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30 Ex-Employees Reveal The “Dark Secrets” About Their Former Jobs That Common People Aren’t Supposed To Know
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!
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#1
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.
#2
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.
#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.
#4
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.
#5
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.
#6
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.
#7
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.
Meghan Hirt-Gehr 2 years ago
The worst for me is when I see stacks of Beta fish in those tubberware containers with holes poked in them.
#8
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.
#9
Glassdoor.com Does remove job reviews and DOES let employers choose which ones get shown first!
John Edgar Werner Philips 2 years ago
What's the point of even having a website like that then?!
#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.
#11
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.
#12
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.
#13
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.
#14
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.
#15
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.
#16
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.
Susie Elle 2 years ago
"I was sealed in a human sized proofing oven for about an hour" WHAT THE ACTUAL-
#17
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.
Elwood Schwartz 2 years ago
A movie theatre in a nearby town does this. But... They also serve alcohol, so maybe nobody cares about the stale popcorn.
#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.
#19
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.
#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.
#21
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.
#22
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.
#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.
Mazer 2 years ago
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
#24
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.
Aran Lindvail 2 years ago
Don't buy animals from those pet stores. Not out of pity, not because it's convenient, just don't. Ever.
#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.
#26
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.
#27
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!
#28
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.
#29
Most dairy coolers in stores are riddled with mold.
#30
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.
What do you think ?
Barbara Skolly 2 years ago
Just wanna say I had the opposite. I worked at one of the busiest Dairy Queens in Canada years ago. The same owners still own that franchise and it was spotless. We even regularly cleaned the baseboards and pulled shelves out. If something fell it was put in the garbage. They always scored well on city and franchise inspections. I still buy treats from there without question. I wish more owners were like them, this may be why its as busy as it is.
Wintermute 2 years ago
Spent a summer in the Alaskan fishing industry. I could tell a thousand stories from those 3 months. The singular most corrupt group of people outside of congress or the mob. Just for a hint. If you get hurt and work 3 consecutive days then you lose all rights to compensation. Also, if you have a boat, you can get a medical prescription license. So when the Ukranian kid got 3 fingers chopped off in a dangerous machine, he got stitched up, doped on painkillers, placed on light duty for 3 days, then sent home piss poor and 3 fingers short. That's just the tip of the ice berg.
StarmanWaitingInTheSky 2 years ago
I worked at a market research company. Everything we tell you upfront is generally true regarding privacy and confidentiality. Even in the lunchroom we never reveal the identities of the craziest people we spoke to. A darker side is more within the company the employees deal with. The company I work at won't allow us to be unionized. Our hours and shifts get cut so drastically we could be cancelled constantly for weeks but the company refuses to put us on paid leave or temporary laid off so we can at least get compensation. But if you call in sick, bereavement or any other urgent reason, we're pressured to "try to come in." If you have a doctor's note they'll decline it. I've been penalized by being forced to reduce my shifts after a very nasty flu that sent me to the hospital. Occasionally, we get really bad projects, where our client is oblivious to the interests of their customers/clients, it's the interviewers that get blamed for not being able to get any surveys done.
Barbara Skolly 2 years ago
Just wanna say I had the opposite. I worked at one of the busiest Dairy Queens in Canada years ago. The same owners still own that franchise and it was spotless. We even regularly cleaned the baseboards and pulled shelves out. If something fell it was put in the garbage. They always scored well on city and franchise inspections. I still buy treats from there without question. I wish more owners were like them, this may be why its as busy as it is.
Wintermute 2 years ago
Spent a summer in the Alaskan fishing industry. I could tell a thousand stories from those 3 months. The singular most corrupt group of people outside of congress or the mob. Just for a hint. If you get hurt and work 3 consecutive days then you lose all rights to compensation. Also, if you have a boat, you can get a medical prescription license. So when the Ukranian kid got 3 fingers chopped off in a dangerous machine, he got stitched up, doped on painkillers, placed on light duty for 3 days, then sent home piss poor and 3 fingers short. That's just the tip of the ice berg.
StarmanWaitingInTheSky 2 years ago
I worked at a market research company. Everything we tell you upfront is generally true regarding privacy and confidentiality. Even in the lunchroom we never reveal the identities of the craziest people we spoke to. A darker side is more within the company the employees deal with. The company I work at won't allow us to be unionized. Our hours and shifts get cut so drastically we could be cancelled constantly for weeks but the company refuses to put us on paid leave or temporary laid off so we can at least get compensation. But if you call in sick, bereavement or any other urgent reason, we're pressured to "try to come in." If you have a doctor's note they'll decline it. I've been penalized by being forced to reduce my shifts after a very nasty flu that sent me to the hospital. Occasionally, we get really bad projects, where our client is oblivious to the interests of their customers/clients, it's the interviewers that get blamed for not being able to get any surveys done.
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