Tell me about your area of expertise

[Axe]

This thread is for sharing tips and general information about whatever it is you do. Whether you work in a coffee shop, bakery, or just play WoW all day, inquiring minds want to know.

 

I work in produce for a large supermarket chain.

 

Some quick facts:

• The majority of produce comes from California.
  
  


• The busiest shopping days are as follows: Saturday, Friday, Sunday, Monday, Thursday, Tuesday, Wednesday.
  
  


• Daily sales are usually in the $20k-$25k range. On 4th of July weekend $38k worth of produce was sold a day.
  
  


• Around 25 pallets (a pallet is about 4x4' wide, 7 feet high) of produce are recieved daily.
  
  


• The freezer where the inventory is kept is as big as a house and kept at 34?F.
  
  

Some tips for you:

• Don't go on the last day, at the last hour, of a sale. Supermarkets run out of shit more than you think.
  
  


• Organic produce tastes the same as its non-organic counterpart. Believe me I've tried it all. Organics only offer you smaller, wimpier produce at a more expensive price. Now get out my store you hippie.
  
  


• Always keep strawberries refrigerated. They grow mold very fast.
  
  


• Wash everything. There's an old guy named Jose who works there who never wears gloves.
  
  

Some other things you may not know:

• Store brand items are shipped directly from the manufacturer with the store label on it. They generally come from the same company that makes the name brand items.
  
  


• Items such as lettuce, cabbage, etc. are trimmed every morning. They may be a day or two old but you would never know. Sometimes they even look better than the new stuff.
  
  


• A number of things in produce are not profitable. They are stocked one day and thrown out the next without any being sold. It's part of the business that you have to carry everything.
  
  


• Stocking is much more of a talent than it may look like. If a normal citizen were to try their hand at stocking produce, it would inevitably end in tears and floor sales.
  
  


• Stock is hardly ever rotated. There's simply no time to rotate things.
  
  

You are now an expert at produce! Should you have any questions don't hesitate to ask.

[Michael-Corleone]

I work at a small bakery/coffee shop. There are only about 10 or so employees. Most just work out front making the espresso drinks and selling the bread. I do it all. I bake the bread some days, I work out front others, and twice a week I deliver a couple hundred loaves of bread to various stores around the county.

 

Some quick facts:

• We usually bake a couple hundred loaves of bread a day.
  


• We go through about 70 or so gallons of milk every week.
  


• Our espresso machine cost around eleven thousand dollars.
  


• Milk is heated to 160 degrees for espresso drinks.
  

Some tips for you:

• We use a different colored twist tie for each day of the week; learn which color cooresponds to which day in order to buy the freshest items.
  


• Cinnamon rolls and cheese rolls taste much better if you put them in the microwave for about 30 seconds.
  


• Freeze bread if you don't go through it quickly. Never refridgerate. There is too much moisture in the refridgerator and it will cause the bread to grow mold quickly.
  


• If you order tea, ask for a little ice in it. We use water from our espresso machine that is 220 degrees.
  

Some other things you may not know:

• We do sell day old bread, but once it is two days old, we donate it to some charity.
  


• We get rid of day old cinnamon rolls.
  


• Some muffins on Monday morning are probably from Saturday. Don't worry though, muffins last longer than scones and cinnamon rolls.
  

[l0bstar]

I work for Cornelius Parks and Recreation. We schedule concerts, special events for holidays, athletic events, children's summer camps, and adult workshops. I personally am a camp counselor. I work a new sports camp each week. So far I have had a tennis camp, advanced soccer, and football. I have also participated in one recreation camp, which was music-oriented and for 5-9 year old kids. For events I set up and break down, as well as answer questions people might have. The only regular event I participate in is the summer movie series. I also do park maintenance on the side, such as repairing things on park shelters, repairing playground equipment, and small landscaping projects.

 

Some quick facts:

• Our recreation camp series had over 350 children this summer, and our sports camps had over 1500 children signed up.
  


• We run upwards of 6 camps a week for 9 weeks during the summer with an average of 30 kids per camp.
  


• We have our own blimpscreen, projector, and audio equipment that in total cost approximately $17000.
  


• We hardly make a profit from anything. We recruit hundreds of sponsors each year to keep our event costs very inexpensive or free. Even the sports camps don't make much of a profit. Powerade sponsors us and donates over two bottles of powerade per camper each week. Their sponsorship, grant money, bond money, and our own budget keeps the price down to $55 a kid per week.
  


• We hire professionals in their fields to teach our camps. Our soccer coach played professionally in Europe before moving to South Carolina in the early 90s.
  

Some tips for you:

• Don't cross the road barriers. Don't be a jackass. They don't apply to everyone except you.
  


• Camps fill up quickly, and sometimes there is a waiting list. However, signups are held up through the first day of camp. I had one kid show up Monday morning with a receipt for my football camp that day.
  


• Make our job easy. We don't get paid much, so don't do anything stupid that gives us more/harder work to do.
  

Some other things you may not know:

• We offer scholarships for kids who can't afford our camps. Partial or whole fees may be waived.
  


• We work with the surrounding towns in order to provide a better camp experiene and more opporunities (Even though my town has more athletic and leisure parks than the other towns).
  


• Muffins still last longer than scones and cinnamon rolls.
  


• Kids are fun but a lot of trouble to work with sometimes. We may look like we want to be there, but we don't. However, we know that we HAVE to be there so we try to make the best of it.
  

[roadeh]

I'm a welder. I weld band-saw blades for industiral sized band-saws. Most of the companies we sell band-saw blades to use them to cut massive pipes used in oil drilling.

 

Quick Facts:

- The company I work for has only been around for 2 years and already we have 80% of the business in Alberta.

-Blade sizes range from 5 FT and 1/2" thickness to 70 FT and 6" in thickness. One 70 FT blades weights well over 100 LBS so they are my most hated blades to work on.

-On a good day if I feel like working I can weld over 100 blades in one day. On a average day I only weld 60.

-We only have 5 employees.

 

Tips for you:

-Don't come to me complaining about your welds breaking. My welds DO NOT break. Learn how to operate your bandsaw right you fuck tard. I'll kill you.

-Don't call me @ 4:30 on a friday expecting me to make some blades for you. Fuck off, it's friday, im going home early and getting drunk.

 

Other things you may not know:

-I get paid really well to do really nothing. Sure I weld, I dont work very hard though.

-I'm almost always done my work half-way through the day. My boss is also NEVER around. So time is spent drinking beer and smoking pot.

-I've almost killed myself 4 times at this job and I average 2-3 serious cuts on my arm/hands a week.

[Nekton]

i've had 3 jobs so far

 

1) Mervyns: Shoe Department

People honestly don't know anything unless they've studied an ad for weeks and are planning a whole day around going shopping. If they just walk in and look at stuff they really don't know what anything means, even if it's a simple sale. They also don't like putting shoes back on the fucking display shelf.

 

2) Carls Jr. : Drive Thru

People are fucking fat and fast food workers hate all of their customers and honestly don't give a shit if they get sick from eating food after dropping it on the floor or peeing on it. People are also really dumb when buying fastfood because they either look at the wrong price or can't find something on the menu and will try anything to make it seem like you made the mistake.

 

3) Winco Foods: Kart Klerk

Old people and women suck at seeing you and 20 bright orage carts behind you

[fr0d]

I'm working on safety control systems for CANDU (Canadian Deuterium Uranium) 6 and Advanced CANDU 9 type nuclear reactors. Currently I'm running thermohydrolic simulations for loss of coolant events which could cause our reactors to 'melt down'.

 

A little background. CANDU type reactors use natural uranium in a colendria core to heat D20 (heavy water) to about 320C before going to a heat exchanger where it boils normal H2O to about 290 C before being sent to a turbine for power production. The D2O acts as a neutron moderator as well as coolant for the uranium fuel bundles so that they don't overheat and meltdown.

 

CADU type reactors differ from normal PWR (Pressurized Water Reactors) in that they don't directly produce steam for turbine power generation, and don't rely on refined isotopes of uranium for a heat source. The advantage of CANDU is that almost every event that could occur to the reactor causes the fuel bundles to powerdown and radionuclide release from containment core failures are much less sever then the PWR type reactor with its refined uranium. Disadvantages of CANDU are the high start up cost. D2O costs about $1,000 per kilogram and each reactor requires about 30,000 kilos of D2O per reactor (1,000 Mw capacity). ACR (advanced Candu) dimities this by using only slightly enriched uranium to decrease this amount by about half. Another disadvantage is that the colendria istelf if made up of about 150 fuel channels each requiring pipe fittings which have to be replaced in costly maintenance every 30 years. However CANDU is overall slightly cheaper then PWR reactors in that they don't have a high operating cost.

 

Some things I've learned while working on the safety systems.

- The best way to take out a candu reactor is to destroy the secondary steam line which is exposed as it directly exits the main reactor core containment building. This causes a loss in heat transfer between coolant and steam and will shut down a reactor far longer then other events. Easiest to hit with a missile since the core building can't even be damaged by a small nuclear blast, let alone a plane, or whatever people wanna throw at it. No radiation release though.

 

- Legislation requires two sets of safety equipment be installed to prevent reactor overheating and melt down. CANDU uses coolant poison (molybdenum nitrate which acts as a neutron inhibiter), emergency moderator rods, water injection systems which can inject 100,000 kilos of water a minute through the core in the case of a large leak, and finally an overhead dousing system that uses 400,000 kilos of water stored at the top of the reactor containment building to douse the reactor to contain radionuclide release as well as decrease pressure in the containment building.

 

- CANDU reactors can be refueled while powered on thanks to a robotic fuel injector robot which is basically a rotating gun that shoots a uranium bundle into a fuel channel in the calendria.

 

- The fuel bundle contains 16 uranium pellets which are about half the size of a roll of pennies. Each pellet produces enough energy to heat a standard home for a year. There around hundred of fuel bundles operating at a time.

 

- The half life of CANDU fuel waste is about 300 years and after that it is about as radioactive as uranium found naturally in the environment.

 

- Nuclear power ROCKS!!

 

Here's a little bit about what I do

-I cause an event that would result in loss of cooling to the reactor. This results in a powerpulse that safety systems would quickly ( >0.3 seconds) respond too and keep under control.. I disable the safety systems and see what happens.

 

- I'm working on a simulation of the newest plant in Chernevoda Romania, and one of the codes I run uses local weather patters to see how a large radionuclide release would affect the population. I once killed a buncha sim-romanians in my simulations.

 

- Me and my buddies at work spend about 1 hour everyday making MS paint-pong pictures. I'll include one at the end of this post to see what I'm talking about. It's fun.

 

- I work next to the marketing department, and always have access to fresh seatles best coffee and food of all varieties. I make friends with people in other buildings by bringing them food. (also because most of the girls are really pretty).

 

Now a little bit about my company, Atomic Energy Canada

- Founded as a crown corporation, AECL cannot run a line of credit, thus we have no real way of competing with private companies, even though the government now views us as a private company.

 

- We're a paper pushing company, we don't actually build our reactors, we just design them and overlook them. Bechtel usually manufactures most of our reactors. They're shady from what I hear, but pay really good.

 

- I can wear shorts and dirty t-shirts to work and still be better dressed then some of the people who work in my office. It rocks!

 

 

Now for the paint-pong. I don't have any on this computer, but here's a picture me and Beth worked on. She made the yeti, I made everything else.

 

 

DAMN I WROTE A LOT

[caoutchouc]

Cool thread.

 

At my current job, I'm a linguistics intern at my dad's company, Sensory, which "is the world leader in embedded speech technologies" according to the website. They made the speech technology that is in the new Furby Too, as well as an assortment of other lesser known children's toys (anyone remember that clip of me playing Saxxy, the electronic kazoo?) and other things.

 

My job is to take wave recordings of people saying command words for toys, "pick" each phrase out, and edit it so it's usable. They then use my recording pool to develop demo boards/products.

 

Some quick facts:

• We have 5 offices, in California, Oregon, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Vienna
  


• Sensory controls something like 99.9% of their field of speech recognition, the kind where you train the technology to respond to your voice (as opposed to it already set up to respond to anyone's commands, which doesn't work as well since lots of people talk differently)
  


• Sensory was going to make voice activation Twister--so you don't have to have one person sit out and spin that flimsy piece of cardboard that always breaks, instead you just call out "spin!"--but the toy company thought it would make the product too expensive
  


• List of products using our tech
  

Some tips for you when using speech recognition products:

• Talk clearly... duh
  


• Background noise will affect the way a product recognizes commands. You should be talking 3-5 times louder than any background noise.
  


• Yes, if the command is "light" and you say "flight", the product will probably mistakenly recognize it. Those words are incredibly similar. Don't act all smug like you just broke our technology. Idiot.
  

Other things you may not know:

• Sensory was in the process of making technology for manatee detector. Boats would have a little thing that could detect that call of the manatee, which would set off an alarm so the driver could slow the boat down. This idea was canned, however.
  


• Sensory had a rat problem. My dad is known as "Bill the Killer" at work because he once had to put a trapped rat out of its misery.
  


• The new Furby was recently demoed on Regis and Kelly, wherein Regis royally fucked up on using it and made it look really bad. gg way to follow directions, Regis.
  

And also because I'm a bio nerd, here are two quick nutrition factoids:

• Your body needs vitamin D to use calcium: try to only drink milk that's vitamin D fortified
  


• Both hypothyroid disease (underactive thyroid) and hyperthryoid disease (overactive thyroid) can cause goiter. The goiter is actually a super englarged thyroid gland. Hypothyroid is generally caused by a lack of iodine in the diet, and is therefore not a problem in "developed" countries because we eat iodized salt. Hyperthyroid is an autoimmune disease and people that have it are skinny as fuck and eat all the time.
  

[sh3p]

I work in bar/nightclub.

 

Some quick facts:

• 
  WE DO NOT SELL BUDWEISER STOP ASKING.
  


• Tuesdays and Thursdays are the quietest nights.
  


• On the busy nights (Friday & Saturday) we take around ?5k in alcohol sales, not including the door charge (?7 on a Saturday, ~600 capacity).
  


• Around 150 crates of bottled beer are delivered every Tuesday, plus around 15 boxes of spirits and 5 or 6 kegs of beer.
  


• The cellar where the backup stock is kept is kinda small and kept at 64F
  

Some tips for you:

• Know what you want to drink when I ask you, or at least have an idea. Don't stand there and gaze around at the 200 different bottles you can see and spend ten minutes choosing your drink, I'll just move on to the next person.
  


• If you tip me well there's more chance you'll get served faster next time.
  


• If you tip me badly (especially if it's a large or difficult order) I'll ignore you next time and let someone else serve you.
  


• Don't just shout out what you want when I'm serving somebody else, or when I walk past you. It instantly marks you as a jerk and you probably won't be staying in the club for very long.
  

Some other things you may not know:

• The customer is not always right, the customer is usually drunk. If you complain that I short changed you or spat in your drink or gave my phone number to your little sister nobody will really listen to you.
  


• Not all bartenders know 500 cocktails off the top of their heads, so if you ask for one and you see the bartender reading a little flip book don't immediately think that they're useless. We have the books to remind us what to put in your drink and how to serve it, we're not machines.
  


• Most bartenders that I've known don't just enjoy their job, they love it. It's a difficult job a lot of the time and the customer will rarely appreciate that. Think about this when you tip your bartender next time.
  


• Ice isn't put in your drink to rip you off, or so we can put less alcohol in there. Without ice a lot of drinks just plain suck.
  


• Asking for only a few ice cubes in your drink is fucking stupid, and most of the time I'd ignore somebody. Either the glass gets filled with ice or you don't get any. Only having two cubes of ice sat in your drink is a sure fire way for the ice to melt and to water down your drink, ruining it altogether. A glass full of ice will nearly never melt in the time it would take even the slowest person to finish their drink, it's just basic science.
  

I wouldn't say you're now an expert at visiting bars, but at least you'll know a little more about the situation that you're in when you do visit them.

[Minkee]

I work for Geek Squad as a service tech.

 

Some quick facts:

• We are owned by Best Buy Corp.
  


• We do not work on laptops usually in store because most laptop owners are morons
  


• Just because your modem isn't working does not mean its not a software issue. 70% of the time it IS a software issue.
  

Some tips for you:

• If you're getting your system service and have anything embarassed on your hd that you do not want a tech to see. We will find all of your pornography, and self portraits of you nude on your couch.
  


• Do not say thats outragous, i can't believe you charge that when it would cost more to buy another complete OS and you'd still lose all your data.
  


• Do not walk up and ask HEY ARE YOU GUYS REALLY GEEKS. That will mark you as a dumbass, and we will completely fuck you out of your money because you made an assine comment like that.
  

Some Other Things you might not know:

• Contrary to the commercials, we do not all have VW beetles. Bestbuy is not going to buy us all cars. Thats only our mobile techs that get to have them.
  


• Anything that is not the hardware being completely out IS A SOFTWARE ISSUE and not covered under a service plan.
  


• Bestbuy service plans do not cover force damage, so do not try and fuck the company unless you know what you're doing. I can tell force damage 90% of the time before it hits the service center. I will tell the customer service person to tell you to fuck yourself.
  


• Contrary to popular belief, Bestbuy does have some of the lowest retail prices due to their buying power. Frys ocasionally does have better deals. If you're buying parts go to frys, unless you catch a zillon dollar rebate from bestbuy.
  

[Cubensis]

I work as a Material Handler for Fedex, biggest air freight/package company in the world. I tow the containers off the belts so that the aircraft crew can take them to the aircraft on the next shift.

 

 

 

Some quick facts:

 

We make most of our profit from documents being shipped, the profit is huge, and also a lot of money on delivering Saturday shipments. If you have to ship anything to be delivered Saturday, you will be raped with the price. Even with my discount it is still rape.

 

Fedex will be flying the Airbus A380, aka The 747 Killer, in 2008, we have made an order for 15 I believe.

 

Many doctors and lawyers work at Fedex for the benefits. Nearly all employees are PT, and just use Fedex for the benefits.

 

You can get a job here doing just about anything. Fedex hires doctors, lawyers, IT people, janitors, mechanics, cooks...you name it.

 

A fully loaded aircraft can weigh half a million pounds or more.

 

 

Some tips for you.

 

Please make sure if you print your own ASTRA labels, that the ink isn't faded, smudged, or the label isn't wrinkled. We use lasers to read the labels, and if the label isn't perfect, it won't be read and you will be SOL for tracking.

 

Make sure you take off the old labels if you have used the box before, or at least cover or mark out the labels. Most people will pay attention to the date, but if someone doesn't check, your package might end up in Alaska instead of Hawaii.

 

If the stuff inside is valueable, pack it well. Don't overstuff a package so you can save a couple of bucks. Please. And use enough tape. One incident i can remember is a company shipping thousands of "promo cards". you know the kinds you get whenever a new club is opening or a party is happening. Well some idiot decided that even though the box coupld probably hold 1000, he had to stuff 1500 in there. And he used a smidgen of tape. Well the package basically exploded, and guess who had to retape and put it all back together?

 

Other things you might not know.

 

They ship virtually anything if you pay for it. Last week I saw 2 live horses being shipped. I also have seen entire cars too.

 

A LOT of fucking work goes into getting your package there on time, we call it organized chaos. Hundreds of people working together to get your shit there and on time.

 

An entire planeload of packages can be late if the planes don't get to the runway in time. here at LAX, all planes land and takeoff in things called timeslots. If someone fucks up say for example they don't check a container for airworthyness (the condition the container is in), and it gets to the plane and the crew can't install it on the aircraft, we have to take it and transload it to another container, which can take as long as 15 minutes. Meanwhile the aircraft misses its timeslot, and also misses its landing timeslot at whatever airport it is going to. If the flight was worth $250K, that profit gets lost if it gets there too late, all customers get a refund plus free delivery.

 

Best benefit to working here is flight benefits. not really supposed to talk about this, but I am anonymous right? I can fly for free to anywhere we fly in the US, including Alaska and Hawaii. I also can fly for a really discounted rate on most airlines. $50 RT on a certain airline to anywhere in the US. I also can get discounts on cruises, if any of you Cali people ever want to go on a cruise with me, let me know.

 

I get to wear shorts year round. Usually our boss buys us pizza or doughnuts on friday with hot chocolate when it is cold. Our vending machine/breakrooms are HUGE, we have about15 vending machines, and you can get everything from Blimpie sanwiches to Red Bull. We also have videogames, but they suck since they are broken. Free internet access at work on a OC192 connection, only thing is that we cant download anything. Also free parking, but you have to get there early or you will have to park at the remote lot and walk, which is terrible when it is raining.