People Are Sharing Industry Secrets From Their Jobs, Here’s 30 Of The Most Surprising Ones
Interview
Any job can teach you a wealth of information. It might not all be relevant to your daily life, but even working in a fast food joint will provide you with knowledge that the average person doesn’t have. And because most of us don’t have the chance to dabble in 15 different career fields during our lifetimes, there’s plenty of info that we’ll never have access to. That is, unless people are willing to spill the beans online.
Reddit users who work in a wide variety of industries have been revealing some of the juiciest secrets from their workplaces, so we’ve gathered ones that you might want to know down below. Enjoy scrolling through and learning something new, and be sure to upvote the replies you find most surprising!
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I work in education. We are way behind the ball with student issues, and are just flying by the seat of our pants so to speak. We are in crisis, and most parents simply want to drop their kids off and hope they have a normal experience. None of this is normal. You need to start having conversations with your kids about mental health and social media. If not…woof. Our society is not in good shape.
As an educator, we are not indoctrinating your children. If we were, they would arrive to class on time and get their work done.
I think it hinges on how conservative parents define "indoctrination". For them, "indoctrination" happens when their child spends their time with a diverse group of people.
I'm an academic researcher and I can speak for a huge number in my field when I say:
**If you want access to our studies and they're behind a paywall, you can email us and we will send you the study.**
We are genuinely delighted to share and if you want further context for the results or what have you, I'll always try my best to oblige.
The only limiters on that last bit is that:
1. the original data for the study might have reached the end of our right to keep it, in which case it will have been destroyed.
2. I might have forgotten details or I might have written that paper during a particularly hectic time and my file system might be total s**t.
Also a lot of us are on ResearchGate and various social media things so you can contact us through there. If you can't contact us directly or we're being slow, one of the other authors on the paper might be contactable.
To find out how this conversation started, we reached out to Reddit user Boring-Plastic-4667, who was kind enough to have a chat with Bored Panda. "I think what inspired me to ask this are the things that blew my mind when I started working as a low level corporate employee dealing with different departments," the OP shared. "The things I saw just shocked me. So I thought it would be interesting to see what similar experiences people had in their jobs."
If you find an extra nugget in your order, it wasn't a mistake. You got a cool employee.
When the US overthrew the Taliban they used a pro-opium rebel group named "The Northern Alliance" to fight the ground war and then put them in charge of the country.
The soy farmers who grew soy because they were terrified of the (very anti opium) Taliban immediately swapped their crops over to Opium poppy where Afghanistan quickly became over 90% of the world's opium supply mostly overnight.
Initially the US tried burning the opium crops but that didn't exactly win the hearts and minds of the people so they resorted to a combination of:
a) Paying farmers the difference to just grow soy instead
and
b) actually purchasing some of the opium from Afghan farmers for the US pharmaceutical industry who suddenly had a huge surplus of opium to offload.
Oh, did I mention this was coincidentally exactly when the Oxycodone epidemic in the US happened and a bunch of powerful billionaires in the pharmaceutical industry decided to push tons of highly addictive opium pills to basically every home and family in the country?
It's a fascinating little detail nobody ever seems to talk about.
If you have already googled your problem, you have already exceeded the first two tiers of tech support.
I work in this industry, above the first 2 tiers. Many times, I find the answer with Google.
We were also curious if they had any industry secrets of their own to share. "I'm not sure how much of a secret it is, since anyone dealing with invoices would see. But the additives that go into gasoline that can make it more expensive (think Top Tier gas or gas that gas stations market as better for your engine) are usually less than $0.005/gallon," Boring-Plastic-4667 shared.
"Less than half a penny per gallon, and the markup can be crazy high. Also, the tolerance for the amount of gas that goes missing and we just can't find it, either because it spilled, actually went missing, or someone measured wrong, is insanely high," they added. "I don't deal with much, but the little bit I do see, can easily be 50,000 gallons a month or more. A truck is upwards of 7,500-8,500 gallons. So, a lot of trucks just go missing, and we just go 'oh well' and keep moving on since it's not that much in the grand scheme of the business."
The US Military is the most wasteful organization in the United States.
People who sell courses on how to make money make their own money selling you the course.
Your phone was not “hacked,” terrorists and the government don’t give a f**k about your information. You clicked on adware, malware, or a link that asked you to put in your login information.
It’s your fault, accept that.
We also asked Boring-Plastic-4667 what they thought of the replies to their post. "I think most of the top responses I would have expected, such as teachers gossiping about your kids or being nice to employees or managers if you have a problem and they will do more things within their power for you to fix it," the OP shared. "The only ones that surprised me were ones I would never have thought to ask. Hearing from people who design slot machines or work in industrial safety are cool to hear from. Mainly the people who we don't come into contact with on a daily basis, like you would a teacher."
If you’re nice to hotel staff they are more likely to give you free s**t
I’m a Casino Manager.
It is definitely possible (more likely than you think) to win money in the short term. For example, if you walk in, bet on Red/Black on Roulette, it’s reasonably close to 50/50 (not quite because of 0). You might do this once, double your money and leave. Congratulations.
You will always lose in the long term. Always. Anyone that thinks they have some kind of system is a sucker. A game would not make it into the casino floor if the maths have not been rigorously checked and long term simulations run to confirm.
*exception to this is Poker. The casino will always have a rake or time charge to make their money but there is no reason you cannot consistently win money if you are skilled enough.
The last time I was in a casino I was given a complimentary roll of nickels because I lived in a different state. Started with that $2, and walked out with $135. That was almost 30 years ago. I'll never beat that percentage, so no point in trying unless it is again with somebody else's money.
Only time I ever really gambled was years ago in Atlantic City. Started with $50 and once that was gone, I would quit. Got drunk playing blackjack with a bunch of old Russian dudes until 3 AM and walked away with $500. Still don't remember how I managed that, but I went shopping the next day. :)
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"Industry Secret." Stand on the Vegas Strip. Look at all those lights. SOMEONE is paying for all those lights.
I turned 25 cents into 13.50 dollars. That was the 1st and only time I gambled. I figured I'd quit a winner rather than try to replicate that again.
Lol reminds me of the time my family (mom, dad, my 2 little brothers and I - all of us under 15) went to Vegas for part of our yearly vacation time. Dad wanted to show us how bad gambling was and asked for 25c or $1.00 from me. He took it, won a nice double digit amount (this was in the mid 80s so can't recall the exact sum but I'm sure it was below $50). My brothers and I were laughing when he came back and mom was all, "Great lesson, Wayne. Don't gamble, kids. This rarely happens." lovely memory of my now deceased dad. Thanks for helping me remember it. I hate how we forget things that are lovely.
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Don't gamble what you can't afford to lose. Set a limit and stick with it. If you win 50% back, don't spend more than 10% to see if you can get more. I went to a casino once and stuck with mostly the rules. It does get exciting and hard to catch yourself. I left with 60% that was won back. Prior to this, I did those free online casinos that don't really cost a dime. lol
I went to the Aurora Illinois Riverboat casino twice in the early 90s. Each time I brought just $20. I sat at the same pull handle machine the whole time I was there. I got up and stopped when I got $40-70 dollars (both times, it was in that winnings neighborhood). I could have stayed and "hit the big one/get it to $100", sure! But nah. I made a nice profit off a simple $20 and that's what I wanted to do. Get a profit. Not lose it all trying to get a bigger profit. Did the person who sat there next do one pull and win the $xx, 000? Maybe. I hope so! I honestly hope so! I knew my 'no more, this is good' limit and stuck to it both trips. Greed = loss most of the time.
Ya know those slot machine toys the casinos give away? They're given to create the illusion that you're lucky and can beat the casino.
If you gamble accept that you are spending the money, it's gone. Don't spend more than you can afford. Stick to your budget. Keep any winnings. Walk away when your stake is spent even if you are winning, there is no such thing as a winning streak. People get hooked when they win, not when they lose.
I once put $5 on the number 14. I actually called my daughter and asked her for a number. She said 14. I played it and won. Then I let it ride after taking the $5 back. 14 came up again, 3 times in a row. At that point I decided enough was enough and I took my winnings out. 14 didn't come out again. It paid for the whole of our vacation with money left over. I never calculated the odds (it was a wheel with Zero and Double-zero if I recall) but they must have been astronomical. Strangest thing that ever happened to me.
I went to Vegas with $800 for three nights years ago. I came back home with $800. I felt like c**p because I wanted more, but hey, I had a good time and it's like I went to Vegas for free and still have $800!
So a genuinely good businessperson's casino can only go bankrupt intentionally? Like if it's laundering mob money?
I have 3 slot machines in our den, not the modern video ones, but the ones with the spinning reels that accept coins. The only difference between the games is the changeable glass front, the paper symbols on the reels and a different chip on the motherboard. The handle is just for decoration as it just contacts a switch to spin the reels (some people swear they win more pulling the handle. HAH) All the odds are programmed into the chip and can't be changed unless your good at manipulating the image files before they're burned into the EEPROM chip. Bottom line........the house always wins.
I used to be a croupier and we used to say that there were 2 kind of gamblers: the loosers and the lyers.
I have a perfect system for when I go to Las Vegas. Take as much money as I can afford to lose, put $10 of it in my pocket, and when the rest is gone I go hit up a buffet with that $10.
I don't know if this really counts or how accurate this is compared to real gambling, but when I bought my first smart phone I down loaded a blackjack game on my phone. At the beginning of each game I would win and then as I kept playing I would inevitably lose. So if this is any inclination of real gambling, yes you would eventually lose.
My wife loves to gamble (mostly slots)! I don’t gamble… EVAR! Around trip 30-ish to Vegas, she got angry with me because I just sit there while she plays. It made her feel bad that I wasn’t having fun, too. So I said “FINE!”, went to the spinning wheel thing, put $500 on black. One spin: Black. Then I left with $500 extra in my pocket. That was about 20 years ago… haven’t gambled since.
I always go in with my 'money for the casino' and refuse to spend anything I win. Sometimes, I come home with a few dollars; sometimes, I've doubled or tripled, depending on the game. But my rule is that I don't walk through the door with money I'm unwilling to drop on the floor and walk back out with.
I go to casinos with a certain amount of money that I'm willing to lose and I do not exceed that. I'm willing to pay for entertainment, and if I win, it's a bonus. Never keep spending money thinking you're going to make your lost money back. You will get in a bigger hole.
I recently had my very first Casino Experience. Won a little, lost a little... then I played $25 on a single number on roulette, won, and collected $900 in chips. Went to the cashier, traded in almost $1200 in chips for cash, and GTFO.
We have lottery and "skills machines" (slot machines) at our store. I watch people dump THOUSANDS in a single night into those stupid machines. They act like they deserve the jackpot and get so angry when it inevitable loses. I love seeing someone walk in, throw $20 in and win $500 within 5 minutes. The people who have been sitting there for hours get so angry and jealous! They scream at the owner. Well, you're the idiot gambling away your bill money!
If people could beat the house in the long run, there wouldn't be one.
I mean the odds are so tempting tho! Isn't beating the house like 0.001:99 that one can win? That 0.001 is still a chance! Lol just playing. :D
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And yet a certain person managed to go bankrupt running a casino.
If you understood business law and bankruptcy law, there are sound business reasons to drive into bankruptcy.
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Another reason to be wary of casinos: a few years ago, a casino in our area was raided by the gaming commission. It turns out that there was an "issue" with the tables. Now they are owned by the bank. Just saying.......
"If you can't afford to lose, you can't afford to win." The Great Kazoo.
I work for an online casino, and somehow people think we're some kind of charity that they can exploit again and again. It's a company like any other, all they want is profit.
Spoken like somebody who never heard of blackjack. Or maybe somebody who agrees that players should be thrown out if they actually understand the game.
Totally disagree. As someone that grew up in the off-track betting and table games world, I routinely met career gamblers that never worked a day in their lives. Sometimes the 'system' can simply be luck.
The OP went on to share that they think more companies, and people in general, should be more transparent. "I'm not sure they ever will be though," they noted. "Either because doing so would ruin the 'magic' or, more likely, would cost them money."
"I think these discussions should happen more often," Boring-Plastic-4667 added. "Either to prevent people from coming up with conspiracies, hearing others perspectives on things, or just getting to hear more about other people's jobs and advice."
That store brand products and name brand products made in the same third party factory aren't the same.
People believe that there is no difference to the recipe and that the same stuff is just put into a different box. That it's the same ingredients on the same production line.
Each brand asks the factory to make the product at a particular price point. A luxury brand might want the product to cost $4 a unit but the store brand might want it for $2. The factory will tailor the recipe to the price point, substituting expensive ingredients for cheaper ones, eliminating an ingredient all together, altering the manufacturing process to require fewer people or equipment, or eliminating intermediate quality control steps.
Sure, there might not be a detectable difference between some products, and other products might actually be identical to the point that spending more for a better brand isn't worth it, but a lot of products are noticeably different even if they are made on the same production line by the same people.
"It#s all the same" is just people justifying buying the knock-off. Which is dumb ... there is no "justifying" necessary. If something cheaper gives you as much satisfaction as the expensive thing, why spend more?
China has stopped buying a lot of recycled plastic from the USA due to quality issues and a lot of it just gets stored in warehouses as landfill. The industry is spending money out the a*s on PR to avoid this being public knowledge.
If your baby goes to a nursery/daycare, chances are those weren't their "first" steps/words etc that you witnessed. Industry standard is to not tell parents when these things happen as it makes them feel bad. I've seen kids up and walking about the room for weeks, even months before their parent proudly announced at drop off that they "Took their first steps last night".
This is very sad. I understand if a child took their first steps that day, and then the parent reports the next day 'X took their first steps last night'. But if they've been walking for **months** before the parents see it, how little meaningful time are those parents able to spend with their children :-( This is a terrible indictment on society.
Almost nobody maintains their sobriety from their first go in rehab. It's takes several goes. On the plus side there's absolutely no need to be hard on yourself for returning to rehab as its nigh on impossible to achieve this on your first go.
All those “practical effects” that people love in movies are heavily touched by VFX. We fix/enhance/replace everything digitally, and the on-
set artists get the credit. My last movie had $350k in wig tape fixes. Fury Road, which was applauded for its practical effects, had 2100 vfx shots in it. The first Avatar had ~2500.
My slogan for VFX is “we make the rest of the movie”.
There is a HUGE difference between touching up the hair on the guy hanging on the side of the plane, and using CGI to put a plane next to the guy hanging on to a green screen.
The reason why the kid fell off the Orlando free fall ride.
Any ride with an over the shoulder restraint system works by using a proximity sensor to let the computer system know where the restraint is locked. The ride can't move unless all the sensors sense the correct metal at the correct position. On some rides you can move the sensor a few millimeters for proper alignment. Not enough to make a difference. On the free fall ride someone in management might have wanted to modify a few seats for larger guests. Someone might have told a maintenance worker to move the sensor which allowed the ride to start with the restraint in a position not in the original design. With this modification the restraint would be at more of a 45 (or so) degree angle instead of directly downward . This may or may not have been done with an engineer's approval. This may or may not have been done with the ride vendors permission. Any procedure like this is strictly prohibited from any standpoint in the amusement rides industry. I can't explain why they thought it was ok. In most situations you wouldn't be able to move the sensor much without detaching the bracket and moving the whole thing to a different location. Again, this wouldn't even be discussed anywhere I have ever worked. But they might have at Icon Park. The details of this mechanical procedure never made the headlines in Florida because all the lawsuits were settled. In the end someone decided to change the position of that sensor. We will probably never know who. There is probably a maintenance worker who was ordered to do so. I've worked on enough restraints to know that it was not an accident. Personally I would have refused to do it and so would almost everyone that works on these things.
Its been years so i can spill the beans. Worked where there were rides. Mechanic said parts had to be replaced. Boss was cheap and said they could last another year. Mechanic comes back with paper for boss to sign stating he said parts needed replaced and management declined. Parts were replaced.
Car industry: NEVER buy a car that is completely new on the market! They always always come with a ton of bugs that need fixing and it takes about two years of serial production to get rid of most of them. If you must buy a new car, be sure the model has been in the market for at least two years.
The reason for why we don't fix the problems before start of selling? Cost
Also, don't buy models that were in development during years of crisis. Example: during the 2008 financial crisis we let got a huge number of people (to fix the numbers in the books, didn't actually save the company money because they all got a big payout on their way out) so we were understaffed and under imense pressure to reduce cost. The models that came on the market after that time were s**t. Like, serious s**t quality we have never seen before.
My dad taught me that like 25 years ago when buying a new car, I've always known never to buy a new model or if the model has been changed for at least a year. I had a friend who bought a 2000 Dodge Neon, that year they changed the model, and she was at a stoplight when her car shut off. Confused and thankfully before she started it, a mechanic who watched from across the street came running towards her with arms waving to get her attention, I turned out her gas tank fell from the car and she would have blown herself up if she tried to start it!
Trained artist here. Most oil paints are made with very toxic substances, as are most paint thinners and mediums. Every single one of my teachers was either very sick (Cancer, Ménière's disease) or a bit crazy (eating chalk, licking pallettes). All incredible artists I was privileged to learn from. One lesson I learned very well: I wear gloves and sometimes a mask when I paint.
Edit: I mentioned Ménière's because one of my favorite teachers had it. I worked closely with him and his suffering holds a large place in my memories of school. While I think the exposure to toxins didn't do him any favors, I should not have implied a correlation. I apologize.
To those asking: no paint was licked off palettes. They had just been cleaned with denatured alcohol and he always led with, 'Now you could eat off them!' before waggling his tongue on the glass. Loved the shock factor, that guy did.
The New York Times best seller list has a lot of people on it who buy massive numbers of their own books.
I just listened to a podcast about now the NYT compiles its best seller list. They do include people with massive and suspicious book orders and they put an * next to those books to indicate they're "best selling" because the authors are gaming the system.
Worked in online community management and social media for years - Admins CAN read all of your PMs. Private only means private from the masses, not from administration, we had to be able to read them to check reports of abuse, grooming, illegal activity etc. I can't tell you how much cringeworthy s**t I had to read through, especially from guys trying to hook up.
The Coke at McDonald’s tastes better because they’re one of the only companies that refrigerate the syrup tanks, the unflavored soda and the supply lines. So when it hits the ice in your cup, it’s already super cold, so less ice melts, and the first sip tastes more “concentrated” and ice cold. That’s it. No magic. No secret formula. Just more refrigeration.
In these days of global shittification, just doing things properly, with quality of service as a goal, is bordering on magic in my opinion!!!!
Some appetizers are the most labor intense items on the menu to make, for example: dumplings takes one worker about an hour to make 12-15 orders.
If you want to know where I'm getting at, if a restaurant offers a plethora of appetizers options then there's a high chance a lot of them are store bought and resold because there's no feasible way to prepare several orders for each item on the menu.
Working is restaurants taught me that A LOT of food is premake by an outside company and purchased frozen. Also, SO MUCH is just microwaved frozen food. I got a lot more picky about my restaurant choices after that, I can microwave frozen food at home for a fraction of the cost.
Previous industry.
US hospitals casually refer to other hospitals as their 'competitors'.
Noped out of that world as soon as I could.
Most—probably 80 percent or more—of the books on the nonfiction bestseller list (autobiographies, memoirs, political/business books, etc.) are ghostwritten.
Source: am ghostwriter.
Good. 80 percent or more of the people credited for writing those books probably can't write their way out of a wet paper bag. Though I hope you get paid well for not getting credit for your writing.
Teaching. Yep, teachers gossip about the kids, and each other, and everything. There is always so much drama going on at any given moment.
Yes, schools are just like other workplaces where humans interact
The news about Boeing is not a surprise to me at all.
The amount of resources that they are able to delegate in an effort to deter whistleblowers is unfathomable to the average American/EU citizen.
On the Texas house floor, people push the buttons to vote for members who aren't even present that day. This happens multiple times, on every single thing they vote for.
In Australia, additional warranties are a rip off. If a device or product can be reasonably expected to last five years without defect then it can be held to that under warranty. Companies are f****d.
If the insurance company thinks they can make money by selling you insurance it's almost certain that you'll lose less money by not buying the insurance. You can't take the risk on things like cars and houses, but you can afford the risk for most consumer products.
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I work in tourism, driving a tour bus and narrating in a major American city. You might be prepared for everything. Weather, pictures, guidebooks, you have it all. The one thing you forgot to bring is your brain. The second you get on my bus, you're an idiot sandwich. We keep a running tally in the barn at the end of the day, about who had the dumbest tourist of the day. Don't be on that list.
I used to work in a town frequented by tourists. My coworker called them "bewildered beasts." The amount of times someone just stepped in front of my car while I was driving down the street... I swear, they thought it was Disney World, not a town with actual moving vehicles that can very easily kill you
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I work in tourism, driving a tour bus and narrating in a major American city. You might be prepared for everything. Weather, pictures, guidebooks, you have it all. The one thing you forgot to bring is your brain. The second you get on my bus, you're an idiot sandwich. We keep a running tally in the barn at the end of the day, about who had the dumbest tourist of the day. Don't be on that list.
I used to work in a town frequented by tourists. My coworker called them "bewildered beasts." The amount of times someone just stepped in front of my car while I was driving down the street... I swear, they thought it was Disney World, not a town with actual moving vehicles that can very easily kill you
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