39 People Reveal Interesting Facts (And Secrets) From Their Professions
By Brian Gates
1. Meteorologist:
The 5-day or 7-day or longer forecasts are completely useless and only made because people would get upset if we didn’t. You could probably do just about as good yourself on anything more than 48 hours away just by reasonable guessing based on the time of year.
– Anonymous
2. I’m a Professor at a large university.
Most days I don’t feel like an expert at all.
– ewblack
3. Comedy writer:
It takes a team of people to make your favorite people look brilliant.
– Anonymous
4. Nurse here: In nursing homes we do every disgusting thing (Vaginal creams? yep. Suppositories? yep. Putting your penis in a urinal and then holding it there so you can pee? yep), to the human body on a regular basis, and we rarely get thanked for it, so please be nice.
Also a little added extra from my years as a hotel front desk agent: We can see the titles of ALL the porn you watch and how long you did. So if you come down to the front desk and play it like it was a mistake, I will know that you watched “Fuck my horny wife” for 47 minutes, and it will be very awkward.
– amelco
5. Visual effect artist:
Actors are as modified in movies as they are in magazines. Skin correction, awkward smile correction, one eye is more closed than another one in a frame, we correct that, smaller waist, longer legs, bigger arms, six pack… there is a lot of fake involved
6. Sushi chef:
Ahi Tuna is actually just Yellowfin tuna. It’s the lowest quality sushi grade tuna you can get. People come in all the time and ask if we have Ahi, then scoff when I say that we carry Big Eye and Blue fin which is the highest grade you can get.
7. Disability insurance:
We hire private investigators to videotape people and hunt around for them online all the damn time if they’re suspected of fraud. I can’t count the number of videos I’ve seen of people dancing at nightclubs and posting on Meetup begging for a x-country ski partner while they’re claiming they’re in too much pain to do their desk jobs and collecting fat disability checks.
I have no pity, either. People like that make it much harder for people with actual problems to get the benefits they require to get better, which is heartbreaking.
– Anonymous
8. Meat processor:
Many of the people who work in the industry are convicted felons who don’t give a shit about food safety processes. One USDA agent can not monitor the actions of 250 people. We deal with listeria on a daily basis and sometimes it gets so out of hand that we have to shut down lines. The meat done that day is still sent out.
– Anonymous
9. Computer programmer:
We were never actually trained on how to make your printer work.
– werak
10. Casino Security:
If you’re ever in a casino, and see a chair tipped over against a wall, or covered in a garbage bag, don’t sit in it. Odds are some has either shit, pissed, or thrown up on themselves. Why didn’t they get up? The next slot spin is going to be a winner!
– Clerk57
11. Firefighter:
People actually die so quick from one breath of super heated air that they can remain standing up.
– ZappaZoo
12. As a structural engineer:
An engineer design buildings and structures with precise calculations and computer simulations of behavior during various combinations of wind, seismic, flood, temperature, and vibration loads using mathematical equations and empirical relationships.
The engineer uses the sum of structural engineering knowledge for the past millennium, at least nine years of study and rigorous examinations to predict the worst outcomes and deduce the best design. We use multiple layers of fail-safes in our calculations from approximations by hand-calculations to refinement with finite element analysis, from elastic theory to plastic theory, with safety factors and multiple redundancies to prevent progressive collapse.
We accurately model an entire city at reduced scale for wind tunnel testing and use ultrasonic testing for welds at connections…but the construction worker straight out of high school puts it all together as cheaply and quickly as humanly possible, often disregarding signed and sealed design drawings for their own improvised “field fixes”.
– Anonymous
13. IT Consulting firms like Accenture and Deloitte hire people who have absolutely no idea what they’re doing and throw them from task to task as if they’re all interchangeable. The dude managing your $5 million data migration probably doesn’t know how a database works, and the Indian programmers he’s managing may have never seen your DBMS before. You pay $150 an hour for the manager and $50 an hour for the programmers. They make a fraction of that and deserve less. You could hire freelancers who would do the work quicker, cheaper and better, but you don’t because then you wouldn’t get to have a smiling sales executive take you out to dinner twice a week with your own money.
– Anonymous
14. Lawyer:
Juries have a right (a subsequent comment argues this is a power, not a right) to render a non-guilty verdict even in the face of overwhelming evidence of guilt. This is called Jury Nullification.
Nowadays, this is supposed to be a huge secret (although as noted in comments below, it is a frequent topic on law related tv shows). Defense attorneys are not even allowed to inform a jury that this possibility exists. Many jury instructions will hide this fact, suggesting that juries are required to vote guilty if the prosecutor’s burden has been met. I originally posted this here because I find it strange that the legal system goes to such lengths to hide this option from juries.
If you are a jury member for an individual that has been charged with a victimless crime (or any crime I guess), such as non-violent drug possession, you can simply refuse to vote guilty despite all evidence of guilt if you feel it would be unjust to apply the law. If you plan on doing this, don’t mention it during jury selection or the DA will strike you from the jury.
15. As an infantryman:
Blowing up stuff, shooting machine guns, and being outside all of the time gets really old, really fast. Also, once you’ve been around weapons so much that you constantly stink of CLP and the cracks in the calluses on your hands are stained black with residue from exhaust gas and carbon, gun nuts strike you as pathetic losers.
As a chinese linguist:
Chinese isn’t that hard to learn, especially due to the simple grammar and lack of conjugation. Also, beer increases your language absorbtion rate.
– Anonymous
16. I worked at a children’s hospital. When a child dies, the bodies are transported to the morgue in stretchers disguised as what appears to be tall, covered mobile linen racks. This is done in order to not distress parents of other patients. If the person moving the rack hands are uncovered, it’s actual bed linens. However, if they are wearing latex gloves… well, y’know.
17. Guest services at a ski resort:
Those lift operators you are trusting with your very lives multiple times a day while skiing? Yeah, they’re stoned off their asses 24/7.
18. The Frozen Yogurt where I work at is not fat free nor organic as we are made to say.
The Yogurt culture (a small cup of actual yogurt) used to make the 4 Gallons of the mixture IS organic. However, the milk, yogurt base, and flavoring used to make what is essentially 95% of the served product is not.
In a way, the Yogurt IS organic and fat free , what you’re eating is not.
– Anonymous
19. I work at a college dining hall. The 4-cheese calzones really contain only 3 types of cheeses. A pinch of mozzarella gets sprinkled on the top and that counts as the fourth cheese.
20. Debt collector:
We can settle for pretty much anything.
– Anonymous
21. Professional musician:
Except in rare cases of absolute genius, “talent” doesn’t have much to do with success in the real world – you become a great musician the same way you become a great programmer or a great writer: by putting in a lot of hours.
– splee-ah
22. Real estate:
Everything is negotiable – especially the fee.
– pen5club
23. Museum tour guide and education “interpreter” (doesn’t translate very well from French) here in Montreal.
Due to a series of incidents in the late 1980s and early 1990s, our union successfully petitioned the government of Quebec to allow all museum staff (working with the public in a non-security role) to carry licensed firearms. I carry an older model Browning Hi-Power 9mm and have had to draw my weapon three times in the last 8 months, though at only one time was I convinced I’d have to use it.
Oh, and only once was it a theft issue, the other times we were being threatened. This is the reality for museum tour guides, and, as far as I understand, university and CEGEP professors as well, though no one ever talks about it.
– Anonymous
24. Airline pilot:
Many of us make far less than you think we do. And I don’t mean the difference between $200k and $100k either. I mean qualifying for food stamps. We can also legally work 16 hours a day, so if the pilots for that 10 pm last-flight-out look tired, they are.
It’s actually a violation of federal law to disobey a crewmember’s instruction. We almost never enforce it because it wouldn’t be good customer service, but keep in mind that if you piss a flight attendant off enough, the cops might be meeting you on the ground.
The things that scare you are not the things that scare us. Turbulence at cruise altitude isn’t dangerous, we just try to avoid it because it’s irritating (It makes it hard to do our crosswords). If, however, you’re near the ground in Denver or some other windshear prone area and you feel the engines go full bore and the nose pitch way way up, be concerned, because we certainly are.
Lastly, don’t drink anything that comes out of the potable water tanks (e.g. coffee, tea, water from the sinks, etc.). They never clean them and there’s a reason airplane coffee tastes nasty. I’m pretty sure the mechanics have found Cthulhu in there once or twice.
25. I’m a male massage therapist. If you get a boner on my table and ask me to fix it, I’ll deliver a quick chop or three to your upper inner thigh. Your boner will reflexively disappear and your balls will try to hide inside your pelvis. Fixed.
– Anonymous
26. Environmental scientist:
Water from a municipal water source is just as or more sanitary than bottled water.
27. As a Zamboni Driver:
Yes, it is that fun to drive. And your Zamboni driver is probably high.
As a Lifeguard:
Every public pool is filled with every human bodily fluid. And your lifeguards are probably high.
As a Bartender:
When you go home after bar close, the real party begins. And your bartender is probably high.
28. Personal Trainer:
6-pack abs are the result of proper nutrition, not 45 minutes of ab work.
If you put most personal trainers in an empty studio with just some dumbbells and asked them to develop 5 days worth of programming, they’d be fucked. PT’s live on machines these days.
Everyone is capable of having an awesome body; you just have to want it badly enough.
– Anonymous
29. Nuclear Nonproliferation Analyst:
Radiation Monitors at ports of entry are better at detecting kitty litter and toilet seats than weaponized uranium.
30. Investment Banker:
We know exactly what the fuck we are doing. (Yes we knew the real estate bubble was gonna blow, but everyone was playing chicken trying to be the last one that leaves before the collapse.) And those “complicated, convoluted” derivatives that nobody understands, are actually very simple and easy to understand when they are explained correctly.
Tobacco industry:
It’s so fucking profitable you would be stunned. Ever wondered how they paid the fines the US slapped them with without so much as a hiccup? Oh and all the smuggled “fakes”….the original brand holder gets paid for that.
31. Karate Teacher:
I’ll never teach you the 5 point palm exploding heart technique because I don’t know it.
– Eustis
32. Advertising Copywriter.
There’s very little manipulation or psychology involved. 99% of the time its just dudes in a room yakking about funny shit and then writing it down. Then the account people retroactively justify to the client why it makes sense with a bunch of fancy science, but believe me, there is very little “THIS will trick them!!!” going on.
– Anonymous
33. Jeweler:
We get shit on all the time about blood diamonds. There have probably never been more than an actual handful of blood diamonds in the US. The vast majority got sold to the former Soviet bloc countries and the Middle East.
Yet no one talks about all the people who died to get you that oil for your car.
– Anonymous
34. Makeup Industry:
Most makeup actually ages women.
35. Marketing & PR:
Most of the magazine articles you read are influenced by the advertising dollars spent or the schmoozing by the PR pros.
36. Bartender (Wide experience, from high class cocktail lounges, to upscale wedding receptions, to sweaty dirty dance clubs):
1. I probably don’t like you. Remember that time that you had to babysit your drunk friends? How drunk people are kinda fun to watch if you’re sober for oh, about 30 minutes, and after that it’s hours and hours of shitshow? That’s my life. Every fucking day (well, weekends anyway). Babysitting 500 of you drunk retards.
2. There is NO correlation between a persons status/age/gender/anything and a) How nice they are as a drunk or b) how good of a tipper they are. I get a wrinkled dollar every day I open from the homeless guy I give a glass of water to, that’s a 100% tip, EVERY TIME. The big shot lawyer who runs up a $300 tab in a night buying drinks for college chicks? $20 if I’m lucky, you do the math. The worst drunks? “Older” clientele who think that, for some reason, their drunk shit doesn’t stink. You’re just as fucking annoying as the 21-year-olds, except they don’t give me this older, wiser, and holier than thou attitude when I cut them off.
3. 80% of the time I throw someone out, I knew from the moment I served their first drink that it was going to happen.
4. The later it gets in the night, the more and more I look for a reason to throw you out. There’s a line of people waiting to get in stretching for 3 blocks, I don’t really give a shit about the $1 you’ll tip me before throwing up in my bathroom. I want you out so the sober customers can come in and start having fun.
5. If you dress like a thug, talk like a thug, and act like a thug, then I’m going to treat you like a thug. I’ll probably help my bouncers throw you out in a rough and embarrassing way if you give me a reason. You’re not tough, you’re not hardcore, you’re the same drunk asshole as everyone else in here.
6. Tipping big up front is great, but only if it continues; otherwise it looks like you’re just trying to pay me off for a hook-up on cheap drinks later. Whatever level you’re going to tip at, do it consistently, and you’ll be served accordingly.
7. Stop looking down on my profession. I have multiple degrees, and a few of my fellow bartenders have their Doctorates. This is, despite our complaining, actually a fun job, and generally profitable.
– Anonymous
37. Mortician:
The anal cavity of corpses must be sewn shut or the corpse could fart during the funeral.
38. Vet tech. If it seems like your pet has spent an unusually long amount of time in “the back”, it might be because we think it’s extra cute, and are petting it/playing with it/taking it around for all the employees to fawn over.
39. Digital Marketing:
When you make posts about weird ads appearing (porno, guns, drugs, baby food) we know it is because of your own search history.
– Anonymous