30 People Share Crazy Secrets From Their Workplaces Now That They Don’t Work There Anymore
Not all work-related secrets are bound by confidentiality agreements; especially after an employee leaves. That’s why some of them don’t mind disclosing information previously unknown to the public, be it upsetting, shocking, or everything at once.
Quite a few redditors recently shared their crazy workplace secrets now that they don’t work there anymore. Their answers covered all sorts of scenarios from pj’s-wearing judges to corporate fraud and things that happen in restaurant kitchens that no customer would ever want to know about. Scroll down to find more of them on the list below and make sure to upvote the ones that surprised you the most.
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Used to work at an ice cream store part time.
We made our waffle cones from scratch and at regular intervals. Not just because of the demand. The strong scent could be smelled from outside the building and draw people in. Also, people were more likely to buy waffle cones or increase their serving size when we were cooking up a fresh batch.
Good business strategy. And hey, made my clothes smell nice (I had a jacket that smelled like fresh waffle cones for 3 months after I left that place)
A lot of stores with in-store bakeries pipe the scent of baking out into the store and to the entrances.
For the most part, it’s not executives and agents that read scripts, but their assistants. By this standard, it is the assistants of the entertainment industry that are primarily responsible for what actually gets made. Still blows my mind
I read book manuscripts as a trainee. And yes, it makes sense to assign this to the lowest rung employee, because the vast majority of what comes in is so bad it wouldn't even pass as a 6th grade essay assignment. The stuff that is well written and at least somewhat engaging, is passed on to higher decision makers. I literally passed on only 2 manuscripts in 3 months. Out of hundreds.
Our VP embezzled 7 million dollars. The company decided not to charge him because then it would be public news. Months after he was fired he contacted my boss asking for a reference lmaoooooo
yes, x did die in his office and nobody noticed for four days.
I've worked with people whose death would have been immediately noticed because of the sudden rise in productivity.
Ex Victoria’s Secret employee: we used to have to cut up products that didn’t sell after a certain amount of time and soak them in bleach before throwing them out. And no, employees weren’t allowed to just have them.
I have to say, back when I worked for them they actually did treat their employees very well. Benefits and PTO, even for some part time employees. And we did get tons of free stuff all the time and great discounts. They rly did take care of their employees.
I also used to work for a superior court judge who usually wore pajamas under her robe and occasionally drank at lunch lol
Bakery.
The French bread and Italian bread are the EXACT same thing with different scoring designs on top - but one is two dollars and fifty cents more.
from many years ago when i worked at mcdonald's:
the ice cream machine isn't raggedy and always broken. at some point it has to go into cleaning mode, each day i think, and this takes 4-5 hours. so when they tell you its down or broken, the machine is probably just sanitizing itself. i don't know that the stores can program them to do this at a certain time of day.
when people in the drive through ask for their fries to be cooked fresh and they don't mind waiting, a lot of times workers will take food that had already been sitting out, and re-drop it into the grease for like 15 seconds so they come out piping hot & shiny again. (this mostly happens on late/overnight shifts)
I worked pizza delivery for a major corporate pizza brand. The quality of the ingredients used even over 15 years ago is of such poor quality that the heat from the pizza over is the only reason you're not going to the hospital due to heat killing the bacteria. When I went to a popular local shop. You could eat off the floor it was so clean. THAT place was amazing.
As someone who is frequently in restaurant kitchens almost all chains are that bad. Stick with fast food or owner ran place.
A good portion of charter schools are one medium size repair away from bankruptcy. Many are mismanaged and misuse funds, and require teachers to spend even more than their district counterparts.
What's a charter school (apart from a school that has a charter, whatever that is)?
A school taking in government funds but not being part of the public school system.
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And their performance is worse than public schools, which isn't a very high bar. Just another scam to take taxpayer money.
You sound like a teachers union representative. People should be allowed school choice in this country but if you say that you get labled a trumpster.
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Teachers are not paid enough. They should not spend their own money on school supplies or anything else. That encourages the bureaucracy to skimp even more. If every teacher at a school refused to spend even one penny of their own money on supplies. Things would change fast once kids and parents started complaining. I also don't think children should be going door to door soliciting for donations for anything school-related. Parents have their own school expenses to deal with and non-parents shouldn't have to support other's. That's what school taxes are for.
At one charter school in our town, it was discovered that the principal was stealing the money withheld from the teachers paychecks for state and federal taxes.
That sounds like it would cause done severe tax issues for those teachers.
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Yea a lot of the time charter or private schools aren't better than public schools
Our older public schools in NEPA are so badly maintained it's surprising the kids & staff have not had major health issues. The Scranton School District had school board people arrested for not fixing the problems within a certain time period. Mold, asbestos, & lead are still a serious issue.
Yeah we sent out kids to a charter school for a couple years only to find out when one needed help that they didn't have the resources to help him even a little, they used the excuse that schools don't do that until 2nd grade. We switched to the state school less than a mile away and they gave him all kinds of help.
I went to one for a year and they never helped with bullying their teachers were horrible to me and others.
You're telling me a for profit school might have profit be it's highest priority not education, and just act like education is important to get more profit? Also public schools the teachers are typically part of a teacher's union while charter schools never have union teachers as a way for anti union politicians to hurt the teachers union because as you know teachers are greedy and way overpaid, jk
Ugh, its not supposed to be a way to sidestep the public school's education policies and resource management. Ideally they are allowed in order to give safe, legal, and licenced alternatives to families, but just like any other line of work, there are dishonest people who promise one thing and give another - its often a good idea poorly executed.
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My old boss takes cash so he doesn’t have to declare the money and I mean thousands of pounds. He claimed furlough off the government even though everyone was in the office working. He broke every covid rule going which was damaging when their were only 20 people on site. I reported him for all of the above but nobody cares.
I walked in on a coworker taking underwear selfies in the restroom to send to a girlfriend or something. He forgot to lock the door. He was very embarrassed. I acted like it never happened.
I never would have expected him to wear little yellow bikinis.
Be a bro and take the photos for him. Let him pose and strut his stuff
From the bookstore: We tear covers off magazines and paperback books in order to get money for them and then chuck the books in the recycling bin, coverless.
Books that don't sell in 90 days are returned and the store will likely never sell it again unless it is special ordered. The system is designed to churn out best sellers and classics and nothing more.
Speaking of bestsellers, authors can just buy themselves onto the bestseller list and get their book on a front shelf with prime real estate. This usually costs about $250,000 although you can pay more if you want it to be #1. It is why books that are just printed will have a sticker or designed with a cover that says #1 bestseller. They knew it would be a #1 bestseller because they paid for it. Publishers can also pay to have their books put on the various tables in the store.
Not sure if it’s that crazy but at the place I work at now, every single close doesn’t have a single adult scheduled. I am always the oldest on shift and I just turned 17. They basically only employ teens. The policy for breaks also violates labor laws.
The town I grew up in actually has a small, successful place food shack type place, that is staffed primarily by high school kids, with some young college kids to help when the high school kids are at school and the place is open. However, the workers tend to like working there, even though the only interior is the kitchen, which is a tiny shack-like structure, and bathrooms, with the rest of it being open air. It also always gets A ratings on health code inspections. They have good food too.
The office manager who was married to a male doctor at the same practice was also hooking up with the female patient care supervisor
Well, maybe they had an open marriage. You'd think someone who wants to cheat would do it farther away from their spouse's place of work.
Anytime a food item that was on our menu being advertised as "NEW RECIPE" just meant the owners found a cheaper version of it from a new distributor.
Doesn't surprise me. I've lost count of the number of times 'new recipe' on a supermarket product has meant that I stop buying it because it now tastes awful
So as someone who works/worked in a tax law firm in the holy grail country of bureaucracy (Germany), I can gladly tell you: Many rich people/companies are just rich bc they can afford us to twist the numbers just the right way (aka. we might be helping certain people to commit tax evasion/fraud). We also had a car dealer, who pulled so many black market deals and other illegal stuff and we still had to fake his numbers/books against our morals (so the Finanzamt wouldn't find out)...
The sad thing is many smaller companies had to quit during Covid (or even afterwards and before that) just bc they couldn't afford someone who knew the in-and-outs of our bureaucratic system (aka. how to file for financial aid from the state), while the bigger ones used those aids to do ~~not so necessary~~ renovations (which they could file as "expenses")...
It's a really s****y system (the bureaucracy stuff in every aspect of the country) and those on top will always benefit from it or know the loopholes, while the more unfortunate ones aren't able to help themselves...
If it's within the tax code it's legal. If they were operating outside the code and obfuscating it, then it's illegal and unethical. If they were doing it at the behest of the client, it then becomes conspiracy to commit fraud.
I was told to never call CPS on a parent because the owner didn't want the "bad press".
Where I am, teachers are mandated reporters. Means that if we suspect abuse/neglect, we are legally (not just morally) obligated to call Child Protective Services. Had a principal that insisted we report to him and then he would make a judgment call as to whether or not to call CPS. Uh, no. I am not risking my license and a child's well being because you want to buddy up to their a-hole parent
My old boss who we will call Maryellen was only 27 when she started at ACME. She quickly rose in the ranks and by 30 was the HBIC. She had made the company millions, they trusted her implicitly. ACME gave Maryellen a company credit card to pay for various expenses, as well as a stipend to do things for the employees such as a cake for birthday months, company cookouts, employee outings to team build, etc… none of which ever happened. Maryellen would take the stipend and go to a Costco and load up on bread, meat, Mayo, chips, drinks, and make brown bag lunches…..which she would then sell to employees for $5 a bag. You could also buy extra chips or drinks for $2/each. She did this every single week, for almost 15 years. They never caught on, or if they did, they turned the other cheek. She then left the company, moved across the country, retired before 50, and now lives in a mansion, travels the world, and has three luxury vehicles.
If ACME is that dumb, it may soon lose Wile E. Coyote's business. (And he's got to be at least a quarter of their revenue stream.)
I worked at a popular auto parts store. Corporate was incredibly sexist towards women and if you complained to HR about that or anything else you were guaranteed to be fired
Worked at a seafood restaurant that was infamous for their house clam chowder. Dude literally bought cans of chowder from the store, poured it into this huge 5 gallon container, and then it sat in there getting pulled from, heated, dumped back in to. S**t never got cleaned or fully replaced, super super super gross. Anything we didn’t use that day would get dumped back in with a couple new cans added.
Infamous doesn’t mean famous… maybe it was infamous for causing a spate of food poisoning cases?
It's me.
Yes, me and that coworker were indeed hooking up.
I did internship at a restaurant kitchen and my boss asked me to slice some mushrooms, but he forgot to tell me to save the stems so I threw them away, then I saw my boss bending over the trash can and he picked out the stems and threw them from the trash can in a pot of soup, then I don’t wanna know what else happened to the food there..
The attorney I used to work for would plot with the area chiropractors in order to inflate their medical bills and thereby inflating their asking amounts for their injury cases. Of course his take home was 40% of the total award amount.
Most prisons are dangerously understaffed, with many sleeping while on shift. Also, most guards aren't the power hungry people you hear about, they're just there for a paycheck.
That's the same with most jobs that are "evil". The job itself might suck but there can be genuinely good people working there because they don't want to starve. We all have the best morals online or when it isn't ourselves making the decision, but money is money and we all need it to survive
I used to work at a very popular clothing store and a woman from corporate came in one day and fired the assistant manager. A few months later one of the managers was doing payroll and I noticed the assistant manager, the one that got fired, name was still on payroll. I thought that was very weird. The manager tried to hide it from me but I definitely saw it. A couple of weeks after that, the other manager got fired. Apparently, she still had the assistant manager that got fired on payroll and she was still receiving checks.
Affair partner? Didn't want them to whistleblow something? So many questions
All of the fancy glamping tents at Terramor Outdoor Resort in Bar Harbor, ME are going to fall apart soon.
The timber frame tents don't have foundations or pads to sit on, instead each piling is sitting on top of a foam block buried just under the surface. This means that they could declare them temporary structures and cut a bunch of corners to get around plumbing/electrical codes. The foam blocks compress over time and the pilings will start to shift. Some of the tents were already shifting badly when I left in the summer of 2021, not even one year after the resort had opened.
But the owners, KOA, don't really care. They're already planning bigger Terramor resorts in a few other states and will likely just abandon the prototype property when it gets too expensive to maintain.
Give me 10 more days to start my next job and I'll come back and spill all the tea about Alyeska Ski Resort.
I worked in a superstore bakery department. The bread plant that mixed and shaped all the dough had a horrendous mold problem because idiots wouldn't clean it properly. The practice was to pick chunks of it out as you caught it. Chances are a fair amount passed through undetected, baked, and consumed.
that's disgusting and makes me want to save my money and eat at home
I ran a daycare for a church (more like a cult) for a few years. The building’s roof was ripped off in a hurricane and the building was flooded.
Behind my back, the church leaders went to a smaller church and arranged our center to be housed there until the building was back up and running. They didn’t tell me that we were uninsured and running outside of state licensing. AND they were insisting parents pay cash to avoid a paper trail. They were also claiming interruption of business on the insurance, and paying the employees cash as well.
It ended up being my responsibility to write receipts (and sign them), so if anything did come out, it would all fall on me. To sum it up, these people were committing fraud, insurance fraud, and going against the states child care policies, as well as having other people’s children under our care with no insurance.
I cut my losses and quit with no two weeks notice, and I’m waiting to hear about the fall out that will inevitably happen. They just got their new building up and running after 2 years of operating this way.
By any chance is this grace community school? I recognize the "cult" church and hurricanes lol
Former principal had an affair with teacher (they were both married). Principal leaves to new school. A year later principal’s wife comes to the school and works along side the teacher her husband had an affair with, without even knowing.
When I was laid off, the production team was one more petty retaliation from unionizing. I hope they did. But almost everyone else in management would rather shutter the factory than have to even acknowledge the production team.
Note: this post originally had 48 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
I'm guessing at that bakery they were selling one as both.
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Just a quick comment before I go. Spare a moment to remember 9/11, guys.
No confidentiality agreements, but interesting. Back about 25 years ago, I was hired in an IT office. We had a contract with a gov't agency, but worked off site at the company's home office. I had been working there for a week, when my direct coworker died in a traffic accident. Killed by a truck on the highway. My boss asked me to clean up his things. As I was going through his stuff, I came across lots of custom CDs.....full of porn. I spent a few days, thinking about how I was going to tell my boss about this, as they had known each other a long time and were acquainted (not quite friends). I agonized about it and finally decided, I had to rip the band-aid off. I sheepishly went to his office and told him. Non-pulsed, he told me he knew and to get rid of it. Since then at subsequent jobs, during my career, I found it isn't such the outrageous occurrence, as I thought it was.
found an electrical meter case in my work truck at the shop once. it was full of really fetesh slanted cd's. i turned it in and the guy was pissed i "went through his things". (i was just looking to see if there was a name on it.)
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I'm guessing at that bakery they were selling one as both.
Load More Replies... Just a quick comment before I go. Spare a moment to remember 9/11, guys.
No confidentiality agreements, but interesting. Back about 25 years ago, I was hired in an IT office. We had a contract with a gov't agency, but worked off site at the company's home office. I had been working there for a week, when my direct coworker died in a traffic accident. Killed by a truck on the highway. My boss asked me to clean up his things. As I was going through his stuff, I came across lots of custom CDs.....full of porn. I spent a few days, thinking about how I was going to tell my boss about this, as they had known each other a long time and were acquainted (not quite friends). I agonized about it and finally decided, I had to rip the band-aid off. I sheepishly went to his office and told him. Non-pulsed, he told me he knew and to get rid of it. Since then at subsequent jobs, during my career, I found it isn't such the outrageous occurrence, as I thought it was.
found an electrical meter case in my work truck at the shop once. it was full of really fetesh slanted cd's. i turned it in and the guy was pissed i "went through his things". (i was just looking to see if there was a name on it.)
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