For example: a Starbucks barista once told me that it’s perfectly legit to order a medium-sized drink but to ask for it to be put in a larger size cup. You won’t get a full large size, but you’ll get more than you usually get for a medium.
What other tips and tricks like that have you learned on the job that people outside your field might find surprising and/or useful?
You can monitor 3 frequencies simultaneously and follow an intentional network fragmentation frequency jump if you connect the earmuff headphones to the TLQ-17 and set it to scan, take the handset from one sincgars and stuff it under one of the earmuffs and set it to the initial network command frequency you want to monitor. When the network fragments in response to your jamming activity, the TLQ will locate the new frequency and you can listen to it through the earmuffs while monitoring the old frequency for hangers on (often the jumpers will be decoys and the good info will get passed on the old frequency). Set the other sincgars to the new frequency and stuff it under the muff on your other ear so now you’re monitoring old and new frequency with sincgars and set the TLQ back to scan for a potential 3rd frequency–on the off chance the jump command set up two decoys and a true command frequency. Getting good at voice recognition will help you tell the decoys from the command net. If you get them to do a fragment jump and still manage to hang on to the command net, stop jamming and start listening–pass that info onto the POC. Repeat the strategy several times over the next few weeks and you’ll get a medal. 
^^^ I swear that wasn’t English. ^^^
I’m a tech writer - lots of tricks for dealing with Word. That said, I can’t think of any easy and quickly useful ones off-hand; most require a good bit of familiarity with Word.
For some reason, most people will not try to dicker over the price of an RV of any sort. I was amazed at how many people would just plunk down the sticker price. The markup on those things is huge, folks: negotiate away.
Something I finally learned about holding a class vote: caucus.
I’ve known for a long time that votes are a pain in the butt with kids. Ask them to raise their hands, and it’ll look like half the class is doing yoyo tricks. Hands go up, hands go down, kids look around and see who else is raising their hands, back up in the air, down again, jazz hands! It’ll drive you crazy.
For years I’ve done the hands-on-the-head trick: for your vote to count, you must put both hands on top of your head and hold them there. That works a bit better, but they still freak out with raising and lowering hands, or just spacing out and forgetting to vote entirely.
But a couple of weeks ago I tried caucus-style voting, by which I mean, I assigned different choices to different sections of the classroom, and I told students to move to the section of the room corresponding to their vote. Works like a charm: it’s easy to see who’s voted and who hasn’t, and it’s too much effort to change their choices once they’ve committed. I’ll do it this way for the rest of my career.
People say they want maximum “freedom of choice”, but the ideal number of choices to give someone in any sales situation is an odd number and ideally three or five items. The customer will almost always select the middle item if they are going into the situation cold and any more than five choices, and they will be overwhelmed and the sale won’t happen at that occassion. So when trying to buy many durable goods, you’ll see a salesman do this most of the time.
I also write a lot of proposals for Government grants, which often leave them open ended as to what you are proposing and how long you take to do the work, as well as how often you hit “milestones” or have “deliverables”. Whenever possible, I try to bid a little less than the maximum for the allowable time and money, and provide a little more on the number of deliverables. So if you tell me a grant can ask for up to $500,000 and take 12 months, my grant will be for $475,000 and will take 11.5 months. No task will be longer than one month before creating a deliverable, and I will have a minimum of 13-14 tasks/deliverables, so the Government gets regular reports on how the money is being spent and sees regular progress. If there’s one thing the Government likes, it’s a lot of paperwork and regular communications.
Especially when dealing with professionals who are experts in their fields, you have to understand that their answers to questions may vary based on the context of the situation, especially when you’re asking a very broad question.
I’m in accounting, so I’ll provide a concrete example there. I was meeting with a new tax client and gave him a tip about employee benefits that will probably save him $900 next year. He was blown away because he said he always asked his old accountant about how he could save money on taxes and this idea never came up.
Now, I don’t know his old accountant, but I’ll bet you the issue is context.
See, I came up with this idea, because I was reviewing his payroll numbers. So I came up with a payroll tax idea. Had he asked me “How can I save on taxes?” even ten minutes later, my brain is now in income tax mode. I don’t have any more ways to save him money on income taxes. It’s hard enough to search my knowledge of income tax law for any savings… it’s virtually impossible to start thinking about payroll tax, property tax, sales tax, etc. etc.
I suspect the same kind of thing is true for experts in computers, medicine, law, etc.
So people need to learn two things:
Electrics - electronics troubleshooting rule #1: Always check the power supply first.
Sometimes a device will get all wonky because of a failed wall wart. Other times only a part of the device stops working, eg on a router you might lose Wifi but the wired connections still work.
This is because not all parts of the circuit have the same power requirements.
Device not powering up at all? It doesn’t hurt to check the wall socket with a multimeter first. It will be embarassing to take the device apart only to realise that the problem all along was a tripped circuit breaker.
I don’t have any specialized knowledge, but there is one thing I think would benefit a lot of people to know and they don’t seem to! When leaving a message on someone’s voice mail, begin with your name and number. That’s really the only important part, but so many people leave long descriptive messages and then either try to cram in their number quickly at the end or have a brain fart and forget it completely. Put it at the beginning and I can easily replay the message as often as necessary to get the only important part; put it at the end after you give a lot of unnecessary details and it might get chopped off, or I might die before you get to the point. Why don’t they teach this in school or something?
AND end with it!
Mice cannot cough.
No really, they can’t. And I know this because our lab is studying tuberculosis vaccines. We infect mice with tuberculosis under BL-3 conditions. Fortunately, the risk to the workers catching TB from these mice is low because TB is transmitted by aerosol…and mice cannot cough.
Other lab animal facts:
Rats don’t have gall bladders, but mice do.
Rabbits and guinea pigs can’t throw up.
Female rhesus monkeys get their periods.
Sheep need to be “barfed” before undergoing surgery.
In my grade school if we had to take a vote you had to put your head down on your desk. I know some people still only kinda half raised their hands because the teacher would ask people to raise their hands higher, but it still stopped people from trying to vote with the majority, at least to a point. Sure, you could peek, but it limited your view. The other option is to have everyone write down and hand in what they chose and you tally it up really quickly. It only take a minute and it’s good when you have this feeling that one or two people really feel strongly about the opposition or when it’s something embarrassing*
I learned that on this board years and years and years ago and it’s now such a habit that I can’t not do it. All my voice mails start with “Hi this is Joey at [work] my number is xxx-xxx-xxxx” and then I leave my message. They can replay it and the number is right at the beginning. In fact when I hear my employees do it the other way around I correct them.
One other thing about that, if you’re calling someone you know, say, a work acquaintance, personally, I don’t even leave a voicemail. No one likes to log into their voicemail just to hear a message that says “Call me, my number is…” They’ll see the missed number and call you back. IMO, that’s a good practice for anyone that knows you well enough to have you in their phonebook. If you have more to say that’s difference, but I don’t like just saying ‘call me!’.
Something else with that, if you’re leaving a message and the person can return the call to anyone and you’re leaving soon…don’t leave your name. Just say “Hi, I’m calling from [work] the number is [number] blah blah blah call us back”. The reason is that if you do that, the person calls back, asks for you, we say that you’re not here and they hang up and that’s the end of it. In your mind it’s “I tried calling, I left a message, I’m waiting for her to call back” in her mind it’s “I called back, if it’s something important, she’ll call again” and it might take days before someone tries calling the other person or it might just slip through the cracks. But if you just say “Hey, it’s [work] please call us” and when you leave you let the other employees know what’s going on, then it’ll get dealt with right away.
Or, at the very least, least, if you’re ‘good’ at leaving messages give them the name of someone else who will be there for the rest of the day that they can talk to and let that person know to expect the call. It’s just really hard when I get a call and it’s someone returning a call from ‘Sarah’ and I have no idea why Sarah was calling that person so there’s not much I can do about it other then have Sarah call them back again tomorrow.
Also, FTR, this isn’t some big place, it’s just a little mom and pop type place, it’s easy for an employee to say “I’m leaving, there’s a “Jane Smith” that’s supposed to call back, we just need to see when she’s going to be home so we can deliver this thing to her house” or something along those lines.
I know that’s kind of wordy, but it works.
OMG does that take me back! 
For us it was fold arms, put you head down in your arms and put up your thumb to vote.
In addition: I work as an accountant, and an auditor gave me some great advice. When you are sending an email what are the steps?
This ensures that you never send an email without its intended attachment, you never miss the subject, and never send without reviewing. It is literally impossible, this way, to send a technically incorrect email!
If you’re sending someone or some company a request and supplying them with a self addressed stamped envelope for the return, and you are asking for more than one thing, send an SASE for each thing you’re requesting. That way if one request is easy to fill, you’ll get that quickly. Also, if the requests need to be fulfilled by two different people or departments, the request can be split and both can be worked on at the same time.
Don’t try to operate heavy machinery when stoned. It sounds like it might be just another of those platitudes like ‘don’t do drugs,’ but seriously, it’s really not a good idea.
Any occupation that can even arguably fall under the rubric of ‘professional’ requires you to be able to act - to at least some extent. If you don’t know who your character is, which persona people expect to see on stage, you’re toast.
Don’t over explain. You’re much better off giving just enough information so that people can ask you intelligent questions - if they’re so inclined.
Ninety-nine percent of the time, the problem with an air conditioner not cooling (especially window types) is dirt. Before calling a technician, clean off the cooling fins.
If you need something from someone in another department, don’t call, go in person.
When looking for a credit card processor, be aware that there are always hidden fees. Ask about the company’s authorization fees, batch fees, transaction fees, discount fees, chargeback fees, monthly fees, monthly minimum fees, customer service fees, pci compliance fees, and returned debit/credit fees. Also be aware that at sometime, some point, your funds will be placed on hold, and try ahead of time to find out the quickest way to get them released. Also find out what type of customer service that is available. At least 2 of the mobile credit card processors out there (Square, Paypal), only offer customer support by email. Be aware of this.