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30 People Reveal The “Dark Secrets” About Their Jobs That Common People Aren’t Supposed To Know
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.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
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
#2
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.
#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
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
Jill Emory 4 years ago
Owners who don't want to be present for their pet's euthanasia. A$$hats. These people are jerks. How anyone can abandon their pet in its last moments on Earth is beyond me. What a cruel thing to do to your pet.
#5
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
#6
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.
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
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.
#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
I ended up quitting a career because people (all genders and ages) kept trying to solicite me for prostitution.
Young male massage therapist.
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
The amount of good food that is thrown away. It’s pretty sickening.
Malakai 4 years ago
Having worked food service before I can attest to this. FDA AND military guidelines are STRICT about managing food waste, rotation, leftovers, etc (and military moreso than FDA in some cases). I used to work as a contractor cleaning a mess hall once, and they did a massive spread for Thanksgiving. The NCOIC managing the mess hall didn't want to bc he knew no one would be there, but the guy above him insisted. Lo and behold, almost no one showed. The NCOIC practically begged the contractors to take it all home because, since it was government property, it would be disposed of. Thing was, for the same reason, we legally COULD NOT take it home or our contract could get terminated. It wasn't the only such instance of food waste, but it was the biggest and saddest I'd ever seen--8 almost whole turkeys and a huge number of trays full of sides the cooks had worked on since early that morning, all tossed out. Because the guy above the NCO wanted a big showy feast for his ego.
#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.
Julie C Rose 4 years ago
My opinion of Ann M Martin has gone up; she always credited her ghosties. I used to hang out in a Babysitters Club snark community on LiveJournal and we regularly commented on each ghostie’s quirks.
#12
Sometime we learn something the day before we teach it to you.
Pseudo Puppy 4 years ago
this, is 100% true. Had a flatmate who was a teacher, and I'd regularly find her skimming a text book the night before to "teach". I'd ask her what she'd do if asked a technical question, as she actually didn't know the content at all. Her answer for her students? "That's not in the curriculum we're covering today", "that's beyond the scope of today's lesson", "that would be a great thing for you to research on your own time, and come back to us with your finding".... or.... she'd make those questions, the "homework" for that night, to "teach you how to research". She did this for regular students, as well as smaller corporate classes that charged $1000 a day per student.... I kid you not. That, plus having completed 2 Bachelor Degrees, I can tell you that it's cheaper (& often more effective), to just buy the $100 text book and read it cover to cover. (unless you want the bit of paper they give at the end of the course)
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
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
Eva Bryson 4 years ago
Then you do all you can to conserve and get hit with higher fees next year because the water board didn't make enough money the previous year because everyone conserved!
#14
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.
#15
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
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
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
#17
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.
#18
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...😬
Alexandru Bucur 4 years ago
Yes, we don't know exactly how they work, but the effects they have have been experimentally studied, so we know that a combination of those drugs will have this effect on most people, etc. Same way for most of history people didn't know why they needed to do some things like boil water or cook meals, but they knew their chances of not dying would go waaay up if they did it.
#19
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.
#20
Young kids talk to their teachers/coaches/counselors/principals about their parents. A lot. And kids pick up on all the dirty little secrets.
Tiggy Darling 4 years ago
I'm a childcare worker. A Dad came in with a broken leg that he said he broke playing football. Later on the child told us his Dad broke it dancing in Mummy's boots. We hear a lot!
#21
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"
#22
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.
#23
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.
MrTree1779 4 years ago
I knew a gynecologist who said, "You don't want to see everything I've seen. It's ugly, infected, weird, damaged, deformed, or just boring...and the women range from terrified to annoying to beligerant. I'm their doctor because i care about their health. But what they have? It's...not sexy."
#24
The acceptance of illegally harvested or over harvested exotic lumber in the musical instrument industry.
#25
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.
Dave P 4 years ago
Social promotion is really bad, in NYC where I live about 1 in 3 students who finish high school read on a 7th grade reading level or lower, 20% 6th grade or below. Also a survey of math teachers in our local public colleges say that 80% of public school students who get into college are not ready for college level math. Social Promotion hurts, and we spend a ton of money of teachers (57k starting salary, caps at 115k after 23 years) and students here (28k per student) without results
#26
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.
#27
I work for the state government here.
Basically, I honestly don't work except for maybe 30 mins a day.
#28
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.
Pseudo Puppy 4 years ago
worked as a sales person for a high-end designer in Australia (they were in the media a LOT....)... and got a jewlery deliver. Problem was, the delivery guy included a receipt for the designer's purchase. A "diamond" (fake) pendant we sold for $200, was bought by the designer for $3.24. I then watched customers justify the price saying "well, it is (designer's name), so you know it will be a good quality"... If I want fake jewelery for fun, I just go to one of those markets where the imports sell it to the public. Same quality, but 20-25% of the retail price.
#29
University Professor: we don’t actually read your entire answer. Most of us don’t.
#30
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.
What do you think ?
Tiny Dynamine 4 years ago
Without saying where these things happen make the statements quite unhelpful. It's not going to be the same all over the world or even within the same country or business.
Soggy Crumpet 4 years ago
Unfortunately your critical thinking skills are not shared by most on this site. I agree that while there is probably truth behind these, it doesn’t make them blanket statements. Promotion of negative outlooks of the world doesn’t help anyone.
Load More Replies...
Neill Powell 4 years ago
Server Room Secrets: Do you have a room, bullet proof, noise-proof and fully access-controlled, to go and hide/rage/freak out in at the office? Server technicians do! The only ultimate-perk in a corporate building, is the access to the server room. Not even HR or the CEO has access. Even the camera footage is considered privileged information. All server rooms smell and sound the same: Like a Monk entering a temple, Engineers all feel at home in any server room.
Tiny Dynamine 4 years ago
Without saying where these things happen make the statements quite unhelpful. It's not going to be the same all over the world or even within the same country or business.
Soggy Crumpet 4 years ago
Unfortunately your critical thinking skills are not shared by most on this site. I agree that while there is probably truth behind these, it doesn’t make them blanket statements. Promotion of negative outlooks of the world doesn’t help anyone.
Load More Replies... Neill Powell 4 years ago
Server Room Secrets: Do you have a room, bullet proof, noise-proof and fully access-controlled, to go and hide/rage/freak out in at the office? Server technicians do! The only ultimate-perk in a corporate building, is the access to the server room. Not even HR or the CEO has access. Even the camera footage is considered privileged information. All server rooms smell and sound the same: Like a Monk entering a temple, Engineers all feel at home in any server room.
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