30 People Are Anonymously Sharing Secrets From Their Jobs That They Aren’t Supposed To Share In A Viral Online Thread
Every company has trade secrets. Not because they're shady, evil or the like—though nobody would blame you for thinking that about some businesses—but because the business world is a dog-eat-dog affair. And if you can get an advantage over someone else, better do it because nobody else will pass up on that opportunity to eliminate you.
However, some opportunities seem... well... ethically questionable. Sure, businesses have to adhere to a standard of ethics and morality, but if nobody knows, you can get away with it, right? Trade secret, after all!
Well, wrong. AskReddit is at it again, this time populating the internet aetherwaves with stories of corporate secrets that should not have gotten out into the vast world because the vast world (or at least the people who matter) might not approve.
Below you’ll find a curated list of the best answers and stories from the now-viral Reddit thread, so scroll down to check them out, and also read through Bored Panda’s interview with Dr. Miranda Welbourne Eleazar on all-things business ethics.
More Info: Reddit
This post may include affiliate links.
They are out of business now, but in the early 90s I worked at Radio Shack for a year and a half. When people would return an item because it didn't work, the manager of the store would just box it back up and sell it again as if it were new. When I asked him about it he said, "Hopefully they will return it to a different store."
I nearly got fired when I refused to sell a guy a walkie talkie CB radio that I knew didn't work. The guy was on his way out for a hunting trip and was buying three of these for him and his friends. We had two and the third was the broken one. In front of the customer, I told the manager that one didn't work and I had tested it. The guy was happy I told him, we arranged for him to get the last one he needed at a different store and off he went. The manager was livid with me and nearly fired me. I'm sorry, I'm not sending people out into the forest with gear I know doesn't work.
Hilariously, a few months later the manager was caught stealing from the store and got fired.
I worked as a dog groomer for a summer, we gave your dog a treat even if they weren't good.
Why wouldn't you?? They're always good boys/girls even when they're not good boys/girls
Movie theaters don’t make money off the tickets - they make money off the food and drinks. Despite this, 99.9% of theater staff give less than zero s***s if you sneak food in. All we ask is that you’re subtle enough that we don’t get yelled at by the 0.1% who cared.
I'm not paying $10 for Jujubes. I always bring a bag of snacks with me. Just please be considerate, don't bring tuna or falafels or something stinky.
“Money is often a key factor for unethical actions, either directly or indirectly, but it’s not the only influence on unethical behavior,” explains Dr. Miranda Welbourne Eleazar, John L. Miclot Faculty Fellow in Entrepreneurship and Assistant Professor.
“Businesses may act unethically to obtain, or avoid losing, important investors. That can also affect the businesses’ long-term survival and profits. The businesses may also be influenced by concerns about their status and power in the industry, which again may influence their profits and survival in the long run.”
She continues to say that unethical actions can also result from how executives see ethical issues and whether they ignore or justify them. And that can also depend on their personality, the nature of the business, what the executive culture is, and the like.
If you don't hear music when you're supposedly on hold, the operator simply muted their mic and can still hear you. I've heard interesting and damning things while they thought I couldn't hear them.
I worked for a restoration company. One time an elderly woman called them to clean her house. She was a hoarder or there had been a fire. I can’t remember. Anyway, the company charged $57,000 for the work to be done, but in actuality they couldn’t even get the charges to add up to $20k. She couldn’t file this on her insurance. There are other examples of gross overcharging, but this is the worst I know of that wasn’t on the large loss side.
The lesson here, if you have water, fire, mold, or hoarder damage and call in a company to clean it up, go through every line item on the invoice. Every single one.
Inbound call center - the “We are currently experiencing an unusually high call volume” message is permanent. They just didn’t staff adequately.
I used to work surveillance at a casino. From something like 3 stories high ceiling, we could zoom in on money on the table games and read the serial numbers of the bills. We could see the pips on the dice. Policy was to not look down blouses.
The thing that further complicates the issue of business ethics is that there is no clear objective line between what is ethical and unethical. Just like in philosophy, there are many different theories and personal takes on what goes and what doesn’t. Even basing this on something as objective as laws and regulations can be tricky.
“From a legal perspective, to determine whether something is illegal, a lawsuit needs to be brought and tried and that often doesn’t occur. Even when lawsuits are filed, most are dismissed or settled before a verdict. As a result, the line between ethical and unethical behavior is often unclear, even in industries that may generally be thought of as less ethical than others. The exception would be industries that are themselves illegal, such as illegal drugs, where any kind of business in those industries may be considered unethical,” elaborates Dr. Eleazar.
Worked at Best Buy 20 years ago. Employee discount was 5% over cost and I needed a new printer. Decided to splurge on the gold plated USB printer cable that we sold for $40. Rang up $1.78.
Used to work at a graphic design firm. All our Adobe software was pirated.
Work in IT.
Everyone pretty much openly admitted our software was held together by the digital equivalent of duct tape and chicken wire.
Cheap, fast, or good. You can only get a maximum of two. Sales promised a delivery date. Management has to come in under budget or lose their job. QA's fight for good is 1 person vs everyone else. Good loses.
Your luggage at an airport isn’t really handled with care.
Hotels do not typically have security, maintenance or housekeeping on staff 24/7. Once housekeeping finishes cleaning all the rooms, the entire staff leaves except for one front desk employee.
I had women freak out on me cause I wouldn't leave the desk at 2 am to plunge her toilet
Dr. Eleazar continued: “Because ethics is often based on individual perception, if behavior most people would find unethical becomes more acceptable in an industry, people may be more likely to find that behavior to be ethical. This can also get to the point where legal changes occur, as seen in the legalization of marijuana and sports betting in many states.”
Though, it is important to note that change doesn’t occur quickly. For example, in the case of legalizing marijuana, sure, the laws are there, but as is usual with decriminalizing drugs, a lot of strict regulation is in place to make sure there is no abuse of the system.
Besides that, people’s views don’t change overnight, and the sociocultural climate and the perspective of marijuana still being technically a drug continues to spawn discussions and debates that make the line between what’s ethical or unethical hard to push in any direction. It’s more of a nudge.
Worked in insurance, hundreds of people have access to your SSN with no security clearance or background check.
Insurance is like a giant bookie ring. I'm betting my house will get hit by a tornado and the insurance company is betting it won't.
If you go to an Event that has "Event Security" ask them for better seats, or be really nice to them they might bring you something special. I work at a Hockey Rink we give nice people pucks, pins and let them go down to the front to see the players.
The "secret ingredient" of Jimmy John's tuna salad is soy sauce!
Edit: Kikkoman soy sauce specifically.
Your warranty service part that took eight months actually arrived three weeks after they paid the invoice. They didn't even order it for seven months.
They told you it was manufacturing delays and supply chain issues but in reality they couldn't afford to pay their bills and had to pick and choose which orders to place. You weren't a priority. They were just really bad at budgeting and damage control.
Arby's manager replaced the expiration stickers on the bread with new ones. I guess so the bread would last longer that way. I threw out 100+ pitas with green fuzz on them after checking the manager's work.
I worked at Wendy's in high school and I'll have to say, they were extremely good about everything being fresh there. This was back in the 80's so I don't know if that's changed, but my store was really clean.
But the keyword here is individual. While businesses have a lot of power in setting trends and making the rules, at the end of the day the bottom line is what determines the business’ course of action, and the consumer is more or less in control of that.
“For both consumers and employees, think about where you personally draw the line between what is acceptable and unacceptable behavior. Consumers can influence businesses’ ethics by choosing not to buy products from companies they find unethical,” says Dr. Eleazar.
“This isn’t always easy since consumers have limited information as to how the company runs its business and also have to consider the costs of the product and how many companies offer alternative similar products. However, when possible, consumers can look at what the company stands for, who the company works with, the materials the company uses, and how the company is covered in the news to decide whether to support the business and purchase products from the business.”
The stain protector is only useful if you actually file a claim. It isn't a magic f*****g potion.
Most furniture companies sell some sort of stain protector as an add on. People buy it, thinking it has some magic ability to prevent stains over the life of a piece of upholstery, then, five years later, spill some Kool-Aid on that s**t, and the stain doesn't come out.
With most of these protectors, there's a warranty claim process that will get you a new sofa (or a new set, if your sofa pattern isn't made anymore), but nobody ever files a claim.
That's the gimmick. The company is counting on you not actually holding them to the deal that they made you, and virtually nobody does.
The difference between the high quality deli meat sold at M&S and the regular deli meat sold in other grocery stores is that we changed the label. We would literally stop the production line, wait for the guy who ran the label machine to swap them out and then start it back up again.
Pretty common. A food factory runs off an order of cookie wafers with the Oreo die, changes it to the Walmart imprint and keeps rolling.
Olive Garden breadsticks are just Franz brand breadsticks, garlic salt, and butter.
ETA: It's margarine, not butter. I forgot there is a difference :p
In the United States. One company's bread and butter was simply reboxing and relabling computer monitors from China to make it seem like they were from the company and made/assembled in some way by them.
One of our best restaurant in my town is locally famous and everyone goes there. They say everything is homemade. The thing they are famous for is the hot beef sandwiches… with “homemade” potatoes and gravy… and the fish fry. The fish fry they also have during the week listed as an entree called the cod platter.
It is instant Sysco brown gravy mix and instant Sysco mashed potatoes… the cod is only fresh and fried on Fridays. If you order it during the week it is frozen breaded Sysco “fish fillets” aka a blend of random fish shaped into a stick. 💀
She continues: “Similarly, employees can decide whether to work for businesses based on where the employees draw the line between ethical and unethical behavior. This may be easier if you have multiple options of places to work or you haven’t accepted a job yet.”
“However, even if you are working for a company and need the job, if you know the company is doing something that you feel is unethical and refuses to change, there is an option to report that behavior and/or leave the company. By choosing not to work with unethical businesses or to report unethical behavior, employees can help stop that unethical behavior.”
We thank Dr. Miranda Welbourne Eleazar for her great insights on business ethics.
But this listicle doesn’t end here, so do keep on scrolling to read more stories and don’t forget to share your own in the comment section below!
Worked at a major cable/ISP and there 4 billing cycles. They upgraded the billing system, but did something wrong, and all but the current cycle got a late charge. But instead of fixing it immediately, we were told to credit their account if the customer called in.
I did the math, and for the size of our city, and the 3/4 of people wrongly charged, it was over a million USD. Most people just pay their bill and don't look to close.
I worked for a large construction company and the sales guys would intentionally omit items from contracts because they received incentives for what would then become a “change order”.
Me: “You forgot to include any framing in this contract”
Sales weasel: “oh, I guess it’s a change order then.”
*customer cries*
*Companies are not your friend* Say it with me one more time, *Companies are not your friend*. Any way they can swindle you, they will.
Maple sap can be trucked in from other states and where it’s turned from sap to syrup decides on the state it comes from, not the location of the trees.
Best to check the sources and the ingredients. Maple Syrup without the additives can get pricey, but is worth it.
I used to work at the front desk of an hotel.
More often than not if we tell you we're fully booked when you try to make a reservation, we actually are.
Buuuut.... Sometimes it's just b******t we make up because we got a bad vibe from you.
We get blamed if we accept a booking from a person who then trashed the room, or was just all around annoying/rude to the staff.
It's not all hotels I worked at that do this, but some do.
Can confirm, worked at a hotel for a few years. If you looked like trouble, we were either sold out. Or would jack up the rates and make you pay cash.
I worked at a candy bagging warehouse like the crappy .99 gas station candy where we would even make trail mix by hand. Tons of sweat would drip into the mix because we would be in a 100f plus room with little ventilation. Also my boss was a hunter so a quarter of the warehouse was dedicated to his taxidermy treasure room. F*****g smelt like s**t in the summer but he was so proud of himself.
Edit: Also should add that if the expiration dates were bad we would use nail polish remover to take the date off.
When I worked at a godiva store we would turn expired chocolate bars into sample pieces.
I actually would not have a problem with this given that the expiration date is days if not weeks before most products taste off.
Everyone's favorite sauce that people wanted the recipe for was mostly mayonaise. Sure it was called "creamy pineapple sauce" but it's just pineapple salsa and mayonaise
Right around the same time a major retailer had its largest warehouse burn down, it fired a huge number of its store managers under the guise that their stores were experiencing unusually high theft rates of 2 million+ after its annual shrinkage report.
They fired my store manager and tried to tell me that we had a near 3 million dollar shrinkage. I spent 12 hours with a full crew of salaried managers trying to locate the missing items within the store. I'm talking full blown arcade machines, furniture, etc. We found nothing outside of a display the counting crew missed.
The warehouse was burned down within a week or two of this.
They're still filling in some of these store management spots.
Buses due for MOT (a certificate of road worthiness in the UK) would have their faulty parts switched out from a working part from another bus, then swapped back afterwards. Common practice.
Also, I'm no germophobe but there's no way in hell I'd eat on public transport. They really aren't clean.
I'm 90% sure a company I worked for was importing product from China, repacking it and selling it as made in USA. I. E. Blending it with the product we did make in the US.
This reminds me of 30 Rock: “Your magic jeans are from BDL? Oh Lemon, it's not hand-made in USA, it's pronounced Hand-made in Usa. The Hand people are a Vietnamese slave tribe and Usa is their island prison. They made your jeans. You know how they get the stitching so small? Orphans.”
I used to work for a rural ISP. We had one access point with 13 customers, but only 12 IP addresses provisioned. This means only 12 out of 13 people could be online at any one time.
Anytime a customer called from that service area, we'd login and reboot the tower's radios, kicking everyone offline to force DHCP renewals. It always meant whomever was calling in was able to get an IP and get online, but we *knew* that if all 13 customers wanted to be online at once, we wouldn't be able to service them.
I brought it up with management, but they deemed it too expensive to address. I explained that it made us look like a fly-by-night shady as hell outfit. Since it was a rural ISP, I knew I'm not just talking to 1 person either, I'm talking to him, his wife, dog, kids, priest and 5 buddies from the coffee shop. Make a bad impression on one person and you might as well take out an ad in their local paper calling the whole town a******s.
I handed out a lot of free month's of service working there and would often make the point credits aren't revenue for justifiability angry customers.
Edits to answer the questions:-Not Nortel, Comcast, Frontier nor the one you're about to ask, but they are good guesses.-Yes it would have been an easy fix, but the GM was an accountant AND cheap.-This was one of our APs. We had 10000 customers, not 13. Some APs (access points) had 80 subscribers connected to it, some had fewer. The larger APs were properly provisioned with more than enough addresses, this was a one off tower but it was always Our Shame.
Edit2: The ISP no longer exists.
Thanks for rewarding with free service. It DOES help with the feeling of paying for sh***y service.
I worked in the seafood industry for many years. Two things immediately come to mind.
First, don't ever buy the per-marinaded cuts of fish that are sometimes for sale at the counter. Those are cuts that are about to turn bad, or already have, and the marinade is only there to mask the poor quality and smell.
Second, more of just an FYI, but a lot of the fresh lobster meat you see is made up at least partly from dead and dying lobsters. Tanks and crates are checked daily (sometimes more frequently during the summer months) and the lobsters that croaked overnight are cooked and shucked for their meat. If you see a lot of straight tails, steer clear.
I’ve worked at Petco and Petsmart and both are pretty terrible. I was a groomer so I had things like benefits, but the amount of people who would try to hide injuries to a pet was shameful, including upper management. They are mostly groomers trained by groomers trained by Petco and Petsmart. If you want a mass produced grooms by people who hardly care then it’s fine to go there. But in my experience (at least in a big city) they care less than other groomers. It’s also lucky if you get half the services you paid for, and none of them work like they claim.
Worked at an isp,we lied to customers daily about speeds and delivery times,we sold internet in stations we knew where full,and dsl is just garbage dont had a single customer in 7 years who actually got the speed we promised.the burned out rates in support was 3 months before people quit.if you tried to actually help customers you got chewed out and was a problem.
Just had a pi##ing match with ATT. Terrible speeds, dropped wifi. Told me I needed a modem, got the modem, was told there were "network issues". I've never blown such big snot bubbles in my life, speed is great now. Asked if I had any questions/comments...THAT was a mistake, told them before the CEO gets his frillion dollar bonus, maybe they should upgrade their crappy infrastructure FIRST. CSR laughed and said she would pass along.
The water test samples we sent to the independent lab were not our well water; they were just bottled water from the local grocery store.
I have one: I'm an attorney. I don't lie to you, our opponent or the court. If I don't believe you're right, I will not take your case. If I find out you are lying about any of your injuries or any facts, your case comes to a screeching halt. And unless my client is an absolute a*s, I care about doing the best for my clients. If I know a client has a financial problem, I will cut my fee to give you more. This is how my firm practices and has for the past 50 years.
wow. An ethical lawyer. Can someone screenshot this as proof?
Load More Replies...
I work in a cosmetics store that gives product samples and we're supposed to limit it to 3 per customer. But really this only applies to rude people we can tell just want free stuff and don't even know what they want it to do, because for people who are nice and we can tell actually want to try the stuff and are knowledgeable about what they're looking for beyond just "free stuff" we don't stick to that limit. Honestly genuinely nice customers are so pleasantly surprising that we'll move heaven and earth to make their experience good. Extra samples. A free product just because. Carry your stuff to the car if it's heavy. Call other stores just to see if they do have one more of that product even though it doesn't show in their inventory. And polite and well behaved or just super cute kids almost always get something from us. Sample of something they'd like, extra bath bomb, something like that. Kindness goes a long way. Rudeness gets bare minimum effort and no letting things slide.
This explains a lot of unexpected free stuff I’ve come home with over the years. Good to know it’s probably because I’ve been ok to people.
Load More Replies...
ISPs are a ripoff. There is no difference in the hardware providing fibre in the range 1 gig and downwards. They MANUALLY set the speed on it so THAT they can charge you more for higher speed. Its default speed is 1 gbps. They're throttling you down to charge you more.
I've got one: Used to work at Walmart in their bakery/deli, everything in the bakery comes in frozen. Whether its dough or sheet cakes, they're frozen. Icing? frozen. Hot foods in the deli are frozen. I still know wayyy too much about Walmart and Dominos...
I work in a distribution center for a major grocery retailer. If we drop any food on the floor, we are instructed to pick it up to put onto our orders. We have had sewage water back up on our dock multiple times. The warehouse gets “cleaned” in sections, but not completely. The workers touch everything with or without gloves. We are paid by productivity, so nobody cares to take their time with anything. The faster we work, the more we get paid. So your food is most likely covered in dust, bacteria, fecal matter, etc. Can’t say how the product is handled once it gets to the store. Retail pays way less, so those workers probably don’t care. The message is always to make the company money because all the product is paid for, so stocks go down if we don’t send product to the store. Not to mention the unsafe conditions, constant injuries, lack of equipment to even do our jobs and careless management that had employees work 24 hours during the holidays.
I worked at a BBQ restaurant and they had this "special sauce " that would simmer all day long in this pot. The sauce was A1 barbecue sauce, we were pour in these big 1 gal bottles with A1 all over it. People would come in and buy containers of this special sauce to put on there items at home and would pay triple if not more,then what A1 is worth in the store
Anyone remember when bk had hotdogs? They made a big deal about cooking them in the broiler. Guess what? If they cooked them in the broiler the outside would burn before the inside got to the correct temperature. They run them through the broiler to get the grill marks (30 seconds to a minute) and then finish cooking them in the microwave....
I have one: I'm an attorney. I don't lie to you, our opponent or the court. If I don't believe you're right, I will not take your case. If I find out you are lying about any of your injuries or any facts, your case comes to a screeching halt. And unless my client is an absolute a*s, I care about doing the best for my clients. If I know a client has a financial problem, I will cut my fee to give you more. This is how my firm practices and has for the past 50 years.
wow. An ethical lawyer. Can someone screenshot this as proof?
Load More Replies... I work in a cosmetics store that gives product samples and we're supposed to limit it to 3 per customer. But really this only applies to rude people we can tell just want free stuff and don't even know what they want it to do, because for people who are nice and we can tell actually want to try the stuff and are knowledgeable about what they're looking for beyond just "free stuff" we don't stick to that limit. Honestly genuinely nice customers are so pleasantly surprising that we'll move heaven and earth to make their experience good. Extra samples. A free product just because. Carry your stuff to the car if it's heavy. Call other stores just to see if they do have one more of that product even though it doesn't show in their inventory. And polite and well behaved or just super cute kids almost always get something from us. Sample of something they'd like, extra bath bomb, something like that. Kindness goes a long way. Rudeness gets bare minimum effort and no letting things slide.
This explains a lot of unexpected free stuff I’ve come home with over the years. Good to know it’s probably because I’ve been ok to people.
Load More Replies... ISPs are a ripoff. There is no difference in the hardware providing fibre in the range 1 gig and downwards. They MANUALLY set the speed on it so THAT they can charge you more for higher speed. Its default speed is 1 gbps. They're throttling you down to charge you more.
I've got one: Used to work at Walmart in their bakery/deli, everything in the bakery comes in frozen. Whether its dough or sheet cakes, they're frozen. Icing? frozen. Hot foods in the deli are frozen. I still know wayyy too much about Walmart and Dominos...
I work in a distribution center for a major grocery retailer. If we drop any food on the floor, we are instructed to pick it up to put onto our orders. We have had sewage water back up on our dock multiple times. The warehouse gets “cleaned” in sections, but not completely. The workers touch everything with or without gloves. We are paid by productivity, so nobody cares to take their time with anything. The faster we work, the more we get paid. So your food is most likely covered in dust, bacteria, fecal matter, etc. Can’t say how the product is handled once it gets to the store. Retail pays way less, so those workers probably don’t care. The message is always to make the company money because all the product is paid for, so stocks go down if we don’t send product to the store. Not to mention the unsafe conditions, constant injuries, lack of equipment to even do our jobs and careless management that had employees work 24 hours during the holidays.
I worked at a BBQ restaurant and they had this "special sauce " that would simmer all day long in this pot. The sauce was A1 barbecue sauce, we were pour in these big 1 gal bottles with A1 all over it. People would come in and buy containers of this special sauce to put on there items at home and would pay triple if not more,then what A1 is worth in the store
Anyone remember when bk had hotdogs? They made a big deal about cooking them in the broiler. Guess what? If they cooked them in the broiler the outside would burn before the inside got to the correct temperature. They run them through the broiler to get the grill marks (30 seconds to a minute) and then finish cooking them in the microwave....
