“What’s The Dark Secret About Your Profession That The General Public Doesn’t Know?” (30 Answers)

Every industry has its hidden side that may be unappealing. It’s akin to visiting the kitchen of your favorite restaurant and seeing how grimy and untidy it actually is from behind the scenes.

Much of this insider information remained concealed until someone posted this question on Reddit: “What’s the dark secret about your profession that the general public doesn’t know?”

People didn’t hesitate to respond, revealing what happens behind closed doors among lawyers, healthcare workers, educators, and service industry employees, to name a few.

Many of these answers may shock you and make you question the fabric of society. But if you want to read about juicy industry secrets, scroll through this list.

This post may include affiliate links.

“What’s The Dark Secret About Your Profession That The General Public Doesn’t Know?” (30 Answers) Former heavy machinery worker. Everything from in facility work to road and construction work.

Every single guy...I mean every guy, that operates a backhoe or asphalt roller or bulldozer absolutely LOVES and gets a kick when we see kids watching and being interested in what we are doing. We all want to stop and let them on the machine and allow them to run it, but are only forced to not to because of rules and insurance.

When we get together for lunch we aren't talking about the women we saw. We're talking about the little boy in the red hoodie who clapped when we dumped a shovel. And not one guy teases you for thinking it was great, because otherwise the job is just grinding and our bosses suck.

I figured we needed a bit of positivity on this thread.

killbillydeluxe , IslandHopper X/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

351points

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Stephanie Did It 1 day ago

I love this!

85points

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“What’s The Dark Secret About Your Profession That The General Public Doesn’t Know?” (30 Answers) It is entirely possible that your veterinarian will kiss your kitten's belly when you are not looking.

catdoctor , Mk7 Bober/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

164points

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Erdot 1 day ago

I love vets that love my pet and are kind and sweet to them. Please, do kiss them each time you can.

19points

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“What’s The Dark Secret About Your Profession That The General Public Doesn’t Know?” (30 Answers) I used to be a police officer: There were a lot of unspoken rules about making sure we had a high number of arrests. Demonstrating high arrest numbers meant we got federal/state grant money. This kept the prosecutor employed along with the entire court system and showed the town/city we needed a larger budget because of all the arrests. The entire criminal justice system is literally a giant business which [profits] off the backs of the public

T-Rat93 , Rosemary Ketchum/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

119points

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Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 1 day ago

This is what a century of for-profit prisons gets us.

92points

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“What’s The Dark Secret About Your Profession That The General Public Doesn’t Know?” (30 Answers) The number of completely incompetent employees working in health care settings is appalling.

ParfaitThat654 , Pixabay/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

118points

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cecilia kilian 1 day ago

Elder care in memory care units is a disgrace in the US. The employees don't care because they are paid peanuts. The residents cannot complain because they no longer have the capacities to do so. Meanwhile the families are paying the price of a small car every month for "care", and the facilities' owners are reaping the profits.

29points

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“What’s The Dark Secret About Your Profession That The General Public Doesn’t Know?” (30 Answers) Security guard: In an active shooter event, we're not going to protect your a*s. We're heading to the nearest safe exit and calling the cops.

HeyTuesdayPigInAPoke , YuriArcursPeopleimages/Envato (not the actual photo) Report

101points

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Nathaniel He/Him Cis-Het 1 day ago

Tbf, that is kind of reasonable, everybody should be getting out.

72points

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“What’s The Dark Secret About Your Profession That The General Public Doesn’t Know?” (30 Answers) Economist here. The dirty secret is that economists do actually know what they're doing, politicians and pundits just ignore us and do whatever they want to make more money for the rich. Oh and all conservative economic theory is a made up scam. Trickle down is a scam.

POEness , Tima Miroshnichenko/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

101points

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Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 1 day ago

Some economists know what they are doing. Enough of them supported Reaganomics to screw this country hard in the 80s. At least most of them are clever enough to oppose Trump's TARIFFS TARIFFS TARIFFS strategy.

35points

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“What’s The Dark Secret About Your Profession That The General Public Doesn’t Know?” (30 Answers) 80% of women with developmental disabilities will experience SA. The statistics are already horrible for neuro typical women but most people outside the field have no idea it's so high. It is horrific.

wylderpixie , Becca Correia/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

97points

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Nathaniel He/Him Cis-Het 1 day ago

Let's all take advantage of the vulnerable! What a mess we are as a species.

64points

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“What’s The Dark Secret About Your Profession That The General Public Doesn’t Know?” (30 Answers) Funeral Director/Embalmer here. I don’t know that this is a particularly “dark” secret, but despite the rising popularity, the lack of understand around what cremation really is always shocks me. You do not get “ashes” back. You get back bone fragments. In school we had it drilled into us to never use them term “ashes” because it is so inaccurate and only perpetuates this misunderstanding. Your body is not reduced to a fine, powdery ash that will float off in the wind/water when scattered. It is reduced to large chunks of bone which are then processed to try to attain a fairly uniform consistency. Much more like a heavy sand.

rosemarylake , Ksenia Chernaya/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

83points

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Nathaniel He/Him Cis-Het 1 day ago

I loved making sandcastles with my grandad. But then my mum would tell me to put grandads ashes back in the urn.

108points

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“What’s The Dark Secret About Your Profession That The General Public Doesn’t Know?” (30 Answers) Book editor. Unless you have a massive social media following/built-in audience already, chances are very small you'll get published by a major house. Chances are even smaller that you'll make any money from your book. Just self-publish if you really want to get your work out there: the publishing industry is 95% about making money and 5% about publishing decent books.

ergo_slump , Claudia Uriarte Laya/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

77points

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Bartlet for World Domination 1 day ago

Is that a big letter book or is Hamlet way longer than I remember?

26points

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#10

“What’s The Dark Secret About Your Profession That The General Public Doesn’t Know?” (30 Answers) I work in the gas pipeline industry and there's been massive accidents and terror attacks people have no idea about and were never reported nor ever will be. All over the world.

LuciusSweetsCrown , DeLuca G/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

76points

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Nathaniel He/Him Cis-Het 1 day ago

Why are they not reported?

27points

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#11

“What’s The Dark Secret About Your Profession That The General Public Doesn’t Know?” (30 Answers) When they make a pain cream, they put in ingredients to make you "feel" something, like menthol, because it's associated with "doing something" or "working". Simple not feeling anything (or less pain) is not associated with effecacy.

ThePainCream , Karolina Kaboompics/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

71points

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ZGutr 1 day ago

That's also true for toothpaste. The tingling feeling is actually your gums being irritated a little. It's giving us a feeling of 'fresh' and motivates the brushing.

27points

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#12

“What’s The Dark Secret About Your Profession That The General Public Doesn’t Know?” (30 Answers) Persuasive design is unbelievably effective on websites.

A little scarcity message there, a little was/now pricing, a big ol' prominent "buy now" button in just the right place, badly designed filters that limit your ability to see the cheapest products.

Lots of websites are utterly garbage, and some might *look* garbage and have obviously annoying experiences (Amazon anyone?) but it's like that because you spend more money, and cost the company less money - not to make it good for you.

We know how long you spend on a page, what you look at, what will make you buy, and how to keep you engaged for as long as possible. We know you are using an iPhone - the newest, largest model - and are likely a wealthier prospect, so will tailor our messaging and pricing to squeeze every cent out of you that we can.

These experiments are conducted on you without your knowledge in order to make you part with your money.

bugbugladybug , Canva Studio/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

65points

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Endcensorship 1 day ago

This is just so wrong to do

17points

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#13

“What’s The Dark Secret About Your Profession That The General Public Doesn’t Know?” (30 Answers) A boutique hotel I worked at didn’t wash comforters unless they had to. And even then you really had to push. I was pulled to help with housekeeping fairly regularly in the busy season, found a quilt with blood on it - sent it to laundry. It was sent back 5 mins for being “clean enough” 🤢🤮

My housekeepers told me it was normal. I was horrified. I cringe staying at hotels and take a blanket when I can.

allthecrazything , Engin Akyurt/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

64points

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Nils Skirnir 1 day ago

Wait until you use an AirBnb

16points

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#14

“What’s The Dark Secret About Your Profession That The General Public Doesn’t Know?” (30 Answers) Professors are regularly pressured into passing failing students to keep up graduation levels. I even had the registrar go into the system and change grades. Let’s just say I have seen my fair share of students who failed my science course but were passed by admins who are now building your bridges, interstates, buildings,levees, and multi-level parking lots.

BagelwithQueefcheese , cottonbro studio/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

61points

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Cathy 1 day ago

I work at a university in Europe and I can tell you we take grading very seriously.

46points

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#15

“What’s The Dark Secret About Your Profession That The General Public Doesn’t Know?” (30 Answers) The US public school system is on the brink of collapse.

imveryclever , Kobe -/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

58points

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Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 1 day ago

This comment has been deleted.

66points

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#16

“What’s The Dark Secret About Your Profession That The General Public Doesn’t Know?” (30 Answers) I work in laboratory support for a life sciences department at a mid-size university, and the amount of plastic waste we generate is astounding. .

ggc5009 , Polina Tankilevitch/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

57points

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Becky Samuel 1 day ago

This is unfortunately true, but at the moment absolutely necessary. We have learned some lessons from things like prion diseases (cannot be destroyed by normal heat sterilisation procedures). Although this waste problem will have to be tackled at some stage, it is absolutely dwarfed by the plastic consumed by the food industry, so making changes to that supply line first is the most important.

28points

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#17

“What’s The Dark Secret About Your Profession That The General Public Doesn’t Know?” (30 Answers) No so much a dark secret, but authors make pennies on the dollar. Even mid-to-high level authors have to work a day job.

MicahCastle , Suzy Hazelwood/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

57points

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Jrog 1 day ago (edited)

The average royalty rate is in the 8-10% for traditional publishing, and up to 15% for affirmed authors. Electronic distribution has much higher rates, up to double. An average book that got picked up by a major editor may sell 3-5000 copies at an average price of 15$. So, except for a few blockbusters an author earns a 5-10k/yr. The real money comes later with licensing and "long tail" commerce, with the book generating small revenues for longer time, compounding with the success of further books.

18points

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#18

“What’s The Dark Secret About Your Profession That The General Public Doesn’t Know?” (30 Answers) Professor. We are totally invested in helping you to make amazing work, we stick up for students all the time. We take the responsibility of helping you win very seriously. The only dark thing is that many people see it the other way around.

treetopalarmist_1 , RDNE Stock project/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

57points

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Jrog 1 day ago

Can confirm.

12points

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#19

“What’s The Dark Secret About Your Profession That The General Public Doesn’t Know?” (30 Answers) Dental Hygienist here: Not sure if ppl are aware that a RDH only requires an associates degree in science (2 1/2 yr program), medium salary is approx. 70k, 4 day work week most offices, good hours (no nights), free dental care and usually discounted for family. It’s a pretty good career and if you work at a private practice it’s pretty easy because you’re seeing patients who return every 6 months and have good home care. I have friends graduating from a 4 year college and deep in debt getting 25k job offers. It’s not a bad gig.

2thSprkler , Tima Miroshnichenko/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

53points

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John Mosley 1 day ago

It's the whole "sticking my fingers into people's mouths" thing I wouldn't be able to handle.

31points

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#20

“What’s The Dark Secret About Your Profession That The General Public Doesn’t Know?” (30 Answers) During an autopsy, we will not take care with your organs and stuff them back in any old how so they fit back in your chest cavity.

PathosMai , RF._.studio/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

52points

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Duckie Love 1 day ago

Doesn't make any difference when you are all sewn up.

58points

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#21

“What’s The Dark Secret About Your Profession That The General Public Doesn’t Know?” (30 Answers) Food service, 20 years in the industry. Even surrounded by all of that food you barely have an opportunity to eat or drink anything. A lot of food service work is part time unless you're a manager, and if you're a salaried manager forget ever having a life outside of work, you are on call 24/7/365, even on your days off. You're on your feet from the moment you start your shift until you clock out. You barely have a chance to sit down unless you're using the bathroom. If you're waiting tables, you earn $2.13 per hour, and all of it is taken in taxes, so you're living on customer's tips. You have to balance a heavy tray of food and drinks on one hand while dodging coworkers and customers and trying not to spill anything. Then you have the customers with entitled attitudes who want their food fast, fresh and hot but don't want to wait for it and refuse to pay their server by tipping them for doing their job. There's a lot of prep work that goes on before the restaurant opens in order to get your meal out in a timely manner. If your restaurant serves breakfast you are awake when your customers are asleep, yep, you're clocking in at 3 am. And we wake up every day to do it for you. So treat restaurant workers well!

JessicaLynne77 , Rene Terp/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

52points

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Stephanie Did It 1 day ago

Cue the flood of comments from all of the countries that pay food service workers a living wage, and who do not have to endure the entitled jerks to stay in business

42points

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#22

“What’s The Dark Secret About Your Profession That The General Public Doesn’t Know?” (30 Answers) 50% of our entire financial and banking system runs on legacy cobol code written prior to 1980.

bmaeser , Ono Kosuki/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

47points

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FlamingoPanda 1 day ago (edited)

For those wondering how bad this is: if the code stops working or someone somewhere makes a seemingly small change then the whole system comes down. Globally. We have seen this on smaller scales with various internet outages most notably when someone took a vital javascript library (the internet runs on javascript) off github (place that coders often use to store their code safely) for reasons and suddenly half the internet was unusable. And the people who know Cobol are retiring currently with minimal new talent coming in. If you want to make yourself indispensable to society learn Cobol.

28points

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#23

“What’s The Dark Secret About Your Profession That The General Public Doesn’t Know?” (30 Answers) I worked at a mental health facility. They were all about image and money. Very few clients were ever discharged. They were far more interested in the money than actually helping people.

jlverno , Alex Green/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

43points

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Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 1 day ago

For-profit mental health is almost as bad as for-profit prisons.

46points

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#24

“What’s The Dark Secret About Your Profession That The General Public Doesn’t Know?” (30 Answers) For anyone that didn't serve in the military, it's an absolute s**t show. Just another corporation with fancy names for managers and employees.

I don't know how the govt functions after having served lol.

demesm , Specna Arms/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

40points

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ZGutr 1 day ago

And I quote: "I know you have nothing to do!!! I don't care, just look busy!!!"

22points

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#25

“What’s The Dark Secret About Your Profession That The General Public Doesn’t Know?” (30 Answers) I work in medical delivery strictly to hospice patients. As you can imagine they die frequently. We pick the equipment up to be returned to the warehouse and sanitized it for redelivery to other patients. It’s a shoe string industry with tiny profit margins. Every single company out there is picking up mattress, slapping a disposable cover on them and putting them back out at the next stop. Logistically there is no possible way everyone in the industry isn’t doing it. I personally refuse to do it. I’ve had a regional vp b***h at me about it and say we were in business to make money not to deliver clean equipment to someone that was going to die the next day. Even if you don’t account for urine and fecal matter there’s still roaches and bed bugs getting moved around all the time.

jjon670 , Cottonbro studio/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

36points

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Jrog 1 day ago (edited)

"It’s a shoe string industry with tiny profit margins". You know what? You should not have "margins" at all. You should not even be deemed an "industry". Margins are resources taken out of your core activities. If you give people "in business to make money" any decision power you are creating an environmental push to degrade the quality of service in favor of their profits. Medicine should be a socialized business, with fees -as well as operational standards- decided by the single-payer caregiver, and close scrutiny on expenses.

30points

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#26

“What’s The Dark Secret About Your Profession That The General Public Doesn’t Know?” (30 Answers) IT guy, I Google or reddit half my problems. Your computers I buy from a place you could buy them from also I just mark them up 35% or more. I could care less if you look at p**n at work until I'm told to care. We talk about end users like they have the intelligence of a rock and we judge you on your technical skills. More techs than you want to know about will search your personal device for nudes given then chance.

1d0m1n4t3 , cottonbro studio/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

35points

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arthbach 1 day ago

It is so common in lots of professional jobs to look up information. You are not expected to have all of the information in your head. Instead, you are expected to be able to use the tools at your disposal, your experience, and your knowledge to find solutions to problems. An IT person looking up information is the equivalent of a GP (family doctor) looking up the correct dosage for a certain type of medication for their patient. It's not a secret, it's how it works.

23points

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#27

“What’s The Dark Secret About Your Profession That The General Public Doesn’t Know?” (30 Answers) I'm a game developer who used to work on mobile games before moving to PC development. Mobile game developers know exactly how much you've spent on the game and when so they can target you with a pop-up at just the right time to get your money. This is a fairly automatic process though not someone sitting in a room watching you. A lot of people know this so I'll throw in a bonus secret - with regional pricing people in second and third world countries are paying a tiny fraction of what you pay for the same MTX. In first world countries it's all about finding the whale who will spend BIG on a game but in second/third countries they just try to maximise volumes of sale. Remember, an MTX usually cost about a day or less than that's work to implement but from then on costs the company exactly £0. You are buying thin air or worse yet just the opportunity to keep playing the game.

Super bonus third secret that I'm sure isn't much of a secret - mobile gaming ads are downright lies honestly. It's never the primary gameplay loop. It'll be in the game somewhere but limited access and never as good as it looks in the ad.

I just straight up don't recommend mobile gaming to people any more. There may be some good games out there but the majority are quite exploitative. Gambling but without the part where the company ever pays you any money. You just get a shiny hat or some bs.

NoMarsupial159 , Alexander Kovalev/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

34points

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Becky Samuel 1 day ago

What the heck is an "MTX"? I wish people wouldn't assume that we all understand their industry slang and acronyms.

21points

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#28

“What’s The Dark Secret About Your Profession That The General Public Doesn’t Know?” (30 Answers) Vets in the US have a high s**cide rate. High debt, relatively low income relative to that debt and their level of schooling, a lot of client abuse and depressing cases, and access to euthanasia d***s.. and like we're taught the gold standard medicine but a lot of clients can't afford the gold standard, so you've got this frustration where you want to help but can't, and then you're accused of being heartless or just in it for the money. I left clinical medicine after two years for a series of non-clinical roles.

And the turnover rate on vet techs (the nurses in the vet hospital) is fairly high, estimated at about 30-35% with an average time in the industry of just 5-10 years.. and that's for your licensed techs that went to school for it. The school I used to teach at had similar findings in our own post-grad surveys, where a lot of our graduates would either leave the field entirely or leave clinical medicine for things like reference lab work, pet insurance, or pharmaceutical rep work after just a couple years.

daabilge , International Fund for Animal Welfare/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

34points

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TribbleThinking 1 day ago

Just imagine a caring child who gets into this field because they want to help animals. Then they find that through their career, they spend a good amount of time putting down animals when it's simply the most humane thing to do. Talk about mental torture.

23points

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#29

“What’s The Dark Secret About Your Profession That The General Public Doesn’t Know?” (30 Answers) Some farm stands and farmers market booths have fruits and vegetables from Costco repackaged into cardboard pints to make it look "home grown".

Agnaolds , Suzy Hazelwood/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

33points

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sdorph 1 day ago

This is pretty obvious just from the wide variety of fruit and vegetables they sell

19points

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#30

“What’s The Dark Secret About Your Profession That The General Public Doesn’t Know?” (30 Answers) Pilot. I don't actually give a s**t if it's turbulent or you're uncomfortable back there. .

Ciabatta_Pussy , TRAVEL BLOG/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

29points

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Kristy Marion 1 day ago

Wow. I’ve been a flight attendant 17 years and have heard about pilots like this but luckily never come across them. At my airline, the safety of their passengers (and crew) are their #1 priority. They all admit the flight deck is a lot smoother ride than down the back, and if we have any concerns to call them immediately. Let alone the fact that a good pilot would be avoiding turbulence as much as possible in the first place. You only have a job as a commercial pilot thanks to the passengers you arrogant tw*t!

90points

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Note: this post originally had 55 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.

What do you think ?

Illifred 1 day ago

I work as a music producer. Most "artists" have no freaking clue what they're talking about. Sometimes they ask me to make the sound more *insert any dumb term here*. I say: "Hold on - I know what you mean!" and then I hit a button or a slider in the patch bay that has absolutely no function. "Better?" "Yeah, much better!"

7points

Dan Holden 23 hours ago

That can go both ways. Search up Leland Sklar's "producer switch" that he installed on his bass for this very reason.

2points

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BookFanatic 1 day ago

I've been a librarian for over 20 years and the job's getting harder and harder. Every year our budget gets slashed because we're seen as no longer relevant. Yet we are expected to do more and fill more gaps. I've been called on to be security, mental health worker, tax advisor, health advocate, social worker, and babysitter. We're on the frontlines of censorship with little to no recourse. The number of challenged titles in public libraries has increased 92% from last year. Libraries have been the victim of first amendment audits, protests, and bomb threats. There are laws being passed to restrict the type of materials we can offer our patrons. It feels like we're fighting a losing battle.

5points

Sophia Athene 14 hours ago

I can imagine how much you might want to give up, but please keep fighting the good fight. If I didn't have to work, I'd just read all day and most nights. As a kid up to teens, I lived for library trips to load up for that week's reading, every week in the summer. I was older than my sister enough to do my own thing like an only child. Books were everything to me. My high school teacher assigned Handmaid's Tale and Sons and Lovers and even more that would not be acceptable today. I read widely as a kid. I had moved on to the adult fiction section by the time I was 12 b/c I'd read every kids and juvenile book.

1point

Skogsrået 17 hours ago

I feel like most of these are from and for the USA and not the rest of the world?

harshtart 14 hours ago

Probably because they're the ones with the most problems . . . 😜

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“What’s The Dark Secret About Your Profession That The General Public Doesn’t Know?” (30 Answers)

Games

Miguel Ordoñez

Miguel Ordoñez

Ilona Baliūnaitė

Ilona Baliūnaitė