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It’s quite likely that, at some point in time, you were asked to keep a secret at work. You may have even signed a non-disclosure agreement or NDA. They are very common documents that employees have to sign… as well as people working with sensitive data and clients.
However, some of the sensitive information you’re forced to keep is beyond weird. Members of the AskReddit online community finally revealed the industry secrets they had to stay silent about. We’ve collected their wildest stories to share with you, including those from people whose NDAs have finally expired.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
I'm a former copy-editor, I caught a case of egregious plagiarism by a very well respected author. Clever enough to avoid the software that can be used, unfortunately for him I noticed the syntax shift and went full Poirot investigation mode. I got paid a big bonus lump sum of money and my wage was immediately increased by 50 percent forever for averting what could have been catastrophic for the reputation of the Publishing House and financially damaging if the other author had ever ever sued them. I noticed it the same week it was due to be sent to print. Plagiarism is far more common than people realise and it can, in the worst case scenario, bankrupt a Publishing House. The author in question who stole another's work was "blacklisted" for life when I dug out the original source and stopped the book going to print (ever) for this very reason.
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#2
I used to train Facebooks moderation AI back in 2016ish era. all of the conspiracy theories about fb purposely targeting content is false and was human error. I saw the rise of the Qanon far right in real time and one of the biggest challenges was containing all of the bots that would spread that information.
Working there made me realize that MAGA was never a real political party (fb had ways to decipher who was a real person and who wasn’t) and that a much more powerful group(s) had almost full control over digital content through bot farms. We would flag 1 account and 3 more would appear with slightly different language/content to avoid chain banning.
That role made me realize how powerful a clever person using AI, information, money, and bot farms are. Someone controlling outrage, as in creating it for both sides, can do a lot of things online or offline.
I firmly believe that outrage content should not be monetized after that experience.
#3
Zinus memory foam mattresses are made with fiberglass fibers. If you open a zipper on the mattress or take off the removable outer cover then your home will be exposed to the fibers and it may ruin a lot of your belongings if not caught fast enough.
I don’t have an NDA but soon their class action law suit will be over and after settling then I will not be allowed to publicly tarnish their reputation. Until then though I can say what I want.
In a nutshell, an NDA is a legally-binding contract that establishes a confidential relationship. It essentially stops you from sharing sensitive information about your company or client. This way, you’re forced to keep your promise not to leak anything you agreed to keep secret. NDAs protect the client’s or the company’s interests and aim to avoid embarrassing them.
Typically, non-disclosure agreements will outline what you can and cannot do, as well as what happens if you break the rules of the agreement. These documents also tend to have an expiration date.
However, NDAs aren’t perfect. They can create an atmosphere of distrust at work. And if the terms are too constraining, employers might push away talented industry professionals who would otherwise love to work for them. On top of that, some employees might find their future job prospects limited if their NDAs prohibit them from seeking similar work for a particular duration.
#4
Elsevier, the company that makes a lot of the compulsory textbooks for University, commissioned scientists to develop a new book binding glue designed to fail after 3 years, as they hated that there was a second hand market.
#5
A school in London had to pay me £35,000 compensation after telling me I was taking to long to recover from cancer treatment and that I should leave my position.
They initially offered mye £5,000.
Even my solicitor said I should probably accept when we got to an offer of £15,000. But I was angry and very stubborn.
Huddo's sister 13 hours ago
There is an Australian woman who recently lost a fairwork commission trial after being fired for taking 'too many sick days' while battling multiple conditions. I don't understand how she lost, when she must have had doctor's notes.
#6
We knew at least a month in advance that Lehman bros was going under and that the banks were going to cause the housing crisis of 2008. Couldn’t say a word thanks to nda’s. Funny part is even knowing, I still couldn’t save my own house.
Austzn 6 hours ago
Remember folks: Their mastermind "business plan" was that a severely underfunded insurance policy was supposed to be a stop-gap to the sub-prime losses they were trying to sweep under the rug. This is why strong financial regulation is so important for stable markets and overall economies, not just for top percenters who don't deserve it in the first place. 😤
One of the best things that you can do before signing a non-disclosure agreement (or any important document) is to thoroughly read it. If any parts seem unclear or vague, ask your client or employer to elaborate. You can always take a pause and get a second opinion about the contract. Get someone with a legal background to weigh in. You shouldn’t feel rushed to sign anything.
That being said, NDAs are a fairly common practice. Refusing to sign any non-disclosure agreements out of principle would likely mean that you won’t get a good job with prospects at a major company. Again, if you have any concerns about the document, voice them to your employer. Have an honest discussion about the need for an NDA.
#7
A friend of mine was paralyzed while riding a Trek. He and his family signed the NDA because they needed the money to pay for healthcare. The quick release in the front tire was faulty and the front tire came off while he was going down a hill, he was thrown, and instantly paralyzed. The lawyer found out that Trek had paid off multiple people who were paralyzed by the same quick release issue and was able to get a very large settlement. I eventually found out about the NDA pushed by Trek and haven’t bought one since. I always share this story when I hear that someone is looking to buy a mountain bike.
Luke || Kira (he/she) 8 hours ago
The company did the math and came to a conclusion that it'd be cheaper for them to pay for the settlements than to fix the flaw in their product
#8
I was a marine cabinet maker and worked on superyachts. I can tell you all the hidden compartments I built into things to store weapons, money, valuables, etc. Mainly used when transiting or near places with pirates.
My favorite was a pop out in the leg of a table.
UnclePanda 6 hours ago (edited)
I found half a dozen cunning hiding locations in my 95 year old house, and added half a dozen more.
#9
There are some natural gas pipes in the US that are not documented in official records. No conspiracy, just bad record keeping from many years ago.
There are also many natural gas pipes that should be replaced immediately for safety reasons.
The general state of the pipeline infrastructure is deteriorating and virtually no one cares.
I worry about an increase in natural gas explosions in residential areas in the coming years.
Austzn 6 hours ago
I used to know someone who did regulatory work for these and he confirmed a lot of horror stories about this infrastructure. He would say funny things like, "Look, the old wooden pipes were only used at a low pressure." and "It is true that there are active functioning pipelines that we do not know much about, including their exact location.....until they blow-out."
Have you ever had to keep a work secret or sign a non-disclosure agreement, dear Pandas? What is the worst thing about your industry you know that others might be oblivious about?
If your NDAs have expired, what sorts of sensitive information were you forced to avoid talking about? Have you ever refused to sign an NDA because of how restrictive its terms were? Have you ever broken an NDA before its expiration date, and if so, why? If you feel like sharing your experiences, you can do so in the comments.
#10
I worked at Apple on the Apple Maps team. One of our contractors accidentally deleted all of Australia once.
#11
Why were the original Nokia mobile phones (think 3110) so durable? Testing.
During some excursion to one of the production sites I saw the pneumatic testing rig that would lift the phone's mechanical prototype *psshht* to some height, *bonk* let it free fall to the ground, and repeat the cycle some 10000 times overnight.
The early prototypes of course disintegrated to smithereens, but for later prototypes Nokia had to replace the floor with a more durable one.
#12
Sometimes, when you contact support agents for mobile games, we can 100% fix the issue and restore things you have lost due to game bugs, but you didn't spend enough money, so we were told not to help you. "Policy" changes depending on your spending tier.
#13
Before Redbox swapped to chip and pin credit card readers, circa 2021, the old swipe style readers stored your credit card info in a text file. I mean plain text, on the computer in the kiosk, that anyone could have accessed.
When they upgraded, there was zero plan to go into each computer and delete that file. There are 30k+ Redbox kiosks floating around with a file of credit card numbers and names to go with them.
#15
I worked for a prominent children’s cancer charity. I documented and brought incontrovertible proof of over a decade’s worth of misappropriating funds and resources, strangely stealing both from the billionaires we try to woo/placate and especially the children we’re supposed to serve by cutting their enrichment repeatedly for ‘special projects’ of the directors and ceo’s friends….special projects that continue year after year with no outcome. I brought this to hr and the ceo. Hr tried to stop me. Hr got fired. CEO finally had to meet with me. I’m out now, but I dearly wish I could warn Mrs. b and the billionaires how their money is being misused, and warn the families in need they are essentially props to the people gripping the budget and narrative.
liam newton-harding 9 hours ago
You can warn them, and everyone else, even if you signed a NDA...NDA's do NOT cover crimes.
#16
That as many as 10 different labels of paint, each with different price points and warranties, and brand names can come out of the same tank of paint.
Stop the filling line, pull out a pack of labels with one name, slap in a new pack with a different name and off you go.
#17
I helped cover up a radioactive leak and lied about it.
In 2012, I was a young physicist at Gustave Roussy Hospital working in internal radiotherapy. We treated patients by injecting them with radioactive substances and then imaging them with PET or SPECT. Because the patients were radioactive afterward, they had to remain in their rooms.
The radioactivity left their bodies mainly through urine, so their urine was also radioactive and was stored in containers on the lower floors till radioactivity goes below a threshold, and then emptied.
The problem was that on that day… the containers were full.
The decision was made waaaay above me that they were to be emptied while still fairly radioactive (and diluted with 3,000 litres of water) into the main Parisian wastewater stream. This was apparently done within procedure and happened regularly. The ASN and the water company were informed, and everything was officially cleared.
The issue was that a journalist got wind of it. To avoid public panic, the official explanation given was that it had been an accident caused by a broken valve.
The ministry of defence, whom knew about it, still decided to replace the containers to new one.
You can read about it here
David Paterson 14 hours ago
Its half life is less than two hours. So the radioactivity has decayed to safe levels in less than 24 hours.
#18
USA ER doc here - no NDA but still something people don’t talk about. Hospital staff absolutely discriminate based on race, gender, sexuality or any other metric, and there is literature to show this. If you’re overweight, female, Black or just generally not-white, you are less likely to get pain medication, antibiotics, procedures or other treatments you need based on any number of excuses. Of course, being a jerk is the biggest deciding factor in all of those circumstances, but the other stuff matters too.
But here’s the big thing: the hospital will bend over backwards to support any staff member or administrator who shows up as a patient. It goes without saying that someone who works at that hospital would receive preferential treatment (as with any industry), but I remember as a resident treating a guy who was having a heart attack and the cath lab staff literally beat me to the room. That NEVER happens. Sure, he was having a heart attack but I’ve literally seen patients wait HOURS before going up, and that’s if you can convince the cardiologist of what’s happening (spoiler: if you’re a female doctor you’re less likely to do that because many docs are sexist AF). Shortly after I saw men in suits around his room and learned this was the father of one of the hospital administrators.
If you’re female or a minority, never go to the ED alone if you can avoid it. Have a family member or friend there to help advocate for you and clarify the situation. Remember that most of us are genuinely trying to help, but there are some who might try to write off your concerns for a faster resolution. Never be afraid to ask the doctor to slow down and listen to your concerns.
Lila Allen 3 hours ago
Also pro tip in the US. If they aren't doing testing or providing treatment you believe they should say " I would like you to note in my chart that you are deciding to not move forward with any testing or treatment despite symptoms XYZ. I will then need a printed copy of these chart notes with your signature" They are legally required to note in your chart if you say this and they know it's the first step towards filing malpractice to have chart notes where they say they aren't testing or providing treatment. It's proof of negligence. They will most likely reverse course and offer testing or treatment. If they don't you still have them on record as refusing to provide tests and treatment.
#19
Activision, after merging with Blizzard in 2008, starting cooking the books like crazy to avoid paying taxes.
Dutch/Irish sandwich with 3 employees in NL, underreporting profits,...
They got caught and had to pay a 9 figure fine in France, as well as having to give each employee a decade worth of profit sharing (as profits were underreported) to then, 2 years later, fire everyone. Still during the Covid aftermath, after a year of record profits, due to "economic reasons".
All while having more money than they could spend.
#20
Worked at JPMorgan.
Innocent people’s accounts were sometimes closed because fraud teams and investigators did not look deeply enough into transaction activity and customer information. I blame the company for not giving employees enough time to investigate and analyze cases properly. They are running through accounts and transactional history, due to time crunch and output metrics.
For example, they might see a “student” receiving $10,000 a month and assume money laundering, when in reality the funds were coming from relatives or a family member who was a doctor helping cover tuition and living expenses.
These somewhat rare unfortunate situations happened regularly, and over time the team became desensitized to them.
If your account was ever blocked or closed for no clear reason, this may be part of why.
#21
The winners of the ad campaign our agency created were not actually randomly selected. We just looked directly at the database and selected the silliest names we could find.
#22
I worked for a pyramid scheme that sold fake phone contracts and pretended they signed people up to new home phone and mobile plans (didn't find out it was fake until after I left). But really just took their money and invested heavily in customer support that would send you in a loop until you gave up.
At one of our corporate events they were giving out those huge novelty cheques to the "top earners" (remember pyramid scheme) it got so ridiculous, I'm talking into the millions for monthly earning, they had to stop the event because it was looking too suspicious to anyone with a brain.
The company eventually got found out but because they operated under shell corps they just changed the name and moved on under a different name. The kicker on top of all that is they called it Cobra, like the bad guys in GI Joe Cobra.
David Paterson 15 hours ago
"customer support that would send you in a loop until you gave up". Hmm.
#23
No NDA but something i learned that I probably shouldn't have. I was working in an aircraft Hangar that would strip and respray full commercial planes. One day I noticed a fleet of Boeing employees setting up on the Hangar floor and when i asked why they said that one of the new planes had a hard landing and when they stripped it down they noticed cracks running the whole way along the hull.
I said presumably it gets dismantled and investigated for weaknesses ......they looked at me and were like Nah shes headed to Africa now. Basically its too much money to scrap/write off so they send it to a country where if something goes wrong its not as big a news story.
Every industry cuts corners and hides things, even the ones you pray shouldn't.
#24
Much of what you hear on the radio on call in shows, prank shows, and general reality segments is fake and performed by actors. I was a contractor for a company that hired actors for this purpose. It was long enough ago that I don’t really remember all of what I did, but I clearly remember playing a person getting pranked by a radio show host. And I remember a scenario where another actor and myself had to pretend to have gone on a date that the show set up. The first one was a recording to air later (so we tried a bunch of different reactions and lines) and the second was live on air. It’s usually structured improvisation with a just a few details set.
#25
MPLC stands for motion picture licensing company. They are the video version of ASCAP. They call companies claiming they need to pay for an extremely expensive yearly license in order to show live tv in bar, hotels or anywhere that’s a public place inside your business.
It’s all a scam. A giant lie. You don’t need to buy it. It’s not a legal requirement in the USA.
#26
Did background work on a reality dating show once. Producers literally told two contestants to go outside and “accidentally” start an argument again because the cameras missed it the first time.
Norfolk and good 8 hours ago
We all know by now that most, if not all, reality TV shows have scenes added in for "entertainment purposes." Most of Britain's Got Talent is scripted in my opinion.
#27
The small company I worked for called itself "AI powered" for years and received hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of government grants for it despite doing literally nothing related to AI.
#28
Walked into a filming of The Great Food Truck Race where a guy hopped out of his truck while the line was long and pretended his generator failed. It was clearly staged and a man with a clipboard followed me down the sidewalk trying to get me to sign an NDA. Get lost, clipboard man.
#29
Job Centres in the UK used to have a points-based system for getting people into work. You'd get more points based on the clients' gender, ethnicity, and whether they had any disabilities.
Edit - this has blown up so I'll clarify. A healthy white male was worth 1 point. A disabled ethnic female was worth 12 points.
I just wanted to make it clear that I believe there should be zero discrimination, at all, across the board. We do, however, live in an imperfect world.
#30
Autism Centers of America, also Autism Centers of (State name) provides extremely poor quality of services to their clients, often shutters locations without notifying staff, and is notorious for committing insurance fraud (multiple pending cases). Avoid at all costs!!!
They also create fake positive reviews wherever possible.
#31
I worked on content moderation back in 2018 and your WhatsApp messages are not really private even though they say it’s encrypted end to end.
Lila Allen 3 hours ago
Yeah there is no such thing as privacy. Snapchat doesn't delete anything. Neither do ring or any other cameras. They won't make footage accessible to you without paying , but they still collect it. Check out how fast the " non operational camera footage" was recovered by the FBI at the beginning of the Nancy Guthrie investigation.
#32
Not technically under an NDA but I know something the company doesn’t want the public to know so I feel like it fits. I worked for Petsmart years ago and every holiday season they sell Chance and Lucky plushies for a donation drive. You buy one of the plushies for $5 and Petsmart will take it and donate it to a hospital or police station or whatever. The plushies cost Petsmart about $0.25 each, so every “donation” is $4.75 in Petsmarts pocket, as well as a tax write off since they’re donations. To top it off, all the plushies that don’t sell get donated regardless. Morally it’s pretty reprehensible, profiting off of donations to children hospitals and humanitarian shelters, especially when if you didn’t spend $5 on one it would go there regardless.
#33
I worked for a budget airline, we'd get a bonus for every "oversized" cabin bag a passenger had.
#34
Some Lowes stores haven't cleaned their a/c units in 20 years and you breathe mold every time you shop there.
#35
I worked for a major airline and when your flight is "delayed due to mechanical issues" it's sometimes just because they oversold and need time to figure out who to bump. the plane is fine. the math just isn't mathing and they need an excuse that won't make people riot at the gate.
DC 1 hour ago
That they even are allowed to oversell is beyond me. You buy a plane ticket, or train, usually in order to get somewhere on a specific date, to do something at that specific date. They supply that, offer it to you, you buy it, and yet won't get anywhere? NEVER accept that! Make it hurt them. Brake as much as you can so they can't operate their vehicle anymore, whatever it costs. Poke the eyes of everybody touching you trying to remove you from a plane or train or whatever vehicle because they, greedily so, sold more tickets than can. They can order a Taxi, or charter another small plane, for those to be left behind, if they chose to gamble on not needing to.
#36
I worked on a certain sc-fi show that starred a male and female duo who worked for the FBI.
On a location shoot in a heritage building, the male lead was supposed to kick in a fake door we had made. He ended up kicking in one of the real location doors and got us banned from using that location in the future.
I also worked on another show where one of the lead actors had a mental breakdown and we had to shoot the last two episodes without him. There were lots of shots of his body double's back, as well as a couple deep fake shots where his face got pasted on in post. Watching the show, you might not notice, but if you go in with the actual knowledge, it's obvious as hell.
Im being vague because my NDAs don't technically expire, we just get to a point where no one cares.
#37
Worked at a pharmacy a long time ago. Every employee was required to monitor the expiration date of a certain medicine category (usually seniors pharmacist would be responsible for psychiatric meds, a junior pharmacists for antibiotics and technicians would split the rest). A new retail pharmacist manager was hired. She forgot to put erectile disfunction meds on the board when splitting the responsibilities. We ended up selling expired Viagra for a month or so. No clientes noticed.
#38
That generic and brand names are really, truly, absolutely the same things, just marketed differently.
Giraffe Sitter 6 hours ago
Can we stop this misleading claim? Yes, the active ingredient is the same, but the pills are often very different.
#39
Sports betting. Almost all users lose in the end. The few who win are those whales who bet huge amounts on low but sure odds. Yes, sometimes they lose, but they outweigh those losses with all their previous winnings. Besides, the biggest prize I've seen in many years was $180,000. Don't gamble.
#41
It hasn’t expired until she passes away.
Had a weekend fling/affair with a TV star in the 90s. Her people actually had me sign an NDA.
#42
Underwood Ranch is using red dye in their sauces but not reporting it on the ingredients list because they're exploiting a current loophole in regulations. They know it's wrong and unethical and that eventually they'll have to declare it or exclude it, and both will hurt their business, but they want to rake in as much cash as possible before then.
This is actually pretty obvious to anyone who actually looks at their sauces. You don't naturally get that atomic red color. Every other sauce that's anywhere near that shade has coloring additives listed.
Austzn 6 hours ago
I am so frustrated by that whole thing. The good hot sauce (Huy Fong) now doesn't have these better peppers and the pepper farm (underwood ranch) is a horrible company that has inferior hot sauce. You can't contact them for anything and their bottles frequently burst their seals in transit. I know, I have 1 of the 2 bottles that survived in my kitchen right now and it is neon-red and S***S!!
#43
The Hot Java web browser from Sun Microsystems (1997) was not written entirely in Java, despite the company's claims.
They used system calls to functions written in C to execute capabilities impossible in Java (most notably, printing).
I do worry that this revelation could shake the industry's faith in Sun Microsystems, but the truth must be told.
Giraffe Sitter 6 hours ago
I’ve had a SPARCstation on back order but now I’m going to cancel it. Thanks!
#44
I wrote the first panoramic photo stitching algorithm native to the iPhone. I sold it to Microsoft in 2008, and they used it to power their app called Photosynth. I sold the whole codebase and patent for $75,000. I used that money to purchase most of a house.
#45
Fishing ships don't [care] about protecting endangered species. Rare near-extinction coral? Drag that sea floor.
David Paterson 14 hours ago
Not a surprise. Sometimes they get caught and have to buy back their impounded ship.
#46
Capitol Hill is totally run by 20-year-old unpaid interns. The congressmen and their paid staff are rarely around or accessible.
Most of the constituent letters are disposed of, never even read by anyone. At most, they are skimmed by said unpaid interns.
Constituent phone calls are handled by the interns as well, and we just placate callers as best we can until they hang up. We never take notes or pass their complaints on. Only those representing super-important organizations get escalated to a (rarely-accessible) higher-up.
The press-releases written by 20-year-old unpaid interns would be printed verbatim, just with the jounalist's/congressman's/paid staff-member's name slapped on it rather than yours.
Source: Was a 20-year-old unpaid intern in a congressional office at Capitol Hill in 2009.
#47
A major trading house in the US lost all of the recordings for phone trades for about a 5 year period.
Because they then lacked the means of refuting any claims, the SOP was to just take the client's word for it and pay them out.
This was never publicized, as it would have caused a free for all of DK trades.
#48
Product “launch dates” in tech are often decided by marketing months before the product is actually ready. Engineers just sprint until something barely stable exists by that date.
#49
Walmart pays department managers to spy on competitors. They have a handheld scanner device they give you to go to other places and scan their price tags. Those all go into a big database to keep track of how much they should price their own products to keep people coming in. The workers are told if they meet resistance to never mention Walmart and deny any wrongdoing.
Stephanie A Mutti 5 hours ago
I don't see how this can be illegal or a suprise. Of course competitors want to know how the other is pricing stuff. If the store is open anyone can walk in and check out prices. It's why I got to Kroger now instead of Publix. I saw the prices were better at Kroger. Why shouldn't a competitor go and see what the public prices are???
#50
I had no real training or qualification as a "sandwich artist". It was just already printed on the sleeve of the tshirt they gave me and I was expected to keep my head down and just live the lie every day. Women, children, the health inspector, didn't matter.
#51
M&M's, the candy, make a huge deal that it is a trade secret how they put the M on the M&M. So let me tell you how they do it!
They use what's called a reverse offset rotogravure printer. The company that makes them was called ackley. They are about too wide and 20 ft. Long, and basically the printer puts the M&M's into these little slots and it goes across a rubber drum and that's how the M gets imprinted on it.
#52
The stuff you’re donating to a certain large “charity” is being raided and picked apart from “adults” to give to their kids or themselves long before it reaches those in need. Also, any roundup donations you make to retailers is just a tax write off and they usually don’t donate.
#53
When you buy a mattress from Saatva and they haul away your old one for free, it isn’t being recycled as advertised—it’s going straight to the local landfill. Despite what they claim on their own sustainability page, the mattresses also aren’t actually made in the U.S.; the components are manufactured overseas and simply assembled here.
The company also required call center employees to “whitewash” their names. The owners, who have been friends since childhood, run the business together and the culture reflects it.
And the pricing? The markup is enormous—around 50–60%. It’s all by design.
#54
In 2015, after its founder Fred Deluca passed away; Subway had a corporate meeting where they announced that they had reduced the quality of their food as low as they possibly could resulting in X amount of dollars being saved. I watched an entire arena of franchisee’s stand up and cheer like they had just won the lottery. It was terrifying.
Barbara Hill 13 hours ago
Why haven't I eaten at Subway since 2010. Horrible food that used to be good. And the stores smell like wet dogs.
#55
The Ferrari 296 GTB Challenge is sold at 750k Euro while to make it cost only around 280k. The hood latches are the same you can buy for 15euro each at a local racing car part store.
#56
Game company CEO I used to work for would pay for female worker toenail clippings. People were pretty sure he used to put them in his sandwich and eat them.
Coworker who was asked if she'd participate (in private) told me about it - she didn't do it technically but I'd give her mine to give to him and we'd split the commission.
Not making this up.
#57
Did some work for a game show and everything was 100% scripted. All the contestants were informed about the questions and had to give the pre-prepared answers in order to maximize entertainment value.
#58
Survivor feeds people off camera.
It's not much, but if people don't get enough food it violates the Geneva Conventions and given that they went after Among Us, they clearly don't mess around.
EDIT: Chill gang, this was over 20 years ago, sorry if my brain is a bit fuzzy on the details. You're right it was not the GC (which does a fuckton more than police who can use a red cross), it was the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. While there isn't a specific line about access to food, I believe they were concerned about the one referring to tortuous conditions (starving people).
#59
GoFundMe claims they make their money off of "tips" that patrons leave when they donate to a fundraiser. This is false.
They're really taking from the "payment processing fee" you get charged when you leave a donation. This means they profit from all the worst events, like catastrophic fires, medical fundraisers for peoples' cancers, funeral campaigns and so on. This company is so scummy. Donate directly to the person fundraising instead.
#60
I worked for a car company. A major one.
A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
#61
Starbucks hated unions back in 2015. We were told if we spoke of them we’d be fired. So I never spoke of them. I have the original manuals/training material for all things Starbucks. They also don’t embrace diversity as they claim.
#62
Not a secret that falls under NDA, but one most people do not know:
If you boycott spending money in online games but still play them you are not making a difference. A drop in total active players will mean more to a studio than a drop in revenue.
I have worked on 3 well known live service games. All of them would have emergency meetings if we saw a significant dip in engagement time. The largest fear in the industry right now is losing players to things like tiktok, easy to get into and endless content. We can work on converting people to buy stuff if they are in the game, we cannot as easily convince someone to leave tiktok to play our game.
#63
Signed so many in my career but two stick out:
1) Joey Lawerence can only be referred to by Joseph or Mr Lawerence on set and cannot be more than 50 yards from his workout equipment.
2) Bruce Campbell has absolutely no official riders in his contracts but he'll invent them if he doesn't like the people he's working with to be funny.
#64
No NDA but when I worked at McDonalds (a long long time ago), we would keep chicken products, veggie and fish burgers in the warming draw all day instead of the recommended 20 minutes. Also, when you made up burgers and put them on the rack you put a number behind it to say when they needed to be thrown out (usually 5 or 10 minutes). Managers would repeatedly change the numbers when it got quiet, so a burger could end up sat there for an hour before it was sold. I won’t eat in any fast food restaurant now but when I did I would always ask
For a slight variation, such as no onions, to ensure I got a fresh burger.
Final thing for McDonald’s, I started working there at 16. One night I did a close and the manager (M40s) told me I would be a lot more attractive if I had bigger chest. It was just me, him and another male. It really shook me up and I never did a close again.
Barbara Hill 13 hours ago
For the last 5 years the only thing I would eat from McDonalds was their fries. I figured if they F/up fries then I was done. They did and charged over 2 dollars for a large fry. You can buy a bag of potatoes for 5 dollars. a bag of frozen fries for around 2 dollars.
#65
Excedrin Express Gels work slower than regular Excedrin, "express" is a term by the FDA for dissolving under a set time, regular Excedrin does it faster as there is no gel shell on the outside of the pill.
"passing test" means no matter what you find as long as the values are in check its good to ship, even if you find a rat in a giant sugar crystal at the bottom of the liquid sugar tank that you made kids cough syrup out of.
#66
I used to consult for banks, and all my NDAs finished expiring this year. So here's one that's top of mind:
If you live paycheck to paycheck and often pay overdraft fees, you should check with your bank about their Posting Order to make sure you're not paying unnecessary fees. Banks can manipulate the order in which they process your transactions each night to maximize the fees you pay. They're not supposed to do this in a way is disadvantageous for the customer, but there is a lot of room for play and very little enforcement. Bank examiners don't always check this so I have seen some banks get away with some pretty raunchy stuff for a long time. And even when they do get caught, the examiners just make them change the setting and there's no compensation or whatever. There's really no law behind this - it's just examiners flexing their muscle or using the almost powerless now-largely-defanged CFPB if possible.
So what am I talking about exactly?
For example, let's say you start the day with $500 in your checking account. Then let's say that you wrote a check yesterday for $300 that will come through today. You swiped your debit card a few times today for $5, $100, $15, $25, $50, $75 in that order chronologically. An automated billpay also goes out tonight for $100. Throughout the day, the bank "memo" posts those transactions but doesn't fully process them until night time. If you just summed these items up, you would be overdrawn by $170 total. A maximally honest bank would probably just charge you a single $25 overdraft fee (ODF) on top of owing them the $170 difference for a total of $195 owed as long as you pay them back within their terms (i.e. quickly). But most banks don't play quite this fairly and, if they do, they will probably advertise it as a selling point.
But what about a maximally *dishonest* bank? Well, they could reorder the posting process largest to smallest, and charge you an ODF every time a charge hits and you don't have the funds to cover it. So in this case, your check plus the 2 x $100 debits would drain your entire $500 balance first. Then you would owe an ODF for ***each*** of the other 5 smaller charges. So now you owe the original $170 balance difference plus $125 in ODFs, for a grand total of $295. Yep, they made an easy $100 more just by manipulating the processing order. A bank would probably not be able to get away with this long term, but nothing really stops them from trying. That's juicy income just sitting there, and poor people how banks make most of their money. They even have software (the most popular one is called ProfitStars) that shows them who their "best" customers are. Nope, it's not the rich guy that has a bunch of rental property loans. The bank's best customer is a single mom living paycheck to paycheck and paying $200+/mo in ODFs when the bills don't align perfectly with her paychecks. Hell, I saw one bank that processed debits first and THEN credits each night, which is about as evil as you can get. So customers could go OD, get charged a fee, then their paycheck would process and instantly cover it. That bank got shut down for doing all sorts of nefarious stuff, but I'm sure they're not the only one that tried it or something similar. I even had a bank CEO ask me if it would be ok to change it to a fairer process right before examiners arrive for their scheduled exam and then change it back after they leave. I had to tell him the truth - yeah, he could probably get away with that. Examiners aren't going to go dig through countless historical transactions to spot behavior like that. They will just ask for the bank's core configuration settings and review a few recent samples of transactions to verify in the moment. Oh, I once had a bank CEO argue with me that largest-to-smallest processing is more consumer friendly because the customer's rent and major bills are more important to pay than smaller transactions, if the bank decides to decline them.
But what if the bank was more cautious with the rules, but still wanted to make plenty of ODF income? Well, there are plenty of options in the middle ground of this that still boost ODF income without being *quite* so nefarious. For example, they can just change the Posting Order by *type* rather than individual transactions. They could process checks, ACH, wires, and billpay first, then debit card transactions last. Even without playing with the debit card item order (let's say they just post them in the order they come in), they will still generate more ODFs because checks, ACH, billpay, and wires tend to be the largest transactions anyway. They can also set it to random order. Or item sequence order (like your check numbers). I'm sure there are more options that are out there. Banks can also set a "de minimus" that doesn't ODF you for overdrafts under some tiny number like $5, but they don't all do that.
Check with your bank to see what they do. Even better, get it in writing and catch them lying to you. There are honest banks out there that don't play games like this, of course, or at least keep it to a minimum. Don't be afraid to change to a better one. Changing banks is not nearly as difficult as some people think. I used to recommend that most people just use credit unions because they are the least likely to be evil, but the flip side is that credit unions are the most likely to be run by incompetent people and have the worst technology, so pick your poison when it comes to that.
#67
* The ingredients you find in your frozen pizza are basically leftovers from other products, that's why they're so cheap.
* A $5,00 t-shirt and a $500,00 t-shirt came from the same place and cost about $1,00 a piece to be made to the brand and about $0,25 to the factory. That said, a $,025 true cost can end up as high as $500,00. Logo stitching included. But I guess most people knew it, yet, they keep "giving away" those extra $495,00 for status. In my opinion that kind of status is just idiocracy.
Stephanie A Mutti 4 hours ago
I had a client who had a $100 pair of flip flops. [which isn't crazy pricing for "fashion"] and I don't understand why you'd pay more than $10 for a pair of flip flops you can't wear in the city bc the streets can be nasty. $100 for pee-pee toes...
#68
House Hunters is filmed well after, and the two houses you don’t pick aren’t houses you looked at.
EDIT: so this blew up. Some extra details... Real estate agent we met day one; new to us. She provided access to the other two options. One was her actual house that was never for rent. Other was her listing.
Idea is to give an idea what it's like, but they only have 5 days to film. Fair play; it wasn't as bad as some others we'd heard. We had a great time doing it. So this isn't to beat up the show; it's just a secret to preserve the mood of the show.
Other small things... "budget" is manipulated for USD, and estimated. Editing is done after all footage is sent to the US - and boy do they edit it. You don't realise what you say a few times is suddenly a show theme you didn't expect. Maps are approximate for obvious reasons. You get paid about $150/pp/day, so don't expect much.
All in all, it's a "secret", but in our experience it wasn't to "fool" the viewer, rather to get it all done in a reasonable time. The story of moving is real, and in general they do a good job of sharing your experience. They do what they do out of necessity to make a good, repeatable show. But it's not a perfect documentary, nor could it be.
It's close enough, and I must say that HHI was a show that gave us the courage to move overseas from the US when it wasn't nearly as common as today. Grateful for what it is.
EDIT2: About the staging - our order was shoot the other two houses and RE meet & greet. On the last day (or 2 for us), movers arrive and pack your place. Then they shoot your place, and the movers wait down the street literally with your stuff in the back of their truck. At the end of the shoot, they put it all back. We didn't have time that day, so next day we shot the "resolution" part with the "party", the chop-veggies scene they all seem to have, and F&F there, and a thanks with the film crew.
EDIT3: Common question - why "lie" about the houses. Simply they hire a local film crew for 1 week. That's why they can afford to make this show thousands of times. It's the only way to be profitable and generate this much content.
#69
Lapetite daycare has their workers write positive reviews on their websites by employees. They also have employees ask friends to write them. They may not have children in their care at all.
#70
HFC were an investment bank that were acquired by HSBC after being issued a massive fine for predatory lending.
Thing is, the predatory lending never stopped. The loans teams were notorious for persuading people who had been turned down for loans to re-apply, after an underwriter had already declared them to be unlikely to be able to repay.
The member of staff would simply change certain details (changing the job title of 'File clerk' to 'professional' is one example). If you wanted to know who was committing fraud at HFC, you simply had to see who was working during their lunch-break, because phone calls weren't recorded during lunch.
The teams selling Income Protection Plan weren't much better, making it sound that you were just receiving information, when in fact you were signing up to a plan which could cost up to 40 quid a month.
Commission bonuses could be huge (I was making a headteacher's salary for what amounted to call-centre work) so the incentive to commit fraud was considerable.
After one member of staff was caught sending out a plan to someone who couldn't speak English, the department manager said "I'm not angry that you did it, I'm angry that you got caught.".
#71
The sub-prime lending market doesn't care if you can afford your bill. The way they make their money is by packaging and reselling your debt.
I used to work for a bank that's a Sandler subsidiary. I helped to write the algorithms that helped to determine whether or not an applicant would get auto approved, conditional approved (additional manual underwriting needed) or rejected. The interest rates were absolutely nuts.. 29% APR.
On a call with the C-Suite execs and board I was told it didn't matter if people could actually afford it. They were targeting people who could make their payment for 3-6 months because that's how long the company had to keep the debt on the books before they could package it up and resell it to someone else.
If the customer did default they could have their vehicle repossessed and auctioned off/resold by a lot that had a strategic agreement with the lending company and the customer was still on the hook for the debt.
It was never about finding people who could pay off their car, it was just about milking as much monthly fees.
"A subscription service to desperation" as one of my co-workers put it.
Bartlet for world domination 9 hours ago
When they did that with houses, the economy collapsed.
#72
Buy 10-12 lottery tickets at a time. If you have $12 to blow on gambling, don't buy 2 $6 tickets, buy 12 $1 tickets. Different for each state, but we had minimum string of consecutive losers before you're guaranteed a winner.
Lost Panda 15 hours ago
No your odds. Sure it's not guaranteed but your more likely to when 1:5 on the above $1 tickets versus 1:6 on the above $6 tickets.
#73
I was an extra on a sequel of a movie while the first movie was still in theatres and it was kind of a huge deal at the time, so I had to sign an NDA.
They even had a code name for the movie: Untitled Sports Movie.
But this was in 2009, so my NDA is expired and I can reveal this very exciting news: I am an extra in the movie Twilight: New Moon!
#74
Ok I got one:
Paul McCartney and all the beatles members are bi.
Met a former Agent/producer before they blew up.
They were not located in London yet, but outside, and much smaller.
They had many parties with men/women mixed and even some did it with each other.
The producer/agent did not want to leave her small town, and did not go to London (where they then got very popular)
Also at least two members slept with Ono later on.
#75
The digital signage screen set up in a library in Munich has a fat scratch on the surface that was "fixed" with vaseline on the day of its installation.
So I've heard.
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