Job secrets~

[Mooshi]

Why not, it's my "Friday"

 

What are some of the behind the scenes things that involves your job that the general public isn't aware of? Don't post stuff that is legitimately insider info that could cost employment. More like, interesting things the public probably had no idea of.

 

To get started, I work with a major US Cellular company so phones ect are kind of my thing. Here is something you probably didn't know that could possibly help you (and an agent) in the future to avoid a mess! You know those series 3 watches from Apple? Yeah, don't get those if you intend to transfer it (the line) to someone else -- they don't transfer at all. You have to disconnect the line, add a new one and pay an activation fee for it. Why? Numbershare. It ties up the system and makes an agent's day miserable dealing with that.

 

Like literally last customer I dealt with added an Apple watch to her account yesterday and wanted to transfer her iPhone + watch to another account. Had to get tech involved because of it since even trying to disconnect the line threw up errors. Had she waited to do anything major AFTER transferring, everything would have been be A-Okay!

 

Friendly advice in general, never do upgrades ect if you intend to take over a phone line in your name or transfer it to someone else. Do transfer first and then everything else after. It will make your life easier and mine.

[Volbet]

Well, there's nothing really interesting happening behind the scenes at my current job, but I have had a few different jobs in the past.

 

For example, while this might be different from country to country, there's no law or agreement that allows movie theaters to take home brought food and drink away from patrons. While they might not like it there's not really anything they can do about it.

 

There's also a surprising amount of therapy involved in working in a customer care call center.

Not for the employees, but for the customers. It isn't rare that people will call random customer service numbers just talk to someone about whatever ills them in their day-to-day life.

[Andreas Lilja]

Security:

 

Nothing is happening = waste of money. 

Something happens = client begs that you to fix it. 

[davrosG5]

I used to work at a nuclear power station.

When they did nuclear emergency drills you could be given Smarties. The sweets/candy were to substitute for Iodine tablets that you would have to take in the the event of the real deal because the real tablets tended to make people gag.

 

Also, for much the same reason that the latest hard drives are filled with Helium, the generators operated in a hydrogen atmosphere to reduce the drag meaning that the entire turbine hall had to have intrinsically safe equipment in it (so that a static or other electrical discharge couldn't happen).

 

And finally for the power station, when they were building the site they cocked up the on-site fire station - the doors were too low for the fire engine to get through them so they had to build a second fire station with the correct height doors (the original station was turned into a storage facility).

[dionkoffie]

I worked at a food delivery company. I was responsible for delivering the food to the customers by car. Some of the food had hairs or cig trash in it because my boss was always smoking while cooking.

 

In return, I broke 4th gear in one of the delivery cars and no-one noticed. I also did some J-turn and clutch drops in it. 

 

I also worked in a datacenter. I once accidentally unplugged a full rack of EA gameservers. I checked the EA server statistics page and noticed a couple servers were down. 

[AshleyAshes]

11 hours ago, Volbet said:

Well, there's nothing really interesting happening behind the scenes at my current job, but I have had a few different jobs in the past.

 

For example, while this might be different from country to country, there's no law or agreement that allows movie theaters to take home brought food and drink away from patrons. While they might not like it there's not really anything they can do about it.

Well, I mean, there are effectively TRESSPASSING laws.  A cinema can decide to eject anyone they want and at worse be obligated to do nothing more than refund your ticket price.

That all said, you'd also need your guest to leave PEACEFULLY.  If the customer refuses you now have a scene in your halls or possibly in the auditorium itself.  The cost there is already worse than any lost concessions.  Then there's the matter of who does this.  Going to have your minimum wage staff do it?  If any of them get injured you could potentially be sued by the employee.  This is why even convenience store staff are explicitly instructed to NOT resist and just hand over the money when robbed, cause the potential losses in an employee being harmed or killed is a LOT more expensive than a register full of cash.  Gonna call the cops?  "Attention all patrons, this screening of Black Panther will be delayed for 25mins while we await the police to arrive to remove someone and their outside bag of Twizzlers."  You'll have more refund demands than the total cost of the lost concessions and deal with potential media coverage.

 

So yeah, a theatre can REMOVE a patron, sure, but in terms of cost/benefit, they'd be smart to have a really, really, GOOD reason and not someone's M&Ms bought at WalMart.

[AshleyAshes]

So, I work in visual effect for TV and film and lemme tell you this: Most VFX are not done once they 'look great'.  They are done once you've reached the deadline and are out of time to put more effort into it or you have spend as much money as the client is willing to spend on that shot.  Often the 'time' and 'money' factor are closely intertwined.  You can call movies and TV art and they can be, for sure, but remember, they are produced in a capitalist system and everyone is trying to make their dollar or they'll stop trying at all.

[Rappalores]

I used to work at a Supermarket and my boss (who just managed the store and did not pay for the goods in advance on his own) and his wife, their daughters and the boyfriends filled their shopping carts brimful and went out the backdoor without paying anything, several times every week.

 

 

[Drak3]

Areas with more earthquakes have regulations on grid ceilings that actually makenit far more likely that that ceiling will drop on your head.

 

Some buildings can have soffits and curtain walls that hold themselves up with nothing more than paper and dust that's been glued into panels. This is rare.

 

If there are thin soffits in a building, and they look like a layout for rooms, they were once rooms. The owner or builder didn't want to pay to redo the ceilings.

 

Union construction workers, especially electricians, have worse work ethic and do a lower quality job than non union counterparts.

 

Regulations on framing, HVAC, electrical, etc. don't matter. What the inspector says does.

 

Metal studs are a better framing material than wood. Only reason they aren't used in houses is because residential plumbers and electricians couldn't drill hiles in them as easily without buying new tools. Metal studs have holes in them already.

 

Being called a residential guy is an insult. For good reason.

[Volbet]

30 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

Well, I mean, there are effectively TRESSPASSING laws.  A cinema can decide to eject anyone they want and at worse be obligated to do nothing more than refund your ticket price.

That all said, you'd also need your guest to leave PEACEFULLY.  If the customer refuses you now have a scene in your halls or possibly in the auditorium itself.  The cost there is already worse than any lost concessions.  Then there's the matter of who does this.  Going to have your minimum wage staff do it?  If any of them get injured you could potentially be sued by the employee.  This is why even convenience store staff are explicitly instructed to NOT resist and just hand over the money when robbed, cause the potential losses in an employee being harmed or killed is a LOT more expensive than a register full of cash.  Gonna call the cops?  "Attention all patrons, this screening of Black Panther will be delayed for 25mins while we await the police to arrive to remove someone and their outside bag of Twizzlers."  You'll have more refund demands than the total cost of the lost concessions and deal with potential media coverage.

 

So yeah, a theatre can REMOVE a patron, sure, but in terms of cost/benefit, they'd be smart to have a really, really, GOOD reason and not someone's M&Ms bought at WalMart.

As I said, it depends on the laws of the land.

Where I live, no, removing a patron for bringing in food and drink is not legal. 

 

Such an agreement, as pertaining to bringing foreign snack to a showing, can't be made before hand via writing on the ticket, in the cinema itself or on the booking website. Meaning you aren't tresspassing by bringing your own Mars bar. 

 

And even if, then the movie theater would have to prove that the home brought goods were meant for consumption in the movie theater and not for a post-show pick-me-up. 

[HarryNyquist]

15 hours ago, Raskolnikov said:

Security:

 

Nothing is happening = waste of money. 

Something happens = client begs that you to fix it. 

This hurts me physically.

 

Under our laws in the US, phones are considered secure for transmitting Personal Healthcare Information and Personally Identifiable Information, provided the individual's identity is (pathetically) verified. This is also why faxes are so common in the medical industry, because faxes use phone lines, and are considered secure.

 

Consider how easy it is to tap a phone line.

 

 

[WhatTheHell]

4 hours ago, AshleyAshes said:

If the customer refuses you now have a scene in your halls or possibly in the auditorium itself.  The cost there is already worse than any lost concessions.  Then there's the matter of who does this.  Going to have your minimum wage staff do it?  If any of them get injured you could potentially be sued by the employee.

Regulations and laws don't always matter especially when said regulation is in 'force' such as a policy for not being allowed to bring food into a cinema screening, now everything's happy your nights going well, you have a policy to enforce you notice someone is breaking said policy, only he's a clear foot and a half taller than you and generally looks like someone you don't want to deal with,

 

Probably easier to just let him in.

[AresKrieger]

In order to fix an issue on medical equipment the government will not allow you to change it without paying them a large amount of money, this in turn encourages all medical equipment companies to bundle issues into a pool and make a bulk change months or perhaps even years later rather than fixing problems as they arise, again this is in medical equipment, very important medical equipment.

 

ESD is irrelevant, it is indeed highly regulated and thus strictly followed in the medical industry but realistically you could work on motherboards without ground so long as you aren't stupidly doing it on carpeting with socks on or similar nonsense.

 

Buying medical equipment in the US through a US company is more expensive than buying it abroad despite increased costs due to shipping and the necessity to follow international and said countries standards, it is unclear to me why this is but up to 50% price differences are a reality, granted it varies but it is still more or at least as expensive domestically.

[Mooshi]

Gonna share some call center secrets~

 

That supervisor you asked for? It's probably another agent because the actual supervisor will do anything possible to avoid speaking with you and would have us de-escalate situations. Most of the times, the customer will calm down even if they were told the exact same thing because another voice said it.

 

Ifyou were super rude, you would be transferred to tech support to avoid you killing our stats with a failed survey.

 

Magic fix it buttons don't work unfortunately. Although, if you were chill I would always give courtesy credits to lower your bill.