Have a PDA?
If you try to upgrade your ROM via the "authorized" websites, it will go wrong. You will then have to send your device to us to be fixed.
It takes 10 minutes to re-flash the ROM and we laugh at you paying us a bunch of money to fix your fuckups.
( Batshitmentalist is sane for once, Fri 28 Sep 2007, 7:17, Reply)

Just remembered another...
My cousin was a vet nurse/assistant and she once told me that after a while they just get desensitized to putting animals down and actually couldn't care less about taking the life of your beloved family pet, even if they act like they do.

Once, she was dealing with a parrot that had been hit by a car. It was basically fucked but still alive so the Vet decided to put it down and tell the owner it had died from it's injuries. Naturally, they started playing with it's dead body, pretending it was a puppet, when the owner burst through the door. My cousin tried to cover it up by saying she was trying to give it CPR. The owner ending up buying them some wine, thanking them for trying everything they could.
(yousuckattheinternet, Fri 28 Sep 2007, 7:02, Reply)

call center bastards
Hello, my name is Jim (my real name is Kerpal) and i work in a call center based in Bangladesh which sells hoovers. The secret is we dont really. We are an elete sect of people with a certain paraphelia where we get off on annoying seven shades of shit out of honest british people by phoning them all the time asking if their hoover's running like some cliche prank call...wankers
(Pimp my Clown is going back to the future on, Fri 28 Sep 2007, 6:48, Reply)

I'm a terrible employee
I am currently working in a call-centre for a British Bank, that may or may not have used Alan Davies in their adverts at one point. The atmosphere is pretty lax for a call-centre, and I sit far away from my boss, so I can get away with murder (not literally).

Add to that the fact that my job is so easy, I hear the Indian government are training actual monkeys to do it, and I can get stoned pretty much every day.

I usually start with a joint in the morning as I'm waiting for the train, and I'll top up with one at lunchtime. This leads to me not listening at all to the customers, or asking bizarre questions, like "Have you seen the new Die Hard?" when they're asking questions about their bank account. I recently had a ten minute conversation with a fellow scotsman about the state of the Scottish Premier League while there was a queue of 10 customers waiting to get through.

Also, here's a free bit of advice - if you've been having a problem with a company, say you've been charged for something or you haven't recieved your new card yet, regardless of how angry or irritated you may be, the person on the other end of the phone DOESN'T GIVE A FUCK. If a customer starts ranting I stick the mute button on and start calling him a 'cock-polishing uncle-fucker' till he shuts up.

I have also recently started giving them inapropriate nicknames, like Mr Singh While You're Winning, or calling them by the first name that comes into my head.

Here's something to interest any conmen reading - I frequently forget to ask for security details when a new customer comes through. I have even given someone full access to an account without asking them for their name.

If I have let a conman into your account, then I am truly sorry. I was stoned at the time.

I haven't been pulled up for any of this yet, and the scary part is that I'm not even the worst customer service advisor.

A guy who used to sit beside me would often come in hungover, and hang up on anyone who started shouting. We would have regular games of twenty questions while our customer waited on hold. There is a girl who will often put the customer on hold to eat - and this girl can fucking eat. She has her own gravitational pull. I genuinely won't be surprised if she has a full cooked chicken on her desk one day.

So there you have it, the dirty secrets of the call centre drone trade. We just don't care.
(Pavlov's Frog figures no-one really reads sigs anyway, Fri 28 Sep 2007, 5:15, Reply)

dirty devils
I actually do work in TV,and some colleagues of mine were making a doco about Tasmanian Devils. They needed a shot of a TD giving birth (The babies are like tiny little maggots, which have to make the heroic journey across their Mum's belly, to get to the pouch).
But it was pretty much impossible to film, so they recreated it using a frozen, dead Tasmanian Devil, some slime and a grain of rice.
No one ever knew. (Until now)
(partario, Fri 28 Sep 2007, 4:48, Reply)

Ahhh, nurses
I can't give away many of our dirtiest secrets, because then the ghost of owl-pocketed Flo Nightengale will come and haunt me. But.
We DO
-keep lists of outrageous names and things stuffed up people's bums
-steal food off patient's trays after they're done with them
-slag the doctors royally to their faces
-tell filthy filthy jokes
-enjoy giving the occasional bedbath
-"appropriate" articles for home use
-gag silently when cleaning up shit

We DON'T
-give backrubs anymore, sad to say
-shag in the linen closet
-stand up when the med students enter the room
-enjoy seeing your wrinkly little pecker, you horny old goat
-like being called "angels" dammit!

Three more words for you: Psychic vital signs
(TDub Nunc id vides, nunc ne vides on, Fri 28 Sep 2007, 4:32, Reply)

I can't say much more than this...
Let's just say that if you want to win money in a casino, you're obviously not good at math.
(Mellzah, Fri 28 Sep 2007, 4:10, Reply)

repost: library
i was working at my university library. i'd had a hefty dinner of pizza and diet coke. some gas built up just as a patron came to the desk in the multimedia room where i work. the room was completely empty. he asked for a pair of head phones. i said "alright, one second" as i proceeded to pray the hardest i've ever prayed not to fart from the sheer pressure of standing up. i didn't, thank god.

then, as i handed him the head phones, it came out. it was clearly audible in an otherwise deadly silent room.

i kept a perfectly straight face and proceeded to swipe his card magnificently. as soon as his back was turned to walk out of the room, my head was in my hands in shame.

in conclusion: before this occurrence, i always wished i could witness someone fart at the library. there are some huge reading rooms where the only sound is the rustling of papers. i think that would be the perfect time for someone to let one slip. honestly, in a perfectly quiet room...that would make my work day complete.

instead, it had to happen to me....sigh.
(juliajuliajulia, Fri 28 Sep 2007, 3:57, Reply)

Veneer
Contrary to common knowledge, furniture made with veneer isn't necessarily crap. So we use it on some extremely expensive stuff.

OK, it's boring, but I'm a professional woodworker. Even our dirtiest secrets aren't all that dirty.

Mort
(mortdubois lacks imagination, doesn't play well with others, Fri 28 Sep 2007, 2:21, Reply)

squareheaded freak
What's wrong with green meat?

After working in the meat industry on and off for about ten years, I can assure you that about ten percent of meat on sale in supermarkets has been green at some point, until it's had oxygen pumped onto it to make it go red again.
( The Awful Puppy Bakery is still bored, Fri 28 Sep 2007, 1:45, Reply)

Peas
When on my summer holiday from uni, back in the day, I need cash quite badly, and ended up working 12 hour night shifts in a pea canning factory in East Anglia. If you ever eat canned peas, this is probably where they come from, just different labels. Here I learnt that the difference between M&S peas, Tesco finest and Tesco value, is not the pea.

Just the number of people on a conveyor belt picking out bits of dead slug/snail/mouse/rat/whatever. Posh peas = ~10 people, value = 1. After 8 hours of this, even the most diligent person would let a few through...

They also did bob the builder pasta shapes, and I amused myself by taking two cans off of the conveyor, filling one with just bobs head and the other with just his body.

Worse things happened there too, which I may recount at a later date.
( The4thCrystal Wishes he was better at photographamising..., Fri 28 Sep 2007, 0:22, Reply)

Ok so I think most of the...
bases have generally been covered here; but I feel it my duty to expand on a few points...

As a lowly student type person I have had countless bar jobs, I take pride in my work, always have done; I have worked in dumps with drunks banging on the door at 10am in North London - to swanky city center champaigne joints...

One thing in common... the landlord/liscencee what ever title you want to give the monkey, is doing the job because they are incapable of doing anything else; and more importantly they are always lying caniving cheating fruitloops...

I shall explain:

short measures... working in a bar that had millions of spirits not on the optic system meant we used the little metal cups... we were told not to fill fully...

Pints should be poured with the largest head possible.. a good inch is the ideal head.

any bar man will also tel lyou that when a barrel is changed you get fobbing on the line quite often - when it goes madly frothy - this can not be helped... although I have never served slops, at one once again up market place the bar manager used to measure the over poors (slop tray) never taking into account the fobbing from dodgy lines and changing barrels... and then charged us at full retail price for said pints...

Heaven forbid you should make a mistake pouring a spirit... that would be deducted at full retail price too...

So what did we all do... well I was good.. I would try my best, and I always refused to serve 2 hour old mistakingly poured pints to punters... usually...

however if you're drunk and being a twat dont expect your bill to be anything other than a work of fiction and your gf's jd and coke to contain anything more that vapour of spirit.

Oh and kitchens every single one has been sickeningly disgusting...

one place a freezer broke down...
no one noticed - I dont know exactly what the story was but I was handed a large plastic tray with about an inch of blood in it... covered in mold... blood mold...

You know how women moan and complain about clothes being labeled the same size but being totally different from shop to shop...

Well blame me... I used to make it up as I went along... what ever takes my fancy... once day x measure might be y the next it might be y plus a bit...

and yes... topshop is a customer.

oh and this one does make me feel guilty as the company was featured on Watchdog... but I didnt know...

Never ever buy windows from a cold call... never ever pay a deposit for said home improvements from a cold call... as you will find said company deciding to go tits up on a regualr basis and changing names, directors... offices... phone numbers... oh it wasnt called Nationwide Home Improvements either...

Oh and clothes shops mark up over 300% from wholesale prices to retail price... thats for simple stuff... expensive designer stuff has significantly higher markups... its all made in the same factories... oh and just because it says made in Italy doesnt mean anything.. it jsut means that someone called luigi sneezed in its vicinity once... when the jumper was a sheep... In China...
(feedingtimeatthezoo day 1 of his bikini diet started, Fri 28 Sep 2007, 0:18, Reply)

Chefs, Vegans, and Jews
I work as a caterer for a certain university in the U.S. As mentioned in another post, allot of stuff in food service these days comes pre-prepared. 80% of the crap you eat in a cafe was made by some massive food service company in gargantuan factory kitchens.

Well getting to the meat of the story, We had a large group of vegans who were having a convention at the university. (Vegans in case you do not know are the hardcore serious types of the vegetarian world they will not eat anything that came from an animal including milk and eggs and most gelatin)

One of the items the group ordered was a vegan vegetable soup. to provide this unique menu item Chef ordered several cases of a frozen vegan vegetable soup that comes to us pre made in a bag all we do is boil the bag for 15 minutes, open the bag and dump it in the pan, Voila! Dump and stir technology.

So we served the the "vegan vegetable soup" and that evening after we cleaned up Chef asked me how they liked the soup.
Well I told him the really liked it, (they did) and then he says to me, "Yeah i fixed it up real good."

"Fixed it?" i asked.

"yeah..." he says. "Tasted like shit so i added some chicken stock to it."

Needless to say my jaw dropped. I probably should have told the Manager but Chef is 68 years old and back in his day there were no special dietary needs so i just chalked it up to early senility and had a good laugh about it with the other kitchen staff. To this day i wonder if those vegans ever realized what was in the soup... well at least it wasn't man milk.

Oh there was this other time during passover that we ordered the wrong type of matzo crackers... during passover Jews can only eat matzos that are "kosher for passover". These matzos were not and when I informed the manager about it he told me not to worry about it because the customer was not going to see the box that warns you it is not for passover use! So we served the matzos... Am I going to hell now?
(eastonm3, Fri 28 Sep 2007, 0:15, Reply)

there are some sick fucks out there
nursing:
we don't really care:
worked for 2 months in a large public hospital in theatre. While being fairly broadminded, I wasn't prepared for what happens when patients are "under".
1. several nurses examining the genitals of a very well endowed football player who was having a knee reconstruction.
2. a female television news reader being placed in stirrups by the mainly male staff while having some skin cancers removed from her ears.

computer tech:
we know what flavour of porn you prefer and is usually the first thing that is looked at.

chef: (one of my kids is a chef)
if you cut the mould off it is fresh and the tampon scene in trainspotting is quite mild compared to real life.
(wallynothere rnot without protection, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 23:50, Reply)

I work for a telemarketing company
that sells copies of the Torygraph to unsuspecting members of the public. Problem is, if someone's nice enough to listen to you, they'll be readers of the Guardian anyway.

My point is, there's a thing called Consumer Cannibalism, I won't go into it now but basically it means that the more you read the paper, the more we charge you for EXACTLY THE SAME THING. So if ever someone offers you a newspaper, you're interested, and they ask you how often you read it, say 'ohh, about once a fortnight, if I'm lucky,' and they'll offer it to you for the cheapest price. Also, once they made the sale, they'll be fucking over the moon.
( hexachordal la la la la la, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 23:46, Reply)

Dodgy kitchen goings on
My brother, not me.....

Served up pureed mushy peas as guacamole because he had run out of avacado

Ran out of custard powder so used milk, cornflour, sugar and turmeric for colour as a substitute.

I never eat at his restaurants (currently a very posh one in Manchester which costs a fortune) as I know how much of a dirty bastard he is
(brocky, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 23:40, Reply)

A few...
OK - working in chronological order :-

Don't piss of your paperboy or give a lousy Xmas tip. He will ruin your paper, stamp on your prize flowers and hammer on your letter box for the next year if you do that.

Wimpey (not sure if these are still going outside of service stations) - was called in one Sunday to catch a mouse while customers were eating around it. Was instructed to act "discreetly" ffs.

Benefits Agency - ended up in Personnel somehow - selection process for new recruits was the manager returning from a liquid lunch on a Friday afternoon, grabbing the pile of CV's from on my desk and telling me (without interview) who was going to be employed. Basically anyone who was able to start the following Monday. I have no idea how the fucking retards he chose were able to dress themselves never mind work for the Government working with disabled peoples claim forms.

IT Support - reboot your computer / printer is an old favourite. I prefer to remember passwords and cause chaos later on. We always hunt for porn (have found many fetishes in my time) and emails which may leave you implicated at a later date. Anything decent and the IT bod will always set your password to never expire so we can forever access your filth. Oh - and we don't really know what we are doing, every strange error message gets Googled in the hope that some sad bastard will have typed up his solution to the problem.

Customer Support Manager - After a year in the job I still have no idea how the software works. Delegation is a wonderful thing :)
(brocky, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 23:34, Reply)

I'm sure it'll still work...
I used to work as a CAD monkey at a large UK chemicals company many many years ago. Our supervisor in the CAD office was a complete bitch - we couldn't stand her. Fooking cow - I still hate her as much just thinking about her.

During my last few weeks, I decided that all drawings I got to work on would have some new content added. For those who don't know Autocad, you can basically keep zooming into a drawing greater than the detail an electron microscope could render - perfect if you want to write a paragraph of insults about the supervisor within the tiniest dot of digital semen coming out of a roughly vectored spunky cock, none of which would be remotely visible to someone viewing the drawing at normal size.

I also accidentally deleted a very important drawing of a very important part of a new chemical processing plant for a very important project, could find no backup of it so hastilly redrew it from memory and improvised the hazy bits from drawings I found lying around.

Teesside never did blow up though, so I guess it was all OK in the end.

Length? 7" but depends on the Viewport settings.
( brown-wings Made with three kinds of butter, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 23:34, Reply)

Tales of Antique Military hardware
I'm not too sure if I should share this but I don't work in the industry anymore so fuck it:

I used to work for a small company that specialised in manufacturing bespoke products for the Air Traffic Control industry. One of our customers was the US military.

The first one is about their 'AN/TPQ-37 Firefinder radar' system (google it). Basically, it's shit. These systems are calibrated in the US then sent off to Iraq to blow up innocent people^W^WFilthy Terrorists. Trouble is because of their 'If it ain't broke don't fix it' mentality up until about a year ago they were still using DEC PDP-11's to test their equipment. You know, like the one Richard Pyror uses in Superman III. A 10MB harddrive for a PDP comes on a pallet and weighs about 110Kg's. We quickly replaced them with USB pen drives about 1/1000th the size.

The other one is about the waterfall display that sonar operators use on submarines. Looks great on a CRT, but unfortunately due to technical issues I can't be arsed to go into, looks fucking terrible on a LCD display. Noone has currently sorted out a fix for the problem yet, so they are currently on the run around looking for 10yr old CRT tubes to put into their flashy multi-billion dollar sub's. It makes me chuckle that on the end of their very expensive FFT data processors they are forced to use 2nd hand TV's.

Not that you really want some 10yr old display that's likely to fail any minute when you are sat underneath the polar ice cap at 1400ft.

And don't get me started on how many times I saw aircraft proximity alarms going off in ATC centres and noone batting an eyelid, even going so far as to disconnect the speaker as it was annoying them. I really wish I hadn't worked there now as everytime I get on a plane I have to take two pairs of trousers in case I soil a pair out of fear.

/me shudders
(Sonny_Jim Kirkladn has a small penis, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 23:25, Reply)

not really a 'trade', but
I used to work in a meat packaging plant. Didn't eat meat for 6 years because of what I saw going on. It wasn't just the illiterate numpties packing down the meat in the mincing machines with their crud-encrusted boots that turned me. No, it was the special people that were employed to make up the boxes. We often saw them 'pleasuring themselves' with the latest pron mag and then going down to the shop floor to help with the food production without washing their hands (come to think of it, they often had to be reminded to wash and change their clothes on a weekly basis). The only thing I learnt from 6 years there was how to artificially inseminate a turkey.
( pottybeaver is neither a potty nor a beaver, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 23:12, Reply)

Pub Kitchens, cooking and the like...
I have done my fair share of working in Kitchens.

There are so many horror stories I could tell you, but to be honest you would never want to eat out again; some highlights :

Had to explain to a kid today that If the steak is not red/brown, but BRIGHT FUCKING GREEN, its not edible. Found out he had been serving them all morning before I got there... mmmm

Meat not used on a sunday - generally only got a few days shelf live left on it anyway, seen it made into stews/curries and the like, to just sit in the fridge for about two weeks before been used for sports teams and the like.

Seen far too many cooked meats/meals dropped on the floor then put straight back on the plate as the chef looks shiftily about to see if anyone noticed.

Worked in full on fresh menu pubs to microwave technician pubs, trust me, go to the microwave places, at least there cooked properly and the retarded monkeys in the kitchen are capable of pressing buttons then putting it on plates, fresh pubs just mean theres too many ways to have accidents, and they have a tendancy to use all food however discoloured or out of date it is, as 'food wastage costs too much'.

And lets not get into what the waitresses do to the meals before there sent out if you've been particulary rude to them when you've ordered...


Stay home with microwavable meals people...its the way forward... and makes my job easier :)
(squareheadedfreak, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 23:10, Reply)

Global warming
Is actually utter bollox made up so that governments can tax you more for alledgedly causing a global catastrophe when in actual fact we're at the total mercy the earth's precession and can accurately predict when the next ice age will happen.

PS. it's next week, but if you switch off your gas you may be able to delay it by 6 hours. Or you can pay me £250 and I'll push it back another day.
( brown-wings Made with three kinds of butter, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 23:07, Reply)

Don't eat peanut butter either
Friend of mine did work experience when we were at school. She somehow got two weeks at a well known peanut butter factory, and one day had to "re-tip" - that is, put the left over mix into one of the large vats to go through the process again.

On opening the lid, the site and smell of large quantities of peanut butter churning away caused her to vomit spontaneously and copiously directly into the mix.

Mortified, she ran to tell her supervisor about what she had done so the vat-load could be scrapped or whatever. To which she was told-

"Don't worry love, everyone does it".

Extra chunky?
(animal252 last activated his kitten hammer on, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 23:05, Reply)

I do PC Repair
Yes, I'm the tech geeky girl who is working on your pc here in the shop. Yes. I am being very thorough when scanning for said viruses. I'm also scanning very thoroughly regardless of what you brought it in for. Scanning for porn. I must say, some of you think hiding it in several sub folders deep is a smart place. But honestly, it's not. If it's there, I and the guys here will find it. And we do. We've got a large share on our server where we put copies of your stuff for our own viewing pleasure. Oh and a side note to the lady lawyer who brings her laptop in every 90 days, I've not seen those type of things placed in those spots before, and judging by the outfit she was wearing, I think she brings her laptop here every 90 days. wink wink purrrrrrr If only you were a lesbian.....
( kitty minion Babies ate my dingo!, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 23:03, Reply)

I go to a place which is madder than Jock McMads mad haggis.
Here are some of the day to day norms.

Racism,
Homophobia,
Bullying,
Beatings,
Ignorant Elders,
Communism,
Monotony,
and anybody who speaks out or dares to be different is an acceptable target for ridicule.

This place?

My fucking School.
(DanS like you've never DanSed before!, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 23:00, Reply)

Parliament
If you ever have;

A: Immigration

B: Child support

or

C: Council Housing

problems, ring your local MP immediately and you will find that you get quick, efficient and genuinely practical help.

Anything else, and there's absolutely no point whatsoever. This is particularly true if you hope to change anyone's opinion on any issue- no-one gives a shit.

Trust me on this.
( Shrub Rocketeer is a twisted emotional husk, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 22:53, Reply)

RE: pint of drip trays
Rachelswipe your story of the slop trays reminded me of this, I used to serve them to the mild beer drinkers.

Oh here comes a memory, parties when x amount of dosh was put behind the bar for drinks, funny how drinks had a extra 50% or worse put on the price, and no one could question you when the tab ran out because they didn't know who had ordered what.

Happy days and free money, booze, fags etc
(anal returd tickled ladies bits on, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 22:15, Reply)

Disappointing Newspapers
I work for a version of a well known British newspaper, commonly known as the Hate Mail (can you crack my code?)

I took the job fully expecting to uncover all sorts of seedy, dodgy goings-on and general knob-jockery.

Nothing.

The version I work for is less hate-filled than the U.K one, everyone is lovely and we mostly spend our time defending ourselves and pretending we are the fluffy Irish cousin of the U.K paper.

Dammit!!!
( commiegirl21 Can't think of anything witty on..., Thu 27 Sep 2007, 22:02, Reply)

And another
Logical, but don't trust builders and tradesmen as far as you can throw them. Keep them in sight at all times if possible, because it's more than likely something will have gone walkies when they're finished...

When ordering readymix concrete, make sure you work out just how much you're getting, and where it should come to when the trench or wherever is filled. A Cement Truck can hold 6 cubic meters (not much really when you think about it) and it's not unusual for a driver to drop off some of your concrete at a mate's house or whatever, yet still charge you for it and hope you don't notice.

Bricklayers are generally paid by the brick, so don't stand around talking to them too long as every minute is bricks not laid and they're more likely to rush and botch the wall you asked for.

As I understand it, all of you selling houses, Home Information Packs should not cost anywhere near what the papers say. You can get a fair amount of it done by your solicitor, apart from the most important thing, the Energy Performance Certificate (EPC). This is a piece of paper with the pretty A - G (or whatever) Green To Red diagram on it (like on a fridge) with a score expressed as a figure. The higher the figure, the better, but quite what the figure means or where it comes from is never clear.

On that subject, when the EPC is done, Man With Badge comes and looks at your windows and whether you use Energy Saving bulbs or not. No invasive work is done, and I can assume that he takes your word for it as to how the house is built, from what materials etc. Load of rubbish really.

For us housebuilders, a legal requirement to pass local council building regulations is the SAP energy rating. This number is calculated (usually by an outside company, not the builder) using proper data and plans, material choice etc. It tells the builder far more than the EPC tells the householder, and actually contains all the right information for an EPC and more. The problem is, houses can be sold off-plan using the SAP rating, but when completed, need an EPC. The builder, with all the right information, is apparently not qualified to do so, and the aforementioned Man With Badge is needed to do his own work. Unnecessary, and creating jobs for the sake of it to massage unemployment figures.
( mr_wicksy is.... old., Thu 27 Sep 2007, 22:01, Reply)