Asklemmy

I can't watch anyone cook without steeling myself from mentioning their risky knife grip, mess-inducing lack of flow, slapdash mis, etc. 😵‍💫 On the positive side, I always call my status ("behind", "hot", "knife", etc.)

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’m a software developer. I get very agitated when I have to sit next to someone who operates their computer slowly.

One of my first jobs was in a call center with a scripted greeting using an assertive voice because the customers always tried to dunk on us. My friends and family would laugh so hard when I answered my personal phone with the script/voice.

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.

I'm in IT. My personal laptop is perennially broken because I. cannot. stop. tinkering.

Used to work in underground mining, every time there wasn't enough light, I'd reach for my cap lamp on my head

We also used left hand drive cars in a right hand drive country and when I went home I'd get in the wrong side of the car

"behind"

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).

Decades of working IT in various capacities including a lot of support roles at various levels have led me to usually suspect that anyone coming to to me saying that they can't get something to work is doing something wrong, regardless if it's IT or something else completely unrelated.

This is often combined with me trying to suggest possible solutions whenever someone complains or vents. This one drives my wife crazy sometimes and she's had to teach me that sometimes she just wants emotional support and solidarity rather than possible ways to fix whatever she is venting about.

Used to be an Amazon delivery driver. Cursed with the knowledge of what all those stickers mean on my packages.

Also you'll start noticing their massive delivery trucks everywhere.

Doing Uber in a very red state, I have to bite my tongue when people bring up politics. It's turned into me not talking about it around friends who share my beliefs for the most part. And it kinda sucks, cause I really did enjoy a good debate.

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.

I often donate plasma. Sometimes while stressed I will start to unclench and clench my fist as if I’m donating.

So many keyboard shortcuts.

Tab, end, shift+home, del

I delete things en masse that I don't mean to, just out of habit.

Used to play Trumpet.

I still do the fingerings when thinking about music once in a while.

When I get in the car, I hit the blinker lever by instinct because on a forklift it puts you into forward or reverse gear.

I make little typing motions with my fingers

My job is to do weather observations every half an hour, or when the situation changes drastically enough to warrant an update. I used to get a bit stressed out about noticing the clock approach one of the routine times while not at work (because that's when I haven't been keeping an eye on the sky so oh shit now I gotta figure it out fast!), but I think I've gotten mostly out of that pavlovian response. Many of my colleagues say that they also get this. But the phone alarm (a manufacturer default) that goes off at that time as a reminder definitely triggers it. Luckily I've only heard it like once or twice outside of work.

I've been the electronic security game for about 25 years and I swear I instinctively notice and look directly at every video camera in every building I enter, and I swear if anybody noticed they'd think I'm casing the joint.

I still sometimes face the shelves because I’ve been there and I want to show solidarity.

I got really used to technical conversations at work going "full duplex" where we'd excitedly talk over each other and interrupt constantly, just to get to each conclusion faster. I had a close coworker join my team, and he was much harder than normal to get a word in, so I got better at jumping in to interrupt until we were at the same pace and the technical communication was synced and flowing well.

Around a month after I'd been working with him, my wife started telling me I was being very rude and interrupting her more than usual. I guess the habit came home with me. I'm still working on it, though it's been over 5 years since I switched out of his team.

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

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.

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.

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 notice people's gait, stability, and their DME

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

Former land surveyor. Was definitely counting my paces when I was not surveying.

Background: you'd often try to capture a grid of points, or cross section of a road, for example, at regular intervals. You'd roughly know your normal stride length conversion to metres, so if I were doing a 10m grid, it'd be: shoot a point, walk 11 paces, shoot a point, repeat for hundreds, sometimes thousands of points. It wasn't long until you would be counting paces when you weren't actively surveying.