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113 People Spill The Beans About The Dark Secrets And Questionable Practices Going On At Their Jobs

Nearly every profession is hiding some spooky skeletons in its closet. That’s what CircleBox2 proved to us when they asked their fellow redditors to share the dark secrets and questionable practices that regular people would be shocked to learn.

Well, it worked—we’re shocked. A bit angry. A tad grossed out. And in need of a long, hot shower. We won’t look at any of these professions the same way again. We’ll _never ever_ drink straight from cans or bottles. And we won’t trust certain businesses (not to mention pizza places) the same way we did before ever again.

Scroll down, upvote the secrets that you were most surprised by, and spill the beans about the secrets at your own profession in the comments below. Bored Panda also spoke to redditor CircleBox2 about their viral thread, so have a read through what they said below. Just keep in mind, some of these hidden things are eye-opening in a Lovecraftian sort of way. Sometimes… sometimes it’s best not to know about what’s hiding in the dark corners of the Earth.

#1

Sometime we learn something the day before we teach it to you.

#2

I ended up quitting a career because people (all genders and ages) kept trying to solicite me for prostitution.

Young male massage therapist.

#3

Sometimes librarians read the new books before registering them in the catalogue for the public.

evil laughter *

Well, it seems like a lot of people wanted to crack Pandora’s box open just a bit or have a sneak peek inside. CircleBox2’s question got over 18.5k answers and comments while over 39.9k redditors upvoted the post.

"Having just graduated from school and on the hunt for my first job, I have been networking with professionals from diverse industries a lot. A recurring theme in a lot of my conversations with them was how their industries have dark secrets that are endemic and structural," the redditor told us about what inspired them to create the thread in the first place.

"An example that comes to mind is how bankers created financial products which they knew were ethically questionable, such as subprime mortgages. This got me thinking, what dark secrets do other professions have, which the industry as a whole tolerates or turns a blind eye towards?"

#4

The amount of good food that is thrown away. It’s pretty sickening.

#5

Retail (and former warehouse) worker.

Never drink straight from the can/bottle. Workers climb on the stacks, rats run over them in the warehouse, they sit in stagnant water under leaaking roofs, etc, etc.

#6

Young kids talk to their teachers/coaches/counselors/principals about their parents. A lot. And kids pick up on all the dirty little secrets.

CircleBox2 said that they expected to get some responses, but had no idea that the thread would blow up the way that it did. "One of the unique advantages of Reddit is that allowing people to be anonymous makes them a lot more comfortable divulging information which they otherwise might have been hesitant to."

We wanted to find out which secrets shocked the redditor the most. Here's what they had to say: "The ones that shocked me the most had to do with people having a callous attitude towards human life. One that comes to mind is about an oncologist who will exploit a family’s grief and sadness just to make more money—when a patient’s death is all but certain, he/she will suggest a 'therapy' which 'may just work,' costing exorbitant amounts of money, just for the patient to die one or two treatments in."

#7

Have you ever started filling out a form for a quote on something (insurance website, or literally anything) and then changed your mind and said "nah, I don't want to give them my personal information", and then abandoned the form before pressing "submit"?

If you think that stopped them from getting your personal information, it didn't. Most companies looking to capture leads will capture your info in real time as you enter it into a form. The submit button is just there to move you to the next step, not to actually send your information to the company.

#8

Sometimes we lick artifacts to quickly determine if they are bone or pottery (bone sticks pottery doesn’t). And then tap them on our teeth to determine if they are pottery or a rock (rock will hurt pottery won’t). Archaeology

#9

As a kitchen hand I'd often have to 'refresh' the squid and mussels in a fine dining restaurant. That basically meant go through all the old smelly seafood, clean it in salt water and keep on selling it. I don't order seafood in restaurants.

CircleBox2 said that, in their opinion, there aren't any secrets that we're better off not knowing. "As ethical consumers and responsible citizens, the more we know, the better. Everyone has a moral obligation to ensure that people aren’t being put in harm's way just to serve corporate interests, and to hold them accountable when they do."

But what would happen if suddenly everyone were to learn all about the dark secrets in various professions? According to the redditor, not much would change. "There are many dark secrets which are already common knowledge, but for one reason or another, people seem to either tolerate them or look the other way, sadly. But hopefully, the more light we can shed on them, especially those that involve egregious human rights abuses, the easier it will become to take steps to deal with them."

They added, summing up their thoughts about the thread: "A quote by Lily Kershaw comes to mind—'Nothing's ever really as it seems.'"

#10

You know the people who write instruction manuals or user guides in things you buy?

Half the time, they've never even seen or touched the product. Some dude just sends us pictures, a rough description of how it's supposed to work, and that's it.

#11

Not currently my profession but ghost writers in fiction. John Grisham, Danielle Steele, James Patterson, Janet Evanovich etc., all those big names with an NYT bestseller every year use ghostwriters who are are never credited or mentioned. It's barely even a secret.

#12

Pretty much ALL the high-end handmade in Australia jewellery in Australia is made at a secret factory in Bali. All the clients have to show an established business and sign confidentiality agreements.

It’s one thing when an employee acts unethically and violates the rules for their own benefit. But it’s a whole other ball game when management either purposefully ignores bad practices or actively enforces them.

For example, the Consumer Federation of America reports that 4 digital communications companies had created a tight “oligopoly on steroids” to overcharge Americans roughly 60 billion dollars each year.

Meanwhile, one thing that we see popping up, again and again, is just how low hygiene standards can drop in pizza joints and other fast food places. Well, some fast food joints might have some other iffy secrets floating about. For example, researchers at Hollins University found that 48 percent of soda fountains at fast food restaurants had coliform bacteria in them (they’re commonly found in poop).

#13

Lot of unethical shipping companies EVEN TODAY dump a lot of garbage, oily sludge, waste contaminated water and oil out when sailing in international waters far away from the shore. There are only a few handful players today who are actually executing business trades while still keeping the carbon footprint and enviornment as one of their core policies. I am glad to be working with one one them

#14

I work at a county jail in the midwest. The most disturbing thing about jail is the terrible loop some inmates get stuck in. Many inmates with mental issues get caught in this loop where they cant have any clothes or items because they will try to kill themselves and they are locked in their cell for 23 hours a day. This makes them more angry so when they are finally let out they lash out at staff and then are locked down again. Its a vicious cycle for a lot of inmates and makes a lot of mental illness a whole lot worse. Staff cant do anything though because if they allow the inmate with mental illness to socialize then they risk a lawsuit from those around them, because of the individuals history of violent outbursts. Majority of hospitals wont take them because they wont risk their staff. So they are just stuck in a room and their only hope is consistent medication stabilizing them.

#15

Many hotels often sell rooms multiple times. Used to work in airport hotel. Knowing that chances are some guests won’t arrive due to missed or delayed flights so we sell more rooms that we have. You have guests checking out from 2/3 am due to early flights so even though the room is technically still theirs you quickly and sometimes poorly clean the room and tell the arriving unexpected guest or new booking there’s a random computer issue and to wait 20 mins and then check them into the departed guests room praying. Multiple times I’ve had to run a kettle under a cold tap to hide the fact the previous guest used it 15 mins before the new guest arrives

Soda machines can also have mold growing inside of them because they’re darn difficult to clean. So if you want to avoid an upset stomach, get something to drink that comes in a bottle or a can. Just remember to wipe them down first and recycle them afterward.

While we might be better off not knowing some secrets for our own peace of mind, these are the kind of secrets we definitely need to know so we can act differently.

#16

Services costs are based on how much money you look like you have. I’m a woodworker/contractor. I come to you house, you tell me what you want done. My jumping off point is how much the market will bare. If I think you can afford a $4,000 solid oak book case that’s what I will quote you. I can make a cheaper version that I make less money on, but why would I do that? It’s not that I’m just ripping you off, I’m selling you a better product, but in doing so I make more money. So when getting a quote it can pay to be very direct about what you want to spend or you are going to be sold the most expensive version they think you can afford.

#17

Many bills are literally written by lobbyists or special interest organizations. I have seen my boss give bill language to a state legislator and then found the same language in print a few days later several times. The bill may change in committee but usually not drastically against the original intent.

#18

University Professor: we don’t actually read your entire answer. Most of us don’t.

#19

I work at a theme park and we use codes with number for situation that could happen in the park to not create panic, we also use codes for some category of people. Like a code 25 means there’s a fire, code 20 is for mentally disabled people.

We also use hand signals sometimes for some situations

#20

Church worker here. This may be specific to the church I work for, but I think it's pretty common for bigger (1,000+ members) churches. They're two-faced. They'll tell the janitorial crew "janitorial service is truly a ministry, and it's so good and so important." But guess what. When the church needs to make cutbacks, we're some of the first ones screwed over. We're the ones expected to clean until 2-3am on a Sunday morning after people have used the building until midnight.

As a woman, I've straight up been harassed by the guy pretty high up in the church hierarchy, and nobody really has my back.

There are so many fake, judgemental, hateful people who hide behind the guise of Christianity. People who will lock people out of the building and laugh at them. They tell the people who aren't dressed presentable enough to sit in the back, if that person isn't run off by their frozen, hateful stares.

This is so anti what a church and Christianity should be.

#21

this may come as a surprise, but your vet tech is not "only in it for the money"

primarily because we are paid very little

please stop yelling at me

#22

Air traffic control (cue the Breaking Bad jokes)

A diagnosis of virtually any mental illness...and a diagnosis of many physical conditions...is disqualifying and will end your career. For that reason, people avoid doctors like the plague.

#23

Customs broker here. Every day hundreds of thousands of containers and air shipments arrive into United States territory. The volume of customs entries entered every day is staggering. When we get licensed to be a customs broker we are trained and tested not just on knowledge, but ethics. We even take a pledge to partner with CBP to uphold the law, and cooperate with them should we come across anything suspicious. Why so much emphasis on this?

Customs can't actually screen everything coming in. I'm oversimplifying but CBP basically works on the honor system. You file an entry saying what the shipment is, and they just take your word for it and release it. This happens hundreds of thousands of times a day. Maybe at best customs can screen 3-7% of what's coming in, the rest of just waived through....

#24

There is at least one water bottle/soda can/energy drink/ spray paint can sitting on a piece of blocking behind your drywall somewhere in your house.

#25

Former retail pharmacy technician. I received many forged prescriptions for strong narcotics for otherwise seemingly young, healthy patients. In hindsight, it's really sad, because I'm witnessing the opioid crisis unfold before my eyes. But the pharmacist has full discretion to pretend we don't have the drug in stock, turn people away, or straight up call the cops.

We will literally put on our acting game and keep these people at the pharmacy until the cops arrive

#26

Some stores that sell used merchandise like video games and movies, will pay you money for stolen stuff even when they know it's stolen. It doesn't hurt them to get brand new games that were only released hours ago for a fraction of the cost. Then they turn around and sell them for five dollars cheaper than a new copy. They are getting brand new never opened sixty dollars games for a few bucks, and making a huge profit.

#27

Copywriter:

MOST of the articles you read on the internet are written by us. We have no idea what we are talking about. We get the topic, Google it, and reword other articles into a new one. All we have to do is make sure we include a few seo words. I've written articles for HVAC companies, movie and tv reviews, tons of different merchandise sales, and so much other stuff I've forgotten. If it's a blog post online, it's likely fake.

#28

I’ve worked in fast food, and it is a sad reality that many workers will come to work sick, because they can’t afford to lose wages. One year, the flu was going around town, and I think our restaurant was ground zero.

#29

I worked for a home improvement store and there was so much sexual harassment in management to employees that no one in upper management cared. If you reported any sexual harassment you got retaliation in return (less hours, no promotions). Calling HR didn't work because the managers knew who'd call corporate & nothing was anonymous. It was wild

#30

Teachers are often made to cap grade failures at 20% or lower. The students that did not demonstrate enough knowledge for credit to pass are still moved along to the next grade. This results in having 9th graders in my English 1 class who read below grade level, sometimes as stunted as on a 2nd or 3rd grade level. These students are constantly frustrated and can become behavior issues. It's also heartbreaking to identify and feel helpless in catching the student up due to current demands from administrators and school leaders.

#31

That the Geneva Convention is more of a...'suggestion' for most of the militaries in the world

#32

How many people who work with children (teachers, childcare workers, etc.) don't follow confidentiality guidelines. Gossiping about families with coworkers, talking about children's home situations, creeping family's social media, etc.

#33

I'm sure most know this, but 99.9% of advertisements involving 'real people' is acted and scripted. Even when the people being interviewed are indeed non-actors, they are prompted on what to say. For example, recently we interviewed a guy who won a car from one of our brands.

First round:

Interviewer: Congrats on your win! How do you feel?

Guy: Uhh... really great. It's a real surprise, to be honest. Thank you.

AFTER SEVERAL ROUNDS AND COACHING

Interviewer: Interviewer: Congrats on your win! How do you feel?

Guy: I feel so lucky to have won a (BRAND) car! The design and handling is first rate, and I'm most impressed by the fuel consumption. I will definitely keep on holding (BRAND) as my top car of choice.

#34

At a very large pizza chain restaurant that remains widely popular, we had these perforated pans for thin crust and stuffed crust pizzas. They'd get washed in the dish washer by the hundreds per day and at least half would still have burnt cheese and shit on them. Well they were just stacked to dry. When making new pizzas in those pans, sometimes the pans that were left to "dry" overnight grew bits of mold around the burnt cheese. We were told just to put the dough on top because otherwise we'd never keep up with the orders if we rewashed everything. The manager said, "don't worry, it gets cooked".

#35

There is a problem in substance abuse treatment in the United States called body brokering. Substance abuse treatment can be very expensive and insurance companies pay A LOT of money for a patient to be there. Treatment centers will hire “body brokers” to find addicts with the best, highest paying insurance and entice them to check in to the specific center, the treatment center then gives the broker a commission from the insurance money.

This can go as far as body brokers literally putting more drugs in to the hands of some addicts before they come in, bc the higher level of drugs in your system upon admit, the more and longer the insurance company will pay to the treatment center.

Brokers will also hire other addicts in a pyramid scheme type way to check in to the treatment center, make friends with the other patients, and upon discharge encourage relapse so they come back to treatment.

#36

The real reason programmers have so many screens is because one of them almost always has Google pulled up on it. No one knows what they are doing 100% off the time. Its typically always "hmmm this should work" or "well hope this works"

#37

Lots of performing musicians don't ever really get over stage fright. Many of them take beta blockers to help with nerves. Although it's less about the mental side of it and more the fact that you physically can't perform if you get so nervous that your hands are shaking. That's what beta blockers help with; you'll probably still feel anxious mentally, but any physical effects like shaking or sweating will be gone.

Not really a 'dark' secret, as there's not usually bad side effects of beta blockers, but I guess some people might see that as cheating in a way. Personally, I find it kind of inspiring knowing that lots of people struggle with the same thing as me, and there's a solution that isn't just 'suck it up and deal with it'.

#38

This isn't dark or really secret, but really funny and nobody else would know this: For playing trombone, we sometimes have to pull our buttocks together, so we can reach a high note.

#39

When you order a cake from a bakery, most of the time it was baked and frozen, probably anywhere from a couple days to a month before, and only pulled out the day before or day of to finish off for your order. It doesn't ruin the cake, it just makes it way easier for us to say yes to more orders because we can have them ready to go and finish them quickly.

#40

I have worked in vetmed since 2013. I have this habit, especially when owners don't want to be present for their pet's euthanasia, in which I give their pets chocolate, pieces of my meal (meat, bread, cheese, even onions/garlic), or the best wet food from our pantry prior to them being given the drugs that help them pass.

They don't suffer from the damaging effects of those foods if they're being euthanized minutes after. I like to give them a taste of something they would never get to try otherwise. Of course, I would never do this unless the pet was already en route to the room where the procedure would take place

#41

When your city asks you to conserve water because there's a drought, what they don't tell you is that the maximum amount consumers could reduce their use by is dwarfed by the amount of water leaking out of old and poorly maintained infrastructure

#42

I work for a hotel doing conferences and big events such as weddings. I would advise people to NEVER have a host bar i.e. all the drinks for the evening go on one tab for example the owner of the company may pay for all the drinks or the family of the bride or groom may pay for all the drinks.

It is common practice for my bosses to come along and just press random buttons on the till to rack up the bill without actually serving any guests. If I catch them doing it I'll immediately get rid of them as it's not right. They don't get any extra pay if we sell more at the bar so the only reason they do it is to be like look at me to their boss.

#43

Alcoholism (especially functioning alcoholism) is very common in the brewing industry. Its extra hard for people who develop a habit, then be around it 40+ hours a week to not start getting more dependent. Then even harder for them to get help as they will most likely lose their job or at least be reassigned if they speak up and try to get help.

#44

When an animal dies in a pet store we can’t just throw it out, we have to bag it up and ship it back to the distributor. It hangs out in the freezer in the meantime; we’ve had a rabbit in ours for weeks, now.

Oh, and hamsters eat each other a lot more than you’d think.....

#45

Semi-Migrant families who work in agriculture in California often live in housing provided by either the contractor getting them field work or the processing plant or dehydrator they work at. These are on small Lots in the fields and even sometimes on the same property as the packing plant separated by a chain link fence. Rent/utilities/water are all deducted directly from their check. These areas are referred to as “Camps”. Yes. Labor camps exist to this day. I did a lot of pest services for these places. They are squalor.

#46

After your dog/cat is put to sleep and if you are having them cremated they will be stacked on top of each other in a chest freezer until pickup (which usually runs every couple of days). When I put my oldest dog to sleep the I made sure I asked my vets office to put her at the top of the freezer because thinking about her at the bottom made me so upset.

If it helps at all offset this morbidity we love your animals like crazy and will kiss them as much as they will let us.

#47

Some doctors heavily rely on opioids to get through their days. Patients aren’t the only ones who can develop addictions.

#48

Aircraft are basically hollow. Not a super dark secret but before I started working on them I assumed they would be a lot more solid than they are.

#49

I am a fairly high-ranking executive at a very large Japanese firm and literally everything important is decided while wining, dining and some things worse than that on the company dime. Meetings are perfunctory and usually conclude with "we agree to research and consider this important issue more carefully moving forward." The the actual deal happens at 2am in a hostess club.

#50

You can buy stamps from your mailbox, just leave a note and money and stamps will be there the next day.

#51

IT,

Outages occur sure, bugs happen too.

Most of the time these things are known and are put off until they happen or are complained about

#52

A lot of the time the engineer you talk to about your project (and decide to trust with it) delegates it to cheaper contractors as soon as you sign the paperwork. Their job is new business.

#53

You do not want to know how long food sits on the loading dock before it gets into the cooler.

#54

You can buy a casket from Costco for 20% of the price that I'm going to sell you one for.

About 70% of the cost of the funeral is overcharging options and leading you on to feel guilty if you don't take them.

We have a lot of fun when we don't deal with customers, but we never have that "fun" with bodies.

#55

Pretty much any software you use is jacked together spaghetti with no tests.

#56

Every stereotype you’ve ever heard about retail and sales staff doing everything in their power to make a rude customer’s life hell is 100% true.

Make sure you spend the most money, done. Send out the worst version of the product, done. Put you on hold for an hour while they have a chat and a break, done.

#57

Library workers are all a bunch of tatted-up punks outside of work. You usually can't see the tattoos because we cover them up with cardigans.

We also will ignore parental restrictions if their children have their own library card, meaning if a parent tells us her kids can't read a certain book or watch a certain movie, we will disregard it and check it out to them anyway. If parents want to control what media their child consumes they shouldn't give them their own library card.

#58

Your apartment building is probably held together with duct tape and wishful thinking somewhere. Neither tenants nor landlords ever want to pay to fix things properly.

#59

The military usually has no idea what’s going on at all and when we look all uniformed and ready to go it’s because we’ve been waiting on standby to figure out what to do next for 7 hours

#60

That contractor you hired is paying off the labor and past due vendor accounts from the last job with the down payment you gave him for this job.

#61

When you order pizza, if you have “unpopular” or toppings that are not picked often you are most likely eating a mixed bag of fresh and spoiled ingredients. Due to pizza kitchens having to refill the toppings containers every week. If the management does not force kitchen staff to empty them out and clean them you will end up eating rotten and rancid meat and veg.

#62

I don't know if it's a secret, exactly, but many clinicians in the mental health field still refuse to work with clients who have a borderline personality disorder diagnosis. Although there's a pervasive belief that BPD is untreatable, there have been at least somewhat effective treatments for decades now. In particular, DBT is pretty effective at reducing rates of suicide, which people with BPD are at HUGELY elevated risk for.

I think it's pretty questionable...it would be like if the majority of doctors refused to see patients with arthritis because there's no cure for it.

#63

Alarm/camera tech for residential and business. The 'monitoring center' you pay for is a lie. There is a pretty good chance no one is responding or it is being sent to a call center handling tons of calls. But that doesn't matter, because the police won't usually dispatch for unconfirmed alarms. (If at all). The gear is stupid cheap and easy to install. I literally had one day training and just looked everything up on Google or YouTube. It's all on there, including install and override codes for most systems since the 90s. Most of the stuff they sell you is pretty worthless. You are better off monitoring and servicing your system yourself, you can get it all on eBay for pennies what you'll be charged by your company. Even used can be reprogrammed and set up fine. If you really want to be secure, get a good dog. But tons of you are locked into years of contracts over basically 30-40$ worth of gear.

#64

A lot of the companies that are doing the background checks that are required you pass before you are employed, look the other way while your information is siphoned off to servers in Russia and China, passing your information indirectly to the governments of said countries. Some financial firms' data (when you sign up for an account with someone like PayPal, for example), will end up being shared with over 80 financial institutions and governments, which is something that such firms would rather you not fully understand, even if they eventually admit to it by way of their ToS.

#65

I work in quality control. There are acceptable levels of insect parts that can found in manufactured food and be OK by the FDA.

#66

Your friendly IT person knows (or has access to know) just how much time you spend working vs slacking off

#67

The acceptance of illegally harvested or over harvested exotic lumber in the musical instrument industry.

#68

On customer service sites where you can use the chat box to get help, they can see what you are typing before you send it so they can get a reply ready quickly.

My sister said they write some insanely offensive stuff and delete it and write something else.

#69

99% of consulting is basically copying one companies good idea and selling it to another.

It’s just PowerPoint presentations of peer company practices bouncing back and forth into eternity.

#70

Airline Worker here...

Let’s just say if your bag is in transit from the belt to the aircraft (or visa versa) and it falls out of the bag cart because we have crappy transportation equipment, that bag will most of the time sit on the road for hours (rain or shine) before it is picked up and sent on another flight to the same destination.

Also, yes bags are thrown, and not a damn supervisor cares unless it’s slammed with a purpose like a wrestling move or something.

#71

I currently work at a dog boarding place.

Unfun fact: it's relatively common, at least in my area, for boarding workers to kick and slap dogs--even little puppies--when they misbehave. We do our best to discourage it, but we had a couple of new hires get fired, one for breaking a dog's jaw. Also, flea outbreaks are insanely common and hard to get rid of.

If you really need to board your dog, please ask for a tour first. A hell of a lot of boarding places are shady

#72

I work in a pharmacy. The vast majority of drug recalls the public never hears about. We just send in whatever we have in our stock still and no one notifies the patient.

#73

Animators usually get treated like their job is super easy and have to redo a whole CGI scene in a week. So if you watch a movie with bad CGI, don’t blame the animators.

#74

The true reason folks win so much on scratchers is they spend twice as much to make a bit of it back.

#75

Mechanical engineering - Pi is 3.0000 Everything will be hidden by safetyfactor of 2-5 (everything is basically 2-5 times bigger than it needs to be) so why bother with decimals.

#76

There is no reason to be embarrassed about your body, specifically your sex organs in front of your doctor, nurse ect. We have seen so many genitals and naked bodies, yours does not even faze us.

#77

Anesthesiologist here. The inhaled anesthetics or “gas” we use to keep you unconscious during surgery are a mystery to us. We don’t know how they work. There are theories, but we just know that it keeps you asleep...?

#78

When you go into a phone shop to get a new mobile and we ask if you are an existing customer, it is usually because our best deals are reserved for new customers. Also, if we tell you we are out of stock on a popular phone it is sometimes because we're down to just a couple of that device and are saving them in case we can use them to close a deal with a new customer.

If you want to get the best deals you usually need to change to a new provider. You could walk out of my store after I tell you we don't have any, walk into the store next door and transfer your number to a no contract plan with them, then walk back into my store saying you want to bring your number across from a competition and I will somehow discover a phone in the model and color you wanted was out the back after all.

#79

I work for the state government here.

Basically, I honestly don't work except for maybe 30 mins a day.

#80

You know why Furniture and Jewelry has such high markup (usually 50-75%)??? So they can put it on sale for %25-50 off. And it works. Very well. I know this seems like common knowledge, but you'd be surprised. The one exception was well known brand of latex mattress, they had a low markup and rarely ever went on sale. They figured the quality and brand sold itself.

#81

Film execs sometimes buy scripts without ever reading them. They have their assistants read them, write a summary and tell them whether it’s good or not. Usually if the assistant says it’s worth buying they’ll read it, but not always.

#82

Did residential electrical for a year. If you're buying a new home, you are definitely not the first person to use your toilet.

#83

A lot of shows use parts of sequences from other shows and movies as their storyboards and just copy them shot for shot.

#84

Chicken feed is made of a actual chickens, use to work at a processing plant. The whole dead chicken is used feathers and all to make a protein meal that is used in dog, cat, horse and even chicken feed

#85

Yes, your nurse knows your lab results and can see your x-ray/CT/MRI. No, we can't tell you results, the doctor has to.

ER wait times are not just to irritate you/make you miserable. Nurse to patient ratios are important, there is a lot of paperwork associated with people already admitted, it is done in order of importance first (your left toe pain will not be seen before the suspected stroke, sorry).

Your ER doctor probably won't remember your name, but your nurse will. Be nice to your nurse, because they can do a lot for you.

Just tell your nurse the truth, chances are we've heard it before and we'll find out about it soon enough.

#86

All those supermarkets that say they're doing extra deep cleaning in wake of covid19. We're not. We didn't have enough staff to do the general cleaning necessary before this and we certainly don't have the staff now. Try tell a suit that you're not filling a shelf because you're cleaning it

#87

In most of the chain pharmacies I worked at, pills we not thrown away even if they fell on the floor or in the garbage. They are just throw back in the bottle.

#88

You'd be surprised by the tolerances for the dimensions and defects on airplane parts lol

#89

When delivering pizza if There’s two orders close to each other and one has already left a tip and one hasn’t, the one without the tip gets delivered first so that there’s hopefully a tip on that one too. So it would honestly be better to wait to tip when the driver gets there. Also pizza guys get robbed occasionally due to having lots of cash so now most companies only allow drivers to carry $20 for change.

#90

Statistics abuse in research. Basically the academic equivalent of fake news

#91

Pretty much every "Amazon like" service usually treats even the most fragile packages as balls, even there's this guy who keeps yelling "KOBE!" Every time he literally throws something to his truck. If they can launch it, they will.

#92

Avoid the ice in restaurants / bars if possible. The ice machines never get cleaned. It's a nasty slimy mess in most of them.

#93

We definitely look at your transaction history to determine if we're refunding a fee.

Groceries, utilities, and you overdraft - waived.

iTunes, xBox, Casino ATM, and you overdraft - yea, sorry we can't waive that fee.

#94

Loading bars on most games/softwares/websites don't actually follow the real loading progression

#95

DO NOT drink the water in an airplane. High chance of gray water cross-contamination. Some airlines even make coffee with it

#96

When we take x-rays of your pelvis, we can see your penis. And we can see your labial folds.

#97

Scuba instructor.. we preach how important safety is to our students. When we dive for fun and without paying customers in tow we get up to some very questionable sh*t.

#98

I don’t know if this is a total secret, but a lot of the talking points about how expensive lawyers are, or how plaintiffs lawyers get unreasonably high payouts for doing little work, is driven by corporations trying to discourage people from suing them.

For example, most plaintiffs lawyers are working entirely on a contingency basis (meaning that they advance all costs with the risk of no reimbursement and don’t see a dime unless they win), and almost all will give you a free consultation. But by spreading the false narrative of “it’s gonna cost you to even talk to a lawyer about that,” big companies discourage you from even consulting one and finding out the truth.

Similarly, the narrative of plaintiffs lawyers getting unreasonably high fees for cases is also designed to misrepresent the truth. For example, you hear a big company say “this class action got $2.50 for each person, but the attorneys got $250k” or something. But, the only reason the attorneys got all that money is because the company went balls to the wall litigating over $2.50, racking up attorneys fees on both sides, when they could have shortcircuited the whole thing from the outset by saying “you got us, here’s your money” and paid next to nothing in attorneys fees. Plus, $2.50 times a million people is a lot of money, meaning that the fees were justified by the total amount recovered, and that the case was not so insignificant to begin with. But, by controlling the narrative, companies make it seem like it’s unreasonable to be mad that they stole millions from consumers, and that’s it’s even more unreasonable for someone whose job it is to take on all the risk, and then get paid based on a percentage of what their results are.

Sure, there are windfall cases, but usually those cases are needed just to offset the 10 other cases where you took a haircut on fees. It’s like putting $100 in a slot machine, losing 10 times, and then hitting one jackpot on your last turn to make it back to $100, and then having the casino say “he got $100 for a single game of slots, this is ridiculous” until you’re forced to give back $90 of what you won. How likely are you going to be to play again?

There’s a lot more to this but the TLDR is that companies are projecting when they paint lawyers as greedy, and do so in order to minimize the chance that they get called on their bullshit

#99

If it has to be accessed regularly in an IT setting? It’s not secure. Not unless you’re in an industry that actually polices it.

Yes, people are dumb enough to pick up USB thumb drives they find on the ground. The nicer and newer it is, the more likely it’ll get plugged in.

Also, if you’re looking to verify the security of your vendors, don’t announce your visit.

#100

Our athletic department has strong-armed financial aid into finding money for athletes who have sub-2.0 GPA's, are constantly busted for drugs, and get in trouble all the time which leads to them being ineligible for athletic money, but we want to keep them on the team so they find other money to keep them here

#101

Those "Donate now and your donation will be double/triple/quadruple matched" or "We only need 10 more donors/$5,000 more from your zip code" emails are all lies.

But they work, so we keep sending them.

#102

Overwhelming majority of international trade is done by incompetent poorly trained and uneducated staff from poor countries that is also exploited .

Government checks are all corrupt, even from western countries with generally low corruption. This is by design.

It's a miracle that ships don't collide and sink constantly.

#103

As a nurse, I’ve had to google + watch teaching videos on not-so-common procedures 5 minutes before going in and performing the procedure on the patient.

Doctors will google your symptoms if they’re stumped on what to give or diagnose.

#104

I worked for a local pizzaria once that sold a “thin crust” pizza.

Yeah, no. No thin crust pizza. In fact, there was no crust involved. It was a tortilla. It was a bunch of pizza toppings on a tortilla that was briefly set in the oven or cooked in the microwave (depending on the size). I was told that if I ever talked about it (and revealed to customers that the restaurant was lying about the crust) that i would be fired. Apparently it was a huge secret or something.

#105

Retail worker here, when you ask an employee to check for something in the back we almost always know if we're out of it but go back there anyway. We dont actually check for the item, instead we go on our phone for a few minutes and act like we looked.

#106

There is nothing wrong with your car. We just disconnected something and reconnected it again. A can of black spray paint will make any part look new.

#107

IT here. There are programs that exist to monitor your activities on company computers and block out dangerous or distracting websites.

Sometimes I just look through the reports and block anything that isn't permissible (streaming, porn, games, etc). If you end up asking me about it on a public chat or a case, you get written up for violating company policy.

#108

schools will lower their admittance standards for international students since school depend on their money to stay afloat.

The more cuts the system does towards the public system the worst this gets. Not only do you have lower teaching standards just by having outdated infrastructure and bloated classes, but the mean skill level of your classes is also lowered.

I've seen students attend classes who were completely unable to speak any English. When I say any I mean any, they had to start with 'hello my name is' 'I, you, he she it' ' Chair, desk, table' weeks into their program. And because of the way class hours and modules are constructed, it is impossible for them to take 2 months off to take full time language classes to solve the problem. So they have to waste everyone's time and money(theirs) for months and months while failing everything.

#109

Costumes in theater are made to be put on and taken off quickly and accuracy is less important. Hidden zippers on victorian gowns. Often when we think about how much detail to include in a hair piece we keep in mind most audience members will only see it from a good distance away. This is a medium budget theater, I bet higher theaters can give more attention but we gotta take shortcuts.

#110

Jockeys (not all obviously but in general) are encouraged to be bulimic. It's normalised to the point where there are often extra bathrooms set up just for puking in. With toilets that are specially designed for the amount of vomit they take in. And no one gives a single sh*t because of the competition and the lengths you have to go to succeed. Trainers will literally explain to you how to do it, and how to do it 'properly'. They call it 'wasting' not purging but it's basically forced bulimia. It's incredibly fu**ed up

#111

I worked in a restaurant where we served bread and butter- the owners made us reused any butter the customer didn't use by filling in the dent of what was used and serving it to the next customer. It always really grossed me out but I only worked there for a week filling in for a friend so I didn't do anything about it.

#112

Padding paperwork (studies) to slow an auditor down.

Every data point, all the minutiae of the calculations, unnecessarily dense explanations of statistical methods that go on at length with notes about distribution fitting.

They (auditors) aren't usually very technical, so they stop at each spot along the way without realizing they can throw half the thing out.

If you're good, you can balloon a 30 page document into 100 in a matter of minutes.

Edit: I keep getting angry comments from finance people. Simmer down. This isn't about you. If you think it is, re-read the post. Do you audit studies? Is distribution fitting relevant to you?

Your industry does not own the term "audit."

Thanks.

#113

"P-hacking" in science.

IIRC, this just means the practice of fishing for significant findings, rather than setting out to determine if your original hypothesis holds true. Normally you would come up with a hypothesis, design an experiment, test it, and then afterwards test for significant results. People "P-hack" in order to find comparisons that are significant, even if those comparisons weren't the ones they set out for in the first place.

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