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.
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.
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.
A whole lot of IT guys aren't that tech savvy. They just know how to Google well.
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.
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.
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.
Had a friend who worked a security job put it well when I was teasing him about getting paid to do nothing when he jokingly said "I'm not paid for what I do. I'm paid for what I'm prepared to do"
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Good! A soldier with time to waste means everything is running smoothly. And if the alternative is that you get money but only if you are actively killing people, that seems like a problematic incentivizer, to say the least.
Unfortunately, too many armies spend too little time protecting their country's citizens and too much time protecting their country's plutocrats. Let's go back to rulers and presidents leading their armies into battle. World peace in 5...4...3...
Troops aren't paid to expend X amount of ammo every Y hours. Troops aren't paid to keep brass and boots polished at all times. Troops are paid to be ready to die at any time, for any reason higher command offers. Combat ain't a 40-hour-week job.
Anyone who has ever served, can't really argue this. It's a blatant exaggeration, but still partially true without context.
Not so. Maybe for the front line grunts, but the rest of us had "9-5 jobs" on top of being ready to muster at the drop of a hat. Worked 45-50 hours a week the entire time I was in, not including middle of the night musters and after hour formations. It's not a 40/week job, it's more like 50+ hours with 24/7 call.
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Carry a clipboard and walk around looking like you're going somewhere - My First Team Leader when I asked what duties I should perform that day.
The person does not understand the concept of a "standing army". The army is there in case it will be needed, but so long as it isn't needed, they are just passing the time. Training and practice can only take so much time, and the rest it just sitting around. Since commanding officers do not like their soldiers just idling their time away, they find all sorts of things for the soldiers to do. The soldiers, in turn, find ways to do these things slowly and inefficiently, because they'd rather not be doing them. Since these activities don't really need to be done anyway, the COs don't really care, so long as it keeps the soldiers out of trouble.
I don’t mind my tax dollars paying for their down time. Because their up time more than makes up for it.
Hurry Up And Wait was invented by the military, back in Ancient Greece or earlier.
With what some of these people go through to train, I'm giving them a pass.
As long as you're the person putting their butt on the line so I don't have to, take all the downtime you want.
I don’t think my spouse wasted tax payers’ money fighting wars. I think we, the tax payer, don’t pay them enough.
Yup, in the Austrian military, too. Had to do mandatory military service there, and one day we had to clean the 36mm anti aircraft gun. When we ended up finishing too soon we sent a shovel full of sand down the barrels and cleaned it again. The worst thing you could do in the military was not looking (or being) busy.
This one is sort of BS IMO. I was navy. Used to work a lot of 60-70 hour weeks (in peace time). We got monthly pay and didn't get a dime extra for those extra hours. Most of the people in my department (reactor) were getting out due to being fed up with long hours, rotating shifts, too hot or too cold work spaces (depending on where in the world my ship was), bureaucracy and politics any time something went wrong and so on. Most of us would have been just fine with a disgruntled "taxpayer" coming and taking our job. PS - I was still a tax payer so I guess I was self employed and gouging myself for extra money? lolololol
Sure, every Army works that way, to a point. There is just so much busy work one can give soldiers and there is just so much training that can be done. Most downtime is because half your squad is on duty (guard, transport, etc.) and the other half is on leave or sick and those that are left have perfected the art of looking busy without doing anything. The flip side is that when called upon, soldiers are paid to get shot at, bombed, live in the wild and march for hours (or ride in the back of a truck with diesel fumes and planks for seats). Oh, and kill people if necessary, or in my case shoot a nuke barely 100 km away. It evens out.
Hurry up & wait :-) and it's usually because the Rupert can't navigate to the other end of the camp without getting lost
The military "absolutely nothing" is more skilled than my absolutely nothing. Take a break ... it is better than me having to get involved.
I was a Marine Corps Infantryman from 1979-85 ( Beirut Lebanon included). I was on duty (ready to serve 24/7 ) at the time I was making about 2k a month before taxes if you figure that an hour I made $2.16 an hour after taxes! Who, would work for that today ??? Not many I can tell you that !
Well no, because there have been four decades of inflation since then.
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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!
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)
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.
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 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 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.
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: 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 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).
Nepotism is so regular in manufacturing its not even worth talking about.
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.
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.
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.
Im 19, currently work at a restaurant, you would not believe the amount of s**t talking we do towards customers
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
My mom's next door neighbor was a trucker. Young guy, family, very nice. Once while coming back from a trip to NC, my husband and I ran into a blizzard. Driving thru the mountains of PA, unable to see the road, was really frightening. We wound up following a big semi up and then down one of the mountains because it was easy to see their lights. Told my mom's neighbor about it some time later and said that trucker saved us. He laughed and said...thank god you were OK. Any trucker that would drive thru the PA mountains in a white out was probably high, crazy or both.
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 )
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
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!
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?
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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)
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’m a hair stylist and makeup artist, first thing we hate if you’re late. You are not only wasting our time but yours and likely someone else’s. It can ruin our appointment schedule for the day. Also some people really tell me their deepest darkest secrets and life woes, if you’re kind I’ll hold them like a therapist. If you’re a jerk or rude then just know we are definitely talking about you.
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)
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’m a hair stylist and makeup artist, first thing we hate if you’re late. You are not only wasting our time but yours and likely someone else’s. It can ruin our appointment schedule for the day. Also some people really tell me their deepest darkest secrets and life woes, if you’re kind I’ll hold them like a therapist. If you’re a jerk or rude then just know we are definitely talking about you.
