Quirks of the Job

[maninahat]

Here's a thread for sharing the odd insights you have from your day job, and also perhaps an opportunity to give a bit of advice from your own professional opinion.

For instance, I work in recruitment. Two things I've noticed:

1) I always say "good morning, human resources, Ben Speaking" when I answer the phone. Literally everyone psychologically blocks out those words, and the first question they inevitably ask is "Hi, is Ben there?" I've gradually changed my greeting to "humorous horses" to see if anyone will notice. They have not.
2) We have forms where we ask about people's background. Every question has a "I do not wish to disclose this" option that people can pick, and although most people will provide their details, sometimes you get people who pick those these options. For some reason, these people would rather we didn't know their ethnicity, religion or sexuality, but they never have a problem with writing down their age, sex, marital status and whether they have any disabilities. From this, one could surmise people who worry about xenophobia and homophobia are cool with ageism, ableism and sexism.

As for advice?
If you've emailed a HR person asking for an update, don't email them another request for an update the next fucking day. The magic of emails is that they don't disappear, so they will already know you are chasing them. Asking too often won't speed them up, it'll just give them one more email to waste time looking at, and one more reason for them to spitefully not do anything for you.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

The only thing I learned in my brief stint in office work is that laws are only as powerful as they're applied. I was working 40hr weeks as a contractor, and was told I could only bill 30hrs. When I asked if I only had to work 30hrs, nope, I'd be fired. Asked around my team, and the entire team from the programmers to the manager worked many hours beyond what they were paid.
And that was the way of it. You weren't going to get paid for all your work, and you can either quit, be fired, or sue(which would cost more than the difference).

Tons of shit like that. Expected to work through the nights on releases, and not getting paid. Checks being late or simply held for no real reason.
And HR didn't care because we were contractors, and my employer didn't care because they underbid to get their contractors in, so they were making all the money they expected. Its just us that weren't paid.

 

[Bobular]

Things I have learned from running an anime store:

[ol]
[li]People are attracted to boobs, male or female, gay or strait, the series that has good boobs sell more. Seems kind of odd but is kind of understandable that straight girls seem more open to buying boob fan service things than straight guys, possibly due to being less worried about being called a pervert for having a manga with boobs on the front if you already have your own.[/li]
[li]People are curious about odd things. They are more likely to look at a series if it has an odd front cover, a strange art style or a stupid title. This is possibly the reason monster girl series sell quite well. Long titles also seem good.[/li]
[li]People are creatures of habit, they will happily stay with what they know rather than take a risk on something new. It can take a fair amount of help to get someone to start a new series rather than continuing the one they're already on[/li]
[li]Popular series are good to have in in small numbers, but most people will already have seen them and will therefore be less likely to buy them.[/li]
[li]People will buy the same thing over and over again if its in a different format. If they've seen a series in anime form then they may still want to buy it again in manga form or in light novel form.[/li]
[/ol]

 

[Thaluikhain]

1) I always say "good morning, human resources, Ben Speaking" when I answer the phone.

Do you do that when not at work? I've managed to avoid that sort of thing myself, but I've caught myself about to follow the script I have to use.

 

[sanquin]

I work in a small restaurant in the Netherlands, basically doing a little bit of everything. We have several "jobs". 1: Dishwasher. 2: Cooking at the gas burners. (the "warm" side) 3: Preparing the plates, refrigerated stuff and sandwiches (the "cold" side) 4: Preparing ingredients and baking cakes and the like. And 5, which can be done by one or multiple people depending on how busy it is and how many people we have: Manning the register, preparing drinks, cleaning tables, and taking orders. Serving what has been prepared is done by whomever has the time, usually the people in the kitchen. And I've done all of them.

Here's some things I noticed:
1: Customers are VERY hesitant to return food if it's not to their satisfaction. Usually they'll still eat it and tell the person at
the register what was wrong afterwards even though we always tell them they should tell us right away so we can remake the dish. At which point we can't remake or refund any more.
2: People that haven't been to our restaurant before, if ordering tea, will almost always ask for just "tea", even though we have like 10 different flavors which are detailed in our menu. To which of course I will always point them to our menu to pick one.
3: People apparently don't understand that when we have like 4~6 orders at once coming in, it will likely take a bit longer for their order to be prepared and served. Even when we tell them we're manning the kitchen with only 2 people for instance. And even though our restaurant generally already serves food out faster than most other restaurants I've been to.
4: Gossip...god the gossip. There's gossip about most of the regulars, and whenever a new person is a bit out of the ordinary the talking behind their backs starts pretty much right away in the kitchen. It's mostly positive gossip, but still...there's so much of it. xD
5: Friendly regulars definitely get treated better. Maybe they get a slightly larger meal, or extra care is taken to prepare their food, or stuff like that.

Some advice:
Not sure if this applies to all restaurants, but it does to the ones I've been to, and definitely the one I work at. Firstly don't clean your table yourself. It means the counter or whatever place you put the dirty plates and such on will get cluttered which looks messy. (unless there's a designated area of course.) Also, at least where I work, we can easily determine which tables need to be cleaned by the stuff still standing on it. It's a lot harder to keep track when there's no dirty dishes on them. Secondly, if you leave your plates at the table don't stack them yourself. People cleaning tables generally have their own preferred way of stacking stuff on their trays. And lastly, don't try to order at the counter. Go to a table and wait for someone to come to you. Keeps things more organized for the ones taking orders.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

When I used to work at Home Hardware every once in a while we'd get a customer who'd wander in 5 minutes before closing and wander around aimlessly looking at stuff and of course we couldn't close until all the customers were out of the store.

 

[maninahat]

When I used to work at Home Hardware every once in a while we'd get a customer who'd wander in 5 minutes before closing and wander around aimlessly looking at stuff and of course we couldn't close until all the customers were out of the store.

I used to work in restaurants and the worst people were the ones that came in 5 minutes before the kitchen is about to close.

Since then, I've learnt never to go to a restaurant as late as 9:00 or 9:30, just in case I piss off an entire kitchen.

 

[Vanilla ISIS]

Always pay attention to your peripheral vision.
People hardly ever pay attention to what's happening around them and will just walk right into you or hit you in the face because they have to do a ton of gesticulation when having a conversation in a narrow hallway (when I was working in a kitchen, one guy would just keep holding the knife at all times and have conversations while swinging his arms, I almost got a giant scar on my face because of that fuck).

 

[Souplex]

I'm currently a political canvasser.
I've learned that people don't read instructions, (And so need to be walked through forms, multiple times) and half of people in large apartment buildings will just buzz you in without asking who you are.

 

[Silent Protagonist]

I work in construction as an engineer and drafter for a contractor. An engineer usually gives us a very simple and symbolic design of what they want, and I convert that into a 3D model that ensures everything will actually fit and in a manner that will function correctly. A big part of my job is acting as the middleman/translator between the engineer(s) who designed the building and the crews that need to actually build it.

Based on my experience, the guys in the field with nothing but a GED are usually smarter than the engineers. This certainly isn't always the case, but with the number of really dumb engineers I have encountered it is a miracle that building and bridge collapses aren't more frequent. This also speaks to how overwhelmingly intelligent some of the people doing jobs society generally thinks of as menial are.

Bonus quirk:A lot of the terminology for plumbing and piping is weirdly and often nonsensically sexual in nature, to the point many people new to the industry think their coworkers are trying to trick them into saying something embarrassing to someone important. I don't know why under 12" lengths of threaded pipe are called "nipples". It seems like "cocks" would make more sense, but that refers to a type of valve.

 

[Zykon TheLich_v1legacy]

I work in a university halls of residence, making sure all the little chumps don't accidentally burn the place down making toast.
They are mostly at least semi-intelligent, but sometimes I wonder if half of them have been spoon fed by their mother until being dropped off to us.
I get that society and technology move on and the things you need to learn to succeed in society change, but I feel that as a general rule you should understand that things like radiators and ovens need to be turned on before they work.
The reason your room smells bad is because you have several weeks worth of half eaten meals lying about the place.
There are flies in your kitchen because you haven't taken out the rubbish for a month you fucking idiot.
No, we will not pay for your taxi to the doctors because you have a nosebleed, I don't care if it's "not your fault"
No it is not our responsibility to make sure you get home without falling over you drunk ass moron, that is not what "duty of care" means.
No, you cannot keep ducks in your shower.
Let me guess, you cut yourself stoning an avocado?

Dicks. Dicks drawn everywhere.

Basically I babysit a bunch of theoretical adults.

 

[BreakfastMan]

Nobody knows how to make websites that aren't a pain and a half to write test automation for.

 

[Palindromemordnilap_v1legacy]

I'm an archaeologist, and some manner of high visibility vest or jacket will make you invisible better than any sci-fi potion or magic spell. Seriously, people either blank you out or assume that you're some kind of official and have every right to be where you are doing what you are doing. A hard hat is optional, but can help.

Oh and please stop asking us if we've found any dinosaurs. We don't go nearly that deep and you are never the first person to try that joke

 

[Silent Protagonist]

I'm an archaeologist, and some manner of high visibility vest or jacket will make you invisible better than any sci-fi potion or magic spell. Seriously, people either blank you out or assume that you're some kind of official and have every right to be where you are doing what you are doing. A hard hat is optional, but can help.

I can second the safety vest and hard hat thing. It's even funnier when you keep in mind those vests are specifically designed to make the person wearing them MORE visible. The reflective vests also confuse the hell out of robots, so keep that in mind in the event of stock apocalypse scenario #404C "Robot Uprising"