Every job has its ins and outs, and dark secrets, that are only known to the people who work there. But we humans are a curious lot. We want to know these secrets, even if there's no practical reason to know them.
Fortunately, the minds of Reddit have come together once again, this time to tell us about job secrets that most of us probably have no clue about.
"People don't realize how much work goes into making boxes or binders for products. Huge machines are used, tens of thousands are made in the matter of days. I have made the same binder about 70,000 times roughly in the 6 months since I started on the job."
"Public defender.
I don’t do this because it’s the only job I could get. I do it because I’m passionately invested in making sure poor people have access to the courts and because without us, there would be absolutely nothing between them and the awesome power of the government. The vast majority of us are there for the same reason.
The perception that we’re not as good as private attorneys is just wrong."
"I'm a supervisor at a home health company. I may actually have the easiest job in the entire world and I get paid decently for it too. Because of Medicare/Medicaid regulations the company has to send a supervisor out to all the homes our employees go to so we can make sure things are going well and the client is being taken care of well. My time is spent either driving to someone's home and asking them maybe 15 questions about their care or sitting in the office doing paperwork about those questions. That's it. That's all I do."
"Bridge carpenter.
When you drive by 6 people standing around one guy working, the group is usually comprised of inspectors, superintendents, subs, engineers, and foremen all standing around a laborer to talk. You can differentiate by the hardhats and how clean they are.
If you want to get upset at someone for your commute being slowed, don't pick the dirty guys."
"Software developer here. Only a minority of companies take data security seriously enough to prevent leaks. For every publicly announced leak, there are 20 that were swept under the rug. Proper security requires that the whole structure, from the top down, has an understanding of the issues. It's not just down to the techies, it's down to their managers, and their manager's managers."
"Worked at an automotive assembly plant. Every 60 seconds the assembly line is shut down, the plant is losing $10,000. Missing parts, incorrectly sequenced material(a red bumper shows up next in line when it’s a blue car in bumper install), broken lift assist devices, 1 person running off the line to bathroom(it’s happened), chains breaking etc.. could all shut down the line."
"The blank urine used in tox labs is the analysts own urine. Every dept in my lab has someone who's straightedge and pees in a cup for the rest of the dept to use. We don't really talk about it though."
"If you ever fall off a ship/ferry at sea and were lucky enough to be spotted - don't try to swim your way to safety. The more you try to swim, the lesser the chances of survival. Just try to keep afloat and conserve energy (and body heat) while the rescue team does what they're supposed to."
"I’m a nanny and most people think the kids are what bothers me the most or what would lead me to quit. It’s never the kids, always the [messed] up parents. People with too much money who don’t intend on raising their own kids are far too prevalent."
"I worked in vet med for a while. People always have this terrible idea of "the back" where your animal is taken away for tests, vaccines whatever. It's the best! Your animal will be paraded around, loved on, kissed, given love, etc. Same if they go for surgery. My favorite thing was singing to the animals as they went to sleep. We love animals, we aren't in it for the money."
"I’m the spray tech at a golf course. We use green dye on our putting greens.
The grass at Augusta national is sprayed green as well; any grass you see on camera has been sprayed green."
"I work with recycling. I can assure you that recycling is WAY more dangerous than it looks like. People throw away loose razor blades, glass (sometimes even whole knives).
There's also the problem with human excrement, if you're cut and get an infection from human fecal meter, you're [in trouble]."
"Most fossils in museums are plastic replicas. Not always the whole thing, but any full dinosaur you see more than likely has at least some plastic components.
There's only a handful of businesses in the world that make the replicas and, at least in the US, they're pretty small operations."
"That as a trucker, that space I left in front of me is so I don’t kill anybody, NOT your personal invitation to jump in front of my bumper because you forgot your exit or whatever reason. So many want to get in front of us and slow down and park in front of my bumper."
"I work at a large biotech/pharmaceutical manufacturing company. The drugs you take or buy from your local pharmacy are so insanely and meticulously regulated & inspected at every step of the journey - from petri dish to pharmacy shelf, that you could take a pill from a bottle and it can be traced back to the exact room it was made in, the exact equipment that was used, who was responsible for each step, and the time it was made down to the very second."
"Ex-security guard here.
We're not there to protect you. We're there to observe and report. Don't assume that just because whatever building you're working in has security that you're safe. Especially if security is of the unarmed variety."
"Anaesthetics- we only ask about your illicit drug use so we don’t kill you when we give you a general anesthetic and that you have appropriate pain relief.
You’ll have a tolerance that we need to counter by giving you a variety of drugs and more of them.
No judgment from us on your choices - just want to actually take care of your properly."
"Laser printers basically shoot lasers at a rolled-up Polaroid, magnetize tiny bits of chopped up crayons onto a belt in that pattern, blow it all onto a sheet of paper with electricity at an opposite voltage, and then melt it at a temperature hot enough to bake a chicken for a fraction of a second before handing the results to you."
"I work in organ donation.
The general public doesn’t understand literally any of it.
One notable thing is that when you register to be an organ donor, it’s a legally binding declaration about your wishes after death. It is akin to a will under gift law."
"The vast majority of content on most business websites is not intended to be read by a human, it's purely there to look interesting to Google so you can be pointed to the only thing that matters on the website: the Contact Us form. Which means that some truly sad people spend their lives writing hundreds of pages of garbage they don't even want to be read."
