Surprise me with secrets about your jobs or past companies

I work in retail and due to the recession, it's easier just to shoplift stuff than it is to go to the register at our store. We have one person working in each department, the only camera is on the register, the "loss prevention dept" is down to one person and she's just part time. Half the workers know nothing about shoplifter techniques. Thankfully I hate all the clothes we sell.

I work in insurance - which is just as bad as all movies advertise. People get the biggest awards for avoiding paying claims. And then of course you're too risky to be renewed after you try to make a failed claim.

I find the more you gravitate towards marine related insurance, you end up brushing up against all kinds of alcoholics. I don't mean happy hour fun, which is blatantly bad enough, but people who show up at the office still drunk, in their boxers and needing their admin (she's vintage) to dress them and send them home. Alcohol leads to other problems, such as wild stories of indiscretion.

Originally Posted by fwiffo

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I find the more you gravitate towards marine related insurance, you end up brushing up against all kinds of alcoholics. I don't mean happy hour fun, which is blatantly bad enough, but people who show up at the office still drunk, in their boxers and needing their admin (she's vintage) to dress them and send them home. Alcohol leads to other problems, such as wild stories of indiscretion.
That's awesome, sign me up! Is this like pleasure-boat marine insurance, or like ocean-going steamships?

Originally Posted by globetrotter

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when I was 18 I worked on a bakery on a communal farm in israel. this was one of the biggest bakeries in israel, a big factory. anyway, there were also guys who worked farming. one of my friends, a nice guy but a little slow, got his finger cought in some machinary on the farm, really mangled, so they put him in the bakery for a week or so, with a big bandage on his finger.

one of the jobs that had to be done was if dough spilled over from one of the conveyor belts, we had to scoop it up and throw it back on the line. so one night that happened, and we hussle for 5 minutes or so to get dough back where it is supposed to be. then he shows me his finger, and his bandage is missing. we thought about it and decided to just wait and see.

a few days latter, the head of the bakery comes up to us in the dinning room, carrying a loaf of bread. he says to my friend "you're the one with the mashed finger?" and when my friend says yes, he wacks him in the head with this loaf of bread and shows him the bloody bandage inbedded in the bread. a customer had found it and it had made its way back.



I have an incredibly similar story, which I posted once before:

One time working in a restaurant I was making around 50 lbs of Italian sausages. At one point I was mixing everything up with my hands and then feeding the meat into the grinder and straight into the sausage casings. My fingers were so cold that they lost feeling. Unfortunately, I also forgot that I had cut my finger earlier in the day and it was bleeding a lot so I had wrapped my finger up in some gauze and one of those finger condoms.

I finished up the last of the 50lbs, washed down the grinder and then went to wash my hands. It was at that point that I realized that the gauze and finger condom were no longer on my finger.

I spent a few weeks awaiting a call to the boss's office but I never heard about it again.

I use to work for customer service in the tax dept at Morgan Stanley. Many of the people I worked with that are supposed to be aiding clients, brokers and CSAs knew absolutely nothing about the market or finance in general. We would have people quoting the dow in dollars and cents. Also, I'd say a good portion of their brokers and CSAs are also totally clueless. The brokers would often call customer service and ask tax related questions or ask for financial advice in some cases. By tax related questions I mean asking what would happen if someone took an early withdraw from their IRA. After working there I would never put any money with them - at least not at any old local branch. Their check/debit card system is a total nightmare as well.

Some of the clients were even worse. It was astonishing how stupid some people were, even people with a substantial amount of money. I don't know if they inherited it or not, but I would literally leave there everyday amazed at what I heard.

This is not that terrible, but...

as a kid I used to wait tables and work banquets at a pretty decent country club. Nothing spectacular but I'd say it was a solid mid-range club, 27 holes of golf, a nice place. A lot of people would do their weddings there. We'd lay out a huge table full of little cheese bites, grapes, and cut up melons, strawberries, etc. Guests would theoretically spear these things with toothpicks but we all know how people are. At the end of every night, we'd pick up all the picked-over, uneaten cheese pieces, fruits, and such and sort them in to ziplocs to put out the next night, or the next week, etc. The fruits usually wouldn't last long, but probability dictates there were cheese cubes that must have seen 6 or 8 different weddings.

Also, I very briefly bounced at a strip club. Not nearly so fun or exciting as it sounds. It was actually depressing and terrifying. The girls were all pretty messed up and the place was in a neighborhood easily reached from the docks, so you'd have all these really hardass dudes on shore leave from cargo ships coming in. I am reasonably big but not really a hardened fighter. All I'd do was sit there all night waiting for one of them to get drunk and fresh with a girl and then invite a physical confrontation. There was an exit door into the parking lot, only opened from the inside. The rule was, for liability or something I guess, that you had help from the other bouncers getting a guy to the door and out of it, and one guy just manned the door, opening it and pulling it shut. If you ended up in the parking lot for some reason (like if the guy dragged you out), you were on your own. I lived in constant fear of that. Quit after like 5 shifts.

Originally Posted by Douglas

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. I am reasonably big but not really a hardened fighter. All I'd do was sit there all night waiting for one of them to get drunk and fresh with a girl and then invite a physical confrontation. There was an exit door into the parking lot, only opened from the inside. The rule was, for liability or something I guess, that you had help from the other bouncers getting a guy to the door and out of it, and one guy just manned the door, opening it and pulling it shut. If you ended up in the parking lot for some reason (like if the guy dragged you out), you were on your own. I lived in constant fear of that. Quit after like 5 shifts.

I find this funny - at one point, a long long time ago, somebody told me to always be really careful of the bouncers in strip clubs. that they were really good at working together and that they watched out for each other, so even if you were toughter than one of them, the group would get you. I've always condidered this gospel.

I've never been to a stripclub. I think Douglas and Globetrotter should take me to one. Then we can get in a fight w/ some bouncers.

Originally Posted by kwilkinson

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I've never been to a stripclub. I think Douglas and Globetrotter should take me to one. Then we can get in a fight w/ some bouncers.

Strip clubs are highly over rated. Only go to the high end ones and only then if someone else is paying.

Originally Posted by Piobaire

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Strip clubs are highly over rated. Only go to the high end ones and only then if someone else is paying.
That's why I invited ballers like Douglas and Globe, duh. You're welcome to come too. Just tell your wife it's bonding time with the little bro.

Originally Posted by kwilkinson

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That's why I invited ballers like Douglas and Globe, duh. You're welcome to come too.

Only if you have me covered.

I worked at a quick-stop oil change place during a summer in college. Everybody in that place was constantly drunk, fucked up on meth, or otherwise unable to do the job properly. They'd strip drain plugs with air tools, piss in the coolant tank instead of adding anti-freeze, put in the wrong kind of oil, or not put any oil in at all. Do not take your car to be serviced at one of these places.

On another note, two summers later I worked at a dealership doing similar service. The service wasn't much better, but at least the employees were on coke instead of meth. You shouldn't take your car to be serviced at one of these places either.

Originally Posted by Piobaire

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Only if you have me covered.

$9 an hour son. I'll get you a room at the Elysian.

Customer service departments have caller I.D. and they know who you are. They know that you call back and speak to different people and lie and make **** up to get discounts. Your file pops up every time you call. Oh, and customer service sits in a room and after you get off the phone, they talk about you when they're on break.

I used to work for UPS. Remember those Samsonite commercials where the gorilla throws your suitcases around once they go behind the door? What happens to your package at UPS is worse. Like, 10 times worse...

"Fragile" = going for distance...

It was always amazing too, that, at every holiday involving candy, a box or two would just spill open...

My first job was at Blockbuster in high school, and I devised a way to steal movies and video games. I won't get into details, but the chances of getting caught were basically non-existant. I was surprised that such a big business lacked the checks and balances that would prevent a 14 year old punk employee from stealing. I never stole anything until our entire staff got screwed out of a scheduled raise. A friend and I made good bank selling video game releases for half of the sticker price at school.