30 People Reveal “Dark Secrets” About Their Jobs That Common People Aren’t Supposed To Know
Each of us perhaps dreamed of becoming someone really outstanding in our childhood. An astronaut, a sailor, a firefighter, a football player, a programmer... Years have passed, and for some people this childhood dream has come true, but in most cases, of course, we choose far from the occupations that we dreamed about in our early years. Reality and adult life, as usual, make their ruthless adjustments...
However, perhaps this post will calm you down a little, and here's why. It is likely that when we dreamed about certain jobs or businesses in our childhood, we did not take into account various facts about them, usually known only to those who have been in this profession for a long time. Who knows, maybe this information would actually influence our dreams?
Be that as it may, an incredibly interesting thread once appeared in the AskReddit community, the topic starter of which asked just one question: "What's a dirty insider secret in your profession?" As of today, the original thread has around 1.1K upvotes and over 1.3K different comments, highlighting jobs we know well from completely different angles, revealing unknown skeletons in their closets.
Bored Panda, especially for you, has collected a whole selection of unexpected, intriguing, discouraging and simply the most popular facts about a wide variety of professions and businesses, so please feel free to scroll to the very end of this list, and for those of you whose jobs also have some ugly secrets known only to you - just share it in the comments. Could it be your voice that will become decisive for some teen in their upcoming professional choice?
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Health Insurance
Health insurance.
The squeaky wheel gets the grease. If we refused to cover something for you, COMPLAIN. File a complaint with the Department of Insurance in your state. Complain to your Human Resources department if it’s employer-provided.
So many people accept the first thing they’re told. Don’t. Be aggressive.
Sure, because when I'm sick, I really want to spend hours on hold being transferred all over to talk about an insurance policy. Your entire industry is predatory and should be abolished.
Customer Service
Call Center Agent working for customer service.
We will put you on hold and pretend to ask the supervisor, but actually we will b***h about you.We cannot change company policy for you.
But if you are polite we will try our most to bend the rules for you, because we deal with so many entitled people.
Worst the ones pretending that they are smarter than you and don't really need your help, but desperatly need your help.
IT Companies
A whole lot of IT guys aren't that tech savvy. They just know how to Google well.
Consulting
Consulting: In many cases, your boss hired us because he doesn't trust your ability to do the job. We will go talk to you, take your ideas, package them nicely, and present them to your boss. And charge your company a small fortune while doing this. If your boss realized that you really are competent, we'd be out of work.
Food Packaging
I worked at a cheese packaging factory a few years ago. We got big blocks of cheese in, cut them or shredded them, then packaged them for sale. All the same blocks of cheese, but we'd change the film and suddenly it's a different brand.
Next time you go to Walmart and think the more expensive shredded cheese must be higher quality, think again. Just get the store brand. It all came from the same blocks.
Armed Forces
People in the military make wasting time an artform. The sheer amount of hours we spend getting compensated by taxpayers to do *absolutely nothing* is astonishing.
If you view it as an hourly paid job, then maybe so. The fact is that the military are there to be called upon and give their lives if the worst should happen. They can sit around and drink tea all day for all I care, as long as they do what they are supposed to do when they are needed.
Drain Cleaning
If you call a drain cleaner to clear your bathtub and all it is just a bit of hair right on the strainer, he will probably just run the snake for 10 minutes to sound busy and charge you full price.
I had a stoppage that backed up a shower and a tub. The charge to run a snake was $79, but to remove the toilet to run the snake was $325. I removed the toilet myself in 10 minutes and saved $325!
Pest Control
In pest control when we come to spray your place if you demand we spray some areas that legally we are told not to, such as chair cushions, couches, entire doors for example, we’ll straight up fake it and through in some fancy chemical words to make it sound like we did. Sorry but not sorry, we’ll do the best we can cause we know pests can legit be a medical problem and we want nothing more than to help, but we don’t care if you say “just off the books lol” we’re not about to get fined or sued when you get a rash from a pesticide covered chair that you requested. (We don’t care if you don’t care about that, we do and that’s all there is to it)
Housekeeping
I'm a housewife. Sometimes I just put dirty dishes in with the clean ones in the dishwasher and run it again so I don't have to unload it.
Medical Labs
I work in a medical lab. I see people touch everything without gloves ALL THE TIME. I also see people use their phones with gloves on ALL THE TIME.
Pricing And Discounts
Pricing for custom work is very subjective. Treat us well and we'll figure the price very fairly. Act like a jerk, there are plenty of ways to pad the bill. Start the conversation by demanding a discount and the price goes up 20% before your precious 10% discount comes off.
Hotel Front Desk
Hotel Front Desk staff here, if you are nice and respectful we will do everything we can to make your stay as enjoyable as possible so you will come back.
If you are an a*****e we don't give two s**ts about you. Bonus points if your a walk-in. Even if we have rooms we will send you elsewhere because we don't want to deal with you.
Edit: I worded part of it poorly, I didn't mean walk ins as a bad thing. I meant people walking in and being an a*****e demanding and being deliberately rude and causing an issue.
Construction
I work in construction. I have a lot to say but I’ll leave you with this one; never look behind the walls, in the ceilings, or in any crawl spaces or otherwise tight and infrequently visited places in your house/building, unless you want to find soda and beer cans from decades past.
Higher Education
higher education: many people who are paid specifically for being smart are in fact really dumb.
In my expericence, many people who are really smart in their area of expertise, but particulary academics, judges and lawyers have almost zero common sense and indeed can't even manage to make a simple online purchase unless someone guides them through it or their secretaries do it for them!
Call Center
Call center rep, the more pi**ed off you are, the less we care, and we'll have already forgotten your name the second we answer another call.
I'm not in customer service, but I do deal with customers on the phone a lot. I kinda like getting the "problem" customers though lol. I can usually de-escalate them, and the ones that I can't are usually batsh!t crazy and are fun to mess with (while still staying professional).
Manufacturing
Nepotism is so regular in manufacturing its not even worth talking about.
Programming
The code behind the software/application you’re using is an absolute mess
Also depends very heavily on who is behind the software/application. Some companies insist on decent code and go to great lengths to try to keep it that way. If it is written as a quick and dirty, it will remain that way. If it is designed and written carefully, in an extensible manner, then there is a chance of keeping it that way.
Hospitals And Doctors
I used to work admin for a hospital and they would purposely overbook patients for appointments in the hope that some would not make it. Whilst this meant that we got through the amount of patients relatively easily, every now and again, the department waiting room (which was basically a corridor with 4 chairs on the side) would be full of pi**ed off patients who are all booked for the same time slot and won't be seen until 2 hours after their arrival.
Yea, this does happen, i know a doctor that does this, She fells the staff to book 2 or 3 pacients all to the same time, and it pisses the f**k out of me theblack of respect that She hás for people, granted most of her pacients are retired sénior citizens that don't have to work any more, but they have their lives and stuff to do all the same.
HR Department
The HR may not agree with management's decision either but has to still drive it within the organisation. We are employees of the organisation just like everyone else, but our performance is evaluated based on other employees.
Restaurants And Cafe
Im 19, currently work at a restaurant, you would not believe the amount of s**t talking we do towards customers
Marketing And PR
I’m in marketing and write a lot of press releases. Unless someone was actually interviewed by a reporter, every quote you read was written and thought up by someone other than the person allegedly saying it.
Completely untrue. I work in Marketing and I also do press releases and media relations. Every single quote or testimony that we give is 100% verifiable and we can provide names and contact information to verify it.
Agriculture
WASH YOUR PRODUCE.
If the guy picking your produce needs to pee, is he going to walk all the way to the outhouse, or is he just going to p**s on one of the many plants around him?
System Administrating
Sometimes I have no f*****g clue why your computer did what it did until I do some research. Majority of my job is reactive. Unless I can change what happened.
Welding
The majority of welders have no certifications, tickets, professional training or qualifications. They just get an opportunity to try it and stick with it.
On a daily basis I see lifting points, holding several tons, welded incorrectly and not tested.
Financial Advisor In Training
For the short time I worked as a financial advisor in training, the reason some people got promotions/better pay than all the other people who were better qualified was due to some people complaining/backstabbing other employees on a daily basis.
Yes, corporate raiding/shark tactics is common and that everyone around you is trying to screw you over/gain an upper hand. Also, don't be surprised by nepotism.
Trucking
Old school outlaw truckers absolutely do still exist. If you ever have a livestock truck that’s tricked out blow by you doing triple digit speeds at night, he’s waaay overweight and running illegal logs.
Most trucks are lumbering beats of burden, but anything agricultural stopped progressing with the rest of the laws two decades ago.
Communicating With Customers
If you yell and scream and throw a big enough fit you get better service. It pi**es me off so much. Our management just rolls over for difficult customers.
I had a boss once that wanted to hit a costumer with a 10kg bucket of Paint lol, i was the One calming the frikking store owner down, the woman was bat s**t insane, She wanted to out a oficial complaint on the store, because we didn't had the amount os stock that She wanted on that specific moment in that particular store ( though we had it on the werehouse and the other stores, and it would take less than a day to get it all )
Audits In Big Companies
If you're a multi-million dollar company, odds are we don't give a s**t about errors under a certain amount of dollars. This is called "materiality", and most auditors rely on the calculation in order to not give a s**t, and get the work done.
In some companies the cost of finding the 'missing' $ simply outweighs its value. It's not so much about giving shït or not
Software Engineering
We don't know how to use the software we make
Speak for yourself! In large companies I can well believe this, as each engineer/developer will only work on a very small part of the product. In small companies, you will be exposed to and have to test most of the product yourself. In very small companies, you probably designed it!
Sales
The key to being good in sales is convincing the costumer ur not in sales and helping the costumer.
Meaning a lot of non-sales people who help you with certain info (finding the right cellphone, car, insurance company,...) actually know very little on the topic, and aren't trying to find you the best company.
They just are secretly sales people who know a lot about sales and how to trick you into thinking their best pick isn't secretly the company they work for.
I'm in sales. This would not be a great way to go about it. Why would they come back?
Pharmacies
I work in a pharmacy
Yes, we drop some of your pills on the floor, and yes we put them back in your bottle.
Real Estate
There’s a huge difference between brokers/agents in real estate. Don’t just use a friend or relative because you can. It could mean the difference of thousands of dollars and important information missed.
Agents/brokers suck in general. NOTHING they do is worth 6% of my homes value!
Post And Delivery
At FedEx ground, we can get away with purposely skipping a delivery.
I've held somebody's packages for an extra 5 days because they swerved around me and cut me off in the neighborhood.
Edit: This is because the Ground branch of FedEx operates through contractors. We don't technically work for FedEx, we work with FedEx.
Moral of the story (at least with me) if you order often and are nice to me, I'll treat you and your property with love and respect because you earned it. But if you p**s me off and order deliveries often, you can expect half of them to be not on time. Or at the bottom of your front steps instead of up at the front door. This was just a one off for me though, I'm generally very nice to my customers.
Bakery
I'm a baker, not at my current job but my former, the boss was tight as hell, didnt buy in wholemeal flour, for wholemeal bread we used 100% white flour with gravy browning
I work in affordable housing. So many think that people living on the system are milking it. 98% of them are not. In 20 years in the business and reviewing thousands and thousands of files, I've only encountered two issue of tenant fraud. The fact is, the system is built to keep people on the system. If someone works really hard and starts making more money, the system raises their rent. It's a no-win situation. Many people who work at affordable living properties, in Section 8 and public housing live at other affordable housing properties because the industry doesn't pay the people who run the properties an affordable wage. So you should really have more compassion towards people in affordable housing, most of the people I've come across in my 20 years are good people working hard to support their families. And really, we're all only one layoff or pandemic away from being their ourselves.
Here's a secret-- it's possible your therapist gets off work and immediately smokes a huge bowl and goes on Bored Panda all night long (source: me right now)
Interesting handle.
What's your name because I do not doubt that my therapist might do this lol
I probably would do that if I was a therapist.
I was a TSA screener for about 2 years. It is a very boring job, screening and patting down all day. We literally lived for irate people. Adult tantrums and screaming was like TV for us. That craziness would boast our spirits for hours.
I work in affordable housing. So many think that people living on the system are milking it. 98% of them are not. In 20 years in the business and reviewing thousands and thousands of files, I've only encountered two issue of tenant fraud. The fact is, the system is built to keep people on the system. If someone works really hard and starts making more money, the system raises their rent. It's a no-win situation. Many people who work at affordable living properties, in Section 8 and public housing live at other affordable housing properties because the industry doesn't pay the people who run the properties an affordable wage. So you should really have more compassion towards people in affordable housing, most of the people I've come across in my 20 years are good people working hard to support their families. And really, we're all only one layoff or pandemic away from being their ourselves.
Here's a secret-- it's possible your therapist gets off work and immediately smokes a huge bowl and goes on Bored Panda all night long (source: me right now)
Interesting handle.
What's your name because I do not doubt that my therapist might do this lol
I probably would do that if I was a therapist.
I was a TSA screener for about 2 years. It is a very boring job, screening and patting down all day. We literally lived for irate people. Adult tantrums and screaming was like TV for us. That craziness would boast our spirits for hours.