30 Things Professionals Wish Their Customers Knew

1. Nuclear engineer here, and if you think radiation is the devil incarnate then buckle in for a quick second as I tell you that:1) No one from Fukushima died from radiation exposure. You saw pictures of the horrific devastation from the earthquake and tsunami. Flooding a nuclear plant doesn't topple buildings.2) Nuclear is one of the safest, renewable, and cleanest energy sources that exist. Second cleanest only to water (and air if you count that).3) Unless we start growing energy and picking it off the vine, oil and coal will run out in the very foreseeable future and nuclear is the way to go.4) You get more radiation from eating a banana than anyone ever did from 3 Mile Island. The most radiation I get everyday is from my morning fruit and I play with radioactive sources and crystals all day.5) Nuclear is actually really cool and by making it to the bottom of the list you're pretty cool too.

2. We are not in the habit of intentionally hurting children.It makes me absolutely insane when a new parent asks, about everything, if it's safe for the baby.Guys. I'm assuming you came to the hospital because you decided it was the safest place to deliver a baby. Why not trust us once you get here?

3. As someone in the movie/tv business, most people don't realize that doctoring and altering footage is really really really easy for someone with the right software. I see my old relatives falling for obviously fake footage all the time because they trust all video to be real.This problem is only going to get worse as the software gets better.

4. A significant portion of active duty military personnel (in the U.S., at least) spend a majority of their time sitting at a desk doing basic administration work.I'm technically trained in my job speciality, but since I'm not exactly in a combat zone when not deployed, I spend most days at a computer answering e-mails and s**t.

5. Unless it's an actual emergency you'll have to wait in the ER. It sucks, we know, but a suspected heart attack will be treated before a busted knee.

6. Organically grown produce is still grown using pesticides. I stopped arguing with people when I realized the fact that I worked for the EPA and it was literally my job didn't dissuade them from arguing with me.

7. Wind farms require environmental impact studies that take birds in account. Yes, they do have an impact, but so does the playground in front of your house.And trust me, if we don't put wind farms up and keep burning coal, it's gonna be worse, even for the birds.

8. When you're in a hospital, not every man is a doctor and not every woman is a nurse.

9. Doctors/healthcare workers use dark humour as a form of resilience not to be callous or flippant.A lot of traumatic events occur in a hospital on a daily basis. Sometimes a dark joke is the difference between breaking down emotionally or being able to compartmentalise and treat you with all our wits about us.

10. Graphic Designer here (but this applies to a lot of creative professions). Doing a job faster actually means I need to be paid *more*, not less.

11. I work as deskside IT support for an office.Anyone could do my job if they knew how to google and read tech forums. Besides, 75% of my job is customer service, 20% knowledge, and 5% politics.

12. As your child's teacher, I see them for 53 minutes a day for 180 days of the year. I cannot undo all of the poor habits you've taught/enabled/encourage and "make" your kid successful. I see people post on the book of faces about their child's [lousy] teacher because they won't do "x" or "y" when those things are the responsibility of the parent. Also, my contract says I work until 3. I will not call, text, or meet with you after hours because I need to have my own life separate from my work life which is really hard for parents to understand for some reason.

13. As a plumber replying to my customer who just hovered over me during the whole repair:Yes, you could have done this yourself.Yes, you would have saved 100s of dollars.No, I can't come down on the price because of how simple it looked to you. We are a business and I gave you the quote before I started.

14. The more you know how the Internet really works, the more you're amazed that it still works at all.

15. Writing code is not really that exciting to watch. It is very unlikely that you will have a lot of cool graphics or special effects on the screen.Its going to be some slightly color-coded words, and very little else.

16. You cannot check-in to a hotel without giving us a deposit or a working credit card to protect us from possible damages."There aren't gonna be any damages."OH OK, I GUESS WE DON'T NEED TO WORRY ABOUT IT THEN

17. One teacher, plus 32 kids doesn't yield optimum results.

18. The pastures you drive by don't just exist on their own. Grass is an actively managed crop.

19. If I cared what teenagers thought of me, I wouldn’t be a high school teacher. No, I don’t go home and drink away their lame insults. They don’t bother me, they’re just hormonal kids, and I love my job.

20. Different artists excel at doing different styles. I work primarily in watercolor, my website and my portfolio are almost entirely watercolor pieces, and yet I regularly field requests from clients asking if I can do oil painting, mural painting, or God Forbid, tattoo them. Just yesterday I had someone ask if I'd give them a tattoo, which I have never done before, have not trained in...I try to refer people to other artists I know who work in the styles and mediums they're looking for."But you make lots of cool things!"YES. IN WATERCOLOR.

21. Solving IT problems usually is done with efficient google searches, reading support articles, and checking out forums. Very little of the information I use for fixing computers was obtained organically (trial-and-error, or training, etc). IT people just google. They consider us wizards but really we just know how to search well.

22. Might be a bit late but the reason you see railway workers standing around and on their phone when your train goes past is because if they were working that same train would HIT THEM.

23. If you're hiring a musician to an event you pay us for playing ofc, AND for the time it takes to rehearse and arrange the songs or pieces you want us to play.

24. Electricity is dangerous. Yeah getting shocked by an outlet is nothing more then a quick scare when you're dry. But when you're wet it's almost certain death (a painful one at that). And when you get into some larger stuff it will literally vaporize you. If you're untrained, you should leave electrical work to the professionals.

25. 95% of the stuff you want to tell your lawyer before arraignment is irrelevant. I know you're scared because s**t is getting real and you're being charged with a crime, and I know you see everything going on as one big interconnected tangle that has to be straightened out once and for all, but all that happens at arraignment of any consequence is the probable cause determination and conditions of release. I'm not ignoring you, I know I only have about ten minutes I can spend with you before we go in front of the judge, but ten minutes is about twice what I'd need if we stayed on topic. All the rest of that stuff I'd be happy to take the time to carefully comb through with you in my office between now and your first pretrial.

26. I need details to troubleshoot your website problems."The website isn't working, can you fix it?"What isn't working?? What page, what section of the page, what is it doing that it's not supposed to be doing, what is it supposed to be doing instead? What device, browser are you using? What were you doing before it happened? Give me *something* to work with here. Even if words aren't your forte and it's just a cell phone picture you took of your monitor, I need details. The more you give, the faster your issue will get fixed.

27. Libraries are not [vanishing]. The main reason we're suffering is because idiots decide, without doing any research, that libraries are [vanishing], so they cut funding because...why fund something that's dying? It's so circular that it makes my head hurt.

28. Clip your dogs toe nails. The longer you wait, the less we can clip them because the quick grows out with the nail!

29. Research chemists spend the vast majority of their time readings journal article PDFs at 2:30 AM and generally don't pour vials of liquids into each other regularly.

30. When your town spends money to fix the road down the street from you but not your road, it's not out of spite.