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Usually, criticizing your employer while you're still working for them is a bad idea. Whether internally, grabbing a coffee with colleagues, or externally, turning to social media, taking jabs at your low salary or bad boss can damage your future opportunities. Even if the complaints are legitimate.
However, once you're out and have secured a comfortable position elsewhere, you may feel much more liberty to share your experiences and highlight the issues you faced. So Reddit user Mave__Dustaine asked all people to reveal a secret about a company they no longer work for that the general public wouldn't know. And since they received thousands of replies, we collected the juiciest ones to save you some time.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
My family owned Veterinary hospitals.
Now, I know the price has gotten nuts but that is not what this post is about.
Most vets truly care and I have seen some do anything, literally anything to help your animal. I remember wanting to leave after closing, so tired and my Dad (the Vet) telling me he wasn’t leaving yet, he wanted to sit with this one dog all night.
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#2
I worked for a very popular fast food chain and was shocked to find out their hygiene standards were actually high and everybody followed them. Like. everyone really did their job and the place was really clean and safe.
These stories vividly illustrate the grim reality that many bosses are unwilling to listen to employee feedback. Even though it might be in the company's best interest, workers often believe they can speak up only after they've left.
For example, the Trades Union Congress (TUC) poll showed that while the majority of UK workers feel supported by their superiors, 35 percent don't think their manager treats them and their colleagues fairly.
Furthermore, more than two-fifths (45 percent) of the 2,100 individuals surveyed for the Improving Line Management report said their manager did not help morale at work.
#3
Nursing homes are ALWAYS understaffed and overworked. The worst one I ever saw was 3 caregivers to 72 residents. That's 3 people who are responsible for feeding, toileting, and showering 72 people every day. Mistakes and abuse are incredibly common due to the sheer burnout that is rampant. Imagine being told after a 16 hour shift that you aren't allowed to leave (because of abandonment laws) for another 16 hours because someone didn't show up for their shift, and doing so while making barely above minimum wage.
Rose the Cook 4 months ago
My mother was terrified of being put in a home thinking they were all like something out of a Dicken's novel. Having worked in 3 I can say she was actually not far wrong. She was "cared for" in her own home by my half sister which was probably not much better.
#4
Here's an open secret: IT workers are really good at Googling your problem.
Tabitha 4 months ago
It isn’t the fact that they’re Googling answers. It’s the fact that they know enough about IT to differentiate between answers that are legit and the copious b******t on the internet. Just like an open book test isn’t as easy as you think, because you have to be familiar enough with the book to know where to look for the answers—-within the time limits of the test.
#5
Working for Tesla was one of the worst jobs I have ever had. Elon Musk was such a prick and treats people subhuman. That's not an exaggeration, I've seen it personally.
Frances O’Grady, general secretary of the TUC, says having a good manager is crucial for workers, but businesses are not investing enough in training them.
“It’s shocking that so many workers feel afraid to raise issues with their boss. If we want better and more productive workplaces, we need to step up investment in training, including for managers,” she explains.
#6
If it seems as though your health insurance claim is being processed by a bunch of gorillas in heat throwing darts...you aren't far off.
#7
I’ve worked for Bank of America and Wells Fargo and both banks screw over customers constantly but there is a difference in how and why they do it.
Bank of America will screw you over because they are huge and disorganized and no one has a clue what’s going on so customers get screwed over when people don’t know how to do their job and no one knows how to fix it when things go wrong.
Wells Fargo will screw you over and they know exactly what they are doing and how they are going to do it. They will intentionally design a process to take too long forcing the customer to pay additional fees.
#8
・A lot of the stuff you donate to Goodwill goes straight into the garbage.
・No, the clothes aren't washed before going to the sales floor and most of the items are not cleaned; please be careful and clean/disinfect if you decide to purchase it.
・Yes, they are raising prices to give more to the higher-ups while not giving anything to the people actually doing all of the work.
・Goodwill pays disabled employees significantly less than minimum wage.
・Most of the "nice" stuff that you donate is going to e-commerce to be sold at an inflated auction price and not to a local person who might want it.
・No, the sales/donation associate can't give you a receipt with a cash value for all of the junk that you just threw in the bin, stop asking. The receipt just shows a rough estimate of what you donated, it's up to you to determine the value of your donation if you're that much of a tax-rat.
・No, you can't _sell_ anything to Goodwill; that's not what the word "donation" means.
・Yes, this _is_ all somehow legal.
Also, some researchers suggest that employees are withholding information about problems or ideas for improvement at work due to a sense of futility.
In fact, one study found that futility was 1.8 times more common than fear as a reason for not bringing things up with direct supervisors in large multinational corporations.
As one respondent in that study said: “I think it would help if you saw them take your suggestion back to whomever and actually consider it, rather than just throw it in the trash bucket as soon as you walk out the door. I think that’s the way a lot of people feel — you can speak in a meeting, you can tell your manager. It doesn’t go any further…”
No wonder so many don't even bother and share their stories just to amuse the internet instead.
#9
As a former compliance director for tele health mental health agencies I would urge people to RUN from agencies like Better Help, Talkspace, Charlie Health, Guideline healthcare, EllieHealth , etc.
These are started by tech corps and other $$$$driven corporations and have little interest in protecting you-whether it's your mental health, confidentiality, or ethically driven care.
These places are unacceptable and have low quality treatment providers. You are best to find a local MH agency or individuals on Psychology today.
Jrog 4 months ago
Most of those use freelance psychologists as care suppliers, but they pay pennies compared to the normal fees of a private practice. So, the psychologists you get are mostly doctors who just graduated or started practicing, people with debatable track records or who cannot find work elsewhere. These doctors will bail on those services in a heartbeat if anything better comes up, leaving the user to deal with a lot of wasted time and money. Also, the service fees are insane; and in most cases you are better off arranging your own calls with a proper professional, nowadays most doctors do remote appointments anyway.
#10
Worked as a cook at a Chilis in CA, and I can say confidently that it was one of the *CLEANEST* kitchens I ever worked in.
We scrubbed it spotless every night.
#11
College bookstores are a f*****g racket. The used books that are sold for a high cost were likely bought back for a fraction. The only people that got the "Good" price for book buyback were the first 5-10 people selling that book back. I saw a book be bought back for $200 and the next person through with that exact same book got offered $50. The add-ins for things like clickers were obscene. Books that were OK'd for the school year would regularly get "new" versions that could just have 2 chapters flipped, but the "new" version ment that nobody could buy used, and the prof that wrote it gets a huge payout. The few "good" profs that gave away their materials were few and far between. The notion that digital books would be cheaper is laughable. Sure, they're charging $100 vs $200, but that's a $100 PDF.
It's a racket and i'm glad I don't need to mess with it anymore.
#12
I used to work in the marketing team for a large recruitment company. About 99% of the jobs posted on their websites (the company owned about 35 web domains) and shared on other websites are fake. The marketing and SEO department was tasked in creating super optimized job listings, that out performed real job listings. To apply to these job listings, you would have to register an account. This would inflate our candidate database and we would have loads of CVs. The sales team would then take this information and contact companies to get them to pay to put their open vacancies on our websites, because we had one of the largest candidate databases. I remember getting so annoyed by this practice I started reporting these vacancies as fake, even on LinkedIn. But LinkedIn rejected my report saying it was legitimate. It wasn’t, and I know this because I created that fake vacancy.
What makes this even more alarming, is that so many recruitment companies do this. If you want to apply for a job, you’re better off going to that companies website instead and not using a third party. I left that place and swore I would never work in recruitment again.
catastrophegirl 4 months ago
several years ago i saw the writing on the wall at my then employer about my entire department being on the way out. i started job hunting and one day i got a call from a recruiter to offer to interview me for my specific job while sitting at my desk eating lunch at work. in a department that was about to be shut down and definitely wasn't hiring. i laughed so hard when i told him who he had called and also chastised him to read the resumes more thoroughly because the job he called me about was listed right at the top of mine and said "2006 - Current"
#13
McDonald's is one of the cleanest fast food restaurants, as strange as that may sound.
Rose the Cook 4 months ago
Don't eat their food but whenever in a strange country head straight there for the clean toilets.
#14
I worked for a bunny farm. Were where raising bunnies for laboratories. They investigated my identity for weeks to see if I was some sort of Green peace agent. I found it weird at first but then I understood why. They kept 7-8 bunnies in a sq meter cage and didnt give AF about them. They were using metal scrubs to scrub the cages and brake baby bunnies legs while doing it. some smaller bunnies were falling out of the cage in a section that all their poop/trash was crushed by a machine and would make a little squeak before getting crushed. I quit after 4 days. Worst experience in my life.
#15
Your child’s daycare worker is extremely over worked and underpaid. parents would complain all the time about how much day care cost, but it’s less expensive than a babysitter. I always wanted to ask the complaining parent how much they would charge to watch 13 children they were not related to.
I worked in the US we litterky had to have a plan on what we would do if an armed gunman broke in.
#16
Alcohol companies stay afloat because of alcoholics. Our research showed that almost 90% of the alcohol we sold was being consumed by about 12% of our consumers. It was talked about in meetings along with comments like “we’re just selling poison.” The industry is as evil as the tobacco industry; they just have so much money in lobbying that they’re not thwarted by regulation nearly as much.
nottheactualphoto 4 months ago
Alcoholic beverages have been a part of human culture since long before recorded history.
#17
Every competition we ran in my old magazines was won by either the editor's family or one of his friends. Every single one.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of prizes.
René Sauer 4 months ago
In germany (and the rest of Europe I like to imagine) there are rules, usually in the small print, that all family and friends of employees of the companies running the competition are prohibited from entering.
#18
For years we manufactured/processes thousands of component incorrectly that substantially increased the probability of sudden and catastrophic failure.
The component? Well it’s the main attachment points for various missiles/bombs for the US military.
Discovered this shortly after working there. Notified the operations manager, who ignored it. Notified the president, who kind of acknowledged it but refused to address it or notify the customer. Finally notified the ownership who promptly had me replaced lol.
Joseph Dixon 4 months ago (edited)
People in management aren't interested in hearing what may be going wrong as they can never conceive they aren't perfect.
#19
Excel. No matter how fancy your tech systems are, your boss just wants a half decent excel sheet to keep track of everything.
ZGutr 4 months ago
Give them pictures and colors and they are happy. I once delivered statistics to a manager for an European board presentation. Even I could see it wasn't looking good. He took a pen and went over them ..... make that scale logarithmic, make that scale start at 500 instead of zero, change that one in a trend-line, change that in brighter colors and on and on and on.... No data was altered, just presented differently. He got praises and applaud for the results.
#20
Almost every President, CEO of CFO I worked for was an egomaniac who was cheating on his wife, usually with an employee that works for them and were compulsive liars. In one specific company the CEO was sued several times by former employees for sexual harassment, but kept doing it anyways and the CFO lied about the company financial status to lay off about 70 employees, when in actuality all they wanted to do was more than double his and the CEO's salaries.
Luke Branwen 4 months ago
Once again, not surprised even the slightest. A decent person with moral standards has no chance of becoming a billionaire.
#21
Stanford University has a database full of everyone that’s ever attended the school… or ever been treated at their hospitals. With the right access, you can look up anyone in their system and see their employment history, every place they’ve lived since graduating, and their connections within the larger Stanford community. The best part? There’s a section that gives all the tax/income information, with an estimate based on equations that say how much the person could realistically donate to the school without negative effect. That way, when they call to fundraise, they know exactly how much to ask for.
#22
Bed bath and beyond. Utter abuse of employees and sexual harrassment from the top down. Always got swept under the rug. If the girl/guy got an attorney, they'd move the manager/supervisor to a different location temporarily. I say temporarily because they eventually fire or get the employee to quit soon after.
They cut hours and say there was no budget for it , even though that was the only employee affected.
I'm happy they're out of business.
Edit: I remember there was a time when only managers, not supervisors, were allowed to open the door after hours to let us out. We were forced to stay on the clock and clean up and whatnot.
That all changed when a girl had a severe panic attack, apparently, which induced a cardiac episode.
We kept screaming for the manager to no avail.
911 was called and were told we were locked in with a medical emergency. They showed up before the door was open, and you could clearly see the employee in distress. They finally opened the door when the police were after the paramedics).
The manager got read the Riot Act by the cops and a detailed report was made. Paramedics said they believed she was having a heart attack and was taken away with lights and sirens.
BBB got in so much trouble! I am happy to say the employee was fine after being treated.
She sued the dog p**s and won her case( so I heard).
Also, the other employees who had suits for "false imprisonment" won their cases, too.
Absolutely horrible company to work for!
#23
Back about thirty years ago I worked in the IT department for a famous 'brandname' aerospace firm. (Name withheld to protect the innocent engineers) Specializing in the construction and testing of Satellites. My main responsibilities were maintaining some very old computers systems ( lot of stories about that) and some ground equipment but sometime I would have to put on a bunnysuit and fix something at engineering work stations in the highbays.
One day a strange wooden box about size of a large shoebox, was shipped to my desk by the internal mail people. I sometime got shipments of things like memory modules or hard disks. But this box has paper stickers on it clearly labeled "Flight Hardware" something that should never have been shipped to me.
Out of curiosity I opened it and found in the box a device called a flight sequencer... Basically one of the key devices that controls a space craft in flight.
What was stranger the spacecraft that this sequencer belonged to was a high profile deep space probe for a Mars mission. One of the first missions to Mars in a long time.
More confusing was that Mars craft has been launched about three months earlier.
So I found myself holding the "flight hardware" sequencer for a space probe that was already several million miles away and there would be no chance to install it now.
Of course there is a nearly 100% chance a spare had be used for the launch but they was a certain "oh sh*t" moment when I realized what it was.
Of course a few months later that space probe was lost when it tried to enter Mars orbit. I'm sure that is completely unrelated chance.... right?
Alex Martin 4 months ago
It was probably a component that failed testing. When you're doing surface mount boards it's easy to churn out an extra 100 boards once the machine is programmed and loaded with parts. I've seen the real stuff being run at board houses and the assembly areas at JPL. They take incredible care with these components.
#24
In the 70’s we had Arthur Treacher’s Fish and Chips (in the USA) and I, at 16, had to sign a NDA stating I wouldn’t reveal the secret ingredient. It was peanut oil, lol. Boy I hope the Statute of Limitations is in effect..
#25
Universities love international students because they pay exorbitant amounts of money for non-resident tuition.
Beth Wheeler 4 months ago
Out of state students tuition is double or triple, no telling what international tuition is.
#26
Let's put it this way. Years ago I was bragging to a cab driver about a new job I had just gotten. When he asked about the company, I told him it was a family business. He replied "You're screwed". He was right.
Joseph Dixon 4 months ago
The problem with companies like that is that they're based totally in nepotism. The offspring of the ownership will always be listened to over anyone who works for them that were hired for being qualified.
#27
I worked in human services (DD/DHHS adult mostly) the amount of money that companies receive for group homes is nuts. Almost none of it gets spent on the individuals or training staff/paying them. A lot of stuff gets swept under the rug. The place I worked for would give you I kid you not a $0.25 raise and would freak out when I mentioned (I was a manager at the time) of doing $100 gift cards for employee of the month. They thought that was outrageous.
TLDR hundreds of millions of tax dollars are wasted by companies that commit a litany of white collar crimes. I live in Nebraska our DHHS department is really corrupt too.
GrowingThruConcrete 4 months ago
Each individual got $25 of their own money each month for clothes, socks, personal care items outings etc
#28
I worked for an oil company that pretended like they were investing in clean energy methods. It was all for show. They knew where they made their money.
Joseph Dixon 4 months ago
Look up Exxon and climate change. They knew what they were doing was harming the planet and then set up a PR campaign to convince everyone otherwise.
#29
Positive one: It's a pretty small place, but *Seattle Sutton's Healthy Eating* actually was super serious about food safety and cleanliness and never refroze product (ingredients arrived refrigerated and surplus would be frozen until the next meal it was needed for, if it got thawed out and still not used for the next cycle, it was thrown away/donated to local farmers). They had zero issue with pulling food off the line and even trashing entire batches if something was off.
She tried franchising once and none of the new locations could maintain her personal quality and safety standard so she shut it down after about 18 months even though she was making good money off it.
Seattle herself was also super nice and all her grandkids worked summers there through high school and college and came in and worked their asses off instead of being the arrogant asshats so many nepo-hires are.
#30
They ~~accepted~~ stole $5-10M in PPP loans and laid off 2/3rds of their staff in the same breath—one of largest PPP loan recipients in my state.
What do you think ?
Trisec Tebeakesse 4 months ago
Bus Driver. Sounds easy, right? We've got hours-of-service regulations that are supposed to allow adequate rest time in between runs so we don't fall asleep behind the wheel. Routinely, constantly, and consistently ignored by both drivers and management alike. We're scheduled for 6,7,10 days in a row, and all 12-hour shifts. Retail folks appreciate "Clopening", and that also happens a lot. Home at 10pm, back on the road at 5am the next day. Be very careful the next time you step on a coach - maybe even bring a cup of coffee for your driver.
veirdbuttrue 4 months ago
The problem is always management. Always. Management ruins everything, and gets better pay than you while they do it.
marianne eliza 4 months ago
Some managers are so bad, they wouldn't be allowed on an HOA.
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Trisec Tebeakesse 4 months ago
Bus Driver. Sounds easy, right? We've got hours-of-service regulations that are supposed to allow adequate rest time in between runs so we don't fall asleep behind the wheel. Routinely, constantly, and consistently ignored by both drivers and management alike. We're scheduled for 6,7,10 days in a row, and all 12-hour shifts. Retail folks appreciate "Clopening", and that also happens a lot. Home at 10pm, back on the road at 5am the next day. Be very careful the next time you step on a coach - maybe even bring a cup of coffee for your driver.
veirdbuttrue 4 months ago
The problem is always management. Always. Management ruins everything, and gets better pay than you while they do it.
marianne eliza 4 months ago
Some managers are so bad, they wouldn't be allowed on an HOA.
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