When reflexes acquired in your job are invading your daily life.
-When i was an intern in a retail, i had to fight against the urge to store the shelves during my own shopping sessions.
Not catching things. I worked at a leather shop with a lot of very sharp things.
I will just watch stuff fall. Even if it’s a friend tossing me my keys or something. Watch it sail thru the air and land right on the ground. Then I normally say “don’t throw shit at me” as their regular reminder that my instinct isn’t to catch things.
Also the phrase “heads up” doesn’t encourage me to catch something either. It encourages me to check the position of me feet for possible stabs.
I’ve been working in high acuity psychiatry for 10 years. I notice when doors don’t click shut behind me and if I don’t hear a solid click or an electric lock whirring sound I get the urge to check the handle, even at home / in my apartment complex. I can feel people behind me on the street if they’re closer than about 20 feet back. I don’t like sitting without a wall behind me (it was weird going back to school and explaining that my ADHD preferential seating accommodation was the back row, not the front).
Graduated a couple years ago with an English PhD: when I go to read anything, I always pick up a pen or pencil as if I’m going to annotate it. I still have to hold one but don’t click it out, like a security blanket, otherwise I feel immensely guilty.
Did a literature Master’s. Cant not skim unless I’m actively stopping myself from it. Also, the internal literary critic never shuts off, but I think that it’s a good thing to always be in critical thinking mode in this day and age, even if it means I can’t “it’s just a story” anymore.
We called that “reading diagonally”
I used to do order picking in a large warehouse. We used headphones that told you were to go. You could also give verbal commands liek “repeat”. So after a week or so I started “repeat”-ing my mom when I didn’t hear what she said.
So many keyboard shortcuts.
Tab, end, shift+home, del
I delete things en masse that I don’t mean to, just out of habit.
Do you also have that reflex to do Ctrl+z when you screw something in real life ? Like, you broke a glass, Ctrl+z. Oh shit, doesn’t works…
I make little typing motions with my fingers
My second job was a bagger at a grocery store, which included getting carts. I tend to just collect them if I pass by some just sitting in parking lots on my way into grocery stores and bring them in. On my way back to my car, if I have a cart but notice the corral is just a mess from people just half-ass pushing them in at just whatever angle. I can’t stop from just un-fucking all of them so they are able to be brought back in by workers, or at least so that more will fit correctly. Just really bothers me to see them all tangled up and possibly roll back into the lot to hit cars.
One of my other jobs a while ago was doing lab billing information corrections so we could bill insurance (would take the stuff that was missing random stuff like part of the insurance, diag codes used, and like missing parts of addresses). When I started they said that we would likely see so many insurance numbers/prefixes that we would start seeing prefixes on things like license plates. This was very true (would see the letters at the beginning and be like “UHC” or whatever), and took a long time to not see them.
Though in a personal life going into my professional life (I work on people’s computers). I have an OCD kind of habit to just disable all the easy anti-user stuff in Windows settings and add uBO to browsers. Might not even be why the stuff was brought in, but most users don’t know to ask (or if things can be done) and either just go through using their PCs without all the random shit, or are just so happy that things run much better. I make a point to note that an adblocker was added so they can ask about it, or remind my peers that do the check-ins and outs to mention them and show them how to turn it off if a site doesn’t load something. Also means that I notice when settings get moved around or more anti-user options show up. Which keeps me sharp in both professional and personal life.
The unconscious urge to post up in a bouncer position when I’m just waiting for someone in any casual situation. I can’t imagine it makes me look like a chill person
Decades later I still sort books when I go to a bookstore.
I’m extremely sensitive to changes in noise levels. Whether it’s a very loud and short noise, like a door slamming, or some change in background noise, like a furnace turning on, I’m just acutely aware of it.
I still sometimes face the shelves because I’ve been there and I want to show solidarity.
I think being a professional cook inculcates or at least intensifies an already present hyper vigilance because there’s always something else I could be or should be doing and it’s a nearly constant list of tasks and any moment not filled by a task is filled with thoughts of what am I not doing right now that I should be.
At least Christmas music doesn’t fill me with hate anymore
Not a professional thing, but I played lacrosse in high school, and I now have a habit of kicking anything forward that I drop, since we would practice kicking the ball forward to scoop it up.
I’m a pilot. At a drive through, I read back the price as a matter of reflex.
I’m picturing “Affirmative. Dollar 1299 now proceeding to window, over.”
“Twelve ninety-nine, first window.” is what usually happens. I’m not the kind of dork that repeats it as “One Two Decimal Niner Niner.” The ham bands are full of geezers that’ll happily play that game with me if I want.
So, per the Pilot/Controller Glossary, “OVER” means “My transmission ended; I expect a response.” Because the communique at the speaker is finished and I don’t expect a response, “OUT” would be more appropriate, meaning “Conversation is over, I expect no response.” Though on the air you’ll often hear “Good day” which isn’t in the P/CG but I think is nicer.
I rather like the idea of having a word for “the conversation is over, I expect no response.” In daily life lol. Feels boss.
“Smell ya later”
“Goodbye” used to mean that, though we’ve started to take it to mean “our relationship is permanently severed, I expect to never communicate with you again in my life.” Which, kind of amazing we felt the need to have a word for that.
i worked for starbucks in the late 90’s and the trauma from its popularity at the time still leaves me w nightmares from time to time 30 years later. lol
