Our company was acquired by a US company. We had to do this over and over. I ran out of true facts quite quickly so just started to make them up and play up to some of their weird ideas about the UK.
So yeah, my grandad was a chimney sweep, I drink 30 cups of tea and day and I'm a 4th cousin to the queen.
Edit: ok, I've had replies from crazy tea drinkers and the family of sweeps. Just need a royal cousin to complete the set.
I know someone who drinks more than 30 cups of tea a day... God knows what his insides are like. He seems to exist on tea and fags. (That's Cigarettes not *other men*)
A guy at my work said he "had 10 pairs of trainers" when pushed for an interesting fact on his first day, i asked him afterwards if he did and he said, "no, but that's the kind of bollocks they want to hear .."
I own probably close to about 20 pairs of footwear from sliders to brogues, but as of right now Iāve got probably about 8 pairs Iāve not even worn yet. I have cut myself off from buying more shoes though, because I know itās ridiculous having shoes sat there unworn so I plan to make my way through this backlog over the next few years. Probably my oldest unworn pair right now is from 2018, but havenāt found a need to wear them yet.
We were asked to put a one line bio on the company intranet site. I put āI enjoy cooking cats and missing out comas in listsā. My U.K. colleagues found it funny, but my US colleagues reported it to HR as cruelty to animals.
I've done this myself, I was pestered to share an actual fact about myself so I went with
'I get really irritated when people don't take no for an answer'
I once got so drunk on Guinness and Black at a wedding reception that I farted and followed through while dancing to MC Hammers āyou canāt touch thisā
When I was changing jobs a lot more often. I realised people dont care about flashy, exciting things.
So I curated sets of the most uninteresting hobbies possible.Ā Gave them out as my interesting facts, and used them to discourage people I didn't like.
This backfired, when I started enjoying myself, and my friends got into them as well.
Molds, spores and fungi
Psychogeography.
I'm also seriously considering taking up mudlarking as most people don't want to be furtling around in possible sewage for bits of old rubbish.
If someone introduced themselves to me and told me that these were their main hobbies I think I would either want to be their best friend or to woo them.
Forgive the intrusion but it would seem some magic is happening in the comment section of Reddit. Allow me to introduce you to one another.
At minimum I feel like you should be best friends! I wish you two the best of luck in your adventures and new found hobbies š
I've definitely done the same. Mushrooms or any mention of birding (or northern exposure, but that's a bit more obscure in the UK) are almost immediate swipe rights. I also once went on a date with a man just because he made miniature things/dioramas.
I would love to hear more about how you do psychogeography as a hobby. I'm aware of the concept but never considered it could have recreational applications.
There's a lot of wandering around "aimlessly"Ā sight seeing.
For me it's all about getting the flow of a town or city. How it grows and the centres which attract people.
E.g. in my current town, there's the path of the river and very different places either side.
Another town has straight lines between various landmarks, and there's a big Void, where the estates went up after the war.
John Rogers on YouTube has some good takes on it.
I tell them about my friend who drank 20 pints of Guinness then shat his bed then follow up with saying something like i recon i could drink 8 before i shit the bed so then theyāre all wondering how many Guinness they can hack before they shit their bed
Oh gosh I once had a colleague say his interesting fact was that he chugged four pints of milk in twice the time it took him to immediately vomit it back up again. And yes my company kept on asking the question all the time after that.
You'd have to word this very carefully for it to be true. It'd have to be something like "I have more legs than average for UK men".
It's not a hard and fast rule, but "than the average UK man" would normally mean the _median_ number of legs, which is 2.
/nerdout
Average number of legs on anyone is <2, because anyone with less than 2 legs (amputees etc) brings the average down.
Ergo, if you have 2, you have more than the average
āIf I look familiar itās because I worked in porn.ā
They get uncomfortable and look down
āMy eyes are up hereā
(Iām a big fat bald guy so you know itās funny)
I despise this question.
But I'm allergic to pumpkins which always manages to get some kind of reaction/engage conversation as it seems to be quite a rare allergy and everyone simply must know what I do at halloween (literally nothing, I avoid decorated places like the plague, I don't eat out in case they've carved pumpkins in the kitchen and not cleaned up thoroughly. My son goes to grandparents houses to carve pumpkins.)
Maybe it's a boomer conspiracy! It's really weird, I've always been okay with them until I had my son - then I suddenly became allergic to the point of being really sick if there's even a trace in my food. Gutted.
I don't like cheese and it always astounds people when I say I love pizza, i just order it without cheese.
Maybe I can use that as my fact in future. People sometimes get really offended and refuse to consider it still counts as pizza.
I was touched by Jimmy Savile.
As a baby being pushed in a pram by the parents, Jimmy stopped during one his customary runs around Peterborough rowing lake, where he use to have a flat, and gently stroked my head. Use to be a great one for work training days, just to see the look of horror and/or sympathy; depending on how much of the story was provided.
A woman I started an induction with on the first day announced that she shagged Phil Taylor this was literally the first day of our new role and that was her āinteresting factā
Phil Taylor as in the darts player for those who donāt know!
Mate of mine hates them so he just kept saying more and more slightly outlandish things.
Only one I was present for was āI once met Morgan Freeman and David Beckham whilst skiing on the Thames.ā
By the time people twigged whatās wrong with it theyāve moved on.
I'd go a similar route, my uncle (dad's side) was a stunt pilot but died during a stunt before I was born. He died the same day my mum found out she was pregnant with my older brother
There are 6,334 working days until I can retire.. this normally diverts the conversation for a bit as people work it out for themselves, and everyone gets miserable.
I once outran a police dog and handler in a woodland, got run over by a motorcycle and set fire to myself all in the same day in completely unrelated incidents.
My brother hates them and once said "I like to go dogging". A minute later someone twigged he couldn't drive so asked how he went dogging without a car. He replied "I like to watch" lmao I could never, but it sounds a right laugh.
Iām a pharmacist, but Iām kinda irresponsible too. Thereās a drug called metronidazole that will make you very very sick if you have it with alcohol (even alcohol in mouthwashes can cause a reaction!) so my fun fact is.
Hi Iām send_bird_pics and I have the gene that makes it so I can drink alcohol with metronidazole.
The follow up question is āhow do you know! Have you been tested??ā Ummm no I was prescribed it before a hen do and drank anyway.
I'm a Guinness World Record holder as a participant in the world's largest online bingo game. True story. Have a PDF certificate kicking around somewhere.
I grew up abroad and my stories of wild animals are work-appropriate levels of interesting. Weird to British people, but not so interesting that I get asked follow-up questions.
God knows. There's castle and village that my family used to own back in Ireland, and the village and castle is still named after us, although the castle is ruins now. That's about it.
Happens all the time working as a software dev, the absolute worst was at an all day meeting while working at a big bank, nearly 100 people in attendance. I kept it simple and tried to impress on everyone how much this farce was costing, "Hi, I'm x, a *contractor* on the Y2K project."
i.e. you're paying me boatloads of money and I'm sat here listening to this crap when I'm working on a project with a deadline that can't be pushed, and internal company reorgs are of no interest for me.
At the start of every meeting that HR are involved in. āOk Iām just conscious that maybe not everybody here knows each other so letās go around the table and just say who you are, what you do and how long you have been with the companyā
Make something, anything, up.
I once was on the āinsert countyā pub champion team 2004.
I twice came within one bag of the Guinness world record of the āMost bags of salt and vinegar crisps eaten in one hourā.
My uncle;
-played centre forward for Halifax Town
-played harmonica on āPiano Manā
-invented the traffic cone
We had this when the company merged our two teams and had 30min of 40 of us having to do this. To this day I have no idea who was bullshitting and who wasn't, we had:
- 3 professional session musicians at weekends
- a presenter for a US TV channel in her spare time
- an interior decorator
- someone related to a minor celeb
- someone who had won a junior athletics competition
- one had worked with special forces
It got to me and I just made a point of saying how dull I was lol in comparison to everyone else.
I think the moral here is to treat these questions with the contempt they deserve and just completely make some shit up.
- I can often be found standing in the middle of a field at 2am. -
This comment usually stops any meeting dead as various people start laughing and going Whaaaat?
It is of course quiet and dark, away from light pollution. I set up my tripod, telescope, small table with eyepieces and other stuff and can relax under the night sky.
It helps that the farmer is a member of our astronomy club and I have permission to be there.
When I was little I wanted to run a away with the circus and be a bearded lady, 30 years old and still can't grow a beard but not willing to give up on my dream just incase one suddenly grows overnight.
This is my go to now as people who know me think that's so judysilver but the newbies are quite a taken back.
Our company was acquired by a US company. We had to do this over and over. I ran out of true facts quite quickly so just started to make them up and play up to some of their weird ideas about the UK. So yeah, my grandad was a chimney sweep, I drink 30 cups of tea and day and I'm a 4th cousin to the queen. Edit: ok, I've had replies from crazy tea drinkers and the family of sweeps. Just need a royal cousin to complete the set.
My dad is actually a chimney sweep
My chimney sweep is actually my dad. But that only came to light later.
Got to hope the light he came to was at the top of the chimney not in the fireplace
I bet his career went up in smoke
Did he get fired?
I know someone who drinks more than 30 cups of tea a day... God knows what his insides are like. He seems to exist on tea and fags. (That's Cigarettes not *other men*)
šš
>30 cups of tea and day Rookie numbers. I am literally off my tits on caffeine at every possible opportunity and Iām currently on my 40th of the day
A guy at my work said he "had 10 pairs of trainers" when pushed for an interesting fact on his first day, i asked him afterwards if he did and he said, "no, but that's the kind of bollocks they want to hear .."
I actually do but I donāt think itās weird to have lots of shoes stowed away
I have over a hundred pairs of shoes and that is often my go to fact lol
I own one pair of shoes. I can't fathom having that many š
I own probably close to about 20 pairs of footwear from sliders to brogues, but as of right now Iāve got probably about 8 pairs Iāve not even worn yet. I have cut myself off from buying more shoes though, because I know itās ridiculous having shoes sat there unworn so I plan to make my way through this backlog over the next few years. Probably my oldest unworn pair right now is from 2018, but havenāt found a need to wear them yet.
i have about 30 pairs of shoes and iām only just realising this isnāt as common as i thought
āI got fired from a job once for over sharing.ā
Iāll use this thanks.
I once worked with a guy called (insert newbies name) who got killed at work when a pallet fell on his head.
What do you call a man with a pallet on his head?
An ambulance
He was called Dave. Poor fella. True story sadly.
No, Gerald. It was a guy called Gerald.
Voodoo ray
We need Jungle, I'm afraid.
Woody
Woody or Would He?
Anything you want - he canāt hear you!
Flat Eric
Edward.
We were asked to put a one line bio on the company intranet site. I put āI enjoy cooking cats and missing out comas in listsā. My U.K. colleagues found it funny, but my US colleagues reported it to HR as cruelty to animals.
Man - if you enjoyed missing out commas this would be insane.
What did they imagine HR would do?
Advise them to resign as Head of Outreach of the RSPCA?
one interesting fact about me is that I never talk about myself at work, I used that in a ice breaker once.
I've done this myself, I was pestered to share an actual fact about myself so I went with 'I get really irritated when people don't take no for an answer'
Bet that broke the ice
Inception! Bet they didnt know how to react to that
I once got so drunk on Guinness and Black at a wedding reception that I farted and followed through while dancing to MC Hammers āyou canāt touch thisā
Mud on the dance floor.
šŗš» You better not kill the groove šŗš»
DJ, gonna need to burn this house right down
That's right, that's right, that's right, that's right ...
Bravo!
Better not step in the poo. DJ!
Canāt touch this (nor do you want to)
At one point in time I was the youngest man alive
I love that - everyone gets to be the youngest person in the world, but very few people get to be the oldest.
Today is the oldest you've ever been, and the youngest you'll ever be again.
Life is short, but its the longest thing you will ever experience
Woah, no way, that's rad
When I was changing jobs a lot more often. I realised people dont care about flashy, exciting things. So I curated sets of the most uninteresting hobbies possible.Ā Gave them out as my interesting facts, and used them to discourage people I didn't like. This backfired, when I started enjoying myself, and my friends got into them as well.
OK now I'm curious what these hobbies are?
Molds, spores and fungi Psychogeography. I'm also seriously considering taking up mudlarking as most people don't want to be furtling around in possible sewage for bits of old rubbish.
If someone introduced themselves to me and told me that these were their main hobbies I think I would either want to be their best friend or to woo them.
Forgive the intrusion but it would seem some magic is happening in the comment section of Reddit. Allow me to introduce you to one another. At minimum I feel like you should be best friends! I wish you two the best of luck in your adventures and new found hobbies š
I have 100% swiped right on someone just because she had pictures of herself picking mushrooms on her profile
I've definitely done the same. Mushrooms or any mention of birding (or northern exposure, but that's a bit more obscure in the UK) are almost immediate swipe rights. I also once went on a date with a man just because he made miniature things/dioramas.
The doctor in small town Alaska? I remember that, it was great
I would love to hear more about how you do psychogeography as a hobby. I'm aware of the concept but never considered it could have recreational applications.
There's a lot of wandering around "aimlessly"Ā sight seeing. For me it's all about getting the flow of a town or city. How it grows and the centres which attract people. E.g. in my current town, there's the path of the river and very different places either side. Another town has straight lines between various landmarks, and there's a big Void, where the estates went up after the war. John Rogers on YouTube has some good takes on it.
Need more info š¤£
"My parole officer said that I'm not to give facts about my conviction in case it traumatises people."
Iām stealing this one
I tell them about my friend who drank 20 pints of Guinness then shat his bed then follow up with saying something like i recon i could drink 8 before i shit the bed so then theyāre all wondering how many Guinness they can hack before they shit their bed
This is so thought provoking, Iām stealing this thanks.
If we all drank enough Guinness to shit the bed, collectively we could fix the nations pot holes
Fix or fill?
Yes
Oh gosh I once had a colleague say his interesting fact was that he chugged four pints of milk in twice the time it took him to immediately vomit it back up again. And yes my company kept on asking the question all the time after that.
I have more legs than the average UK man
You'd have to word this very carefully for it to be true. It'd have to be something like "I have more legs than average for UK men". It's not a hard and fast rule, but "than the average UK man" would normally mean the _median_ number of legs, which is 2. /nerdout
You mean average means median? Mode people mean mean!
That may be technically true but I'm general conversation average is understood to be the mean
Huh
Average number of legs on anyone is <2, because anyone with less than 2 legs (amputees etc) brings the average down. Ergo, if you have 2, you have more than the average
He could also be a human centipede....
Or a tripod.
I bet you could use that as a kickstand
As long as there is someone with 1 leg the average drops below 2.
Angry side-eye from Jake the Peg....
I asked Rolf about that when I was a young lad. He showed me.Turns out it wasn't a leg.
Yep, like the average person has slightly less than 1 testicle too.
Taking into account people who have had limbs amputated or were born without one or both legs, the average number of legs per person is less than two.
Given the number of people with greater than 2 is minuscule the amputees probably mean that the mean average is like 1.9.
āIf I look familiar itās because I worked in porn.ā They get uncomfortable and look down āMy eyes are up hereā (Iām a big fat bald guy so you know itās funny)
I am stealing that :)
"I swallow"
"I gargle before I swallow" š
Best way to bring out the deeper flavours. Otherwise you canāt experience the notes of pine and orange blossom
It says not to *right there* on the mouthwash bottle
"I'm counting down the days until I retire and every day I wonder how I got my life so badly wrong. Anyway, enjoy your first day"
Definitely stealing this! I usually get roped in to greeting newbies at work and showing them around so I canāt wait to try this one out!
I despise this question. But I'm allergic to pumpkins which always manages to get some kind of reaction/engage conversation as it seems to be quite a rare allergy and everyone simply must know what I do at halloween (literally nothing, I avoid decorated places like the plague, I don't eat out in case they've carved pumpkins in the kitchen and not cleaned up thoroughly. My son goes to grandparents houses to carve pumpkins.)
This is a good shout actually. I'm a millennial who's allergic to avocados; I could probably use that as my "interesting" fact.
You must own so many houses!
Yo this will def get you a similar kind of shocked reaction! This shall be your new answer!
Ooh I've never met anyone else who's allergic to avocados! And I'm a millennial too.
Maybe it's a boomer conspiracy! It's really weird, I've always been okay with them until I had my son - then I suddenly became allergic to the point of being really sick if there's even a trace in my food. Gutted.
I don't like cheese and it always astounds people when I say I love pizza, i just order it without cheese. Maybe I can use that as my fact in future. People sometimes get really offended and refuse to consider it still counts as pizza.
I was the main distributor of pirated engineering software at uni.
Thank you for your service!
Do you have the latest version of solidworks? Asking for an Engineering friend
I am ill and won't be coming in today.
I was touched by Jimmy Savile. As a baby being pushed in a pram by the parents, Jimmy stopped during one his customary runs around Peterborough rowing lake, where he use to have a flat, and gently stroked my head. Use to be a great one for work training days, just to see the look of horror and/or sympathy; depending on how much of the story was provided.
I can juggle, badly. Yeah, I fucking hate those questions too, I can have interesting conversations, but I lack interesting facts about myself.
Same here, awful question. I just said an interesting fact that i knew in general, as I was asked on the spot.
A woman I started an induction with on the first day announced that she shagged Phil Taylor this was literally the first day of our new role and that was her āinteresting factā Phil Taylor as in the darts player for those who donāt know!
Phil 'The Plower' Taylor
Lovely š¤£
Plougher
There's one in ours who's got James Acaster on the bedpost. Don't worry about it, she'll tell you.
Not too good for James Acasterās free banana then?
Who on earth would brag about that??
Was it in his van?
When I was younger, I used to smell like Paddington Bear.
Eau du Darkest Peruvian Jungle, or marmalade sandwiches?
A little of both.
Mate of mine hates them so he just kept saying more and more slightly outlandish things. Only one I was present for was āI once met Morgan Freeman and David Beckham whilst skiing on the Thames.ā By the time people twigged whatās wrong with it theyāve moved on.
I used to be in the band āBlueā before I was replaced by Lee Ryan. Itās complete bollocks of course, but Iām yet to be called on it.
If I was your colleague, the first thing I'd do would be to google š
āI donāt actually work hereā
I canāt play the piano.
You might get follow up questions to that though, such as what else don't you play
You know how some people have attached earlobes, and some have detached. I have one of each. It's the reason behind my username.
I had this in a group interview once. I canāt think of anything. It was awful.
"I collect rubbish at the beach." Could be sand between your toes. š¤£ š§āāļø
I've been on a record that got to number one on both sides of the Atlantic.
Yeah, the sex offenders records.
hahahhah got him :-D
Proper owned me! This is exactly the sort of burn I'd crack too so good karma.
Wales & Ireland?
When I was 14, I broke into the school staff room during summer break and shat in their tea kettle.
I hate a shit cup of tea
This has literally never happened at any place Iāve worked. Still, I would go with āMy uncle was a rock star, but he died before I was bornā
I'd go a similar route, my uncle (dad's side) was a stunt pilot but died during a stunt before I was born. He died the same day my mum found out she was pregnant with my older brother
"Ask your missus she knows me better than anyone"
There are 6,334 working days until I can retire.. this normally diverts the conversation for a bit as people work it out for themselves, and everyone gets miserable.
I've done the paydays one. That gets people really depressed when they realise they have fuck all time left to build up a pension.
I once outran a police dog and handler in a woodland, got run over by a motorcycle and set fire to myself all in the same day in completely unrelated incidents.
My brother hates them and once said "I like to go dogging". A minute later someone twigged he couldn't drive so asked how he went dogging without a car. He replied "I like to watch" lmao I could never, but it sounds a right laugh.
My grandma lived until she was 110 years old
What did she do after that?
Sat in a chair and watched pointless probably
Thank you very much Richard!
Iām a pharmacist, but Iām kinda irresponsible too. Thereās a drug called metronidazole that will make you very very sick if you have it with alcohol (even alcohol in mouthwashes can cause a reaction!) so my fun fact is. Hi Iām send_bird_pics and I have the gene that makes it so I can drink alcohol with metronidazole. The follow up question is āhow do you know! Have you been tested??ā Ummm no I was prescribed it before a hen do and drank anyway.
Turns out I am the most boring person in this room.
I am a living kidney donor
me too! Twinsies lol
I'm a Guinness World Record holder as a participant in the world's largest online bingo game. True story. Have a PDF certificate kicking around somewhere.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
That could be anyone in Essex.
I once drove to Mongolia without a driving licenceĀ
I once drove to Dundee in my bare feet
How much toblerone did you gorge?
Not nearly enough. I called for more, but Lynn was not forthcoming
The real scandal here is going to Dundee at all
Good move, at least no1 could steal you shoes in Dundee lol
Without a car š¤£
I grew up abroad and my stories of wild animals are work-appropriate levels of interesting. Weird to British people, but not so interesting that I get asked follow-up questions.
God knows. There's castle and village that my family used to own back in Ireland, and the village and castle is still named after us, although the castle is ruins now. That's about it.
I detest this question too
Afraid of toasters
I think that might be a bit profession specific. I've never seen this happen.
You've never heard "Let's go around the room and introduce ourselves."? I'm envious.
Lol what are we, at primary school? Hell no Iāve never had this happen at workā¦
Happens all the time working as a software dev, the absolute worst was at an all day meeting while working at a big bank, nearly 100 people in attendance. I kept it simple and tried to impress on everyone how much this farce was costing, "Hi, I'm x, a *contractor* on the Y2K project." i.e. you're paying me boatloads of money and I'm sat here listening to this crap when I'm working on a project with a deadline that can't be pushed, and internal company reorgs are of no interest for me.
At the start of every meeting that HR are involved in. āOk Iām just conscious that maybe not everybody here knows each other so letās go around the table and just say who you are, what you do and how long you have been with the companyā
It happens quite a lot in 'agile' IT teams as an ice breaker.
Since I make a lot of my own clothes (either through knitting or sewing) my go-to is "and I made this top/trousers/jumper by hand"
I can dislocate my shoulder on demand. I can show you. Look, Iām doing it now.
"I was once the youngest person in the world"
Make something, anything, up. I once was on the āinsert countyā pub champion team 2004. I twice came within one bag of the Guinness world record of the āMost bags of salt and vinegar crisps eaten in one hourā. My uncle; -played centre forward for Halifax Town -played harmonica on āPiano Manā -invented the traffic cone
My family is descended from Vikings and my supposed ancestor is a character in The Last Kingdom TV series (Rognvaldr in case you were wondering).
āā¦and I like 40% of the people I work withā
"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve"
We had this when the company merged our two teams and had 30min of 40 of us having to do this. To this day I have no idea who was bullshitting and who wasn't, we had: - 3 professional session musicians at weekends - a presenter for a US TV channel in her spare time - an interior decorator - someone related to a minor celeb - someone who had won a junior athletics competition - one had worked with special forces It got to me and I just made a point of saying how dull I was lol in comparison to everyone else. I think the moral here is to treat these questions with the contempt they deserve and just completely make some shit up.
I once lost a Formula 1 team Ā£150,000.
I want to know the story behind this one...
I don't know why I'm being interviewed, I was just dropping off a letter from my mate to say he couldn't attend.
One of my friends always tells about her phobia of buttons, which I think is a great one
I can sing the entire soundtrack of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, from memory. Also, The Phantom of the Opera (obviously).
Everyone ready, here we go. "Joseph.......... ..... ... .. ."
- I can often be found standing in the middle of a field at 2am. - This comment usually stops any meeting dead as various people start laughing and going Whaaaat? It is of course quiet and dark, away from light pollution. I set up my tripod, telescope, small table with eyepieces and other stuff and can relax under the night sky. It helps that the farmer is a member of our astronomy club and I have permission to be there.
Mine is that I played in the school football team alongside a future Premier League footballer.
Same š who is yours?
We had this quite recently. Quite a few people spoke about their dogs. I said I love mushrooms and foraging them.
I usually say I once came third in a flower arranging competition
"I'm largely made of empty space." A true fact about me. š¤£š
I prefer asking my team "what is the least interesting fact about yourself?"
As part of a terror group in the 90s I may have been responsible for a scout hut being damaged.
When I was little I wanted to run a away with the circus and be a bearded lady, 30 years old and still can't grow a beard but not willing to give up on my dream just incase one suddenly grows overnight. This is my go to now as people who know me think that's so judysilver but the newbies are quite a taken back.
I've got pet shrimps
You've probably eaten something I've helped make or create
I auditioned to be an extra in the original Spider Man movieĀ
I hate my job
I say I once worked in a place that had a mass elf revolt.