Surprise me with secrets about your jobs or past companies

[Douglas]

Originally Posted by globetrotter

I find this funny - at one point, a long long time ago, somebody told me to always be really careful of the bouncers in strip clubs. that they were really good at working together and that they watched out for each other, so even if you were toughter than one of them, the group would get you. I've always condidered this gospel.

It is true. There were enough bouncers that there could be about 6 of them on you in a matter of seconds if you were out of line and tried anything. Still, when you have a mass of bodies dragging someone outside, and a door that slams behind you, it's not hard to imagine being dragged out. I really only saw one time when someone tried anything, and it did not end well for him. Fortunately, I was on the other side of the bar and not involved.

Most of the guys were OK and there was a certain camaraderie just by being on the job together, but there were plenty of politics and I didn't feel like I had any real allies in the place.

Still, it was an interesting couple of weeks. One guy was just massive. He said he weighed 500 lbs - I find that hard to believe, but he was a really, really big dude and was easily 7 feet tall. He looked like a freak, like Andre the Giant or something. I worked across the bar from him a few times and over the sea of people and the crowd there was just one single head floating above them all. It was incredible.

The biggest problem was the girls. You could get fired for just looking at a girl the wrong way - they called all the shots. Let's face it, the patrons aren't there for the bouncers, and there's a line of meatheads behind you wanting the job. So the girls called all the shots. A few of the guys thought they had something special going with a girl, or a shot at her, and that could screw up your relationships, which could screw up your safety. One or two of the girls were really cool, but most of them were just strung out.

I was happy to quit and keep the shirt, which remained a novelty for some time.

 

[mack11211]

In the 50s when she was in HS, my mom dated a guy who worked at a Dairy Queen.

This is a large soft-serve ice-cream chain in Minnesota.

He told her they couldn't lubricate the machines with oil because it would show up in the vanilla soft-serve.

So they used Vaseline instead.

Put that in your cone and lick it.

 

[Hombre Secreto]

Originally Posted by mack11211

In the 50s when she was in HS, my mom dated a guy who worked at a Dairy Queen. This is a large soft-serve ice-cream chain in Minnesota. He told her they couldn't lubricate the machines with oil because it would show up in the vanilla soft-serve. So they used Vaseline instead. Put that in your cone and lick it.
They still put Vaseline in the plastics, and gaskets to keep ice cream machines lubricated.

 

[FLMountainMan]

Boring, but....

Subsidized child care centers are excellent opportunities to launder money. The local federal prosecutor says that at least one-fourth of the guys he prosecutes have a wife or girlfriend who owns a center.

I worked two part-time jobs in high school, one of which was a busboy/barback (pretty sure it wasn't legal, especially since I started at age 15). I was actually really, really good at it, so they fired the other guy and gave me all the weekend shifts. However, I typically stole a case of beer per weekend I worked there, which greatly increased my popularity in high school.
Once, a really pompous customer asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. I replied that I always wanted to be an attorney. He began to mock me and did so for a good three minutes before his date finally shut him up. Needless to say, the butter for his lobster was really half-and-half. Urine being the mixer.

Immediately after high school, I worked at a well-established antiquarian bookstore. I soon became qualified to do appraisals and would take on all the appraisals that insurance companies farmed out - a policyholder's home would burn down, and they'd submit a list of the books they owned, along with an estimated value. Sometimes, insurers would be skeptical and ask us to do one. The owner's claims were always ridiculous and I never had a appraised avlue over 40% of the claimed value. People would frequently pull **** like listing the same book four times. "Huck Finn by Mark Twain." "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Samuel Clemens", etc.

 

[oman]

Originally Posted by Tck13

Customer service departments have caller I.D. and they know who you are. They know that you call back and speak to different people and lie and make **** up to get discounts. Your file pops up every time you call. Oh, and customer service sits in a room and after you get off the phone, they talk about you when they're on break.
man is this supposed to scare people, because frankly it just bemuses me i mean, you really think anyone gives a **** that a ****** CSR has nothing better to do than talk about customers on their break?

 

[MetroStyles]

Originally Posted by oman

man is this supposed to scare people, because frankly it just bemuses me

i mean, you really think anyone gives a **** that a ****** CSR has nothing better to do than talk about customers on their break?

Also it isn't true. Most CSR reps and systems are so horribly outdated and ****** that they can't even figure out who I am despite typing in my account code into the phone prior to getting connected.

 

[crazyquik]

Originally Posted by FLMountainMan

Boring, but....

Subsidized child care centers are excellent opportunities to launder money. The local federal prosecutor says that at least one-fourth of the guys he prosecutes have a wife or girlfriend who owns a center.

Can you explain this a little more? Why does it matter if they are subsidized? I don't even know what a subsidized child care center is (no kids, don't launder money, etc

)

 

[Piobaire]

Originally Posted by crazyquik

Can you explain this a little more? Why does it matter if they are subsidized? I don't even know what a subsidized child care center is (no kids, don't launder money, etc

)

I would imagine create phantom customers that are supposedly paying cash?

 

[BP348]

Originally Posted by Douglas

The biggest problem was the girls. You could get fired for just looking at a girl the wrong way - they called all the shots. Let's face it, the patrons aren't there for the bouncers, and there's a line of meatheads behind you wanting the job. So the girls called all the shots. A few of the guys thought they had something special going with a girl, or a shot at her, and that could screw up your relationships, which could screw up your safety. One or two of the girls were really cool, but most of them were just strung out.

I was happy to quit and keep the shirt, which remained a novelty for some time.

Your not lying. I have a friend who worked at a local strip club as a bouncer too. The stories he used to tell me. The girls might be hot but they were all fucked up in the head. And most were strung out 75% of the time.

 

[Incman]

Originally Posted by Tck13

I used to work for UPS. Remember those Samsonite commercials where the gorilla throws your suitcases around once they go behind the door? What happens to your package at UPS is worse. Like, 10 times worse...

"Fragile" = going for distance...

It was always amazing too, that, at every holiday involving candy, a box or two would just spill open...

Can definitely corroborate this one. My dad worked for Fed-Ex in his late teens/early 20s, and he said exactly what just said, "Fragile" meant "How far can you throw/kick this". No wonder companies pack things so well.

 

[MetroStyles]

Originally Posted by Incman

Can definitely corroborate this one. My dad worked for Fed-Ex in his late teens/early 20s, and he said exactly what just said, "Fragile" meant "How far can you throw/kick this". No wonder companies pack things so well.

That's just wrong.

 

[Incman]

Originally Posted by MetroStyles

That's just wrong.

That's what I said to him

. Although, this was in the early 90s, so I would assume (hope) things have changed since then. I've gotten many iDevices and other random fragile electronics delivered to me safely, so I still have faith in them.

 

[rexthedestroyer]

My dad used to work in the Soylent Green factory, and well, I'm not even gonna tell you what its really made of.......

 

[FLMountainMan]

Originally Posted by crazyquik

Can you explain this a little more? Why does it matter if they are subsidized? I don't even know what a subsidized child care center is (no kids, don't launder money, etc

)

Short answer? Poor and at-risk people get their child care partially or fully paid for by the government. In theory. Getting a center is easy - they can be run out of your home. Fix it up for the initial inspection and you're in business.
"Hire" the other single moms in the neighborhood. "Enroll" their children at your unlicensed center (forcing them to be licensed has a "disparate impact") and bill the government for providing their child care. Give a cut to your "employees." Profit.
Launder money there by buying swing sets, painting the rooms, etc...
The Milwaukee Journal did a nice article about the rampant fraud that exists in the system.

Long Answer - A big part of the welfare-to-work transition in the 1990's (under the greatest president of my lifetime, and undoubtedly your favorite, Bill Clinton). The Feds decided to make some much needed changes to the welfare system that would have the added consequence of kicking people off of welfare and putting them back to work.
Now, no one in government really gives a damn about single men, so they were basically SOL. All the single mothers though needed someone to watch their kids as they were now forced to find jobs. Coincidentally, I'm sure, the illegitimacy rate amongst women soared after widespread welfare was introduced in the 1960's "War on Poverty (as effective as the War on Drugs/Terror/Racism/whatever. So not providing child care to all these mothers would be a social disaster.
So the government stepped in and modified part of TANF to provide child care for poor, abused, immigrant, and "seasonally employed" people. The states were given block grants to administer these funds.
States set up early learning offices, almost completely run by teachers and social workers, as they have the programmatic expertise. However, this group, while much needed in society to provide a counterbalance to calculating assholes like me, does not tend to make accountability a high priority when giving money to people. So the systems are rife with abuse and rules are usually very lax. The midwestern states as a whole have the highest rates of fraud. Miami-Dade county though, as with every single governmental aid program ever created (several billion dollars a year in medicaid/care fraud alone), has the most corruption of any MSA.
TMYK.

I'd be happy to provide specifics on how to bilk the system, but I've already typed a novel.

 

[LawrenceMD]

Originally Posted by FLMountainMan

Boring, but....

Subsidized child care centers are excellent opportunities to launder money. The local federal prosecutor says that at least one-fourth of the guys he prosecutes have a wife or girlfriend who owns a center.

my parents used to own and run nursing homes and found out that the gov payout was huge in california.

they were doing it legit in new england, but were constantly told by friends and family out in california that they would become super bigtime if they made the move west.

little did they know that it was basically a way to skim off social security and a dumping ground for addicts/mentally ill patients along with unwanted elderly. most of the places were overcrowded, understaffed, with deplorable living conditions (drug addicts beating, ******, and stealing the elderly and weaker patients). the gov officials were in cahoots with owners of the facilities to just bring in bodies.

my parents were trying to do it legit and run a high quality home just for the elderly, but you had to pay off officials just to get the "ideal patients.. i.e. elderly". eventually they had to take in the crazies/recovering drug addicts.

it was so messed up they just sold off all the properties and moved back east and my dad went back to being an electrical engineer and mom back to her medical practice.

it was an interesting time in my life... i got to live in aesthetically beautiful places (OC laguna beach), but did see the down trodden parts of Riverside/Bakerfield/Long Beach where a lot of these nursing homes are.