning lights and klaxons no longer hold the same threat. All funny until someone drops the trigger and they get a lethal radiation dose. THankfully nobody did though.

Or 10 tonne detectors... on fire. Not really 'on' fire but one of the inner layers of the (spherical) detector used a flammable gas and this got ignited. Same place, high power electron beam being steered into several tonne magnets. It melted some massive holes in them and turned them from magnets back into the huge pile of ex-battleship steel that they were.

And the usual stuff about things getting thrown around in high magnetic fields. Trash cans, floor buffers and gas cannisters of combustible gas.

Still, in just under 2 years time I'll be qualified to do it all myself.

Length, 7 years as a student, and still counting.
(Dr_Faustus filius of a femina canis, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 13:41, Reply)

reallywittyname
Is spot on.

I used to work at a newspaper and the girl in charge of the competitions always rigged them - decent prize or not.

Still, she used to share them with me so I didn't mind.
( Pooflake braces for an onslaught..., Thu 27 Sep 2007, 13:38, Reply)

Pub Chef/Team Leader..
hmmm

Got caught with drugs...great we'll confiscate that...for later. (ive never done drugs, and never will...I hope)

stock gone missing, thats fine, we'll ad an extra shot on JD/Vodka/Spirit on to whatever round you have just paid out for.

Money isnt adding up, well, you wont miss that pound, will you?

Has the CCTV gone missing? its amazing how many times that get recorded over...

That chicken breast has just fallen on the floor, thats fine, wash it off, 20 seconds in the microwave, and it WILL be fine.

If you didnt already know, barmen are randy buggers, and yes, if you have nice tits, you will get the best service....and twice again later that night.

You know, most people cant tell when the vodka has ben topped up a lil with water.

In all honesty, these are things I have seen with my own eyes. I was actually very honest with my customers, and the best chef at my pub and didnt do to people things that I wouldnt like to be done to me.
(drain_bamaged, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 13:35, Reply)

Oh yeah...
...you know how magazines have competitions to win stuff? If it's a halfway decent prize, don't bother entering. The winner will be John Q. Madeupname and the prize will be either going home with one of the staff, or flogged for cash.
( reallywittyname veraciously conspues lexiphanicism on, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 13:35, Reply)

The Economist
Every year the highly prestigious Economist Magazine does a worldwide survey into the cost of living.

They hand out a massive list of items that people have to cost (Food items, clothing, Insurance, cost of an x-ray etc)- I was paid (quite well) for doing this - around £1000 for a weeks work - which was a massive amount for a student

Each person had to get three prices for certain items high end, mid range and council estate level - which felt like just a bit too much work (I was a student)

So I got one lot of prices- then adjusted according to which level I was doing.

Hardly that bad really as I only did one city- but imagine how many people did that all over the world - and they publish the results - which is the most expensive place to live etc.

You have been warned....
(audreyforbes audreyforbes, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 13:30, Reply)

IT, well spreadsheets & databases
many many tricks:-

1) instead of developing something spartan that just does the job (RAD, rapid application development) pander to the customer's needs and give them all the whilstles and bells they need. this leads to much more scope for something to go wrong and makes it much harder for anyone else to understand
2) never put any comments in your code, as long as it works
3) make sure things run on one PC (yours!) so that nobody else can run it. a laptop is best
4) accidentally forget things like...the year changing or bank holidays... things that will arse up the db once you've left
5) leave your business card, they can hire you as a consultant for £500 a day
6) (illegally) password-protect stuff
7) if something goes wrong, make it pop up with your email address, aren't you nice!
(Darth Vodka, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 13:28, Reply)

IT Dept. where to begin...
Any computers given to us will be scanned for grot and saved to a network location for later theft and perusal by other IT staff. Especially if its home made.

Occasionaly reboots work but other times we just can't be bothered to talk to you.

When you're sitting there like a lemon with me telling you I'm waiting for a console/connection/remote access/ferret I'm usually buggering around on the net, b3ta, msn.

We do keep lists of annoying people and they do indeed receive poor service, shit hardware, and deliberate work loss.

When buying a PC the one they suggest to you will be whatever they are trying to get rid of and extended warranties aren't worth the paper they are written on.

*relurks*
(Lord Flasheart gave a Whizz-Bang! on, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 13:26, Reply)

Adult Ed Pervs
I work in ESOL (teaching English to adult immigrants, basically) and we have to assess each learner's ability and place them in the correct class. From beginners to advanced, the levels are Entry 1, Entry 2, Entry 3, Level 1 and Level 2 to match with the National Qualifications Framework.

All of the teachers at my workplace are female, so we do tend to get a bit of attention at times from male learners with, shall we say, 'interesting' ideas about how to behave in a student-teacher situation. We've had learners who've asked us out ('Please to come pub with me?'), requested 'special private tuition' ('You my house come, we making special sexy time') and even proposed to us('I see you no married. No ring on hand. I be good husband for you'). Of course, we politely decline in all cases.

We're also aware of them spending the entire lesson staring at our tits, so we informally class these amorous men as 'Entry 4' learners in brackets on their paperwork just to inform the other teachers of what to expect.

So, if you're a student in adult education classes and you notice an E4 on your ILP, then it means you're considered a naughty pervert :)
( gypsy turnips, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 13:24, Reply)

Italian Restraunts
i used to work in the kitchen of A Specific Kind of italian restraunt, which shall remain nameless. (unless you lok at the last scentence again)

dough to make the pizza bases? delivered frozen
tuna? Tinned
Salad? straight out a bag
Tomato sauce (or pomodoro, to make it sound more exotic)? tinned
the mushroom (funghi) sauce ran out during service one day, we replaced it with Cream of mushroom soup.

throughout all this, noone gobbed, bled or came in the food... we figured head office had ruined it enough already.

i'm not proud
(Grahamey Lagroin For Its a grand old team to play for..., Thu 27 Sep 2007, 13:14, Reply)