Every country/state/city has their own local unofficial laws/customs, but I’m curious what are some super specific things you’ve seen that you’ve never heard of from anywhere else. Things that completely surprised you upon learning it was a major taboo to do but just in this one specific location?
Apparently all 200 people at my job had a secret agreement a day I was off that the moment something in the lunch room microwave timer dings done, you have to stop whatever you’re doing if it’s your food item and grab it immediately when it’s still scalding hot, even if nobody else is waiting for the microwave.
Anytime the microwave dings somebody will immediately shout DONE and they don’t see anyone immediately moving to the microwave they or someone else will repeat DONE until somebody grabs it. The most confusing case was when the microwave dinged once somebody walked into the lunchroom, yelled DONE then immediately walked out of the lunchroom. And it’s not a joke people legitimately will get angry if a food item is left in the microwave for too long.
At my previous job everyone called Powerpoint slides “foils”. I have never heard anyone else call them that anywhere. At my current job a coworker who had also come from that company called them foils out of habit and no one but me knew what he was talking about.
In my previous job we called working from home “Homeworking”, (we used the english word instead of Spanish because it’s faster and working in IT we already use a lot of English or pseudo english words already (like “deployear” for “deploying”))
So when I interviewed for my current job I used “Homeworking” when they were checking my English, and that lost me some points .
Fortunately not enough to cost me the job.
There was a point, back in the early 1990’s, when I spent a lot of time in pharmaceutical sterile areas - I was effectively working as an internal consultant within a pharma company. This meant fairly frequent trips out to another site to work in a manufacturing area.
OK, so you have to dress (gown) to enter a sterile area - it’s a very precise procedure, and you strip down to socks and underpants, leave your street clothes in the locker, wash hands and then go through the gowning procedure to enter. Being male I was (obviously) using the men’s changing area, which was largely communal. One oddity I noticed was that all of the sterile workers at this site wore huge underpants - massive boxer-style affairs with cargo pockets and what-not - with me there in my briefs.
I didn’t think too much of this, until the day the (female) cleaners walked into the communal part when we were changing and, rather than doing the U-turn out again that I was expecting, stood there and started chatting with a group of essentially naked men. That’s a couple of middle aged women chatting in a fairly smutty manner, and 8 or 9 naked men having a laugh with them. Odd, I thought (dressed in socks and briefs). The impression was that this was pretty much a routine event.
I assume that at least the lower tiers of management knew about this and tolerated it. You would assume that this was an obvious disciplinary for all involved, but everyone seemed happy enough, so I was pretty much obliged to play alone. Every time I think back on this, it seems more and more strange.
Damn - that should read Play ALONG. Missed the edit.
Also, as a PS to the above, more bizarre behaviour at the same site.
On the days we went down for technical meetings, the managers we met with would take us out for (free! ) lunch in the (not very good ) site canteen. As often as not, in the course of a meal - or for that matter a coffee break - there would be a message coming over the tannoy, in a bored sing-song sort of voice:
Fire emergency in area thirteen. Fire emergency in area thirteen. (for example)
-which wouldn’t even cause a pause in the conversation. On the first couple of occasions I politely inquired, as you might, What area is the canteen located in? (Unspoken part: Because if it’s between eight and eighteen, I’m out of here.) Nobody ever seemed to know or care.
According to what I’ve read on The Internet, or maybe just the SDMB, escalators are for walking up. I can’t say I’ve ever been on an escalator with people walking - we’re always all just standing there, riding. So I surmise that riding an escalator is a Cleveland/Akron/Northeast Ohio thing.
The one that always got me is the Chicago thing about blocking parking spaces when they are shoveled out, and “stealing” someone’s spot is unthinkable. Even up nort in WI we never did this. Silly FIBers.
The other is the dangerous “first person and first person ONLY can turn left in front of traffic with no arrow”. Who the hell came up with that one? Some sort of “polite” PA or somewhere thing. Except in the rest of the world, where we follow traffic laws, a visitor expecting things to be the same as back home could get themselves t-boned.
Forty years ago I worked in the composing room of a well-known daily newspaper. The production plant where I worked was located in an old New England mill town, and the 40-man crew comprised a wide variety of ethnicities – Polish, French, Irish, Italian, Black, you name it. I was by far the youngest guy there and these guys were real hard-bitten old-timers. There were also two young ladies working alongside of us.
One of the guys was getting married, and they organized a bachelor party at the local VFW or Elks Lodge. I wasn’t invited, being a newbie, but the guys were very definitely looking forward to it. As I later learned, it was the local custom to hire a stripper/hooker for the evening, and hold a sort of lottery where one guy ended up getting a blow job on stage.
Next day at work, the two gals who worked with us were very curious about who won the ‘lottery,’ asking repeatedly, “who got the girl?” They were disappointed to learn that “Frenchy” had won the lottery, but “was too drunk to get it up.”
So that’s a ‘localized custom’ I’ve never encountered either before or since.
Our old electronic medical record had a tasking system. You would put in a task, for example, call pt back to schedule for xyz. When you completed the task, you clicked a button that said “Done” Which led to conversations of “Did you done it?” “Oh, yes, I doned it.” It made perfect sense at the time. Now with Epic, new hires are confused if you ask if they doned their task.
So ‘dibs’ is specifically linked to parking, when you’re in Chicago? Because I’d think of that as a pretty common slang term. Though in my youth, we generally “baggsed” rather than “dibbsed” what we wanted
Going to date myself now, but back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and PowerPoint was not ubiquitous (i.e. before it was integrated with Office in 1994), preparing a presentation for use with an overhead projector involved building a set of pages printed on clear acetate sheets, AKA foils. I haven’t heard that usage in at least 20 years.
It’s probably used in other contexts, too, but it’s definitely and specifically used here to describe reserving a parking place that you’ve shoveled out.
In those days before color printers were common, if you wanted a color presentation, you sent out the PowerPoint to a service bureau to get either color overhead sheets or color 35MM slides.
I always sort of rolled my eyes at dibs until it happened to me. After a 20 inch dump, I carefully cleared out my spot. It’s back breaking, ball busting work and you have to keep it maintained as the plow trucks push new curbs up to block me in.
I came home from work to find ‘my’ spot blocked by the car belonging to the European caretaker of the elderly man across the street. I had to park a distance away and on a snow route which means I risk getting towed if we get more than a couple inches of snow that night.
As I trudged back home, there was caretaker lady digging around in her trunk. I firmly but, I think, politely said she has to clear out her own spot. The elderly neighbor had an exclusive handicapped spot for caretakers to park in. I offered my snow shoveling tools and use of my spot from 8a-5p while I was at work to more easily shovel out her spot. She suddenly lost her English and I dropped it and left.
It happened again another time with some new neighbors. In a single family household neighborhood with enough spots for everyone, if you didn’t dig a spot out, you can’t park there for at least a few days after snowfall. No dibs for snow less than 3-4 inches. More time for higher snow.
In Newfoundland, the office shuts for lunch at one-pm, so as to not miss calls from Toronto. Then the lunch break is until 2:30 , everyone gets 90 minutes. You go home for tea, missus has it ready, and then a nap on a couch next the warm stove, maybe a nooner, and back to work . There was no businessman’s lunch downtown, you go home. The main newscast on the radio was at 1:15.
Not just Chicago; it happened in Toronto too. Mostly in the older areas, where houses didn’t have driveways, and there were no back alleys, where you parked behind your house. You parked on your street instead. So, you’d move your car, shovel out your spot, and if you didn’t return your car to that spot immediately, you’d put a couple of lawn chairs in it, to indicate that it was taken.
Of course, in Toronto, if you had a driveway, you were expected to park in it. And you could do so with the assurance that nobody would block it, since parking across a driveway is just plain illegal, even in it’s your own. However, here in our western Canadian city, parking across your own driveway is not only legal; it’s common. My driveway is next to my neighbour’s, and more than once, I’ve had to knock on his door and ask that his friends move their car from in front of our driveways, as it is blocking me from getting out of mine.
Where I am, pedestrians don’t cross against a red stoplight, even if there’s not a single car anywhere in sight. You stand there politely, feeling sheepish, until the light changes. And cops WILL write you a jaywalking ticket if you don’t.
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) lunch in the (not very good 
) site canteen. As often as not, in the course of a meal - or for that matter a coffee break - there would be a message coming over the tannoy, in a bored sing-song sort of voice: