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27 People Reveal The “Dark Secrets” About Their Jobs That Common People Aren’t Supposed To Know
Article created by: Kotryna Br
Let’s face it—almost every profession has a few secrets that the rest of the world would be surprised to find out. When faced with challenges, some businesses may decide to take the easy way out, which often leads to enforcing bad practices. And there’s no way of knowing about them… unless you’re a part of it.
Thousands of workers decided to share their stories on the r/AskReddit page. One after another, members spilled their industry secrets that companies keep from the general public. From paramedics and teachers to skincare specialists and SPA workers, these people did not pass the opportunity to share their knowledge.
As people say, the more you know, the more you’ll understand, so make sure to read these stories below, upvote your favorites and let us know what you think!
- Read More: 35 People Reveal The "Dark Secrets" About Their Jobs That Common People Aren't Supposed To Know
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#1
I worked at a White Castle from 2000-2003.
It was clean. Nothing super disgusting at all. All of the equipment got a thorough cleaning every 24 hours. The floors were mopped regularly, walls were wiped down... everything.
The food was always fresh. If the burgers cooled enough for the buns to get hard, they were trashed. If fries/sides sat under heat lamp for 15 minutes, they were trashed.
We threw away a lot of food. We had to track it all for inventory purposes, and filled up a couple pages a day of stuff we through out.
Even when the bulk of the crew was teenagers, we really were trying to work fast and do a good job. Every year or so, they made us get timed on the griddle by a regional manager. Everyone had to do it. Starting with a clean griddle you had to fully prepare, box and bag 30 hamburgers as fast as possible without cutting any corners.
I know not all locations are like that, nor are all fast food restaurants, but when I was working there, we did a really good job of everything.
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#2
When purchasing items on the internet (especially airline tickets), use incognito mode on your browser.
We use your own cookies against you: raising the price on tickets the more times you check, as you shop around for better deals. That way you'll think the price is going up or that seats are being actively sold - thus increasing your urgency to buy, and punishing you for trying to get a good deal.
#3
I used to work for a large smart phone company.
During development, we used to go through phases, Engineering Verification testing stage, Design Verification Test, Production Verification Test, and finally Mass Production. Each stage was meant to have checkpoints in order to ensure that the final product was built with good quality and any known bugs would be able to ironed out before the product launch. Any bug that was not resolved would potentially have the ability to delay the launch.
Except that there is a thing called Waivers. So the PM could request that certain bugs be granted a waiver delaying the fix of the problem to a later date. No big deal, every project has a few minor bugs, right?
For each stage there would be hundreds of waivers. Some would be minor, to be fair, but sometimes they were definitely not minor.
I will never, ever, buy an electronic device in the first 3 months of mass production. Wait for the second wave of production, the quality of the product increases ten-fold.
#4
Airline pilot here.
You know those blankets that we give you on the flight? The airline never washes them. Ever. We just shake them out and shrink wrap them for a later flight. Every once in a while we toss one that's unusable.
#5
Worked in a no-kill animal shelter. The thing is, no-kill still does mean you have to put animals down sometimes. Especially behavioral issues are terrible. When is a dog too dangerous? Can you rehome a Pitbill with a bite-history? What if they get too dangerous for staff to handle?
Especially when it 'gets out' that we had to put a specific animal down and all those Facebook warriors start rioting and calling you names. It's not like we make those decisions for fun...
#6
I used to work in skincare: None of the products cost more than $2 to manufacture, but would retail at anything from $20 to $150 per product.
Always amazed me how much people would shell out for anything with volcanic clay or snake venom cream
#7
I worked at UPS ages ago. The word "FRAGILE" on a box meant nothing to us, so make sure you pack your stuff properly.
#8
Worked in management for Trader Joe's for 8 years and boy have a I got a doozy for you: the employees are ACTUALLY that nice.
#9
Fred Meyer (owned by Kroger) throws away literally tons of edible produce, deli and bakery food every day at individual stores. Mainly because it doesn’t look picture perfect. Most wasteful company I’ve even seen. We have homeless people stealing food everyday and being prosecuted when we could just give them the food. But no,It all goes to the garbage compactor.
#10
Worked for a private school. Grades were definitely bought. We were discouraged to give anything lower than a B. Had one principal that told a teacher to take the final for a student that went on summer vacation early. She called it a shadow final and said nonchalantly that it's no big deal, just answer how you think the student would answer.
This school is expensive, and these kids go on to fancy colleges because of these grades.
#12
Reality TV is anything but. Ever seen House Hunters on HGTV? The couple "looking for a house" actually already bought and live in one of the houses that they're "looking at." The other houses are usually friend's houses, or houses that have sold but not closed or moved in yet.
#13
I work in a public library. Sadly, since we're open to all, we get a lot of indigent customers. In this day and age, that means a lot of opiate users, many of whom shoot up in our restrooms. We've had many overdoses, most of which are treated quickly and effectively by administering Narcan. However, that's not always the case, and some people are either beyond saving, or are found too late. In 2019 alone, we've had 13 deaths. Security and the EMTs are always careful to make it appear that the body being wheeled out is only ill, so as not to freak out the patrons. The actual number of deaths is even 'hidden' from the staff. (I'm friends with a few of the folks in security, which is how I know about it.)
#14
I worked at Whole Foods. Your cookies and bread were heated in store, not baked. Oh. And in AM meetings, you're referred to as "basket size", not customers.
#15
A "high class" spa I worked at used epsom salts and vegetable oil for their $65 salt scrubs.
#16
I used to work in a factory that produced pillows. Let me be the first to tell you, some nasty stuff goes into those pillows. Tell me, have you ever seen those pillows labeled "Memory Foam Cluster"? Do yourself a favor, and avoid them like the plague. What we do is, there is a bale of old, recycled memory foam brought behind the grinder. This bale consists of everything from old mattresses and pillows, to those cooling memory foam pillows. Except they are all old and dirty. We cut the bigger pieces into more manageable bits and toss it into a grinder that chops the foam into small, fine cubes. These cubes are stored in a large tank, and then blown into an empty pillow casing using pneumatic pressure. Now we made good pillows too, but for the love of god, stay away from anything labeled "cluster."
#17
Volunteer paramedic ... when we find an old person who clearly has been with no pulse for hours we close the doors, shut relatives out and pretend to do something to avoid useless legal action.
#18
I worked at a car dealership. The $1200 car care system that we would discount to $900 was “applied” with about 15 squirts of a spray bottle. Many times I’d hang out with the detail guys so the customer wouldn’t get suspicious at a quick turnaround.
#19
The icecream machine isn't broken it just needs cleaning which takes a long time. BK worker here
#20
Wash your fruits and vegetables very thoroughly a lot of them will end up being scooped off a disgusting warehouse floor and put back in the package after falling out
#21
Apple: All techs and “Genius” employees are fully aware of wide-spread issues well before they are officially released to the public. They are NEVER discussed at the morning staff meetings with management present but are ALWAYS a source of discussion in the 3:00-3:30 tech staff meeting.
For example: It got to a point where I would replace an iPhone 6+ for the “display” issue and sometimes had to replace the replacement 2-3 times while the customer was waiting. It was embarrassing and frustrating that the official release from the company was that the issue was caused by customer misuse. We all knew the truth and the techs with any sort of conscience would bend over backwards to do what we could to right the wrongs. That is one of several manufacturing issues masked as user error or misuse that we tried to work around.
#22
Former Geek Squad here - most of the people that work there, aren't really technical at all. We usually just walk it over to a bench, hook it up to a corporate VLAN and run just run some software. If there are real issues - people remotely connect from India or somewhere else.
We are basically just salesmen with a clip on tie.
#23
Applebees; on the tabletop computers, go to "Extras" and tap and hold the little white space on the top left of the screen. When it gives a password prompt, it's 4321. Lets you change the table numbers or play games for free.
#25
Idk the legality of this but it always seemed wierd. But we would get bags of another company's product (animal premix) and manually transfer that product into a bag of our own. We would give these products lot codes of our own and sell them to customers.
#27
I used to work for a major card service company, and before the law changed if you bought a gift card to say a red lobster and didn't use it for like say a year. It was a distinct posibility that the entire value of that card would be gone due to monthly service charges. So picture me the guy trying to explain to the guy how his 50$ gift card was worth nothing, and you can imagine how that goes. Weirdly enough I ended up loving that job the most due to other types of accounts I used to handle. That was one of the worst parts of my job honestly.
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