Share Surprising Secrets about your Industry!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
61

[rant]
It really bugs me how many parents let this kind of crap go on. And don’t tell me I don’t understand-I have two little boys, 5 and 7 years old, as wild and crazy as any others I’ve seen. And in a restaurant (or movie theater, etc.), they sit quietly and eat their food, and walk if they have to get up. Why? Because the first time they misbehave, they get to go outside and have a long talk with mommy or daddy. The second time, they get to go home. (Can you package that to go, please?) They hate that first one … and I’ve only had to do the second one once. When they realize that their parent is actually going to go through with that, you don’t have to re-establish it later.

I’m not going to sit and watch my kids disturb other diners and disrupt the service. If they can’t act civilized, they don’t belong there.
[/rant]

62

Here is a hair salon secret…you know those deep cleansing treatments you pay extra for 9 x’s out of 10 its the regular shampoo we use…we just let it sit awhile and/or add heat.

Did you color your hair yourself and it turn a little too dark? Before trying to recolor or running to the salon for help try washing your hair with Dawn dishwashing liquid…just leave it on a few…generally will remove that “just a little to dark look” and won’t harm the hair at all.

And mom and dad ummmmmmmm …PLEASE GO SIT DOWN I WILL NOT CUT OFF THE KIDS EAR BUT I MAY YOURS IF YOU DON’T GET OUT OF MY WAY…most of the time if ya’ll would just go sit down and stop hovering Jr. would calm down and we could get this cut done and over…I promise if I need you I will let you know!

There is a lot more I could tell you but we want you to come in often!

63

Oh yes, this is really important. I worked for several years in a pediatric cardiology office, and dealt with all kinds of parents. After a while (or very quickly, if you stood out in some way), we got to know the parents. If you were a properly concerned parent and nice to us, the secretaries, doctors, and nurses would do nice things back for you - like squeeze you into a clinic or see you specially outside of clinic hours, go out of their way to find info for you, return your calls before other people’s calls (all other things like urgency being equal), and so on.

If you were rude and inappropriately demanding, you went to the bottom of the list. We’d triage things by urgency of course, but if it didn’t sound that important, your calls got returned last. We’d be much less flexible about working with your schedule. Don’t tell a pediatric cardiology secretary, “But my child has a heart condition” - I guarantee you that the thought running through that person’s head is “All of our patients have heart conditions, that’s why they’re seeing our doctors.” Explain the symptoms, and if you think the appointment is being pushed too far off, ask if the doctor could call you back so that you could hear from him or her about the situation.

Oh, and if your kid had a serious heart problem and you kept missing appointments (or constantly rescheduling without actually making any appointments), we’d send letters to your house about the situation. They would ask for you to call so we could get you some help if transportation or paying for the appointment was a problem. The third letter would be a warning that you had better bring the kid in or we would involve Child and Family Services. This nearly always wasn’t a bluff.

When you call a doctor’s office, please tell the person you first speak to up front exactly what you are calling about. Don’t ask to speak to the doctor and then tell the doc that you need to schedule an appointment - that’s usually done by a secretary or maybe a nurse. Don’t throw a fit at the secretary if they can’t read off the result of a recent test to you - they aren’t medically trained to interpret the results. If you stonewall the person you’re talking to and ask to speak to the doctor or nurse without saying why, you’ll get that person in trouble when you finally talk to the doctor/nurse and say you need medical records forwarded somewhere, etc., as he or she will think the secretary isn’t triaging calls properly.

If you really do need to talk to the doctor but can’t say why (maybe you want to complain about the person who’s taking the message, etc.), just firmly insist that it’s a personal matter or lie and say that you wanted to discuss your treatment, and leave your name and number. Then when the doctor calls back, apologize for the subterfuge and explain why you needed to talk.

64

heh, if my kids act up in public I tell them that there are corners everywhere --even in a restaurant-- and I can find one for them if they’d like me to. (only had to do it twice)

65

A couple of minor things I’ve learned from previous temporary jobs.

Complaints: be nice to the person on the other end of the phone. Whatever went wrong isn’t usually their fault, and if it was a common problem then they may often just be temps hired that day to man the floodgates. They’ve had people shouting at them all day. If you’re rude most companies encourage their staff just to hang up - you can shove that compensation you wanted.

(I was in a situation where a cheap rail ticket promotion for seniors was oversubscribed and thousands couldn’t get through to the call centre; I was getting literally hundreds of old men and women every day swearing at me).

Getting action on complaints: I like this one a lot. If you want a fast response from a big company, do a little internet research and find out who the chairman/CEO is. Address the letter of complaint to them personally; make sure it’s handwritten. It won’t reach his or her desk, but if you can get it to their PA or secretary then you will get a faster response. At the company I worked letters to the chairman took priority, since his secretary would vet our response in case of media publicity.

Government surveys: I don’t know how common this is, but I hated it as a job. In some countries a sample of businesses are selected quarterly to take part in economic surveys (a whole range of them). Forms are sent out. Here’s the thing: you don’t get to pick and choose whether to do them. We did follow-up - and we couldn’t take no for an answer. We could take rough estimates over the phone as a sneaky way out, but if you threaten or refuse point-blank, you can expect a letter from government lawyers in a while.

66

levdraken, I have more evidence of this.

For graduation, all the hotels in this town get booked. They are often fully booked a year in advance (or the first day hotels start allowing reservations for that weekend).

But the other day, one of the area hotels called our office for some basic factual information. This sort of stuff can be annoying (it’s probably for their market statistics, and community requests like this are lowest priority among the many requests we get). But the hotel employee caught me in a good mood and I was super nice about it–and I joked with her that for doing this I should demand some rooms for graduation in April. She got serious and said “Do you need rooms? Because I can hook you up.” As it happens, my mom had been a phone vulture months before and had rooms already elsewhere, but it was news to me that there will still rooms for the asking. For nice people. Niceness can pay!

67

That’s disgusting. If there’s something in the drink, why shouldn’t you remake it for the customer?

This is rude and potentially dangerous. People aren’t ordering decaf to make your life difficult, there is a potential for dangerous drug interactions with caffiene.

For example, patients prescribed Xanthines (drugs which act directly on the smooth muscles of the respiratory tract (and blood vessels) to cause relaxation for the relief and prevention of bronchial asthma and the reversal of bronchospasm) are advised to avoid caffiene.

I have a hard time believing you would risk an individual’s health just because you’re too lazy to start a pot of decaf.

68

My mom works as a cake decorator.

If you are on a super tight budget, don’t get a wedding cake.
Instead get a sheet cake and have it decorated in white.
My mom will often stack sheet cakes so as to make a tier cake (without the columns). The savings is great. If it is a wedding cake, they will cost more.

As everyone here has said, be nice to the decorator and you’d be surprised at the money you can save.

Be honest: say if you are on a tight budget.
My mom (and I am sure others like her) are understanding about being young and in love but not having the money.

If you have your kid’s cakes made at the grocery store, you will be better off buying the toys to place on the cake.
My mom makes a Winnie the pooh cake with figurines that costs $4.00 each. You can get a nicer set of figurines/action figures at Target/Walmart for a lot less.

My mom also did flowers.
When getting flowers, ask the florist what is in season. If you don’t have your heart set on a particular flower, you can save a lot of money.
Also, Gardenias are nice in bouquets because they smell so pretty… but they turn brown very quickly.

One last thing: if you have a series of parties to give for the holidays (say one for your family and one for co-workers), you can save a lot of money by having them consecutive nights.

You only have to buy flowers once, clean the place up really well once, etc. You may be tired, but you will get it over with!

69

I am an emergency room physician. Our industry is not exactly monolithic and our secrets well known. But here goes.

  • 75% of ER visits could probably be dealt with by a good family doctor.

  • These phrases get my immediate attention: “Chest pain”, “Abdominal pain”, “Brief loss of vision”, “Weak in one arm”, “Not peed for two days”, “Short of breath”, “Pain in the middle of my neck”, “jet black stool”, “coffee-ground vomit”, “diabetic”.

  • These phrases usually don’t get my immediate attention: “dizzy”, “vomiting”, “can’t eat”, “high blood pressure”, “losing weight”, “fever”, “allergy” and “diarrhea”. These can all be serious, and the sickest patients I have seen had vague symptoms. From my point of view, though, these terms are pretty widely abused.

  • If you take a lot of pills and have an up to date list of your medicines, doses and what you have tried before, I will kiss your feet. If you have a list of all the pills which includes stuff you stopped ten years before or if you have vague allergies to more than ten things, you might make me curse under my breath.

  • Your doctor is busy. As a patient, you deserve answers to your questions. Try and balance this by writing your questions down. Then identify which ones are the most important to have answers to. Make sure you ask these ones first.

  • The squeaky wheel gets the grease, but the squeaking must be polite and infrequent. This is a very fine line.

70

I’m in software (QA/CM) now but I worked for 5 years as a customer service rep for a large insurance company (think half brokerage/sales half insurance type stuff).

Broker ‘Tips’ - It was actually not very well known until Enron and a few others how corrupt most brokerage houses were. Most people thought the buy/sell ratings were actually based on something other than how much profit it would make the brokerage house. Not true, when you get a call from a broker with a ‘hot tip’ unless you are one of his best clients it is not a hot tip, he’s just trying to sell whatever shares his company happens to want to unload that day.

Insurance Companies #1 - A lot of customer service reps are actually on your side and will work to resolve things to your satisfaction, even if it costs the company money. Relationships and goodwill actually ARE important. The kicker here is that they expect you to be reasonable as well. Don’t call in DEMANDING to have withdrawal charges removed and threatening to sue because “you were not told about them”. We have the signed copy of the legally binding contract between you and the insurance company that outlines the charges, we also have the one page form that your state requires be signed by both you and your rep and outlines the charges, we also have the letter you wrote last year asking for a withdrawal that says “I am aware of the withdrawal charges”. We will be happy to present all of these to your state’s insurance commissioner.

Insurance Companies #2 - Crusoe’s post above about sending complaints, etc… to the CEO is right on, it may not necessarily be handled to your satisfaction but it will be handled quickly and with great care.

Software #1 - One main reason why people have so much trouble wth computers is software engineers spend all the time coding and writing the code and don’t take the time to create proper install packages. Companies spend all the time trying to create features and don’t seem to care what the software does to the machine once it has been installed. They call some guy in at the last minute to do a WISE or InstallShield package, give him two days and expect it to work. I’ve seen multi-million dollar software projects be installed with a $1000 cookie cutter package that was no more than a pretty batch file with a bunch of copy statements. IMHO half the problems with software aren’t because of the software, it is because of poor install techniques. Most people would be appalled to find out some of the most delicate and error prone parts of the software (editing the registry during the install, and installing and registering .DLLs) actually receive the least attention.

Software #2 - Mainframes are not going away, their importance may be reduced but they are not going away. Big iron is just way too powerful.

71

There’s so much about the food industry to tell and the more popluar the “gourmet trend” the worse it gets.

If it’s not on the menu, go some place it is. Yes we have all the ingredients in house, with rare exceptions, but nothing for that dish is prepped and it throws a huge monkey wrench in the works if someone insists on having something made from scratch right now. If you call ahead (and I mean first thing in the morning, or better yet, the day before) and ask if the restaurant can do a dish outside of their menu, they’ll most likely work it out for you. Restaurants hate to tell a customer no.

When you book a banquet get a correct number of guests as early as possible. Do not call three hours before and drastically change your numbers. You won’t get good food because they’ve had to hastily slap together something for the unexpected guests. It take a day of prep to get things ready. You can’t expect that they can do an extra 50 covers in a couple of hours; you’re probably not the only banquet that day.

Show up on time and start on time, we have a party booked after you and they’d like to get into the room at the time they were promised.

And the rule is: The fancier the food, the longer it takes to prepare and the more it’s been handled.

Not everyone who cooks for a living can cook. The belief that anyone can cook is one of the reasons kitchen help work long hours for small pay. It’s not considered a skill. While at the bottom levels they’ve developed ways to keep it a low-skill job, at nicer places it take knowledge and talent. Never begrudge the money you pay for a good meal. The people who made it for you deserve to be compensated. Often times they’re over-worked, under-appreciated, under-paid, have garbage for equipment and are truely doing their best to put out a product they can be proud of because that’s why they’re doing the job in the first place.

I’m sorry, I’ll stop now.

72

Chefs and other restaurant types: is Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential a fairly accurate read on working in restaurants? (particularly on the chapter on what he advises customers never order)

73

Things like this make me wish I had gone to school to be a doctor like my mom wanted, instead of getting a job cooking so I could get a little pocket money.

74

If there’s something in the drink it’s LONG since dead. Alcohol is a really good disinfectant.

You do know that decaf coffee STILL has caffine in it, only at a lower concentration? If you know you have to avoid caffine for MEDICAL reasons, you should NOT be ordering ANYTHING with caffine in it.

Anyway, YOU’RE the one with the medical condition you either need to make it clear that you MUST have the lower caffine. When you ask for decaf, all the waitress knows is that you want decaf, not the rest of your life’s story

75

BURNER here’s hoping that you didn’t spend you school money on culinary school. I made that mistake and will be paying for it for the next 10 years. I can’t help it though, I love the industry.

76

Alright folks, since I’m from Orlando and I work for one of the two major theme parks in the #1 destination in the world, (Sea World doesn’t count), I think I better pass on some of the tips from an employee.

First: Be nice to the attendants. Us attendants are usually paid paltry amounts for the work we do. When I say nice, I don’t mean try and sweet talk us - I mean just be nice. Our goal is to make sure EVERYONE has a good time visiting us, not just YOU. If we cut the line off in front of you it isn’t targetting you as a person, group, or an ethnic biased - we’ve just hit our size limit. Our rules or directions may seem trivial and stupid, but they are often for speed. When we ask you to move all the way across the row, it’s because we want constant flow of people until the room is full.

If you have some time before a show, or just decide to hang out outside an attraction, talk to the attendant. We’re regular people and often our job gets monotonous and boring, for the most part we love to interact with guests. Attendants have more power than they let on, which doesn’t say much - but I know at Universal Studios Orlando, they can get you expressed onto any attraction, or even back doored depending on what happened or how much they like you.

But don’t go up to them and ask them straight up to let you skip into the Express lane. We resent when people come up to and ask just like that, assuming we’ll let them in.

And don’t bribe us, that is a fireable offense in the eyes of the park.

Second: If something is wrong with your day, excluding park wide problems such as long wait times or attractions which never opened that day. I’m talking about when you are in line for a long time and then the ride breaks and you have to leave. Look for someone who looks like they have authority and make your statement. Again - DON’T GET ANGRY. Unhappy guests are one thing, angry guests enter an entire different category. Go up to them and tell them your story and see what they can do. And be subtle, if they give you something don’t go waving it around or being loud about it. We want to make guests happy but we can’t do it for everyone or else it becomes pointless.

Third: Ask employees if you have a question, but be polite. If they are in the middle of helping someone else, don’t barge up and cut someone else off. I often get hit by 5 people at once and I just work one person at a time. I’m not being rude, but I am retaining control.

Fourth: It sounds like I am romanticizing the job we do, but we’re vastly outnumbered by the guests so our control teeters on our ability to retain the control which is involved with dealing with guests. If you step past your boundary, cut the line, or harass an actor. We have no qualms calling security on you. If you try to push past me while I’m collecting Express passes, I’ll stop the lines and call security to have you escorted out of the park.

Fifth: Rain checks. If you come to the park (I know this is true for Universal, and I assume it is for Disney in some form) and the weather is horrible - down pooring for hours or something. If you have an extra day you can go to Guest Services and tell them you want to come back to the park another day because the weather interfered with your enjoyment of it. While we can’t control the weather, we want your experience to be pleasurable so on occasions of really bad weather - they give out Rain tickets which are good for either a full day or a half day. I can’t remember.

Sixth: Universal Orlando’s Mardi Gras parade. This is a big event for our parks and it is always a hit, while companies often buy nights for their employees to come and ride on the floats sometimes not everyone shows up. So the park needs people to ride the floats. Now this is UNOFFICIAL but near the beginning point of the parade is a point for a standby line. Lines begin forming early, so this is when you want to waste HOURS in line, but you can go and sit in the standby line and they’ll begin pulling people from the line to go on floats. I’ve been on the floats three times and it required waiting in the line for the majority of my day. If you’re more than 15 people back in line, don’t expect to get on because employees also like to get on the floats.

Seventh: Little kids are KIDS. If they are TOO scared to go on an attraction DON’T make them. They now have the predetermined choice that it is not something they’ll enjoy, and 99% of the time you’ll end up coming back out of the show, or baby-swapping on the ride. Don’t force them to do something they don’t want to. Child wails are not part of the attractions.

Eighth: Another Universal Orlando exclusive tip. We have baby swap for parents with kids who want to ride a ride but can’t take the baby. The baby swap often connects getting on the ride with where you get off. And some of the attractions allow you to avoid waiting in line if you want to just ride again you can get off the ride, go through the baby swap and get back on. If the attendant asks, tell them you were told you could ride again and go through baby swap. Some will tell you no, and that means their attraction is not one of the ones who do it. But for the most part - to my knowledge - they almost all do it.

I think that’s enough for now. I’ll see if I come up with more. Perhaps I’ll write a whole manifesto on how to enjoy your park visit the most…

We’ll see.

77

Glory, did you bother reading my whole post? Wherein I said that since I myself like a cup of decaf from time to time, I don’t do this, but plenty of other people do? Feel free to scroll back up and read my post again.

Besides, people who need to avoid caffeine for medical reasons shouldn’t drink decaf anyway; there’s still traces of caffeine in it. This reminds me of the woman who told a co-worker of mine, “Now listen! I need a cup of coffee and it HAS to be decaf! If it isn’t, it will seriously damage my health!”

She’d had about a pitcher’s worth of iced tea with dinner. :rolleyes:

78

I work at a printing company, and my slogan is “Your poor planning is NOT my emergency.” If you start hollering about having just used your last envelope and you HAVE TO HAVE MORE PRINTED RIGHT NOW…take a number. The correct approach is "I fucked up - could you help me on this one? Then the answer is Yes.
I have a feeling this is common to many industries.

79

My Industry secrets:

Milwaukee is a source of vastly overpriced, low qualilty shit. The “R” stands for “Recall”.

If you have to ask twice, it may be because you didn’t believe the first answer.

80

I used to work as a bus in a small, non-chain restaurant. The free bread that is served is reused over and over and over again. So the bread basket you see with leftovers on a vacant table will be refilled and recirculated to new customers. Also we did not have the time to wash our hands between clearing tables and refilling these baskets, so if we just cleared a table and got someone’s half drunken wine on our fingers, we would have touched your bread (with a surprise of something). The bread that ultimately did not get eaten everyday was collected and placed on top of the chef’s oven for the entire next day. The heat would completely dry the bread. Afterwhich, the bread was ground into flakes and used to bread chicken for the parmesian. Mind you, the bread sat out for a couple days now and kitchen flies have landed on it, laid eggs, etc.