“Dirty Little Secrets” That Companies Hide From The Public Get Revealed By These 35 Ex-Employees Online
One of the most, if not the most, important factors to a successful business is building trust with your customers. Unfortunately, it’s not always in their best interest to give us the whole picture and tell the truth. Only when we become a part of the company and get to peek behind the curtains can we grasp the reality of the situation. And as it often turns out, your workplace hides many things they wouldn’t want you sharing with friends, family, or people online.
But unless you’re bound by strict confidentiality agreements that last forever and a day, you’re welcome to spill all the juicy dirt about your experiences after you walk away. Ex-employees took to various Reddit threads to anonymously share the big and small "dirty secrets" within their industries that companies don't want regular people to know. But as the public, we really should.
Members of the Ask Reddit community started up discussions that really got workers opening up about the illuminating trade secrets and spicy tidbits from their former jobs. We at Bored Panda have gathered some of the best responses and put them all in one place for you to read. Obviously, we can’t guarantee whether these tales are fact or fiction, so remember that everything on the internet has to be taken with a grain of salt.
Continue scrolling for what happens behind the scenes at some major corporations, upvote your favorite stories as you go, and if you have any secrets you want to share, tell us all about them in the comment section below! After you’re done, be sure to find even more insider information in our earlier publications right here and here.
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Large chain bookstores: so so so many perfectly good books get thrown out...
Mass market paperbacks are cheap to manufacture and get shipped out in huge volumes. For some publishers (particularly ones that put out new mysteries or romances quarterly) when the bookstore wants it off the shelf to make room for something new, it's just not worth the cost of taking them back and finding someone else to sell it. But they don't want anyone getting them for free. So as a bookstore employee I spent hours ripping the front and back covers off of books, then tearing the book at least in half so that no one could read it later. The covers get sent back to the publishers, and the books that could have been donated to a library or school get put in a locked recycling container out back. A manager had to come back and check my work to make sure the books were not left intact.
I almost cried the first time I had to rip up a load of kid's books (in a city with high child poverty rates and underfunded schools).
Call center here.
Just because you hear music when I put you on hold, doesn't mean I do.
I can hear every profanity you utter.
Unpopular opinion loading...My dear old dad taught us to go into these calls with honey rather than vinegar and I got to say it's made a huge difference in my life. I've only had to go apesh*t maybe twice ever and yes it was getting technical support for cable. WHAT IS WRONG WITH THOSE PEOPLE!?🤣
If you own your own business, never and I mean never do any work for anyone with the promise of more business later on, if they want you to do it free the first time. Just drop them as clients and move on.
Nurse assistant here. If you have taken any illegal dr*gs, or prescription dr*gs to get high within the last 24 hours... F*****G TELL US. It could save your life. We won't judge you for it... But we would judge you for bullsh**ting us even if your life could be at risk.
I don't have tons of free time.
I am unemployed and despite contrary f**king belief I am neither lazy nor have tons of time.
Searching for a job is a full-time job by itself. In parallel, it's hard to keep searching for a job because really there is no reward. Usually, when you do something there is a result. You go to the gym and you burn calories. You sell sh*t and you make money. You study and you get grades. Even if you fail at something. You f**king learn something and try a different approach, you gain experience.
When you search for a job there is no result. You try and you try and you try....and nothing happens. Like drilling a hole in the water.
In parallel. You can't plan anything. You cant buy a f**king washing machine because you don't know where you will be staying tomorrow. I cant plan a trip back home to see my family because I need to be on stand-by for interviews and even be here to answer the f**king phone.
So no. I don't have tons of free time. Not having a job also f**ks with your biorhythm. Meaning it's hard to wake up early and sleep early. When I had a job I could easily wake up by myself at 7. Now some nights I don't sleep at all.
And this is just a part of being unemployed. I am the lucky one. Because I still have money left and a supportive family.
Teacher here.
Your child's success depends mainly on three things: the child's will, the parent's support, and the teacher's skill. If your child doesn't want to learn, he won't learn. If you don't f**king feed your child properly, he won't be able to learn. If your child gets his way at home, he will be a terror in class and won't succeed.
I am only a part of your child's education. I can't do anything if he refuses to learn or if you refuse to support him.
I was a deep sea diver for 10 years in the Gulf of Mexico. Huge oil spills happen and are covered up hundreds of times a year by every company. The entire industry is in on it. The bottom of the gulf is a disgusting garbage dump. Every boat dumps their trash into the gulf no one obeys the laws and the coast guard doesn't enforce s**t.
*I had a bunch of requests for an AMA so I'm doing one now if anyone has more questions.
School photographer here. Do not coach your children on how to smile. I can normally get them to smile naturally with a funny word or simply by smiling at them. I have seen MANY kids that have obviously coached smile because they are afraid mom will take away their Playstation. Remember that school photos are a marking of time, love your kid for who they are at that moment. And NEVER tell your kiddo to not show their teeth. Second graders are supposed to have lots of missing teeth-- it's charming. Seventh graders have braces-- that photo will remind them of such a tumultuous time in their life. And lastly, there is always re-take day.
Retake day? Not in the schools here in the U.K. You get one day once a year to get a professional school photo. If it looks bad it’s tough luck.
The groundbreaking scientific results published by the mainstream media bear little resemblance to the results published in the actual scientific article.
Of course they don't. Such articles would be so dry they would be positively crunchy! You'd lose the general public in the first couple of lines.
It ISN'T necessarily dry. What it ISN'T is "cut and dried" and the public wants answers that are black and white, even if putting it that way is terribly misleading if not outright false. Plus, the important reality is often not as outrageous as taking a single bit of data out of context with all the caveats and assumptions. Media wants attention. Truth is not important.
Load More Replies...That's because reporters aren't scientists and do not really understand what they're reading.
Big news organisations have science reporters but I read that if an editor thinks a science story will really appeal to their consumers they'll get one of their 'big' reporters to write it. Having said that, even 'science correspondants' at the BBC sometimes get things totally wrong. I once had an e-mail argument with their health editor who insisted that young, British women drank an average of 216 litres of alcohol a year.
Load More Replies...I truly believe this is one of society's biggest problems! The news constantly overstates or completely misrepresents current science, leading to constant contradictions. This leads people to conclude quite understandably that scientists don't know what they are talking about. So when there is a real issue, with good research and strong consensus people still feel comfortable dismissing the scientists who "don't know what they are talking about" and instead listen to their favorite conspiracy theorist. Among other problems It leads to anti-vaxxers, climate change deniers, and all the variations of making the covid crisis worse
I once read a study about wine. The study said something like: on 150 people, that we're eating healthy, practicing sport, with no complicate médical background, a glass of red wine a day had positive effect on their heart (and the did not mention other organes). The title in the media??? " Drinking wine protect your heart !!!" Not misleading at all
Load More Replies...Also often the articles are extremely outdated. I remember a newspaper article some years ago claiming some groundbreaking discovery about evolution. The article explained that (hold your breath) changes in environment change how the animals evolve. Which is basically what Darwin and Wallace said in the 19th century. I never knew what the original scientific article actually talked about but for sure it was not that.
My SO is a research physicist and has published some stuff with colleagues. I try to be supportive and read them, but Woof! are they boring 😴 Cliff notes it for me babe.
There are several sources dedicated to science reporting and I have found that these often have a reasonable volume of interesting but not sensationalized stories that have an okay shot at giving at least a passably accurate representation of real, current science (and sometimes some engineering on the edge of science). There are also professional science explainers who mostly get things right too (though sometimes they get caught in their own appeal to false authority fallacies). A few news outlets (like NPR) have dedicated science and tech shows respectively that usually come pretty close to reporting real developments but YMMV. Otherwise, you better look it up yourself, unless it's Fox or state media and then it's likely a straight up lie.
The problem is big media will report on the results of a single study. Oftentimes the study has not even been put through the peer review process yet, which is absurd. I mean anyone can conduct a study but until it's been properly reviewed and replicated it means nothing. So the media is reporting on things that have not been accepted by science yet, just a study was done, that's a big difference.
Exactly! " New study shows" is way too commonly used for things that need more context and research. It's just like statistics, you can't just believe it because it sounds official.
Load More Replies...The media never includes info from the final section, where the limitations of the study are set out, and the fact that these findings might be the result of questioning 25 college students, who were getting extra credit for participating, and probably do not generalize to the rest of the population
I have always loved a wide variety of scientific areas (microbiology, physics, astronomy etc.) I subscribed to some of the actual science journals. I spent so much time looking up terminology and jargon I went back to "popular" science magazines. Unfortunately so many of those were so dumbed down and more than 1/2 the magazines were ads, I gave up on those as well. I love the AAAS recordings and some youtube channels. And on occasion I'll buy a course from Great Courses.
Sensationalizing science. I spend probably 2/3 of my work time trying to correct for this. It's exhausting.
Also, any archaeological discovery that is of Jewish or Christian material almost certainly has very little significance for scholars of ancient Jewish and Christian sources, even though mainstream media will present it as a "this-changes-everything" discovery.
A lot of times you can ask the scientist for their actual research articles and they will give it to you for free
Well, academia is also about spending an insane amount of time doing PR stunts to get visibility and be funded. Including writing press releases that make results exciting and accessible to an audience as broad as possible. So it’s not necessarily the fault of the journalists.
Exactly. A number of studies have found that the worst culprits are the university press office, not the journalists https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-causes-of-bad-science-reporting/
Load More Replies...True. You have to not only read the study yourself, but exam its methodology to determine the accuracy of its conclusions.
They pull sensational bits out and often remove/purposely misrepresent the important parts. The Dunning-Kruger effect graph and the interpretation of it we all know is a complete fabrication that spread around the world as a meme based on 1 journalist. TL:DR version unskilled people/ignorant (NOT STUPID) are overconfident of their ability because they don't have enough data yet to make an accurate estimate. As they gain more skill, their self-evaluation becomes closer to their actual skill at a flat, linear rate. There is no curvy graph with a "Mount Stupid" followed by a sudden loss since intelligence/wisdom isn't what is being measured.
I work on a farm. When they say you should wash your produce thoroughly at home, they're not joking.
Depends where you farm I guess. In America you can bet I’m washing that apple to within an inch of its life because of all the pesticides but some pesticides used in the USA are banned in the EU so most fruit is ok to eat straight from the tree/bush.
A lot of people know this, but, the police can lie to you. About damn near anything. If you are ever arrested, shut the f**k up. Request a lawyer. I can repeat this, but you dumb motherf**kers will still talk to the f**king cops. You are soooo much better off just not talking to them.
That's in the USA. In our country, if the cops show up it's a miracle, and if they actually ask any questions that's even more amazing. Mostly they just round everyone up and take statemetns at the station. They are so indifferent to their job that you can fill in your own statement and put there "I murdered donald duck and buttf*cked mickey mouse" and they will just read over it and not notice it.
911: Location first, say it twice and say it clearly. Then allow the dispatcher to lead the call. I know you think you know what needs to be said, but I promise you everything will go more smoothly if you let me take the lead. I'll be gentle.
Also, yelling at me to "Get them here! Get them here!" does not actually make them get there faster. The police drive cars, they don't teleport. Me asking you questions doesn't slow down the response, another dispatcher has already sent them. Me asking you questions helps make sure the officers are informed when they get there so they don't waste the first few minutes on scene playing catch-up.
Calling from a landline usually gives me your name and address from the moment you call. Calling from a cell phone does not. I can geo-validate your call and get a close location, but it isn't 100% accurate. Calling from a disconnected cell phone makes it impossible to call you back OR geovalidate your location.
If you dial 911 on accident, stay on the line, don't hurriedly hang up and hope the call didn't go through. I'm going to have to blow up your phone AND text you if you don't take 20 seconds to stay on the line and let me know it was an accident.
Don't give disconnected cell phones to children to play with, unless you remove the battery first. I can't tell you how many parents just let their 2 year old play with an old phone because they assume she can't call anyone. She can call 911. Over...and over...and over again.
Interfering with a 911 call is illegal. If you're fighting with your girlfriend and she calls 911, do not try to take the phone from her, yell over her, disconnect the phone line, etc. You can be arrested.
Seriously people, learn your address. Be aware of your surroundings. You should know your address before you move somewhere. If you're going to a party, maybe try to just know what street the party is on, just in case. If you're in an emergency at a residence and don't know the address, look for a piece of mail. I know this sounds like ridiculously obvious advice, but you'd be surprised.
911 is for emergencies only. You should have your local non-emergency police and sheriff's department numbers saved in your phone. If you don't, please do yourself a favor and look those up right this moment and put them in your phone.
This all assumes the person is not in a stressful, dangerous situation where they are trying to hold it together. If you are calling 911 it’s not a calm situation where you are necessarily thinking 100% clearly.
It is impossible to crawl through ventilation shafts. Professional duct worker here.
I work in the space industry and I am happy to report that there are no tricks here, everything must work with multiple redundant systems.
From my former job: The US military has a tradition where you spend your entire budget by Oct (the new fiscal year) or you risk losing that portion of your budget. I've been in units that would go out and purchase $200,000 worth of useless s**t just to avoid having a budget surplus. Multiply by the number of units in the military (a s**t ton) and you have all your fraud, waste and abuse.
Harley Davidson is in pretty bad shape, they store the lion's share of their new motorcycles in some warehouses in Montana because they don't want to stop production just to keep shareholder happy. They are a ticking time bomb.
Oh also for the last few years they force retailers to buy some new bikes every year even though they don't change. If the retailers don't buy them they lose their licensing to sell Harley's.
So basically all their sales have been made up for the last five or so years.
Er that's their own fault for targeting a very specific demographic, namely white guys having a midlife crisis. If they didn't have an image of being a gang vehicle for old conservative white guys, they'd sell more. I can afford one, I'd never buy one or drive one. The image of a harley basically says you support the confederacy. They are dead unless they get adverts with black young guys riding them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipDmsxQVxIM
Retail here!
For people who LOVE to return items. That little policy on your receipt is interpreted by me, the cashier. If you are polite and kind to me I am more than happy to bend the rules in your favor for one of the world's largest retail companies that can probably afford to lose a little money here and there.
IF you are a d**k to me I will use any excuse to deny you a cash refund and my company is not known for customer service, so my management will almost always back up whatever my claim is and support my strict ruling of our refund policy.
TL:DR: be nice to cashiers and we will be nice in return
So don't be a d**k to people you want something from.. sounds like a plan for life in general.
Emergency room doctor here.
I really do want you to get better, I really want you to not d*e. I get spat on and cursed at and am the recipient of several stink eyes daily. If you actually show that you care about your health and listen to me or show me the slightest bit of respect I will bend over backwards to help you get better.
If I'm not sending you home with a six month supply of dilaudid it's because you are better off without it. I'm sorry you have a boxer's fracture because you punched your door, but fractures hurt and I can't take all the pain away and keep you breathing at the same time. Man up and deal with a few days of discomfort, it goes away eventually.
I ask probing questions about your sexuality and drug history and the consistency of your poop because its important. I am legally prevented from sharing this info with your boss, your wife, the police. Just tell me the truth. The guy on the other side of the curtain has a curling iron stuck up his a*s, the herpes you got in high school doesn't shock me.
My paycheck is my paycheck. I don't get paid more or less because I prescribe a name brand antibiotic, or decide to do stitches instead of glue, or admit you instead of letting you leave AMA. I get paid the same if I see one patient this shift or forty, most of my decisions are based on medicine, or to decrease the chances of getting sued. This isn't true for every doctor or even every emergency doctor, but consider giving your physician the benefit of the doubt.
Never understood why people go to the doctors, or any professional. Then when they are told "X is wrong, you need to do Y to fix it". Get abusive and say they are wrong. No one forced you to come here. You can just leave without the abuse.
Graphic designer here. For the last time, just because we have Photoshop and Illustrator doesn't mean the design process is on auto-pilot. So when we say we need an extra hour to work out your problem, we mean it. And yes, we need the vector file of your logo, or at least a PDF copy of it.
Video editor here for reality TV. It's fake for the most part. They usually do multiple takes of the "reality" scenes that are staged beforehand. The most recent egregious use of this is Duck Dynasty. They pass the show off as reality tv and they actually have table readings for that show before shoots. Not saying that reality TV isn't sometimes entertaining. I'm just saying that you shouldn't be fooled into thinking that this is actually reality and the camera just happened to be there when these people were doing what they normally do.
From my time at the IT help desk: 90% of the time I'm not "a genius who magically knows how to solve problems". I just google whatever you told me and followed the steps from the top result to fix it.
We all know this that’s why we struggle for hours to fix the issue ourselves. Trust me. IT help desks are the last resort, not the first.
Got an interesting one for you: The New York Times Bestseller List is Curated Advertising.
Yup. While it is based on sales, there are some nifty little loopholes left in the list to allow publishers to "choose" what gets on the list.
Here's how it works. What shows up on the list is the top sellers from set locations in a period of time, right? So a publisher comes out with a book, and they want it to go right to the list on day one. So they call the seller and place an order in advance to buy all the books that seller has that they haven't even shipped out yet. The seller takes the money, and all those books are now "sold." So they need more books to sell. So they contact the publisher, who agrees to sell them more stock, which happens to be the stock they just bought back.
The publisher then calls the seller and buys the stock again. The seller calls the publisher and orders more. Repeat until you've got the numbers you need (which you know, since the big publishers swap info freely so that everyone knows how many sales will take what spot on the list). You can "sell" 30,000 books this way while only having 2000 printed. The whole time the stock sits in a single place.
There's no rule against this. After all, the publisher does pay the seller each time. 50% of that money comes back to them, however, so it's basically low-cost advertising.
And that's how you get a book on the NYT Bestseller list. But only if you're with a big publisher. In the last few years, indie and self-pub books like The Martian started getting on the list, both through legit sales and the creators using the same system ... So the NYT restricted the list. You're only qualified for it if you're one of the big publishers now.
And now you know.
I worked for a political consulting firm and was completely floored when congressmen/women would come in for media training (learning to be "normal" on camera or in front of constituents). Nearly every politician who came in for training was clueless and literally had "their views" on the issues fed to them by my boss (the media strategist). Sounds obvious, but it's really horrifying to witness.
No to the rest of the PLANET it is obvious that your congresspersons are muppets. I mean look at Klan Mom, and her buddy Bimbette I mean Boebert for f**k sake. And Teddy "schools need one door" Cruz. What a bunch of fucktards. Literally only "the Squad" have any brains. Especially AOC and Ilhan.
Car dealership. WE ARE SCAMMING YOU.
Mark ups are out of control and not for the sales people to make a living. They can make their commission on the list price. Some dealerships are marking up the values on some in demand vehicles by tens of thousands in some cases! That is why manufacturers are starting to rethink how they sell their vehicles. Ford for instance is considering selling from factory online because dealers are refusing to abide by the rules and people aren’t able to buy vehicles at the rate they want. They manufacturers don’t get the money from the markups
I work at a US lobbying firm, and I'm sure no Redditor would be shocked to hear that US legislators are ignorant. You might be surprised just HOW ill-informed a lot of them are, though. Like the Congressman who believed David Cameron was a member of the Socialist party. Or the one that asked me why we called it Russia now, not the USSR. Or the Senator who told me he'd grown up drinking sea water, and it was healthier for you. Or the governor who thought all Jews were k**led by Hitler. The list could go on.
For the most part, the people who want to lead are motivated not be an altruistic vision to make the world a better place, but by the simple desire to be at the top. Pride, arrogance, and a strong desire to wield power are the primary motivators for running for office. The issue isn't that our politicians are ill-informed and self-centered; that should be obvious. The issue is that so many people put absolute faith in political leaders as though they were superheroes with the ability and the will to save the world. Politicians are elected to do the will of the people, but many in democracies around the world seem to think they are elected to do the thinking for them. A healthy democracy is dependent on a well-educated, accurately informed, and engaged populace. The quality of the politician elected to office likely reflects the degree to which that is actually the case.
If more citizens knew how often U.S. Military individuals said things along the lines of, "F**k civilians, they can suck my d**k." People might lose some of their unrelenting support for the troops.
The UK has a few choice phrases for civilians in a warzone. "Acceptable Losses", "Unfortunate Individuals", "Unexpected Non-combatants". They all usually mean, "Oops, shot a civilian"
Recently retired trucker here. A fully loaded semi-truck traveling at highway speeds takes approximately 100 yards to come to a complete stop. Which means that the fun game of slamming on the brakes at the last minute in front of a big truck is just one of several ways you get referred to by the phrase "dead man driving."
I work in visual effects for large hollywood movies. We do so much digital cleanup and enhancement of practical effects, yet get no credit for how it looks. We only get sh*t on when a director or studio forces us to make cartoony CG characters or un-photorealistic backgrounds. We're the only department that doesn't have a union, yet we're in charge of upwards of half the movie's budget. Life of Pi was shot mostly on green screen, yet the cinematographer got an Oscar, even though most of those shots were created later in VFX without his input.
When you pick your dog up from the kennel after a splendid beach vacation and he/she smells like dog shampoo (probably because you requested a grooming session), that's because we have a spray that smells like dog shampoo.
Your dog has been in his cage, frightened by the foreign environment and loud barking/growling dogs. He probably s**t himself or peed and then laid down in the puddle. This made him feel extremely guilty because he knows he's supposed to go *outside* for that. He's a mess, mentally and physically.
So when you come to pick him up and we realize "oops, Fido never got over to the groomers", we have a spray bottle of doggie febreeze. We wipe any s**t off as best we can, tie a festive bandana around their neck, and hope you don't notice the completely manic excitement they're exhibiting when you're finally reunited.
*I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, I love you, I love you, please let's leave, let's leave, let's leave, leave, leave, leave, I trust you, I'm sorry*
I don't know if it's a dirty secret as much as common sense when you think about it, but having worked in a warehouse that stores beer cans, I'd say that you should wash the top of any can you drink from, as it may have been sat on climbed on, touched by filthy hands and had mice run across it, and if nothing else was probably covered in layers of dust.
Most people who say this are ignored as kooks, but having worked in pharmaceutical research, I can confirm this:
We already have developed better, safer medicines than most of the c**p currently on the market. However due to the following reasons, most of it will never reach the market.
* FDA Approval costs a fair amount of money and time, and for a "new drug" to be approved takes bloody years. The slightest f**kup in testing and back to the beginning.
* Money. If a new drug discovery is not going to be as profitable as the stuff currently on the market, it will simply be patented and sat on.
* Research funding: Not enough of it anymore to properly explore all the possibilities.
I'm in radio. We don't get to pick what we play on air, the pd schedules it and we just talk in between songs. The closest we get is when we play a request, that's usually something we wanted to hear and no one actually requested it.
The guys down at the talk station ironically can play whatever they want but think the last good song came out in 1975.
Fiber Internet Service Provider here - bandwidth is not a scarce commodity like they want you to think it is. It is all about profit margins and over subscribing the network.
RMT here,
90% of your upper shoulder/neck problems can be solved by stretching properly daily. Same thing with headaches.
Stop slouching.
When you climb into a helicopter and the rotors are turning, you can't reach your arm up high enough to lose a hand....but we don't want anyone trying to test it or prove us wrong.
I'm a manager, in a hotel. I will never make your stay worst (even if you're an a** I'm not). But you have no idea how much I can make your experience unforgivable if you're a nice, kind and respectful guest.
Banks are a business. Your house deposit is to protect the bank from losing money. If you tell the bank to send money to someone as part of a scam that's your choice. The banks business is to loan/send money not to examine your choices and decide if they are right for you.
I'm a manager, in a hotel. I will never make your stay worst (even if you're an a** I'm not). But you have no idea how much I can make your experience unforgivable if you're a nice, kind and respectful guest.
Banks are a business. Your house deposit is to protect the bank from losing money. If you tell the bank to send money to someone as part of a scam that's your choice. The banks business is to loan/send money not to examine your choices and decide if they are right for you.