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There’s a certain amount of comfort in walking away from a toxic job and knowing you can spill all the juicy dirt about your experiences online. After all, nearly every business has some muddy secrets they would like to keep tucked away deep in the closet under lock and key. But as we all know, these dusty skeletons are just waiting to be showcased in broad daylight.

A couple of Reddit users decided to find out what dark company secrets and questionable practices people can reveal since they don't work there anymore. Thousands of ex-employees typed out their priceless insider knowledge and spilled the tea about discount hacks, store policies, and other things their former employers preferred to keep from the general public.

So take out your notebooks and grab your pens because Bored Panda has handpicked some of the best answers these two threads had to offer. Also, remember to put your thinking caps on — we can’t guarantee whether these stories are fact or fiction, so take them with a pinch of salt. Continue scrolling, upvote your favorites as you go, and if you have any similar tidbits to share, be sure to tell us about them right in the comments below!

#1

30 Ex-Employees Reveal The “Dark Secrets” About Their Former Jobs That Common People Aren’t Supposed To Know I worked for the northwest company in northern Canada. The Inuk art that they sell for hundreds or thousands of dollars they buy for $10-20 from the artist. I asked a manager why, he said it’s because they’re poor anyway. I quit that evil company the next week.

giganticsquid , Jay Cross Report

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Mazer
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

THIS is one of the reasons I buy direct from native artists. Also a standing excuse to go to Pow wows all year

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#2

30 Ex-Employees Reveal The “Dark Secrets” About Their Former Jobs That Common People Aren’t Supposed To Know Dupont killed off an endangered species in an area they wanted to expand. Then they laid off some folks who knew they were endangered, and magically the epa inspector didnt find anything, because they had buried up the pits and holes where the frogs had died.

[deleted] , Stephanie LeBlanc Report

#3

I’ve been waiting a while for a thread like this. F**k Home Depot. They have a department called Home Depot Interiors - do not have your home remodeled by HDI, people, come on.

The specific department I worked for was Cabinet Refacing. I was a salesman for about 4-5 months before I got the f**k out of there. Here’s the deal:

Any time you have a salesman come into your home, to give you a pitch and he/she brings samples and has a little presentation, please know that their commission on your remodel job is sometimes as high as 20%. That means if you buy a kitchen remodel for $20,000, your salesperson just took home up to $4,000 of your money just for selling you this ripoff remodel and sitting in your house for a few hours. That’s $4k you could use for all top of the line, new appliances.

Also, when it comes to cabinet refacing, it’s a waste of f**king money. They work so hard to spin the information to make you believe that you’re getting this incredible service when, in reality, the ONLY benefit is that they can remodel the kitchen in like 3-4 days versus a couple weeks if you pay a contractor to do it properly. I have had customers show me a bid from a contractor for, literally, half the price of refacing and they would receive an actual full remodel with all new cabinets.

The sales process is dishonest. You are taught to bend the truth as far as possible without technically lying but THEN, once you start working with the salesman who have been there a while, you are taught to full on lie and cheat and, basically, steal from people. This comes in the form of over-measuring everything. Countertops. Cabinets. Flooring. Everything is measured keeping a huge cushion so when the customer inevitably tries to haggle with you, you can bring the price down and still make money.

This type of stuff is so pervasive in virtually 100% of in-Home sales. Solar panels, windows, vacuum cleaners, security systems - you are getting ripped off. Your haggling skills don’t mean s**t because these people eat, breathe, sleep thinking about clever ways to rip you off. True salesman are sharks who adore money and nothing will stop them from getting yours. It’s totally crooked but because it’s a deeply engrained mentality in the entire sales culture, it’s hard to weed out the few good ones.

TL;DR - In-Home sales are a huge ripoff at best and a legit scam at worst. Save your money and try to find companies who simply give normal estimates without a big dog and pony show with some dickhead wearing pleated khakis, a polo shirt and briefcase showing up at your door. Real workmen wear regular clothes.

NOTE: Home Depot, I told your CEO, your national HR director and your legal team that I would do everything I could to sink your stupid cabinet refacing ship. I worked out of the HDI San Antonio office and you know how bad you f**ked me and all those other hopeful salespeople by being dishonest about earnings. Come at me bro.

kula_shakur Report

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#4

30 Ex-Employees Reveal The “Dark Secrets” About Their Former Jobs That Common People Aren’t Supposed To Know I worked at this awful f**king pet store that sold dogs. We all knew the prices of all the dogs by heart but if someone asked we had to pretend not to know, bring the dog out to them to play with(even if they specifically ask you not to)so they get attached. Meanwhile I'm in the back with my thumb up my a** pretending to look up the price. Then when they're all nice and bonded with the dog I'd have to come out to tell them that instead of the $300ish they were expecting, it would be more like $2,500. Queue tears. Lots of f**king tears. There was all this complete bulls**t we had to tell them to justify the price including that the dogs were registered. Well I had a customer come back absolutely f**king furious that the dog wasn't actually registered. Turns out what management meant(but didn't EVER say to us) was that the dogs were regester-able. That's just one example of a whole lot of s**t I put up with there. I'm a pretty honest person as guilt really gets to me more than normal I think and all that intense lying through my teeth to good people made me extremely depressed and I quit after only 3 months.

2muchpain , Eva Chen Report

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#5

30 Ex-Employees Reveal The “Dark Secrets” About Their Former Jobs That Common People Aren’t Supposed To Know Worked at Domino's in college. Our franchisee made it a fireable offense to call in sick. If you missed a scheduled shift, it would be considered quitting, and you wouldn't get put on the schedule ever again.

As a result, workers would come in to work INCREDIBLY ill and still make your food. I once witnessed a coworker begin to make a pizza, stop to go puke in the bathroom, then continue making the pizza.

enigmazweb24 , Melanie Lim Report

#6

30 Ex-Employees Reveal The “Dark Secrets” About Their Former Jobs That Common People Aren’t Supposed To Know Went to an Aveda beauty school. Every year Aveda does a big recycling cap program, since most plastic caps cannot be recycled. We collected caps for a month, and our clients were really excited to be helping the environment. After the promo was done the instructors made us grab 3-4 garbage bags of caps each...and we threw them in the dumpster of the building next door. We didn't even use our own trash. Probably because Aveda can take away their franchising rights if they find any infractions.

Also Aveda is owned by Estee Lauder so there is literally nothing natural about them. And they test on animals.

stalkercupcake , Roberto Sorin Report

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Is Be
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I look for the no animal testing logo and do not purchase if not there. It has made a difference in big companies following suit. I know there are loopholes when they buy from third parties but at least it's a start.

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#7

30 Ex-Employees Reveal The “Dark Secrets” About Their Former Jobs That Common People Aren’t Supposed To Know The first thing you do every day at PetSmart is dump the dead reptiles into the trash. We treated them as well as we could once they were in the store -- given our fairly minimal resources -- but they're mistreated in transit and often die within a day of arriving at the store. We once reordered a chameleon three times because they kept dying. Everyone knew they were too delicate to transport, but head office wanted a chameleon in the store. Most employees aren't aware of this, since management tries to sweep it under the rug, but I was the morning custodian.

The birds are also neurotic as hell due to sheer mind-numbing boredom, and the rodents bite because they're unsocialized. Elderly hamsters get put in the back room, where they'll never be purchased, because they make customers sad. At least in my experience, the employees genuinely try to take care of the animals, but it's just not a good environment for them.

The cats are okay, though, since they're not actually sold by PetSmart. The company just lends display space to rescue groups and shelters. They're mostly pretty happy and well cared for.

Just in case anyone's interested in helping out an animal without going through a corporate pet store, your local shelter probably has birds and rodents who need homes. You can also ask PetSmart employees if they have any animals in the back, although that's a morally grey area since they'll reorder another animal to replace the one you purchased.

enjollras , Jéan Béller Report

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Meghan Hirt-Gehr
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

The worst for me is when I see stacks of Beta fish in those tubberware containers with holes poked in them.

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#8

30 Ex-Employees Reveal The “Dark Secrets” About Their Former Jobs That Common People Aren’t Supposed To Know Female co-worker filed a complaint because a male co-worker slapped her a**. I watched management have him sign his paperwork for a “written warning” and then I watched management shred it while the female co-worker was at lunch. I worked in HR for them at the time. I can confirm they made no formal documentation of anything that happened that day. They shredded the only paperwork that even acknowledged it happened.

Anadorei , James West Report

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#9

30 Ex-Employees Reveal The “Dark Secrets” About Their Former Jobs That Common People Aren’t Supposed To Know Glassdoor.com Does remove job reviews and DOES let employers choose which ones get shown first!

Rafael_Bacardi , Wikipedia Report

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Syd
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Long Rant: They also for a long while allowed companies to hire 3rd party companies to post fake positive reviews. How do I know this? My partner's former company was bad, very bad. And employees left reviews stating why it was bad. Then suddenly we all saw the company have a flood of positive reviews with similar wording and never mentioning Cons, just Pros of working there. At one point there were more positive reviews from "current employees" than actual employees at the company. The company was a small startup. I don't think there was even enough former and current employees to account for the number of reviews. It meant that every employee and interviewee had to leave a review to match the numbers. This went on for months. My partner got the heck out of dodge when we started noticing.

Lisa Intally
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Like with anything on TripAdvisor or Amazon, I take what the worst review says and consider whether I can live with that. If not, then go on to the next.

Electric Mayhem
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I can confirm this. I posted a negative review of my shltty employer and it has mysteriously disappeared.

bumble bee
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Who is really shocked? I'm not. Nothing is as it appears, and nothing is trustworthy.

Healing Moon Breezes
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

yeppers...I know this for a fact. They erased my honest review. I guess the companies pay more.

Mimi M
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Always view with suspicion a company where the reviews are either 'wonderful' or 'awful'. In cases like that, I tend to go with the 'awful', especially if there are a lot like that, not just one or two disgruntled (former) employees.

StarmanWaitingInTheSky
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

You can still filter the reviews to go from most recent to last or vice versa. It also depends if the employer is active on the site.

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#10

I started working as a casual in a seafood department of a supermarket franchise a while ago. After 2 months they moved me to full time, 4 after that I was Employee of the month and assistant manager.

The company asked if I could relocate to another store to run their shop as Manager. I was stoked, manager at 18? Felt good man.

I was there for eight months, 13 hour days six days a week. I was getting paid $450 a week. I thought something was wrong about that and approached my manager, he said because im young and still on my full time probation period i was earning less, but once probation was over id be on a higher pay grade. Well probation rolls past and my pay hadnt gone up.

The union came in one day and were chatting to all the staff about the job. I asked him about my paygrade and what i was earning, and his jaw literally dropped. He pulled out his folder and showed me what i was supposed to be earning which was over double.

He backed me up when i approached head office about it and despite them trying to pull over every thing in the book to avoid backpaying me, i ended up walking out of that meeting with something like seven grand plus a penalty.

The company went from 15 major stores to 2 in the space of 3 years.

JollyOldBogan Report

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#11

30 Ex-Employees Reveal The “Dark Secrets” About Their Former Jobs That Common People Aren’t Supposed To Know Hotel I use to work for payed off a surveyor not to tell people that they destroyed a crap ton native American artifacts when they built. Pottery, bones, you name it they bulldozed over it.

[deleted] , MrT HK Report

#12

30 Ex-Employees Reveal The “Dark Secrets” About Their Former Jobs That Common People Aren’t Supposed To Know I worked for a chicken restaurant. At one point we were so infested with cockroaches it was normal to see about 20 a day. We (The management and supervisor staff) begged the manager to shut down the store to clean. Instead we never ever stopped and were required to come in on the weekends to clean around everything. We also were required to call cockroaches "friends" so we wouldn't let the customer know that we were infested. On more than one occasion we would feel them crawling on us and we were told we weren't allowed to react or we would be written up. Thankfully we got shut down by the health department and corporate took over the store and turned it around.

WaywardMSL , Derek Markham Report

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#13

30 Ex-Employees Reveal The “Dark Secrets” About Their Former Jobs That Common People Aren’t Supposed To Know This is way more lighthearted than most, but here it goes. I used to work at a fast casual burger place with a secret recipe BBQ sauce. The secret ingredient was Root Beer syrup.

M45H3DP07470 , Dplanet:: Report

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BasedWang12
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

this makes sense. People use colas and the like all the time for ribs

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#14

30 Ex-Employees Reveal The “Dark Secrets” About Their Former Jobs That Common People Aren’t Supposed To Know When diesel fuel gets spilled in working water front they just spread dish soap. This sinks the fuel to the bottom, where it can't be cleaned up, avoiding the rainbow slick, 10k fine, and a real clean up.

croutonianemperor , John Rourke Report

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Chich
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I once had a job that involved a lot of aerial surveys. Photographed and reported an oil slick coming from a mill to Environment. My managers were quite upset.

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#15

30 Ex-Employees Reveal The “Dark Secrets” About Their Former Jobs That Common People Aren’t Supposed To Know Walmart distribution center had a week long orientation. For about 2 days of that orientation they gave us reasons why unions are bad and have no place in the company . They told us we would be terminated if we tried to unionize.

They pretty much fed us propaganda materials and treated us like kids. They made us repeat that we understood the situation and the consequences of attempted unionization.

errff , Christian Erfurt Report

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#16

30 Ex-Employees Reveal The “Dark Secrets” About Their Former Jobs That Common People Aren’t Supposed To Know My first job was at a French bakery. It's a decent sized chain in the states. A list of their transgressions against humanity:

I watched a pizza come out of the oven and fall toppings-side-down on an unusually filthy kitchen floor. This was on Mother's Day (busiest day of the year for a place like this) so it was scraped up (as instructed by a manager) and tossed back in the oven with a little extra cheese to hide all the c**p stuck to it. I was made to serve this to a lovely older lady and it haunts me to this day.

The cow. Holy f**k, the cow. This was what we called a huge fridge-sized milk dispenser that was never cleaned well. One day someone dragged this disgusting bastard out from the alcove it was in and, surprise surprise, nobody had cleaned under or behind it for months if not years. There was a several-inch-thick layer of spoiled milk with a technicolor carpet of mold across it. Makes my stomach turn just thinking about it.

At 16 I was given the prestigious position of baking all of the bread / pastries / etc.. It was all frozen and it was not at all uncommon for me to find years old boxes in the freezer. Those were all cooked and served.

Now, their transgressions against me:

I was sealed in a human sized proofing oven for about an hour because of a faulty door. It was on, at a low temp / high humidity, but STILL.

There was an actual oven with doors that opened like a kitchen cabinet (swinging open horizontally rather than open vertically) and it was placed around a corner at a high traffic area. Well, those doors did not move independently - they were linked so if you close or open one the other closed. I was leaned way into the f**ker and guess what? Someone closed one of the doors as they were coming around which closed the other door as well. This resulted in me getting closed in and it was at about 450f. I struggled out by pressing the sides of my forearms against the doors resulting in pretty severe burns as big as a two computer mice on each forearm. I was made to complete my shift.

Boxes in the freezer were stacked waaaay too high resulting in an avalanche of frozen cookie dough burying me in that b***h. I had to bang on the wall with my foot for about 20 mins before the sauté cook came and dug me out. Manager didn't give a f**k.

Allow me to conclude this by saying that I worked in several other restaurants during my young life and NEVER came across anything REMOTELY like this again. I've never seen a waiter or bartender f**k with another person's food - as far as I'm concerned that's a myth. I've never seen such atrocious cleaning practices anywhere else, not even close.

bunkpolice , Coffee Danube Still Life Photography Report

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Susie Elle
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

"I was sealed in a human sized proofing oven for about an hour" WHAT THE ACTUAL-

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#17

30 Ex-Employees Reveal The “Dark Secrets” About Their Former Jobs That Common People Aren’t Supposed To Know At a movie theater where I used to work, at the end of the night, we would collect all the unsold popcorn and stuff it into these enormous yellow trash bags. The next morning, yesterday's popcorn was the first to go in the warmer. My boss said that popcorn was fine to reheat and serve for up to a week. We never dated the bags, though (bags that we were not allowed to throw away. We reused them all the time) so there was literally no way to know how old the popcorn was. Not as horrifying as some stuff here, but I thought it was kinda gross.

KitchenSwillForPigs , Corina Rainer Report

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Elwood Schwartz
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

A movie theatre in a nearby town does this. But... They also serve alcohol, so maybe nobody cares about the stale popcorn.

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#18

Worked for a few years in a Shell gasstation in Denmark. The mixed candy isle is only filled, it's never, ever emptied or cleaned.

The gummybears at the buttom are probably highly saught by archeologists around the world.

asg0noir Report

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KitFrey
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

"Here in this old abandoned shop, we found some old, small bear shaped things, we are conducting research and scientists think that they may have been highly sought after treasures."

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#19

30 Ex-Employees Reveal The “Dark Secrets” About Their Former Jobs That Common People Aren’t Supposed To Know This is my best story, I was 18 and a pushover at the time, wasn’t going to argue since I just started working there:

At Staples (in Canada), we ran out of pencil crayons during back to school season, which was not good for business; parents want to do one-stop shopping for school. So one of the managers took me to the Wal-Mart at the other end of the shopping centre, and we loaded up 2 carts with ALL of their pencil crayons.

It gets worse. To eliminate any suspicion and prevent the Wal-Mart managers from stopping us, we told the cashiers we were on a mission trip to Africa and that these were supplies for poor schools over there. They believed it, we took them all, stocked the shelves at Staples and resold them.

Looking back, damn that was some shady s**t.

Meowmeowsuplex , Taylor Heery Report

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D Maisenh
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Not shady, just second sourcing. They don't mention the brand so as long as they are charging the same price for the same product there is nothing wrong with it.

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#20

I worked for a company that is the largest producer of pharmacy software in the US. There's a bunch of beans to spill. I won't name the company directly and I will say this is all "allegedly" true because I am about to accuse the company of systemic gross criminal negligence. Nearly 60% of all patients in the US exist in one of our systems and you're information is 100% for sure compromised. Multiple security breaches occured during my time there both internal and external. Despite this and the massive amount of HIPAA data that was stolen (think Equifax levels of information stolen BUT they also stole your credit card numbers and your patient records) the company has not changed their policies at all. They have no network security to speak of and most pharmacies that use the software are protected by a single 4 character password that is so easy to guess it frequently is cracked by accident. The company regularly hires contractors with no background check and no drug testing. They are immediately, day 1, given full backend access to all pharmacy systems that use our software. In order to learn the software they are taught to create false patient, doctor, and RX records, sometimes in live store environments without the stores consent or knowledge. Multiple employees have been caught creating false controlled substance scripts in pharmacies in the area then picking them up after work even going so far as to create fake insurance payments so it looks like the store is getting paid. Most independantly owned pharmacies make do not track actual earnings. I don't understand how they're in business. You will get fired if you will not assist pharmacies using the system to falsify DEA reports. Pharmacies do this to hide illegal sales of controlled substances. The company is closing in on half a billion dollars of wealth. There is systemic racism, homophobia, and sexual assault occurring openly. They are about to close deals with almost all major pharmacy chains. The CEO actively participates and goes out of his way to encourage descrimnation of non-Christians in the work place. They lie to their customers constantly. Those deals with the major chains include Wal-Mart and Walgreens. This would put the information of nearly 90% of US patients into a system which is (or was when I left) known to have active security vulnerabilities which have been exploited in multiple known hacks with no intention of correcting them. This includes your social security and/or DL#. The entirety of the system was held by ransom ware at one point. We told our customers it was a network outage at our headquarters while the CEO got together $10 million or so to get it back. This was caused by an employee torrenting porn on his workstation. The employee in question received no discipline, still works there, and golfs with the CEO once a week. The CEO has been caught multiple times in his office during work hours with multiple secretaries between his knees. I could go on for days about this c**p. If they were a consumer facing company I'm sure things would be different but they work mostly with businesses so they get away with it.

Reddit Report

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#21

30 Ex-Employees Reveal The “Dark Secrets” About Their Former Jobs That Common People Aren’t Supposed To Know I worked in a coffee shop where they would buy individually packaged muffins in bulk, like the kind you see in convenience stores. They would then have us remove them from their packaging and wrap them in saran wrap, and sell them as homemade for over twice the price as what they sold literally next door at the gas station.

I always enjoyed the compliments I got for my baking skills.

Mlefurr , Alice Dotto Report

#22

30 Ex-Employees Reveal The “Dark Secrets” About Their Former Jobs That Common People Aren’t Supposed To Know I worked at a “luxury” movie theatre for 3 years. Complete with service to your seat, oversized recliner seats, pillows and blankets. The pillows and blankets were never washed. Ever. But the break room was stocked with brand new ones. Always ask for a new blanket.

QueenIllest , Kilyan Sockalingum Report

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juztme
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Not english, so there are some mistakes. Same with airplane blankets. I worked at a laundrycompany and the airplane blankets almost never get washed. Unless they are really dirty. So yeah... Bring your own blankie..

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#23

Comcast spams their own employees asking them to donate money to their PAC to fight Net Neutrality. F**k Comcast, I’m glad I was fired.

dirtyblueshirt Report

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Mazer
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I stopped using them when they began overcharging me. Took my equipment down to the shop, told them to send me a check. The sweet ignorant young man who closed my account said I owed them. I said good luck with that. Called customer service the next day and had my check within a week. Horrible company

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#24

30 Ex-Employees Reveal The “Dark Secrets” About Their Former Jobs That Common People Aren’t Supposed To Know Current PetSmart employee. The amount of "quiet" (dead) fish we have to throw out by the end of a single DAY is ridiculous. I don't know how it isn't alarming to customers, because we're told to do it right in front of them. Also, I don't understand why it isn't allowed to socialize the animals. Nobody wants a hamster or any pet that is going to bite.

ruskio , Daniel Corneschi Report

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Aran Lindvail
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Don't buy animals from those pet stores. Not out of pity, not because it's convenient, just don't. Ever.

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#25

Worked for the United Nations. There's a list of global corporations they refuse to work with/accept donations from, because they are considered basically evil. It's not publicly available info even to most people who work in the UN system, but if you try to work with a company on the list, and you send the proposal up the food chain, eventually you'll get shut down. Don't have the list to share, but maybe someone else does. Some very well-known brands are on it.

FroznMbryo Report

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NsG
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

This is a good thing! I mean, it would help to have examples, but the fact there's a list suggests there are still morals somewhere in the world.

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#26

30 Ex-Employees Reveal The “Dark Secrets” About Their Former Jobs That Common People Aren’t Supposed To Know I used to work for a food distributor and I was forced to work when sick with out gloves or masks because they ran out.

PM_ME_TINY_DINOSAURS , Stacey Gabrielle Koenitz Rozells Report

#27

30 Ex-Employees Reveal The “Dark Secrets” About Their Former Jobs That Common People Aren’t Supposed To Know Ruby Falls is fake. Their waterfall is pumped in. It's artificial. The formations are paint and plastic and styrofoam or occasionally purchases from other caves halfway across the country. They lie about the height of the falls. Like not a little exaggeration, they claim it's almost twice as high as it is. Most of the stories your tour guides tell you are made up. Unless they have gray hair their funny quips about past tours are mostly bs. The employees are not told any of this and have to piece it together on their own. A lot of management legitimately doesn't know. The tour guides know and don't care, the ones that do care quit. They threaten to sue employees who ever reveal any of this EVEN TO FELLOW EMPLOYEES!

[deleted] , Joshua Forrest Report

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Mazer
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Apparently this is an attraction in Tennessee. I check the reviews and they are mostly good. People seem refectory happy with their experience. Fake waterfall or not

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#28

30 Ex-Employees Reveal The “Dark Secrets” About Their Former Jobs That Common People Aren’t Supposed To Know At a certain chicken establishment, we had deep friers that you put chicken into, locked them up, waited on the machines timer and pulled them out. It was 3 mins and 30 seconds long. In rushes when we were low on chicken, they made us open the machines up earlier before they were fully cooked by sometimes a full minute... I didn't work there that long.

renacotor , Rob and Stephanie Levy Report

#29

30 Ex-Employees Reveal The “Dark Secrets” About Their Former Jobs That Common People Aren’t Supposed To Know Most dairy coolers in stores are riddled with mold.

-Little-Green-Ghouls , Eduardo Soares Report

#30

30 Ex-Employees Reveal The “Dark Secrets” About Their Former Jobs That Common People Aren’t Supposed To Know Worked in the kitchen at a Wetherspoons (pub chain in UK). If anything went out of date, we simply changed the day dot on it so it now says it goes out of date tomorrow instead. If something fresh didn't sell well but we already had lots of it prepared (this would happen with steaks and fish mostly) the dates would get repeatedly changed until it went brown/stank and then it would get put on 'special'. Manager's bonuses were, in part, based on wastage; lower wastage=higher bonus.

Also we got pretty much everything pre-portioned, frozen and so at least part if not all of your meal will be microwaved. In general the later you come in, the more kitchen equipment we have turned off and cleaned so more of it goes in the mikes. Send back your food because its cold? That's going in the microwave. That job seriously broadened my mind to what exactly you can cook using microwaves alone.

We also didn't get breaks. They would even tailor shift lengths so that you would get the shortest legal length breaks (that we would get shouted at for taking anyway). For example, a 5 hour shift gives you 15 minutes break but a 4:45 shift gives you no break, guess which one they give you.

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NsG
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

The fact that the food is microwaved should come as no surprise to anyone who has even heard of Wetherspoons. Ding-ding Food is the usual term (or Ping, because of the ding/ping the microwave bell makes). That, and the fact it's like £3.99 for a full breakfast which is comparable in price to a McDonald's muffin - noones expecting gormet here (gore-met possibly). No surprise about the breaks either - the Wetherspoons boss is well known for his attitude towards staff.

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#31

I worked at CVS and we had a guy go back to the pharmacy, reach over the counter and grab a tray full of filled(?) prescription papers and ran out the emergency exit. These papers included private information on DOZENS of our customers. Names, numbers, addresses, meds they are on, etc.. There was virtually no reason for that information to be so easily accessible or out in the open, even behind the counter. Some tech really screwed up, but the kicker was my store manager who told everyone not to tell anyone or report it because it "wasn't that big of a deal". All I could think about were all of my regular customers that had come in that day. Called HR that night and reported him. turns out, it was a big deal. Full on investigation big deal. Every single one of our customers had to be called and informed of a breach because there was no way to know who's prescriptions were in that tray and who's weren't. We lost a lot of clients.

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Don't Look
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

The manager was afraid. That's unfortunate because had he not been greedy, he would have found out that admitting it to the law IMMEDIATELY would have resulted in catching the thief, at least.

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#32

Geek Squad memberships are a total ripoff, it takes longer for their services to complete, BitDefender will slow down and f**k up your computer, we didn't troubleshoot things, just tell you something is broken to get you to buy stuff and Clearplex is just thick Saran wrap, it costs less than 2 cents per sheet.

We were told explicitly "You are not a computer technician, you are a sales person. This isn't a computer repair job and I don't care if you can fix them, you're here to sell services!"

I am a certified computer technician, and f**k those scumbags, I walked so many people cause it was bad for them to have us work on their stuff.

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Don't Look
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Geek Squad isn't just a ripoff, it's a sham. I used to do the repairs that the magnolia people screwed up.

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#33

30 Ex-Employees Reveal The “Dark Secrets” About Their Former Jobs That Common People Aren’t Supposed To Know Worked at Red Robin was constantly forced to buy tube meat from Walmart and sell it as Gourmet.

Had to sneak it in the back so nobody would connect the dots.

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TomCat
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I've gotten sick every time I've eaten at red robin. Needless to say, never again.

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#34

30 Ex-Employees Reveal The “Dark Secrets” About Their Former Jobs That Common People Aren’t Supposed To Know I "managed" a food joint at a six flags when I was 16. But a 16yo running a food establishment is not even the worst part. We literally watered down the nacho cheese about (50/50), I grilled chicken for 10 hours a day on the same grill without time to clean it so by the end of the day there was a quarter inch of gunk built up, I had new crew members everyday who had never worked there before, my managers would take their breaks when we needed to close but we couldn't leave until they checked our work, so we would just sit for a good 30mins before we could go home. I ended up getting fired because in accidentally bumped a HIDDEN SECURITY CAMERA while cleaning in the back room.

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#35

I used to work in financial services. Agents would sell products based on the commission, and not on how well the investment actually performed. Our customer service department was pretty much always taking calls from people who had been deceived about what to expect from their investment.

I work for the Post Office now, and I will honestly say I have never worked with such hardworking people before. There are problems with managers expecting you to get things done quicker than humanly possible, and a lot of our equipment is old and falling apart, but I honestly feel like the vast majority of my coworkers are trying to take care of our customers and to just get home safely.

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#36

Petsmart (which actually normally wasn’t as bad as you’d expect) made us take the sick animals to the instore vet, banfield... which would be fine but banfield only sees cats and dogs. Which resulted in a lot of small mammals and lizards getting incorrect medicine and diagnosis and eventually passing away. (Though the store I was at realized this and now they take them to a reptile and small mammal specialist) We also couldn’t say no to a sale, meaning many fish went home in bowls, Guinea pigs went home in hamster cages, and so on The breeder that sell us the animals normally sent us the rejects, meaning it wasn’t rare for us to get an animal in that was malformed, malnourished, and sometimes even with severe injuries Also the hamsters CONSTANTLY eat each other

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NsG
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

"Petsmart (which actually normally wasn’t as bad as you’d expect)" and yet it has appeared at least three times in this list, so maybe it IS as bad, or even worse than we'd expect.

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#37

Worked at Harris Teeter's deli several years ago and dropped a whole deli turkey breast on the ground. My manager picked it up, went to wash it in the raw foods sink (with just water), dropped it in the raw food sink with raw chicken juice, rinsed with water, and handed it to me to cut for a customer.

She left immediately after (end of shift) and I promptly threw the turkey away and got a new one. This happened literally ALL THE TIME.

(Not really a company secret but definitely was swept under the rug because my manager was female as am I):

She was CONSTANTLY making sexual comments towards the female workers too. Telling us who had big tits or big a**es, making sex-related jokes, or talking about our sex lives at home. She even touched my a** once or twice but covered it under the whole "excuse me, my bad, just trying to get passed."

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#38

Animals in cages at the airport gets thrown violently on conveyor belts by the luggage staff. They don't care. It's just a game of who throws the luggage the strongest on the wall and falls on the belt.

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TomCat
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

NEVER trust an airline with your pet. Of your pet can't fly in the cabin, drive to your destination or leave your baby at home.

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#39

Working at a grocery store, I learnt that you should always. 100% of the time. No if’s or but’s. WASH YOUR PRODUCE. We would often get boxes with squished, molding and rotting fruits and vegetables (it is perishable food after all) but would just sort those out and quickly wipe off the surrounding items.

It’s very likely that apple that you took a bite out of has been touched by at least 5 customers, possibly been dropped on the floor, and might have been right next to rotting fruit for a few days. Enjoy.

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#40

It's not really a secret, but it isn't typically trumpeted from the hilltops either; you've got a full week to bring any used game you buy from GameStop back with the ticket for a full refund. You've got a month to bring it back for a store credit refund in full. I made it a point to tell every customer who bought a used game this information and got (unofficially) reprimanded for it on more than one occasion.

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Drea Benoit
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Similarly, Petco has a policy that you can return any dog toy labeled “indestructible” if your dog destroys it. It’s great because you just bring it back to the store, rather than dealing with the toy manufacturer. I learned this after mentioning to an employee that my dog destroyed a $20 toy in under a minute. He told me there are a few regulars who shamelessly bring back destroyed toys a few times per week, then get the same exact toy knowing it will be immediately destroyed. These kinds of people ruin generous policies like this.

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#41

I am in Mexico and used to work at call centers. They would ask us to always state we were located in the US. I worked for Comcast and Sprint-Nextel but there were some other campaigns such as HP tech support or AT&T or Verizon.

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Mazer
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Yes because American corporations are all about keeping their suits rich and keeping all of the rest of their employees poor and without benefits. They also avoid bigger taxes and environmental restrictions to have out of country employees

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#42

As per my username used to work for hotels (escaped in November of 2018). Sites like Expedia can and do book more rooms than the hotel physically has. You want to be sure there will be a bed for you, book on the hotel's own website.

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Autumn
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I use sites like Expedia or hotels. Com to find what hotel I want (can filter by distance, what amenities I want , room type etc) and then go to the hotels website to book, and I've always paid the same or less than what Expedia was offering, so I don't really see any upside of booking through their sites anyway

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#43

That mattress you bought on "clearance" was a return somebody slept on for up to a month or so.

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#44

30 Ex-Employees Reveal The “Dark Secrets” About Their Former Jobs That Common People Aren’t Supposed To Know If you ordered any vodka; Grey Goose Belvedere Titos Ketel one, etc You are getting Blue Ice vodka. Owner of the bar would pour cheap vodka into those bottles. I refused to do it myself, so he would do it. I made phenomenal money there, 350-500 a shift so i never said s**t about it. After i quit i let people know. Was shut down 3 months after

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Is Be
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Same thing here at one of our bars. You would think these higher brand's representatives would pay a visit to bars that are not on their client list.

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#45

I worked for a privately owned company offering customized data programmes plus data entry and analysis services. We had a contract with Ontario's Emergency Medical Services. My job was to decipher and enter 15 years worth of data from ambulance call reports covering 2 counties into the database designed by our company in order to bring the province up to date before the big hospital merger in 2008.

When the job was done, instead of picking up another government contract, my boss sold her house and moved out of the country in a hurry with over a million dollars. That's when I found out that the entire contract was illegal. Some hospital admin didn't want to deal with the job they were given so they illegally outsourced it to our company on the sly, allowing my boss to take a truck load of classified documents off hospital grounds every week.

I wasn't allowed to tell anybody because the scandal would have delayed the merger and cost the region tons of money in fines, investigations, and replanning. I hate being someone's dirty little secret. It feels really rapey.

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HannEli
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

OMG! It is hard to think of the right thing to do in the moment, and it would be scary to not have an idea to do about it.. I would feel very bad about myself and the situation as well. Remember though, it is not your fault. Your boss had shady values, she had a corrupt plan and you were not apart of that intentionally. Find peace... I bet you're an amazing person.

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#46

I worked in a staffing agency in a large city. We had a fridge in the office filled with alcohol. We drank during our entire afternoon. Mornings were when we met with clients. Afternoons were job interviews and filling slots. Oh, and the company bought the alcohol. Literally got paid to drink.

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#47

I have an experiment for you. Take a thin stack of regular index cards and go to your local Wal Mart. Go to the fresh chicken section. The long clear plastic strip at the front of the shelf can be lifted up out of the black shelf. Lift it up. Take your index cards and place it where the plastic was. Now run it, without lifting it up, to the end of the shelf. If half rotten chicken guts don't fall out of that shelf then you are at a cleaner Wal Mart than I've ever been in. Odds are you'll be able to see (and smell) them caked all over the bottom of the plastic thing as soon as you pull it out of the shelf. When I worked at Wal Mart I always waited until the place was practically devoid of customers before I pulled those shelves apart to clean them.

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#48

I worked at a gas station/ auto shop and I was told to dump used motor oil in the gravel behind the building because the storage tanks were full.

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Mazer
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Illegal. Please report then, that oil is so detrimental to the environment. Expensive and difficult to remove.

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#49

One of the sales managers was convicted of coercing a 14 year old girl into having sex with him when he was 23 at a church retreat saying it was God's will.

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#50

Worked in a private owned doctors office. They would routinely schedule people with government insurance for appointments months out, and schedule people with private insurance for much closer appointments, next day even. Also, since Medicare and Medicaid won't pay for immunizations and therapeutic injections separately, when they are given during an office visit, they would schedule the patient for another appointment the next morning, and "give" the injection then. Thereby allowing them to bill it separately. The thing is, the patient never even knows about this "second" appointment, and their insurance pays the bills. The office manager would also sign into the doctors computers and send in narcotic rx's for patients under their names, even though she has no medical license at all.

Example. A patient comes in for an office visit and gets a flu shot. No other vaccines given. They are billed for the office visit that day and for the flu shot the next day. Also the managers has all of the doctors passwords and keys to their systems. She claimed it was “just in case anything happens that I need to fix and they’re not here” , but she often used it for other purposes, even when they were in office or on vacation.

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Mazer
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2 years ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Many of us poor trash patients know all about how f****d we are. Feeling horrible, vulnerable and being treated like a piece of s**t by the medical community is par for the course. It’s one of the reasons I always leave reviews and encourage disgruntled patients who are treated poorly to do likewise. I know a number of people permanently disabled because of delay and/or denial of care because they are poor. I know a few who took their lives. It’s the worst feeling in the world. I don’t envy the karma people in medicine will be facing

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#51

KFC intentionally shift starves older team members to prevent them from bringing the labour budget up, and when they quit due to lack of shifts they don't get paid out because technically it's them quitting.

Just think about that for a moment. The only people above 18 in the store are likely the management staff.

The people cleaning the dishes your food is prepped on, cooking your food, preparing your food, packaging your food and handing it to you are 15-17 year olds with exactly as much maturity as you would expect.

Don't get me wrong, a lot of them are pretty good for their age, but still, all it takes it one kid angry at their boss for whatever reason to forget a step, or stuff up, and bam, you're sick for 4 days with food poisoning.

Edit;

A few points since people are both agreeing and disagreeing.

I'm not in the states. A lot of American KFC workers may very well have different experiences.

I'm speaking about my "area" in particular, which consisted of about half a dozen stores. This may have ended when I left, or it may be that I have a skewed perception. I've been wrong before, and I might be wrong now. This was also several years ago, so things could have changed radically.

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Vic D
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Well that explains a lot, the last few times I went it was run by a bunch of teenagers, I even witness a food fight behind the counter, never returned to KFC after that.

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#52

30 Ex-Employees Reveal The “Dark Secrets” About Their Former Jobs That Common People Aren’t Supposed To Know Worked at McDonals as a teenager in the kitchen there. As a cook we were trained that whenever we hear a timer go off on a tray in the patty warmer we press the button to reset and do nothing else. When I was training to be a manager we were taught that the timers were the recommended safe time for a patty to sit in the warmer and all the pattys in the tray that timed out should be thrown away. As a cook we would often have trays that had their timers reset 5+ times in a row before the pattys were served from them.

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Vetus Vespertilio
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

In the Olden Days, before MickeyD’s got computerized, it used to be a matter of pride that you could “call” production (tell the grill person how many patties to place on the grill and how many baskets of fries to drop into the fryers) so accurately that you’d have no product left over when it timed out. Since you had to report wastage to head office every night at closing, and you had to count, not weigh, the product wasted, if you had too much waste the closing crew would climb all over you because they had to pull too much out of the trash bag to count it. Times have changed!

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#53

Panera Bread - all of the soups. ALL OF THEM come in frozen and in plastic bags.

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#54

Not specific to my company but;

Used to work in a four star spa hotel

Bedsheets don't always get changed,especially with 1-2 night stays

Don't ever use the cups- the same cleaning rag that cleans the toilet will probably touch your cups too

They used to charge 30 quid for a basket of fruit - that fruit had been dropped on dirty service room floors and all sorts before being eaten by the customers that paid the 30 quid for it

In all seriousness I can't relax in hotels at all now

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Is Be
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I am OK with not getting sheets and towels replaced daily. A lot of good hotels give you that option being better for the environment.

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#55

30 Ex-Employees Reveal The “Dark Secrets” About Their Former Jobs That Common People Aren’t Supposed To Know I still have copies of emails from our Gamestop district manager directing us to sell through all our pre orders of GTA4 instead of holding them for the customers that reserved them because he got a commission on total numbers sold.

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Kira Okah
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Wonder if that is what happened with mine. Preordered game on the Vita, game released, told me there are none for a month despite my preorder. Claim was that they got 4 Vita preorders but only ordered two Vita copies for the whole shop - had two preowned Vita copies and gave me one of those instead. At least I got the game, though they wouldn't allow my preorder bonus.

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#56

30 Ex-Employees Reveal The “Dark Secrets” About Their Former Jobs That Common People Aren’t Supposed To Know I worked at NASA as a contractor for 2 years. 90% of the computing hardware was very antiquated and out of date. I saw a lot of Dell computers from the mid 2000s still being used, yes even pre-thin-style monitors, that beige or off-white color. They are pretty underfunded and spend most of their money on more advanced hardware like supercomputers, large servers, etc. But the basic hardware is really out of date. In fact, the whole place looked like a museum of the 1990s...the architecture, the dress styles, the lighting, carpet, and so on. It was very strange, almost eerie.

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Susie Elle
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I'm not surprised if I look at some of the lab equipment at universities and such, and the prices of hardware you need for specific ends.

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#57

Worked in several chain restaurants through college as a cook; nothing to report that you probably haven't heard already, but I can tell you, most of the things you've been warned about are true, but the best thing I can tell you is:

Don't go to a restaurant within 30 min or so of its closing time. The cooks have already cleaned in an attempt to go home-- at best you're getting the scraps left on the counter, at worst, well you've pissed off the cooks.

Oh, and I cooked at Hooters. They literally train the waitresses on how to flirt with customers. No, they don't like you. In fact, if you're a particularly odd-looking or annoying customer, they tell the other waitresses about you and they look at you through the kitchen windows and mock you.

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#58

Worked call centre for Sprint-Nextel. This was before smartphones so tech support and customer support were relatively simple.

Staff turnover was so high that you couldn't get fired no matter how bad a CSR you were. If you turned up on time and sat at your desk the entire shift, no-one gave a s**t.

Sometimes the exorbitant wait times were due to only having 2 people on shift for the entire network. Sometimes they were because CSRs would keep the line open after a customer disconnected to avoid taking another call.

The security identification system means jack s**t. If you've ever had an ex, stalker or anyone turn up where you live after thinking they couldn't possibly know, blame the lazy CSR who ignored the warning notes and security protocol and gave all your information away.

When they say they're going to put you on hold, but there's no music, you're actually muted and we can hear everything you say.

Customer service, billing and tech support were all the same people. Tech support was a roulette of good, knowledgeable people.

We used to have access to customers' online accounts for tech support needs, but we could also see any texts or old school MMS messages.

All calls are recorded. All of them. They're all stored for an indeterminate amount of time in case there's a legal need for it.

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Rahul Pawa
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

This one deserves to be higher, if for nothing else than the tip about them being able to hear you when you're on hold. Even if there is music, I would assume they can still hear me.

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#59

AT&Ts customer service call center is run out of Canada. They made us say we were in the US so I said I was in Detroit because it was across the river.

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Scott
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2 years ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

While this may be true from this person's experience, I used to work for AT&T in a technical support call centre and lived in Denver, CO. We were specifically told NOT to say which city we were in, however, and for good reason. There were multiple times people who were... dissatisfied, shall we say, looked up something like "AT&T call centre, Colorado" and got the address for the site. I once had someone give a bomb threat, and another tell me they were going to wait in the parking lot to kidnap me, torture me, and kill me. Best part? I had their SSNs, home addresses, phone numbers, ID numbers (driver's license, state issued ID, whatever) all in front of me. I loved it when I heard bomb threat person get a knock at their door from their local law enforcement. Ah.... good times. Edited to Add: The O&O (owned and operated) sites may possibly be all US based, but they absolutely do outsource customer service too, but they're not technically AT&T employees so that may be their out on the ads saying their support is entirely US based.

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#60

I worked at Dunkin Donuts, and at least at my location, all the s**t was frozen. The free samples are the oldest donuts we have, and when serving, we pick donuts from the back of the tray, as those are the oldest. Also, my location wasn't too high volume, so we didn't switch out coffee every 18 minutes like we were supposed to. Coffee could be a few hours old, sometimes donuts were over 5 or 8 hours old if they were a low-demand kind.

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Aria Whitaker
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

This one is not quite as bad as some of these...hours old coffee and stale donuts? Meh. Better than floor-chicken or snotty, germy pizza.

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#61

Arby's is vile. They will sell you sandwiches that are literally roast beef shavings and burnt scraps because they want to save money by not wasting even inedible bits of beef. I was told, when I worked there, to not waste any meat, even if it meant rolling a pile of burnt skin, rubbery scraps, and miscellaneous shavings into a ball and plopping it on a bun.

I quit after a week.

Edit: so, worth clarifying—yes, there are well-run Arby’s. Mine was a training store owned by a very large franchisee, and they are the embodiment of penny-pinching miserliness. Their preferred method of rotating stock (cheeses, veggies) is to switch the labels when the hold date is exceeded, rather than actually discarding expired product.

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Angela Horak
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I worked in an Arby's and it was extremely clean. They were very fussy about the date dots. Even saw a manager throw out an entire day's inventory of cookies due to possible peanut allergen contamination. I would have taken those home tbh. Honestly the Arby's I worked at was much cleaner than the fancy restaurant I worked at later where a chef screamed at me for not using a piece of lettuce that he deemed acceptable and forced me to take it out of the trash and serve it.

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#62

Companies that deal with commercial truck driving licenses often have their drivers fudge the log book numbers to make it look legal.....

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Miah Lee
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

My dad was an OTR Driver (this was pre electric log) and each company he worked for did this. The drivers had the “legal book” and the “real book”.

#63

Being a butcher I found out that a lot of things you're told to do goes against food hygiene.

Bit of meat fell on the floor? Pick it up and give it a wash. Meat hit that point it can't be in the window? Mince it. Chicken will go bad tomorrow? Kebab it.

Just after Christmas we had a load of extra bacon that we didn't sell and was taking ages to go. It got to the point where the bacon was sticky and started growing mould/fur. I was told to scrape off the mould/fur and put it in the window for display.

The joints and the sausages were hung up with rusted hooks and put me way off.

The butchers got top cleanliness ratings for some reason.

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#64

Champps Restaurants.

The flavor in the seasoned sour cream you can't figure out is curry powder.

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#65

Dollar General here. I was written up for not working off the clock. My managers boss even knew I got wrote up for that s**t and said nothing.

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Mazer
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

You need to contact your States labor board, not the company.

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#66

I worked in the games department for a large amusement park in Ohio (hint not Cedar Point). Though I’m sure this statement applies to every amusement park with games, those giant stuffed animals you spend $25+ to get cost the park literally pennies. Basically what the park does is they buy the outer coating/pattern of what the stuffed animal is going to be, then they buy the little foam pellets, they fill the shell with the pellets in house, and then have an in house seamstress sow it all up.

If I remember correctly the shells cost something like $6.50 a pound and you get like 50 shells in a pound or something ridiculous like that. So all in all you are paying a huge markup to MAYBE win a giant stuffed prize.

Also: the rims on those basketball games are half an inch smaller in diameter than regulation, while the ball stays at regulation size. While it doesn’t seem like much, it is significant enough that it makes it a lot harder to make that 10 foot shot.

Finally we were trained to go after certain people because they have more ego driven personalities. If a family with a dad and two kids pass at the same time as a group of junior high boys pass, the junior high boys are targeted every time. This would go on to not only be just trying to “sell” the game, but also throwing minor insults in to try and poke at their egos and works every time.

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dev mehta
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2 years ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I find it amusing that they have an 'in house seamstress'

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#67

I worked at Great Clips. The stylists are strongly advised to only cut a client's hair between 10-15 minutes. If the stylist's average haircut time is more than 15-17 minutes, they might get talked to by the manager about speeding up their services or written up if it continues to happen.

Stylists also get paid based on how fast and how many clients they have that day.

If a person comes in with a long, tangled rats nest and wants a complicated haircut that takes you an hour to deal with, they can f**k up your timed average for the day and f**k your pay.

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#68

UPS gave me an entire safety orientation on proper lifting on the job and applying warning tape to packages over 70 lbs. They, however, did not follow either rule as I was expected to get things done faster than proper lifting or warning tape application would allow. I was also fired after my manager neglected to inform me that I was supposed to perform certain duties on the line I was working. Not to mention your packages are usually never handled with care, but that's the trade off of receiving next day shipping.

I also worked at Job Corps. Plenty of students were allowed to graduate because they were favored by the coach/counselors. They also implemented a co-ed dormitory in a dorm that was meant for girls only. Not too mention I know of several instances where a female Residential Advisor hooked up with a younger male student. As a young male, I was never allowed to work the female dorm, which was okay with me. However, they allowed young females to work the male dorms. That's where problems arose. One male student hooked up with a 40 year old female, and got addicted to meth thanks to her. Last I heard of them both, she was pregnant and he was in jail for domestic assault.

Don't get me wrong. Job Corps does have success stories, but the cost is questionable.

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#69

Candy man here. We left chocolate out in display cases for months on end. When my friends came by to the store I told them to avoid it at all costs.

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#70

Staples (and probably some other stores)

They price match as long as the product is shipped and sold by Amazon. You can get many great deals at a convenient location. Always check for prices on Amazon because I can guarantee a lot of stuff there is overpriced.

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#71

I worked at domino's for 2 years. I can say that they do not care if your pizza is ruined or burned or fell on the ground. On one occasion a pizza fell top first on the ground and my manager just gave it to the customer...

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Rahul Pawa
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I worked at domino's for 4 years (2 different franchises) and that s**t would not fly with any manager I had. Also...how does a Domino's burn pizza? Their ovens are timed conveyors, they need to adjust the timing if the pizza is getting burnt. Some badly run franchises give the whole brand a bad name.

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#72

Nordstrom, you can return anything. They will take it back, used and all.

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Mrs S
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Never worked there, but very much enjoyed every single interaction as a customer.

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#73

When I worked at a gas station while I was in high school, whever the owner would call us to raise the price, we'd fill up our cars first.

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madbakes
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

1. That's not a shady activity the business did. 2. This actually isn't uncommon. We learned the day before that price would be increasing, so we would top off our tanks that day.

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#74

From working at McD's for 4 years.

When you get breakfast we have a "Substitute" button. You can change any meat for any meat and any eggs for any eggs. Any bread for any bread.

My fav is to get the Big Breakfast with Hotcakes.

Switch the sausage for crispy chicken.

Switch the biscuit for a bagel.

Switch the scrambled eggs for egg whites (comes with 2 round whites)



It is the same price, the chicken and bagel are larger then sausage and biscuit.



And keep an eye on how you make your meals.

A big mac meal and two cheeseburgers is cheaper than a 2 cheeseburger meal and a big mac.

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Tom Hanlin
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

"Egg white omelets" are a grotesque mockery caused by the false belief that cholesterol is bad for you. Even the government was finally persuaded to back down from that claim, which was never based on research.

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#75

Reformation, their fabric is ridiculously overpriced. Because they are marketing towards the “green gal,” who suddenly cares about sustainable clothing, they’ve duped people into ditching stores like forever 21 because they makes their clothes with s**tty, synthetic fibers to a brand that makes the same quality of clothing with renewable fabrics. Also, it’s a start up so the store infrastructure is jacked. Management is young, protocol is non existent, HR is imaginary and if any of the 20 something girls in management don’t like a particular Instagram post of yours you can be fired.

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#76

At Anytime Fitness, personal trainers are only requires to get a AMFPT certification (it's basically a mail order degree) for insurance purposes. They can also let you out of your membership/personal training contacts with a few click of a mouse with no penalties to you or them ..they just don't.

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#77

I used to work at a well known chain restaurant (not Applebee's) when I was young. People would ask all the time if something was microwaved, due to their food varying in temperature, their plate being hot, the taste of their food, or whatever. Yes, the food is microwaved. No, we will not actually tell you that. From what I could tell, your main course was made to order. So if you ordered the chicken, they would actually cook the chicken on the stove right after you ordered it. Everything else, like your sides, were shoved in plastic bags and "cooked" in the microwave. Like your potatoes, veggies, rice, soup, whatever. I think fries were actually made to order as well, since they were meant to be crispy. Also, it really boggled my mind when people would order dessert. It's literally a frozen piece of cake, cheesecake, or whatever. None of it is fresh. And the ice cream is the cheapest vanilla bean ice cream on the market. We got our's from Aldi's by the brand "Dean's" which is well known for being a large tub at a low price.

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Benita Valdez
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I think most chain restaurants do that with majority of sides. The one I worked out did grilled and steamed sides so if you wanted it steamed then into a baggie and nuke it for a few; rice was reheated in micro too

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#78

When I worked in the mailroom for the main AT&T facility for the West Coast, the management company Global Real Estate would order Tivo's and flat screen TV's for the 350+ vacant rooms in the building at the end of every fiscal year. After they were installed, the following weekend all those TV's and Tivo's would "magically" turn up missing.

If you look up Global Real Estate, they're up to some pretty shady s**t all around the world. I'm pretty sure they're run by the mob. My Italian boss once made a thinly veiled death threat to me over a steak during a Christmas party.

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#79

All the soups at Bob Evans, and a lot of the meat really; comes frozen in plastic bags, that then get boiled as a means of heating them up.

Tons of stuff get's microwaved and sent out. The cooks do very little actual cooking.

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#80

DocuPAD (giant desk sized screen used for electronically signing paperwork in car dealerships), costs about 1/20 than what it's sold for, barely works, and the company has no interest in improving it.

Edit

After moving on to a position where I worked more closely with software developers, the docuPAD commits several cardinal sins of database design that lead to numerous financial errors. This is because they are transferring field values to another database and financial calculator, instead of just referencing the fields over a secure connection. This increases the clunkyness in use, and causes all sorts of numbers to be off.

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#81

Not really that bad, but I like to let people know about this: In high school, I was a youth football ref. All we did was talk about the hot girls at our school and make sure nobody got hurt. I would only call things that were a) Too obvious not to call or b) dangerous. Nobody cares about that 3rd grader who's holding on the back end of the play except for the parents/coaches who think their kid is playing in the state championship game. Also, if your kid goes out with a head injury and you try to send him/her back in a couple plays later, you're a terrible person.

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#82

A certain learning center basically forces employees to rewrite student's college application essays. They also put a non-compete clause in their contract, which while legally dubious, is not worth fighting.

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#83

I worked at Express and Victoria’s Secret for years.

No employee can do anything about shoplifters. If you see someone steal something, we were supposed to go over and ask if they needed help.

You could literally swipe whatever you want, quickly before they call mall security, and book it out of the store with hundreds of dollars in merchandise and the employees can’t do anything about it, because they don’t want to be sued.

Edit: At the end of shift, which was usually around 4am, we, the employees, were bag checked by the manager to make certain we never stole anything.

Also. The Express Wall of men’s professional shirts had to look immaculate before we could end our shift.

Made me have a total different experience while shopping in any store, and to this day I put back whatever I can’t afford to buy where I grabbed the item, and put it back where I found it, completely out of respect for the employees.

Side note: While working for Express, they wouldn’t let me leave on Christmas Eve until 6am because of the chaos of earlier in the day.

I also found out I was pregnant with my first baby and it was a complete surprise. My manager had zero sympathy to my nauseousness. She actually told me to use “breathing exercises” so I wouldn’t puke on the floor.

I never quit a job in my life. But making a scared pregnant lady work until the “Santa Clause” hours of the night made me realize “These people don’t give a s**t about me as a 6 year employee...” All they care about is having enough staff to take in the exchanges the following day.

If I had a good experience and felt like I was an exemplary employee, I would’ve gladly shown up the day after Christmas. However, the company never showed me that respect at all.

So, happy holiday returns Express!

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#84

Used to work at Best Buy. They take a small portion of laptops and do all the Geek Squad stuff to them, and put them back on the shelf with the new price with all the added junk. If the laptop sells fast, guess what's left over? And they won't give it to you at the advertised price. You had to pay more because it had been "optimized". At least the store I was at wouldn't change the price if that was all we had.

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#85

Soy sauce. the secret ingredient in Jimmy John's tuna salad is soy sauce.

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#86

Wanted us to report 40 hours on military contract work even though some of us worked far more, so wtg falsifying records to the military.

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sanityisnotproven
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Stop with the word "r****d" people. It makes you as offensive as the act(s) you are reporting.

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#87

I worked at an independent gym. But at most gyms the sign up “special” is only there to mark up the perceived value of the membership. It's to convince you to buy into it with the idea that you’re getting a special discount. The reality is that the original price doesn’t actually exist and the “deal” or “discount” you get doesn’t actually expire. It’s just the standard membership rates that everybody is paying!

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#88

My friend from panera worked over 40 hours a week multiple weeks, and her boss would cut her hours at 40 and not even pay her a regular wage for the extra hours. She reached out to corporate about it, and they did nothing.

This was 4-5 years ago, and she is living in another state, probably way too late for her to deal with this now.

I say full time for 20-25 hours a week meaning, 20-25 or more. If you worked less than that amount, you were part time, and get no basic benefits. If you worked 20-25 or more consistently, you would get basic benefits which included paid sick time, paid vacation time, both of those paid upfront if you didn't use them up, and something else I don't remember (This was B&N) If you were a full time manager, you would get salary and regular benefits (like basic insurance and things)

I'm not sure if it was franchise or company, it was part of a plaza that had many stores (Khols, Barnes and Noble, Old Navy, Dicks Sporting Goods, lots of clothes brand stores, lots of beauty brand stores, a supermarket)

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#89

At Hot Topic they warned about having low units per transaction or ‘UPT’ as they called it. If a customer only wanted to buy one thing, we were supposed to try and pressure them into buying related items. The store I was at had a box of s**ty little pin on buttons that we had to suggest to everyone at checkout.

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#90

Car insurance; your credit score is a huge factor in determining your rates. People disproportionally think it's a speeding ticket in their driving history. Sure, it does, but if you wrote two identical policies for identical cars with two identical people in the same zip code, but a huge difference in credit score? You'd see completely disproportionate prices. Most agents don't talk about it and in a bigger national companies, they'll likely automatically escalate the call to a specialist.

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Got Myself 4 Pandas
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I worked in car insurance for years in the uk, and I don't think this applies here - basically you'd have a general price for insurance depending on the current profits of the company, so varied all the time, but then your personal information would add and subtract from it - so a smaller engine car that would be parked in a garage with an older driver with 10+yrs no claims would be much cheaper than a 17yr old with a sporty car parked on the street who of course hasn't had the time to build up any no claims discount. You can lower it still by adding a voluntary excess but people have a habit of thinking that would be all they pay but if your policy comes with a compulsory excess then you need to pay both, the voluntary doesn't override the compulsory. So many times some poor sod has ended up having to pay way more than they bargained for. Also kids car seats should be replaced after any accident even if they look ok, and are covered out with car contents

#91

I still work for them but I'll say it anyway.

We ran a survey with a random draw prize.

The marketing girl said the winner should NOT be chosen randomly and instead be one of our high net worth clients.

I refused to be a part of helping her searching for the winner as it was basically illegal to choose a random winner in a non random way. As she was a retard unable to search for anything she conceded defeat and let me choose someone randomly.

I work for one of the largest banks in the world.

edit: OK not so large actually, top 50 - we used to be top 20 but things moved around.

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