There are a decent amount of companies that, if you have worked for them, you will avoid their services or products like the plague. Unfortunately, most places will fire you if you start telling the public about what goes on behind the scenes.
Someone asked “What is a corporate secret you can now safely tell because you don't work there anymore?” and ex-employees spilled the beans. From tips and tricks to how to get around customer support and hotel staff, to horrifying facts about what goes on in a fast food restaurant. So upvote your favorites, comment your thoughts, and keep learning!
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Health insurance dude. When you file a claim, it is often denied because they're counting on you not escalating it. Once you do, your case goes to a "medical management group" which ought to be called the "we don't wanna pay" group.
Keep escalating and involve your doctor. Fight for the insurance you paid for.
I did data entry for a church before, digitalizing all their wills and donations. Since my NDA has long passed, I can say that it's ridiculous. People donating their entire wealth, millions upon millions to the church, even private estates and islands. There's even old money trusts from like 1800s still pumping in money.
It's a sham and these churches are filthy rich. And it's not even a "prosperity" megachurch.
Never put your information into any online financial form that claims to comparison shop for you.
1. They don’t comparison shop for you.
2. They sell your info to 4-5 of the highest bidders and your phone will be blown up with calls and texts for weeks with people trying to sell you their finance stuff.
Sorry!
So true. That happened to me with health insurance. The minute I submitted my information, my phone rang. And rang. And rang. I was averaging a call every 20 minutes for the next week. Never again.
NDAs are a lot more common than one might think. In the US, as of 2022, around one-third of all employed people have an active NDA at this very moment. So perhaps it’s good that there are anonymous outlets like the internet out there where people can share what goes on behind the scenes without risking their jobs.
While most exist to protect the company from the sort of things we see here, there are many that are just to limit the spread of “trade secrets.” However, given the sheer number of NDAs out there, it would appear that “trade secret” is a pretty loosely understood term.
Worked in nursing homes for years. Not sure how “secret” this is but a couple things: most of the staff does actually care about the patients, we just have many. But you yelling and screaming at staff because of how we treat your parent is almost certain to make us care much less. The people who are kind and patient get better care for their parents every time.
Also lowkey: once your parent goes into a nursing home/independent living, they really do start to live a different life, with different social groups, norms, and daily routines. They usually adapt more easily than their kids do and when their kids visit and start hollering about every little thing, it causes the patient more stress and anxiety than anything else.
This is so true. My Momma had to go into assisted living. I left her to become part of the community. I visit her regularly, and belong to a social page for the facility. My Momma is always at ALL the activities and Always smiling. She didn't want to go into the facility, but has blossomed into a thriving, happy, beautiful person. It's not always true for all, but you have to guide them into the positive aspects of their new life. AND, for the love of God, treat the staff as family members, they will recipricate!!!!
Farmed salmon is Frankenfish. They are infested with sea-lice to the point that their eyes are eaten out and they have huge open sores on their skin. They are chock-full of growth hormone and antibiotics. The fish that die off by the millions from infection are still allowed to be sold for human consumption. I had a friend who worked as a diver for Grieg Seafoods, a Norwegian fish-farming company, and the videos he had were horrifying.
Can confirm this having worked on fish farms all over Norway Scotland and Ireland. Don't eat farmed salmon they live a horrible deizie rinden life and it's destroying the environment around it .
Not sure if it is all furniture stores, but they like to sell you stain resistant coating. It is literally a 6 dollar bottle of scotch guard in a spray bottle. We would charge 90 dollars per item sprayed.
Yep but that's a labour charge to do the work, so not totally unreasonable. Just overpriced.
That being said if something downright criminal is happening, most countries do have laws to protect whistleblowers. After all, unethical practices are, unfortunately, not always against the law. Indeed, legal experts have found that some companies make employees sign NDAs that they can’t legally enforce, for example having clauses that “prevent” them from complaining about discrimination or harassment.
Former data analyst for an alcohol monitoring company. I won't say the name but they're the big one with the ankle bracelet that measures alcohol from your sweat.
Most of the time, the data is made up.
We get a VERY vague idea of how the alcohol is being expelled from their body through sweat. Sometimes it's enough to make some sense of it but most of the time we were "encouraged" to "find the event" through the noise or we would be fired. Because of this, I believe numerous people reported false information to the courts.
This has ruined countless people's lives. Their own and their families.
I quit before the end of my 90 day probationary period.
I worked for a consulting service. 90% of our reports were just copy and pasted. We charged thousands for every one
My aunt worked building chicken houses for large poultry companies. When you pay the extra couple dollars for free range eggs, you feel you’re doing the right thing. A lot of these companies have “free range” chicken houses that leave the doors open. The chickens can come and go as they please. However, the companies install large fans at the doors that make the chickens afraid to leave the chicken houses, forcing them to stay inside. The whole free range thing is ultimately b******t.
In the EU there are well defined rules about what Free Range does and does not mean. The scenario you describe would not be allowed, but would classify for 'Barn Raised'. In France there are also "Label Rouge" products , applied to all sorts of food production, which lays down even more stringent rules for chicken/egg rearing.
Any lab who runs any type of genetic test on you is selling that data in one form or another.
Used to work at a factory that made US military boots and shoes. Looking perfect was way more important than comfort. Some for the Navy were hard to get the back height right when sewing/forming the leather, so when the soles went on, they were adjusted to look level. Basically, the sole of a left or right would be much thicker than the other. I've seen some off by a half inch/15mm. I constantly brought it up to management, that it was essentially the same as having a piece of 1/2 inch board taped to the bottom of the boot, and would be extremely uncomfortable walking the 20 miles a day like they do. They didn't care as long as it looked good.
And yet the US military consumes so much money it could permanently house and feed all people in need.
If you have a medical device that uses electricity, you can send your prescription to the electric company and they can’t legally ever turn your electricity off.
Edit: Since multiple people take everything completely literally here. I’m referring to if you don’t pay your bill they can’t legally turn you off. I’m by no means referring to maintenance, fire protection, or power outages. Idk why I need to explain this. Also idk if it’ll affect your credit score or anything along those lines.
when people submit their videos to viral social media pages, they immediately sign the rights of the video away to the company. but people rarely ever read the fine print on the submission forms so don't realise
Well, you need to sign over the rights for worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable licence (with right to sub-licence) to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform that content, otherwise the company would not be able to publish it on their platform. You're granting a "limited licence" to them, but you will always retain ownership.
An open secret at a big orange box retailer of home improvement goods I used to work at was that they would accept pitches for new products from inventors, demand a sample for consideration before agreeing stock it in store, then ship the sample to China to create a similar product with just enough changes to skirt patent law, copyright, etc.
When I was young I worked at a meat processing/packaging plant. Hotdogs, bologna, pepperoni, etc. Not really a corporate secret I’m revealing. but the production of all that s**t was disgusting. Worse than you think.
Worked for a major Railroad in the 90's. I worked in HazMat/Environmental. So making sure HazMat laws are followed and the environmental side was cleaning up HazMat spills.
They had fulltime staff that were lobbyist. When something really bad would happen; Railcar with nasty s**t in it crashes into a water way. The lobbyist job was to get the law changed so they didnt have to pay anything and even to correct it. The will do ANYTHING to keep from paying fines. If the state threatens to take them to court, they counter they will close all rail traffic in the state (as they own the rail).
Wayfair will buy and photograph competitor's furniture and stuff that looks close enough to their own cheap s**t. We were told if a vase arrived looking like plastic c**p, to go to West Elm or Target etc and buy a ceramic better looking one. Same.with couches, chairs, and so on. They are a C**P company to work for and their goods are 90% garbage.
And where do they get off claiming they're cheap. I checked their website just once. They sell c**p at luxury prices.
The cheap.dole orange juice, medium priced Tropicana and expensive naked juice are all the same s**t.
Actually, here, there are two kinds of juice: the "pure juice" and the one made out of watered down concentrate. "Nectars'' are made of fruit puree with added water and sugar.
Hotel industry: of course club members get priority when it comes to upgrades, but even if you’re not a member, you are more likely to get a free upgrade if you list “Dr.” as your prefix.
There's almost always mold in the ice machine. Both my S.O. and I have worked in many restaurants. You'll live but it's still gross. I always ask for no ice.
We have a company that comes by every two weeks to clean ours out.
The Radisson Hotel has a "Yes I can" policy. If they are capable of doing something for you as a guest and you ask directly, they are supposed to say yes and maintain a positive attitude towards providing you satisfying services. ALWAYS SHOW UP EARLY FOR CHECK IN AND ASK FOR AN UPGRADE. This is how I go from $250 a night in a regular room to $250 a night for a jacuzzi suite every time I travel.
Seriously doubt this will work at Radison in SA. Our attiude to business is the customer is a pain and no we can't do that.
Used to work at Michael’s craft store.
There’s a quota for the amount of credit cards we can get customers to sign up for.
We have to try and convince them to sign up for credit cards or else we lose hours and get in trouble.
We’re told not to tell anyone about the interest rate as it’s very high, 32.5 percent APR rate.
We get an extra dollar in our paycheck if someone signs up for one.
We’re only allowed to sell it to people speaking English, even if we speak fluent Spanish or other languages.
Also for the rewards they say you get 5 dollar coupons ever 25 dollars you spend but that’s not true. That is only when you first sign up, after that it’s only 3 percent of every visit you go to Michael’s. It’s not really worth it. I worked there and I tried it and it only ended up making me spend more by trying to earn the vouchers.
There’s no way to change ur email or phone number for the rewards, when we change it in store it’s only per transaction and doesn’t permanently change.
Everything in the store is marked up to be expensive on purpose so if you use the coupons it will still be slightly overpriced but people feel like they’re saving.
The quality of their art supplies is bad because they stopped carrying good brands and started to only carry cheap brands owned by Michael’s that were made poorly and are incredibly expensive.
We have so many holiday items that are “ 50 “ dollars that are entirely made of styrofoam’. Look at the big Easter bunny for 50 dollars, break off an ear, it’s styrofoam.
Most store credit cards are borderline loan sharking. They all seem to be around that high 20s or low 30s interest rate. The "buy now and get it 12 months interest free" is inevitably on a card like this and the credit provider is banking on people failing to pay it back before the 12 months is up. After which the interest snowballs rapidly.
I will flat out just say don’t trust any diamond grading report that is not GIA. I worked for another diamond grading lab that worked with retail jewelers and the boss would fudge the grades to help them.
honestly I doubt the average person can tell the difference between crystal glass and diamond, so ... who cares?
I did data entry for a major telecommunications company 20 years ago. The sales representatives would file expense reports for so much c**p under “entertaining expenses” and the company uses this as their basis for tax reduction. For example, one sales rep was very good friends with a guy who was a branch manager for one of our customers. A couple of times a month the sales rep would host his friend aboard his fishing boat, and he would write expense reports to pay for their beer and refreshments and ice for their cooler and gas for the boat. All came under “entertainment expenses.” And since the guy was a customer, the sales manager signed off on it. There was all kinds of the stuff going on. The company also sponsored a national golf tournament and paid for entertainment expenses for customers who were executives from large corporations. The expense reports for these events came in, and they were 4 to 5 inches thick and had to be manually entered. So there we were, clerks, barely making enough to live on and were transcribing accounts showing that a vice president (customer of ours) would check into a luxury hotel, suite, and immediately send their clothes out for dry cleaning, order shrimp cocktails and champagne from room service, and my company would pick up the entire tab. Multiply this by about 300 other individuals. These people had generational wealth and they were highly placed into large corporations. The irony was that these were the people most likely to complain about welfare for low income people and yet they were getting all this paid for, and my company was using it to eliminate their tax. This is why you hear about about corporations not paying any tax, because of write offs like this. Don’t get me started on their conventions because that’s exponentially worse….
If you've ever put your ID into a computer for a background check it's probably been circulated to others regardless of whatever cybersecurity claims the company doing the background check claims.
Not necessarily. In fact this is illegal in my country. We have a thing called Protection of Private Information Act which says they have to explicitly ask your permission. You can sue if you find out that they shared without permission.
Rental car companies: the upgrade price is made up on the spot.
Little story: wanna rent a car for a few days, look it up in the company site, cars were available and cost x. But, been near an office i went there figured i will get the car faster. So when i was there ask for same car, but price was Y, so.i said what i was already researched and they make something ti justified the price they give me. I stand up, said ok i will reserved online. Magically the price was matched.
When a Verizon rep tells you they fixed something but to call back in 2 hours or 2 days, it’s because 8 times out of 10 they didn’t solve your problem but if you don’t call back in within 2 hours or 2 days depending on department it won’t affect their stats.
ETA: if ANY rep tells you that the credit department or ANY department can raise your finance limit (unless it’s an error), they are lying.
Lululemon comes in straight from Hong Kong to the US. Mostly made in Sri Lanka and Vietnam. Same with Mast Global, Lane Bryant, Torrid, Express, etc.
That’s a secret? I assume all clothing companies’ stuff is made there unless they’re an explicitly ethical company, and often even then.
I can't speak for other food/beverages, but I would safely assume it's the same ... i worked in a sauce factory. Kosher sauce is the same sauce, but the difference is when they are starting to cook it a rabbi is present there blessing it.
Brand name sauce and off brand sauce are essentially the same. Barilla and Aldi's are identical. Barilla ships out the door stacked nicely, pallet shrink wrapped properly. Aldi's brand ships out stacked terribly, with a thin wrap of shrink wrap. Thats where the savings is. Loading Aldi's sauce on to trucks you could guarantee there was going to be at least one or two pallets dumped.
This is 100% False, there is no Rabbi Blessing for Kosher, The Rabbi needs to inspect all the ingredients to make sure they are all kosher, properly clean down the entire production line with scalding hot water at 212F, and much more. It is why most Kosher food are made in all Kosher Plants (but not all). This person is lying because you can see they have no clue what they are talking about. Also some brands like Barilla own their own factories and make in house, some premium brands do use Co-Packers, but while made in the same facility, you choose the grade of ingredients, you choose recipe, etc. So most of the time they are not the same as a off brands. I know because I interned for a Kosher Supervising agency years ago, and did factory inspections, so I Know the kosher end and the factory end.
The insurance companies target for you paying on life insurance is about ten years. It's long enough to have made back the commission and expenses plus some profit. After that, they will make it easier and easier for you to forget to pay for it, and have it lapse. There will suddenly be an issue with automatic payments...things like that. But why?
If the policy is lapsed when you die, there is absolutely no payout despite ten years of premiums. That's why.
You are correct that a lapsed policy doesn't pay. 10 years of premiums isn't 10 years of savings. You don't get your money back when you stop paying on your car insurance right? Everything else in this comment is wrong. "Problem with automatic payments?" seriously? If the insurer doesn't follow their end of the payment agreement then the policy does not lapse. You forget to pay your premium because everyone forgets things. That's not the carrier's fault. Insurance is based on actuarial tables and keeping enough reserve so that claims can be paid. Yes, there are disreputable brokers out there, but all the major carriers play a straight game. If you have trouble with getting a claim paid, you are probably the one with the problem. Pay your bills, keep your paperwork in order, read your damn certificate of insurance so you understand your own coverage.
I waitressed at a nice restaurant in a very upscale neighborhood. One day I went into work and the back dining room, which was devoid of customers, smelt like death. Literally one of the foulest smells I’ve ever come across. We were about to have a dinner rush, so I alerted my manager and she hurried back. This woman goes, “oh, the trap worked!”, pulls the seat off one of the booths, and picks up the largest decomposing rat I’ve ever seen. It was pregnant. An hour later someone was digging into their burger in that booth… Despite their upscale label, many high-end restaurants will have pests like rats and roaches. I once saw a roach crawling up an ice bucket. Management never did anything, just made sure the customers didn’t know. Also please think twice about ordering soft drinks, the machines are most likely not being cleaned properly and mold loves those areas.
Candy and chip packaging plant..
The production lines didn't change depending on the brand, just the package.
The chips that were being produced went into a Kroger bag at $0.99, then a few thousand runs later, they switched the package to a name brand for $1.99.
Outside of the label, nothing changed.
yes I play guess the brand. So we have basically 2-3 actual brands here, and the in-store brand is almost always one of those three. So it's just about guessing who the original was.
Not “corporate,” per se, but 15 years ago, when the MA state healthcare budget was tight, MassHealth (the state Medicaid program) decided to send out an extra “redetermination” form to everyone covered by MassHealth. This form was normally sent out yearly and used to determine if people still qualified—had their income changed, or had they been offered insurance through their employer?—and was written in extremely difficult-to-parse English. If the form wasn’t returned or if it wasn’t delivered (extremely common if the person had moved or didn’t have a permanent address), the person would immediately lose their MassHealth coverage. Sending this form out every six months instead of every year was a great way to knock a few thousand extra people off the Medicaid rolls in the middle of the year and save money in the short term. In the longer term, people who truly needed coverage would not be able to get their cancer treatment/diabetes medications/addiction treatment. It was a truly disgusting decision, and I was in a position where I was told by high-ups why it was being done but couldn’t do anything about it other than protest.
if you keep calling apple to get your phone repaired for free, eventually you will get the right person on the phone that can’t be bothered and will give you what is called a customer satisfaction code which can be used for a free repairs/replacement at the nearest apple store.
don’t give up, always ask for a supervisor.
also phone insurance is a scam. just put that extra $15 a month in a savings account account.
Having an insurance agent (auto/home) is about 20-30% more expensive than if you do it online yourself. I’m talking about the same exact policy from the same exact company.
Also, almost all insurance companies sell the same exact policy but they just rename stuff to make it sound like they are giving you something else.
Oh, and most of the time, the insurance agent has no f*****g clue about what they’re talking about. They just want you to buy whatever b******t they are selling. They are a step up from a used car salesman. Insurance is simple in terms of the coverage you get, YOU DO NOT NEED an agent.
Your agent also doesn’t represent you. If you file a claim, they can’t do anything other than give you a claims number.
I always assumed people like an insurance agent (or mortgage broker) are just there to save your time doing the legwork. Instead of you looking at half a dozen companies and getting quotes the agent does that for you and recommends the best (or cheapest) option. The question is whether the time you save not doing it yourself outweighs the cost of their commission.
If you buy a new game from GameStop, and it’s not in the shrinkwrap, there’s a pretty decent chance that an employee has taken home and played that copy of the game.
Edit: spelling
It's not like discs wear out. As long as it works and still has any codes that came with it. If it bothers you ask for a shrink wrapped copy. At least at my local stores the staff is pretty helpful.
My wife was once employed by a large glass warehouse in the midwest. Her job?
1. Open box of glassware from Poland.
2. Open box that says Made In USA with company logo.
3. Transfer glassware from Box A to Box B.
4. Seal Box B, put Box A into bundler.
Mind you, this is s a regional operation, so diming them out ain't gonna help anyone. Management said this was legal and that building was there for 20 years doing it and its still in operation today.
When I was younger, I had a summer job at a bakery. Everything was frozen but the whole community thinks it’s homemade. They get away with it by saying everything is baked fresh daily - that’s technically true, but it was frozen first. They wouldn’t even use their dumpsters to throw out the packaging and boxes.
Where I live, it's now mandatory to disclose if the baked product was frozen before baking.
Skin care companies make a butt load of money because the manufacturing costs of their products usually are just a few bucks. AHA for example just costs about a Dollar and a couple of cents then they are sold as $20 or more. I worked in supply chain so I handle the manufacturing, logistics and warehousing part of a well known skin care company.
Housing associations (UK)
Many of the staff laugh at their tenants who are struggling.
If your housing association runs care homes as well the office staff also look down at care staff. They also think it's disgusting that you ask for a living wage.
I f*****g hated working for one, bunch of pricks.
Audit is a sham. It is required by law for large companies so they pay auditors to sign off on their accounts. Even though it is supposed to be independent review, it is more like auditors work for the company they are auditing. Majority of the audit is spent on fixing the cr**py accounting done by the companies. And when audit finds something that is beyond fixing, nothing happens. It gets buried and everyone pretends nobody saw nothing. I have seen many huge f**k ups that got covered by the audit partner with lies. There was this company that generated 2 mil of operating profit for the year, which is fine for the company of their size. But during the audit I have found the problem with their underlying accounting system that was undercharging the company liability by a little each time. This was going on for number of years, basically their whole accounting was wrong. Ran this through technical department, through directors and talked with the partner and they all agreed that this is wrong and we have to adjust the financial statements. But what they did not realise was the size of an error. Once we finished calculations it came close to 6 mil euros of unreported liability. There is only one fix you can do here at this time - expense it all and report 4 mil loss for the year. Thats where the audit magic started to happen. Partner has immediately took over and said they will raise this with the board of directors. They never have but they met with ceo for total of 5 minutes and told us that they discussed the issue at lengths and it is fine as is this year. They will make changes next year to do proper calc going forward (they most certainly have not done so). This is just an example of black and white case that got buried, but the amount of fudging going on during audits to make the accounts look fine is scary. Any of the big scandals that get into media and people asking why did audit not find it, you can be sure that they have. But they were told by superiors thats its actually fine.
I worked in advertising for a large publisher. We used to sell digital ads called a fireplace (essentially three ads that surround the page on a desktop screen). The publisher would sell the impressions (how many times someone sees a page/ad) of these ads x3 for each page, instead of them being one page view.
When I pointed out that this was fraudulent I was “made redundant” with a fat payout as long as I kept my mouth shut.
That was at least 5 years ago now though so…
When one big name appliance manufacturer purchased another, their lab techs noticed something odd in their audit reports regarding product failures. All products are designed so that when they fail they do so safely. Any time it does not do so is notable.
The techs noticed that the number of failures was well below what could be expected, it raised red flags. It turns out that their number of failures was higher than recorded. The executives had ordered that fires be officially recorded as *phyre* and leaks be recorded as *leeks*.
As the buying company assumed the liabilities of the selling company, the buying company has turned around and sue the selling company and the company executives personally. In the end they could stand to win back all that they paid, retain the company and receive personal and punitive damages from the execs.
I believe the case is still before the courts.
Hunter Douglas. The extremely expensive shutters are made of compressed cardboard.
And your bonus for exceeding projected manufacturing goals is a pizza party.
And Walt is a d**k.
Oh, Window blinds. There used to be( (probably still is) a large UK company advertising heavily. I did once call them to ask for a quote, but they absolutely refused to do so without a home visit. I lead them on for ages over the telephone, assuring them that I did actually want to put extending blonds or whatever on all my windows, plus in the conservatory etc. but that I was very rarely and unpredictably at home, making an appointment difficult, so could they please, pretty please, give me at least a vague idea of costs? When they eventually did I nearly laughed him off the phone. It was literally three or four times what I could buy a much better product for at a local builders yard/DIY shop. Even if I paid someone else to fit them they'd have worked out half the price of the crappy branded product.
High end, partner leveled lawyers do not care about your case. They will simply give it to the underlings and blame whoever worked on it if something goes wrong.
Basically.. Corporate lawyers take all the glory and have job security as long as paralegals and low level lawyers do the work/blame.
CARMAX will sell a car that they have to tow from place to place, or get it into "good enough to start" condition, so you fill out the loan paperwork and get into a lemon that dies as soon as you get it home.
Theyll blame it on you, and people are very afraid of taking a company like CARMAX to court over lemon laws.
They exploit that enmass
SO many things incorrect here. First one is that Lemon Laws do not apply to used vehicles. Second is that Carmax has a automatic 90-day repair policy and a 30 day return policy. Literally the safes place to buy a used car.
Work in mortgages. Your initial closing disclosure is hot garbage designed to meet legal requirements. The company can and will increase fees on you and will find a way to pass it onto you. That was my entire job. Finding ways to pass fees onto customers.
Don’t use strategy consultants.
The managers are megalomaniacs who have been in the game too long to realize they just faked it ‘till they made it (made it meaning they ended up in cushy, well-paid jobs - not that they stopped faking it). Most of the work is done by overworked and underappreciated interns/newly graduated consultants who have no clue what they are doing half the time anyway.
Almost everything on a quote to work on your car is negotiable.
Most dealerships use matrix pricing on parts. That means you’re paying more than MSRP. Most manufacturers have a 32-35% markup on parts.
So if the part costs the dealership $100, average MSRP would be bout $135. I’ve seen dealerships that did a cost + 100% matrix so the customers would be charged $200 for that same part.
Don’t be afraid to ask for a discount.
Or avoid the dealership altogether and support your locally owned and operated repair shop?
Oh! I used to work for a big-in-my-region farm company that grew berries as well as bought berries from other farms, they packaged them and sold frozen berries under their own name as well as for Fred Meyer, Trader Joe’s, Albertsons, etc.
The farms they bought berries from were supposed to get certain checks done before we would accept their fruit (make sure their water source didn’t contain E.coli, test the soil, have people look through the berries to remove bugs, prove their fertilizer & pesticides were approved by my company, etc.) and, at the end of the season, maybe two of the fifty or so farms we bought from had actually done everything. We’re just happily letting people get rawdogged by their frozen fruit.
so a lot of people in Asia do business like this, it's like an all day thing sometimes maybe even goes on for a few days. they take you to some luxury dinner you eat the best kind of food, then you go to some luxury spa, massage, like tea time or whatever, and basically fun s**t could even be bowling in some giant high rise. then they take you to some VIP brothel only for the executives, you have all the sex you want, then chill inside the brothel which has soft beds with TV attached to it in a sleeping room with all the other VIP members. you get honeyd**ked into giving them the deal, works 99% of the time.
The secret sauce at Bronco Burgers is just ketchup and mayonnaise.
Used to work at Staples. We had a conversion report that came out every day. Basically, it was to monitor foot traffic in the store. Every single person who walked into our door had to be converted into a customer. No window shopping allowed. Even if you had to sell them a cheap item, it counted.
God, I don't miss retail.
I "window shopped" many times in Staples. Rarely did anybody even acknowledge my presence, and when they did it was just a quick "Can I help you find something?" "No I'm good." "Okay, let me know if you need help."
Half the IT systems in the oil & gas industry were built in the 70's and 80's and have a handful of consultants that can even touch them. These guys get paid hundreds of thousands a year to be on retainer and sometimes go years without coming in.
Worked with dozens of companies in the sector and yet to see a publicly listed one where this isnt the case. At the top they all pretty much use SAP....but there's some wild s**t underneath that feeding information into SAP from a computer thats lucky if it runs DOS. I've seen floors of personnel dedicated to manually inputting that s**t.
The “secret” to Chickfila chicken is just pickle juice and pressure cookers.
Bose does not make great speakers. They’re loud, and we have a bias towards loudness when comparing audio, but they’re not good.
Bank tellers are rated and rewarded based solely on how many new account leads they can sell. Nobody cares about their speed or accuracy so long as you meet some minimum threshold. They exist to sell you products you probably don’t need by searching through your recent transactions.
Also, Washington Mutual’s “sale” to Chase was b******t.
I’ve had a few different jobs in the last 20-something years…
Peloton has more than one manufacturer for the bikes and other equipment etc…. One manufacturer is better than the other and when you call in with a broken bike etc they know which one you have and so does the tech fixing it. Warehouse Employees used to pick their own bikes so they can make sure they get the “better” one . FYI Always get the warranty!
In a lot of cases, "premium" liquor is the same stuff with a different label. Lots of "small batch, handmade" stuff is bought in bulk from MGP, filtered and bottled. They're not handmaking anything and a small batch is tens of thousands of gallons.
A significant chunk of the UK Internet used to be secured by a single Cisco router, you could access it publicly, and everyone knew the password which was also a common dictionary word. I'm astounded it never got broken into (at least to my knowledge).
This was back in the 1990s, don't even bother looking for it now I'm sure it's not there any more!
why break in when the door is open? we will just scrap all the data passing through said router :)
Oh, I've got so many... I used to work for Apple.
The one that probably surprises people the most is that the level of support you get totally varies depending on how wealthy you are and how likely an issue can come back to bite the company in the a*s.
To explain, there are varying levels of support. You have consumer support, then you have support for Enterprise and Education, Apple internal support (called Partner Relations, but is only applicable to employees and vendors of a certain level, in most cases) and finally... VIP Support.
Consumer support is just how it sounds. Any regular person that can call the 1-800 number can get help. Nothing special.
E&E requires a contract. Someone buying 15 devices for their business means nothing to Apple. You can complain all you want about how "your business needs this", the call will end and someone will take a good 3 minutes to laugh at you and tell their boss. The contracts are really hefty too, on the low end it's usually around $250,000 for tech and services for 3 years. Some universities have terms that last for a decade and are several million dollars though.
PR covers a few things. Some of it is worker support, like a store has a tech issue and needs to report it, but it also covers Safety escalations (if your phone ever shocked you or your Mac smells smokey, they get involved) and Carpe Facto escalations (they cover widespread issues and develop solutions to them by working alongside engineers and programmers), but most of the time they never talk to customers, only Apple employees. When they do talk to a regular consumer, it's a big deal, and likely being done to avoid any legal issues.
VIP Support is basically what everyone thinks Apple should do for everyone. However, it's pretty much only available by being connected in some way. Celebrities, executives, various other rich people... they get treated special. When you sign up, you get assigned a special support ID and a dedicated Advisor, so you pretty much just have one person that helps you constantly. That person will maybe have 3-5 people, at most, they're assigned to, and they're paid a handsome salary to be on call for them 24/7.
If Taylor Swift has someone call in at 2:45 in the morning because she needs someone to trigger the Find My alarm for her phone... you've gotta get your a*s up and do it.
If The Rock's phone gets broken during a workout because a weight fell on it accidentally, even at 4 in the f*****g morning, he can have someone call in and get a new phone sent to him directly in about 2 hours.
If Spongebob's voice actor, Tom Kenny, wants someone to help him know how to connect his iPhone to a projector in the middle of the day... he can have someone talk it through with him step by step and they'll even go and speak to the projector manufacturer themselves if something goes wrong.
Outside of special promotional offers (some of which are in gift bags at events like the Academy Awards, Grammys, etc.), it's generally a paid service... when I worked there it was $50,000 per year but I'd imagine it's gotten more expensive since then.
I work for a major Big 10 university and Apple will not change a single thing in their contracts with us regardless of how many devices we sell in our store or how many licenses for Apple software are sold.
My first assignment at my new job for a fortune 500 company was to hack a security patch from slightly newer but still well past its end-of-life version of PHP into our own ancient version of PHP that we'd been custom building ourselves because we couldn't get it pre-built for our operating system. Because we "cared" about security enough to cover our asses for a handful of high profile vulnerabilities, but not enough to run modern software.
This wasn't just used in some old machine off in the corner that ran a report once a month, this was an integral part of our core SaaS platform. They assigned me this despite having no indication that I knew anything about C code, I'd been hired for a job that included some light scripting and automation. If I was dumb and had screwed it up, it'd have been a Sev1 incident and quite expensive. If I was smart and nefarious, I could've hacked _anything_ into that binary. I guess they judged well enough, because I did it without breaking things.
Public transportation company, most of the buses that were active back then havent passed inspection for about 10 years, and the "inspection" approved the buses to be on the field everytime.
Until one of the buses braking air system failed and ran over a couple of people while the driver was uphill. Everyone in the company knew these types of practices and multiple times we would report this to HR and authorities they never replied.
As soon as that accident happend there was an internal investigation by the authorities they found out the reports from the employees were not investigated internally or reported accordingly since HR never looked at them and now currently the poor bus driver is currently in jail for that s**t. And the company went bankrupt in less than 2 months afterwards.
It was a s**t show.
This was from a few years back but top flight golf balls are the exact same as the nice Callaway golf balls
Branding was the only difference.
That the flour Domino’s uses is so gross I have never eaten a pizza there ever since I worked for a certain transportation company that transported said flour 🤮
Blockbusters charity tins on the counter weren't charity tins. They were to balance the tills at the end of each day with a made up charity on them.
Friend used to work there, not a single penny ever got donated.
Every Blockbuster's nation-wide or just your friend's? Or was it a friend of a friend?
The dirty little secret of Silicon Valley is churn. At peak startup boom, you’d have companies valued at billions of dollars with something like 30% YoY customer retention. Which means that enterprises were spending millions of dollars on software licenses that their employees rarely used. In one startup I worked at, an account was considered “healthy” ( or unlikely to churn) if 5% of seats were utilized at least twice per month.
Your 401k money might be held at a large reputable company, but it’s likely managed by a different and much smaller company you’ve never heard of. And maybe that small company’s IT sucks so much that your social security number is stored in raw text on multiple very old and insecure databases.
Dont trust best before dates. Its all about selling the product. If the production date is not suitable for the buyer, it will just stay in the cold room and be processed on the day that will match the expire date (21 days from production)
So let's say something is produced today (February 16) and is set to expire on March 18, but the buyer (some grocery store) wants it to expire March 21, the producing company will just let the goods sit in cold storage for 3 days before putting on best before label.
I call bs on this. I used to work in food manufacturing. The date is printed in the carton while it's still flat, then it's pulled and glued and the product is shoved inside. The absolute headache and wasted time it would take to put the date on a finished box at a later time is insane, the line would have to go at maintenance speed and hand fed, which is glacial. Manufacturers are looking at the most profit, and they just give it to a distributer who's going to move it the fastest.
A lot of fancy wine is the same wine as the cheap stuff until it gets bottled and labeled. I used to service a larger wine maker as a route driver, and a guy showed me how the whole bottling process worked.They switched labels in the middle of a run, and he said the labels just tripled the price of the wine coming out of the barrel.
Former Byrne dairy cashier when I was in college.
If you live near a Byrne Dairy (New York and North east U.s.) there is a good chance that the Walmart milk is also Byrne Dairy milk. Them and Stewart's are the top milk providers in that region.
Stewart's and Byrne Dairy also have a huge rivalry .
Don't get ice from the ice machine, they don't clean it often enough at Byrne convenience stores.
It's appropriate to ask the last time the coffee or soup was changed. Coffee is supposed to be refreshed every 30 min on a busy day. The soup sometimes gets icky and they just stir it rather than change it.
Buy the Byrne dairy thermos. Coffee is suddenly a lot more affordable with the discount you get. It's worth it .
If the pizza looks dried out in the case, don't get it, they should have thrown it out an hour ago.
I live in the northeast US and I've never heard of Byrne Dairy. Where I live, it's definitely Hood country.
GDPR is more of a guideline really. It's been around for about 7 years, yet I've never seen any client suing over their personal info, or any entity trying to enforce it.
Sites/apps/games keep insane amounts of personal info of their users, that go back 15 years+
its not a guideline its the law you can actually get a criminal record and unlimited fine for breaking it
I used to work at five guys. Complete scam one burger was $12 without fries or a drink after fries and a drink it’s $20 and the fries we could give you a whole bag of fries and you would still be overpaying. And they SEVERELY underpay their employees. We could’ve all made $20 an hour and they would still be in a very good profit margin but underpayed us “because you make tips as well”. And lied about the employee average wage on the front door. Another time someone OD’d in the bathroom, died, was resuscitated and the whole time we stayed open so all the customers saw a dead man getting CPR in the bathroom. If you had a mental issue, they didn’t care, panic attack? Didn’t care. One of the my coworkers who had been working there for 14 years tried to get workers comp because she fell on a hole in the floor and couldn’t even start the process “because she didn’t have a valid claim.” I could go on but I think this is enough. Best of wishes to you all.
Unrelated but I went to a Five guys once in PA, USA. I'm Canadian and this was years before they opened in Canada. Asked for a veggie burger and literally got a bun with lettuce, tomato, onions and ketchup... Veggie patties definitely existed back then just not at Five Guys i guess!
BP is quickly losing its international outlook.
Load More Replies... A lot of these are meaningless if they don't name names. "I work for a health insurance company that blah blah blah." They are too vague to be interesting and can easily be made up. Watch: I work for a major fast food chain. The secret to our secret sauce? It's ketchup and mayonnaise. See? I just made that up. I work for a major software company - the password on our server is "password". I work for a car manufacturer. The seats are stuffed with recycled mattress fluff.
People afraid of getting sued for liable or slander or whichever is written vs spoken. A lot have been around a long time like brand name vs store brand food...but a lot of this is probably true for most places, of course they're going to maximize profit and cut corner, every business does that
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I was literally going to go to Home Depot then to Whole Foods to get some salmon for dinner. I shouldn't have read this. Ignorance is bliss.
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BP is quickly losing its international outlook.
Load More Replies... A lot of these are meaningless if they don't name names. "I work for a health insurance company that blah blah blah." They are too vague to be interesting and can easily be made up. Watch: I work for a major fast food chain. The secret to our secret sauce? It's ketchup and mayonnaise. See? I just made that up. I work for a major software company - the password on our server is "password". I work for a car manufacturer. The seats are stuffed with recycled mattress fluff.
People afraid of getting sued for liable or slander or whichever is written vs spoken. A lot have been around a long time like brand name vs store brand food...but a lot of this is probably true for most places, of course they're going to maximize profit and cut corner, every business does that
Load More Replies... I was literally going to go to Home Depot then to Whole Foods to get some salmon for dinner. I shouldn't have read this. Ignorance is bliss.
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