# post obscure facts about your profession! **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [January 21, 2010, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-obscure-facts-about-your-profession/525859 "2010-01-21T16:51:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Audrey\_Levins](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/73ab20/32.png) [@Audrey\_Levins](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Audrey_Levins)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2010, 9:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-obscure-facts-about-your-profession/525859/21 "2010-01-24T09:21:26Z")
As a bartender I am not allowed to wear any kind of brand logo for any type of alcohol while I’m working. So the hats/shirts/buttons etc. that I am given by liquor reps is slightly amusing, because I can’t wear any of it behind the bar. The reason it isn’t allowed? I’m “promoting the sale of alcohol.” Yes, kids, that’s the actual reason given. I am also not allowed to serve a bottle of wine or a pitcher of beer to one person. If you really want one anyway, I will give you two glasses. You’re “waiting for a friend.” If you buy a bottle of wine–and this only applies to wine–you are allowed to leave with it. But only if it’s been uncorked. Everything else is licensed for “on premise only” consumption. So don’t leave with your beer, drunk dude. Yes, you, over there thinking you’re being all cool, sliding it in your coat pocket… 😃 ---
**Author:** ![HISSNLISSN](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ed8c4c/32.png) [@HISSNLISSN](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HISSNLISSN)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2010, 10:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-obscure-facts-about-your-profession/525859/22 "2010-01-24T10:09:22Z")
(Almost) every bit of uncredited text on the Internet is, in fact, written by a real person. Did I mention I’m looking for a new job? ---
**Author:** ![wolfman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/a8b319/32.png) [@wolfman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfman)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2010, 11:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-obscure-facts-about-your-profession/525859/23 "2010-01-24T11:31:20Z")
> [@Audrey\_Levins](#): > > Yes, kids, that’s the actual reason given. > > I am also not allowed to serve a bottle of wine or a pitcher of beer to one person. If you really want one anyway, I will give you two glasses. You’re “waiting for a friend.” > > 😃 One cool bartender I knew made up his own way around a rule like that. The rule said ‘no full pitchers’ So For regulars he would serve double half pitchers. Basically for the price of a pitcher he served half the pitcher when you sat down then when you were done with that he filled it up for the other half. Kept it from getting to room temperature and flat as well, and if he liked you each half was pretty generous. Although I’m not sure if reloading something that the customer has is kosher with the health department, but nobody really cares about crap like that. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2010, 11:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-obscure-facts-about-your-profession/525859/24 "2010-01-24T11:47:56Z")
Well, this might be common knowledge for all I know, but the President of the New York Society for Prevention of the Cruelty to Animals was asked to intervene on behalf of a young victim of heinous child abuse and neglect during the late 1800s. The story of little Mary Ellen made the front page of the New York Times in 1874, thus spawning the country’s (and possibly, the world’s) first child protective agency. That’s right, folks. Animal welfare predates child welfare. ---
**Author:** ![outlierrn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/outlierrn/32/3005_2.png) [@outlierrn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/outlierrn)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2010, 11:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-obscure-facts-about-your-profession/525859/25 "2010-01-24T11:57:31Z")
Although the hands and the feet have fairly obvious differences, they also have a lot a structual similarities. Sooo, in pediatrics, primarily kids that aren’t walking yet, we often use the veins on the feet for IV’s and blood draws. ---
**Author:** ![Student\_Driver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3da27b/32.png) [@Student\_Driver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Student_Driver)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2010, 12:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-obscure-facts-about-your-profession/525859/26 "2010-01-24T12:58:05Z")
> [@voguevixen](#): > > Seriously though. I’m a pharmacy technician and even though I’m in charge of filling drug orders and knowing what drugs are for what I’m not legally allowed to say so: you have to be a pharmacist to do that. Example: If someone says “where is the ibuprofen” I can say “aisle seven” but if they say “What is the difference between 200mg and 400mg?” I am literally not allowed, by law, to say “The 400mg is twice as strong.” (BTW - 200mg is an over the counter strength, but 400 is a PRESCRIPTION strength. I once said AT WORK “wow my arm really hurts from my H1N1 shot…can I take anything?” The pharmacist on duty said “You can take two 200mg ibuprofen.” I said “Why not one 400mg?” and he said “You need a prescription for that.”) For God’s sake, I wish more people would understand this. It might vary from state to state, but where I’m at, _any_ employee of a pharmacy who is not a pharmacist is restricted like this, and can’t talk about anything medical at all. Customers get incredibly angry, thinking I’m being coy or something by “refusing” to give product recommendations, etc. Frankly, I get disturbed at the number of customers who are willing to put themselves or others at risk by taking the advice of some guy stocking shelves at a big-box retailer. It also doesn’t help that none of the non-pharmacy employees or managers in this store understand the concept, dragging customers to me to get advice on how much Tylenol someone’s feverish baby can take or to get a diagnosis on infected wounds. Getting into arguments with store management in front of customers when they demand that I illegally give medical advice is bad. “I know you can’t _legally_ tell them what to take, but if _you_ had an infected puncture wound on your foot, what would _you_ take?” …anyway, to contribute to the thread… The record-keeping of, restricted access to, and seemingly draconian limits on ephedrine/pseudoephedrine purchases that annoy so many people aren’t simply annoying state laws or (as so many customers seem to think) unfriendly store policies. IIRC, I’ve seen complaints like these even here, as if pharmacies are restricting access to medicine for fun. It’s a [federal law](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combat_Methamphetamine_Epidemic_Act_of_2005) that’s part of the USA PATRIOT Act. Believe me, we understand how annoying it is that your purchase of Mucinex D means that you can’t get some decongestant later in the month for your sick kid, but our hands are tied. ---
**Author:** ![Napier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Napier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Napier)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2010, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-obscure-facts-about-your-profession/525859/27 "2010-01-24T14:20:04Z")
There is a joke that is particular to the field of aerosol science (“aerosols” being particles or droplets suspended in air, and not propellant packaging, which stole the term from the aerosol scientists). The governer of Kentucky decides he wants his state to produce better racehorces, so he calls together and consults his top three scientists. They are, of course, a geneticist, an aerodynamicist, and an aerosol scientist. The geneticist speaks first: “Clearly, we need to breed stronger horses. I propose a program to measure strength and breed the strongest ones together.” The aerodynamicist points out: “But strength isn’t the whole story. We also need to reduce the aerodynamic drag on the horses. We need to study the resistance horses feel as they move through the air.” The aerosol scientist then chimes in: “Yes! This is the problem exactly! To begin, let’s assume the horse is a sphere…” This is hilarious because in aerosol science most of the things that get modeled for particles begin with the assumption that they are spherical (as many actually are). ---
**Author:** ![Silver\_Tyger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/fbc32d/32.png) [@Silver\_Tyger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Silver_Tyger)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2010, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-obscure-facts-about-your-profession/525859/28 "2010-01-24T19:13:02Z")
I’m surprised this is obscure, but people are amazed when they find it out. Pretty much everything you see is designed by a graphic artist.\* All packaging, even the really boring stuff. The shape of your speakers, car, camera, everything. Those flying logos you see during the game on tv? Some of my classmates may have designed those. The annoying animated flash ads? One of my teachers may have done them. I’m not sure what people think graphic artists do. Print ads and logos, I suppose. - technically I’m using ‘graphic artist’ as a very broad term here. There’s specific terms, but all of them may are trained similarly. ---
**Author:** ![joyfool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/df788c/32.png) [@joyfool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/joyfool)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2010, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-obscure-facts-about-your-profession/525859/29 "2010-01-24T20:15:24Z")
Meals on Wheels originated in Great Britain during the Blitz and the first home-delivered meal program in the United States began in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in January 1954. ---
**Author:** ![pravnik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8edcca/32.png) [@pravnik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pravnik)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2010, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-obscure-facts-about-your-profession/525859/30 "2010-01-25T00:31:34Z")
On the back of the law license of Texas lawyers (maybe elsewhere too) is a piece of paper with the oath of the officer of the court they took when they were sworn in, signed by the officer who swore them in. Mine is signed by the federal judge I used to clerk for who swore me in. Not strictly lawyers, but law enforcement: the “wagon wheel” badge of the Texas Rangers is made from a silver five peso Mexican coin. If you turn it over and look at the back of the badge, you can still see the imprint of the struck coin. ---
**Author:** ![Gaudere](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e495f1/32.png) [@Gaudere](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gaudere)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2010, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-obscure-facts-about-your-profession/525859/31 "2010-01-25T00:51:53Z")
Graphic designers will adjust the spacing between letters by hand for important bits of text. It’s called kerning. Don’t learn about it or you will notice all the poorly spaced letters out there for the rest of your life. ---
**Author:** ![Jamaika\_a\_jamaikaiake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/7993a0/32.png) [@Jamaika\_a\_jamaikaiake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jamaika_a_jamaikaiake)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2010, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-obscure-facts-about-your-profession/525859/32 "2010-01-25T01:36:30Z")
There was a mathematician named [Paul Erdős](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erdos) who was influential, and had many collaborators. Some mathematicians noticed this, and so they began to wonder, in a six-degrees-of-separation kind of way, how “far” each published mathematician was from Paul Erdős. As a substitute for “knowing” someone, they used “published a paper with.” They called this “distance” a person’s “Erdős number.” So, for example, Erdős had an Erdős number of 0, his collaborators each have an Erdős number of 1, their collaborators each have an Erdős number of 2, etc. But then, people began to take this “collaboration distance” seriously as a mathematical concept. In other words, mathematics was made out of mathematicians! [You can calculate the collaboration distance of any two published mathematicians here.](http://www.ams.org/mathscinet/collaborationDistance.html) ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Fight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/90ced4/32.png) [@Cat\_Fight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Fight)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2010, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-obscure-facts-about-your-profession/525859/33 "2010-01-25T01:40:49Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > Video games often feature egregious, even nonsensical translation errors, because the translator is only given a bulk list of every bit of text in the game, without any clue as to context, or in the case of dialogues, who’s speaking. > The information is also highly disjointed, because it’s organized by how the game files are themselves structured, rather than “what makes sense”. > > One might for instance get a file with a list of item names, and a second file with a list of item descriptions - but not in the same order. For dialogues, you might get a file with every sentence uttered by character A, and another for every sentence uttered by character B. Or an alphabetical list of every sentence of every character in the game. Joy. > > The same is true for voice acting/dubbing : the voice actors will usually not play out their dialogues together, rather Voice Actor A will record every phrase of character A, then on the next day it’s B’s turn in the recording booth for character B etc…, hence the common weird, flat or over-the-top intonations. I knew that about the VOs because I have friends who do them, but I don’t think even they knew that about the translation! Thanks, that explains a lot! ---
**Author:** ![Ann\_Onimous](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ea5d25/32.png) [@Ann\_Onimous](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ann_Onimous)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2010, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-obscure-facts-about-your-profession/525859/34 "2010-01-25T04:22:26Z")
> [@EvilTOJ](#): > > I’ve worked in various call centers for a decade. I can tell you with great authority we use the mute button quite liberally at times. And we mock you. And I’ve heard it all. Using mute only works on the customer: but QA hears you loud and clear. I’ve heard mocking, flirting, cussing, telling off, everything. That’s why I love my job. So when you hear “this call may be monitored for Quality Assurance purposes,” believe it. ---
**Author:** ![Trepa\_Mayfield](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/edb3f5/32.png) [@Trepa\_Mayfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trepa_Mayfield)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2010, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-obscure-facts-about-your-profession/525859/35 "2010-01-25T04:59:56Z")
The Library of Congress system uses two letters (X and Y) for military books (one for naval, one for land-based), but only one § for all of literature, comics, plays, literary analysis, biographies of writers, etc. As such, the P section takes up 1 1/2 rooms in our library, while X & Y take up two shelves (not even a single bookcase!). Holy Books (it might just be Bibles, actually) are listed under BS. Also: Almost every library has a strict rule that each person can have checked out no more than 3 movies/videos at a time. This shouldn’t be an obscure fact, but no-one seems to remember it when they come to check out…:sigh: ---
**Author:** ![NicePete](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ee7513/32.png) [@NicePete](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NicePete)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2010, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-obscure-facts-about-your-profession/525859/36 "2010-01-25T16:10:42Z")
> [@pravnik](#): > > On the back of the law license of Texas lawyers (maybe elsewhere too) is a piece of paper with the oath of the officer of the court they took when they were sworn in, signed by the officer who swore them in. Mine is signed by the federal judge I used to clerk for who swore me in. The oath I took to become an attorney in Kentucky required me to swear that I had not participated in a duel, nor had I acted as a second in a duel. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2010, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-obscure-facts-about-your-profession/525859/37 "2010-01-25T16:27:17Z")
When I became a lawyer in Ohio, I was asked (rather apologetically) by the local bar admissions committee if I advocated the violent overthrow of the U.S. government. I assured them that I didn’t. Hah - _suckers!_ 😉 As a magistrate, I can do everything a judge of our court can do _except_ marry people or conduct criminal jury trials. My colleagues and I don’t wear robes, but under Ohio ethical rules I could wear one in campaign ads if I ever ran for judge. I hardly ever use a gavel. John Roberts’s title is “Chief Justice of the United States,” not “of the Supreme Court.” ---
**Author:** ![fubbleskag](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c2a13f/32.png) [@fubbleskag](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fubbleskag)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2010, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-obscure-facts-about-your-profession/525859/38 "2010-01-25T17:19:21Z")
Web developers hate it when graphic designers adjust the kerning of every piece of text in a mockup. ---
**Author:** ![Silver\_Tyger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/fbc32d/32.png) [@Silver\_Tyger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Silver_Tyger)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2010, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-obscure-facts-about-your-profession/525859/39 "2010-01-25T18:24:03Z")
> [@fubbleskag](#): > > Web developers hate it when graphic designers adjust the kerning of every piece of text in a mockup. Dear lord, why would you bother?! Oh right, because some designers are batshit insane. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Excellent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f19dbf/32.png) [@Mr.Excellent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Excellent)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2010, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-obscure-facts-about-your-profession/525859/40 "2010-01-25T18:48:14Z")
> [@NicePete](#): > > The oath I took to become an attorney in Kentucky required me to swear that I had not participated in a duel, nor had I acted as a second in a duel. Ha! As a Maryland attorney, I swore no such oath! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-obscure-facts-about-your-profession/525859.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-obscure-facts-about-your-profession/525859.md?page=3)