29 Things Employees Can’t Reveal To Customers Under Any Circumstances

Few people know all the ins and outs of an industry without having ever worked in it. That’s because there are things “outsiders” should never know, and if you’re wondering what kind of things we’re talking about, it’s details no customers should ever hear—for example, the information that certain things are only cleaned once a year or that the “different” things you are buying are all made by the same manufacturer.

These are just a couple examples of secrets redditors revealed after one of them started a thread on the ‘Ask Reddit’ subreddit. They were curious to learn what people’s jobs prohibited them from telling customers about, and if you’re curious, too, scroll down to find their answers on the list below.

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29 Things Employees Can’t Reveal To Customers Under Any Circumstances We are highly advised against telling parents about milestones like first steps, first words etc happening at our center because it could cause numerous negative emotions in the parent and we know the child will do it again soon! It’s a very special moment and we want the parent to experience it as authentically as possible. I’m a daycare teacher :).

Trashiee , cottonbro studio / pexels (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:

198points

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Nolgoth 5 months ago

I have heard this before. Sometimes they will tell the parent "i think they are getting ready to do xyz" to prepare the parent to look out for said milestone (even if the child has already done it)

82points

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29 Things Employees Can’t Reveal To Customers Under Any Circumstances I work for a major US brewery and we have one beer that we put into two separate cans. One of them is a “premium” beverage (one of the most popular in the US top 5) and the other is an “economy” beer. It’s the same stuff.

zackintehbox , cottonbro studio / pexels (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:

176points

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Tucker Cahooter 5 months ago

So I guess that Simpsons joke about Duff, Duff Lite and Duff Dry was actually accurate

133points

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29 Things Employees Can’t Reveal To Customers Under Any Circumstances Your loved one is dead. You should let them go and stop making us fill him/her/it/them with epinepherine just to keep their heart beating.

Simpawknits , Marcelo Leal/ unsplash (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:

175points

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Daniela Lavanza 5 months ago

As a believer, i don't get why people want to keep this person alive, or even appearing alive. If it's their time, if what remains of their life is a misery, show mercy and let them go. My one rule is not "life comes first" but "compassion comes first". Don't let someone you profess to love suffer because of your selfishness. Yes, it's a hard choice, but sometimes the last gift you can give them.

141points

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29 Things Employees Can’t Reveal To Customers Under Any Circumstances I sell new homes. I've sold about 1500 of them.

Get a home inspection if you buy a new home.

Fewer than a hundred of my buyers have gotten home inspections. Probably fewer than fifty. Every single one has found something important that we wouldn't have addressed otherwise.

mongooseme , RDNE Stock project / pexels (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:

164points

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Colin Matthews 5 months ago

I’m not sure which country this is, but Australia and NZ banks basically insist on an inspection for mortgage and insurance

49points

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29 Things Employees Can’t Reveal To Customers Under Any Circumstances I worked at a historic penitentiary in Phila., PA.
At the bottom of the children's waiver, in fine print, it states that there are cell blocks that have not been abated for asbestos, and the old lead paint leaves a film of dust on everything. I got written up for pointing this out to a pregnant woman.

HotSpinach , Thesab / wikipedia (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:

151points

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SilverSkyCloud 5 months ago

your boss was an as*hole

140points

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29 Things Employees Can’t Reveal To Customers Under Any Circumstances I worked in retail management for many years, and can confirm that the average consumer has a 2nd grade understanding of math.

**Black Friday sales are not really sales**.

If an item costs $30 normally, they will run a promotion that is "3 for $90," and people will come in droves to buy out a product.

If a shirt is $20 and is normally "Buy 1 Get 1 50% off," (so $60 total for 4 units) the Black Friday Sale will be "Buy 3, Get 1 Free!", which is $60 for 4 units.

You would be genuinely surprised by how many people don't do simple math and get excited by big signs.

WhiskeyEjac , CardMapr.nl/ unsplash (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:

150points

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Donkeywheel 5 months ago

Impossible in places with actual consumers protection laws (the EU evidently) : you cannot legally call « sales » all these fake deals.

78points

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29 Things Employees Can’t Reveal To Customers Under Any Circumstances I was in charge of all of the keys for a navy base. Signing them out to contractors and TCNs, n such. There were probably around 300 keys for the whole base and every single one was the exact same key. When they set up the system no one realized that when they bought the same 300 locks it came with the same 300 keys. So I was basically giving out master keys to the base without no one ever knowing and I'm sure they have never replaced the locks. It passed a high level government inspection, those f****n people didn't even notice all the keys were the same.

onebowlwonder , Skitterphoto / pexels (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:

148points

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Nonna_SoF 5 months ago

There's a reason Feynman could make a hobby of picking, in use, locks during the Manhattan Project. It hasn't gotten better.

40points

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29 Things Employees Can’t Reveal To Customers Under Any Circumstances I worked at a fancy hotel and was out front to greet people and assist upon arrival.

We weren't allowed to say "Welcome back!"

This was in place to protect those that decided to bring another spouse/partner/mistress/etc day after day to the hotel during their stay.

really_affordable , Mikhail Nilov / pexels (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:

137points

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Jinx (she/her) 5 months ago

i would not want to protect those types of people

57points

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29 Things Employees Can’t Reveal To Customers Under Any Circumstances For reference, I work at a trampoline/adventure park.
We don't clean the ballpit like ever. Some kid peed in there once, and they just told an employee to stick a mop in there. When we do clean it (like once a year), the number of phones, vapes, socks, ect, is actually disturbing. We're supposed to clean it like 2-4 times a year.
Also, we never clean the baby changing stations. It didn't click to me to maybe wipe it down. If I'm on the bathrooms, it's now added to my to-do list.

Koi_Fishhy , Photomania World / pexels (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:

133points

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Nolgoth 5 months ago

I would expect a ball pit to be cleaned at minimum once a week... not once a quarter 😲

105points

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#10

29 Things Employees Can’t Reveal To Customers Under Any Circumstances I worked for a small family owned business that was famous for their old fashioned pies…they were bought in from a large company and baked there. That was it. I had so many customers tell me how we have the best pies ever and that the baker does an amazing job, when in reality all she did was put them in the oven.

27xman , Craig Dennis / pexels (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:

130points

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Very Scary Dragon 5 months ago

Pretty standard and has been for decades, sadly. In all types of food service. If you're paying less than like $20-40 per menu item (large city on the west coast pricing), you're very likely buying what is essentially a fancy TV dinner. It's not necessarily a ripoff, since the higher end food service factories use MUCH higher quality and fresher ingredients than, say, Hungry Man or Stouffer's. Hell, a lot of it is even made by actual hand, just in an industrial assembly line type kitchen in the Midwest somewhere. Plus you're paying for labor and overhead. But you're kind of blindly trusting the restaurant to actually sell the high quality factory-made stuff, and not dog food rejects from Nestlé.

37points

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#11

29 Things Employees Can’t Reveal To Customers Under Any Circumstances Company I used to work for did live chat support. Unbeknownst to customers the support engineers could read what customers were typing before they hit send... Be careful what you say to tech support is all I can say!

lasermole , Christina Morillo / pexels (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:

115points

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Jennik 5 months ago

Glad I've always been polite! I'm always just happy to find it genuinely is live chat support and not a bot.

65points

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#12

29 Things Employees Can’t Reveal To Customers Under Any Circumstances I’m a contractor, so I guess it’s more of a trade secret. In sports broadcasting, you only see the interviews that have been approved for air. So, all the horrible language, political statements, extremely awkward answers, etc., get screened and buried so nobody sees them.

But I see them, and they’re very entertaining.

brickhamilton , Pixabay / pexels (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:

108points

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Daniela Lavanza 5 months ago (edited)

Having a friend who worked for a famous sport media, I can relate it's highly controlled. Even some written interviews in newspapers are fake. The journalists sometimes don't even meet celebs. They agree with their agents to create questions and answers that fit a convenient public image, with fake confidence to make it sounds real. This is done because some celebs don't have time for all the interviews, but also sometimes to avoid real problems to be known by the audience, as they may show in a real interview (dr. u.gs, family problems...).

33points

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#13

The job you applied for does not exist. If the website you applied on has the word job in the url, it's just data mining, at least 70% of the time. Job applicants will give up some of the most valuable data without hesitation and every fortune 500 spends upwards of 90k a year harvesting this data so I know it's high yield value content. What they do with the data idk but I do know it's packaged and sold.

Pm_me_your_marmot Report

Final score:

101points

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Corrsfan 5 months ago

This is beyond depressing

78points

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#14

29 Things Employees Can’t Reveal To Customers Under Any Circumstances I work at a university and we're heavily discouraged from telling students to drop out. We're also discouraged from telling them to change majors if it's going to make them take longer to graduate. The second one really bothers me.

esoteric_enigma , Yan Krukau / pexels (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:

96points

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Thee8thsense 5 months ago

I would think they would encourage anything that would increase tuition to the school.

66points

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#15

29 Things Employees Can’t Reveal To Customers Under Any Circumstances In my country there are 2 main distributors of the products my employer sells. Us and the other company..which buys their products from us to sell them as theirs. I deliver a truck full of products every week to them. But we have to deny every connection to the other company.

Chili919 , Lisa Fotios / pexels (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:

91points

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Awkward lady 5 months ago

More detail required, at least what the products are.

16points

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#16

29 Things Employees Can’t Reveal To Customers Under Any Circumstances Old job but that our “house beer” is one of the most common lagers in the country.

dolphins344 , cottonbro studio / pexels (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:

91points

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BebeR 5 months ago

Yeah this is super common. ''house beer'' at bars and restaurants are hardly ever anything special and are not made specially for the establishment. The just pick a beer they like from a brewery and slap a new name & label on it.

52points

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#17

29 Things Employees Can’t Reveal To Customers Under Any Circumstances Our warranty is as long as it is because it will fail after the warranty.

dylanr23 , Clay Banks / unsplash (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:

84points

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Jennik 5 months ago

I'm not sure what the situation is in other countries, but in NZ the Consumer Guarantees Act protects consumers even if the warranty has expired. Consumers have the right to expect products to last for a "reasonable lifetime". There are guidelines for this - it varies according to the product. It's a waste of time buying those stupid extended warranties because you are protected anyway. And there is legal recourse of a company tries to avoid their responsibilities.

45points

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#18

29 Things Employees Can’t Reveal To Customers Under Any Circumstances There's a sticker in the window that we have ADT security, but we stopped paying for it since covid.

Purplociraptor , Mr.TinMD / flickr (not the actrual photo) Report

Final score:

78points

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Nonna_SoF 5 months ago

Technically it's best to have an unbranded sticker or one from a company you don't use. That way potential intruders can't lookup known vulnerabilities with your system.

59points

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#19

I worked for a big Japanese electronics manufacturer in a call center back in the early 90s. We were not allowed to say that a line of our tv's had bad tuners even though we all knew it and sent out countless free tuners to repair shops all over the country even for out of warranty products. I typed it so many times I even remember the part number, 1465371-11. EDIT: since so many people asked, it was a whole line of Sony tv's.

Game72016 Report

Final score:

72points

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Oliver Weedon 5 months ago

Sony stood for Soon Only Not Yet in the broadcast tv world when I worked in the industry

1point

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#20

When I was in retail maintenance, I wasn't allowed to let the managers see the bill. That was for corporate eyes only.

My theory was that if they knew how much I was making to change a lightbulb they would quit and go do that. Or maybe they would be good employees and change the lightbulb themselves, thus increasing the companies liability. .

Dirk-Killington Report

Final score:

71points

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Paul C. 5 months ago

For a period of time I used to scan and index invoices at the pension company I worked at. I don't think HR realised that meant EVERY invoice, including accounts for corporate events. Some were breathtaking, like £20,000 for a famous sports coach to give an hour long speech at a meeting!

34points

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#21

I grew up working for a family ice cream business. The restaurants that we sold bulk tubs of ice cream to thought it was home made by us. While we did make our own ice cream the 3-gallon bulk containers was product that we purchased from another company and sold at a high markup.

I was under strict orders from my father to never reveal this to the customers.

One of our customers would then sell this regular ice cream as gelato, even though it was just ice cream.

shavemejesus Report

Final score:

70points

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Ace 5 months ago

In Italian the word 'Gelato' is used as a generic term for all types of ice cream.

32points

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#22

If a software salesperson says a feature is "in Development", that likely means they sent the dev team an email saying 'wouldn't this feature be great?!' 6 months ago. Until it hits the roadmap, it isn't real.

And once it's on the roadmap, add 6months to a year for actual delivery. Roadmaps are estimates by management and they align with profit goals, not actual dev time.

AhFFSImTooOldForThis Report

Final score:

69points

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Robert T 5 months ago

Yeah, I've worked with salespeople like that. They can sell every feature except those already in the product. Naturally, being miracle workers, we managed to deliver.

12points

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#23

I used to work for a medtech startup, writing an algorithm to detect if someone has passed away. Since we were not allowed to proclaim someone dead, we notify the healthcare workers that the person in question is showing 'unusual inactivity'.

theRealTallguy2 Report

Final score:

65points

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arthbach 5 months ago

Another way to express that is 'unresponsive, zero vitals'. _______ When a friend was working in a hospital for geriatrics, a patient died. When dealing with elderly patients, this is not surprising in the slightest. One nurse phoned the doctor to come pronounce death. His reply was, "Keep monitoring the vitals every 4 hours, and if anything changes phone me straight back."

38points

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#24

"the reason I'm giving you smaller portions is because manager says so. Yes you had bigger portions another day because a different kitchen lead was in the back monitoring who didn't care. No we are out of that item, it'll be 10 minutes. No I can't grab from the other line. Yes I know the other day we grabbed some for you but the other manager allowed it and this one doesn't. ".

SeeYouInTrees Report

Final score:

63points

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Display_Name 5 months ago

When you work in restaurants there are two manager types. One who micromanages even the number of ice cubes in the glass and the one that doesn’t.

41points

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#25

29 Things Employees Can’t Reveal To Customers Under Any Circumstances None of our food is fresh. Yes, even the food listed as made fresh daily. No, we don't actually make the soup, in fact it's often refrozen and a day old. The food used to be fresh, but corporate phased that out during COVID and raised the prices.

Kyubimon , Timur Saglambilek / pexels (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:

63points

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Jamie 5 months ago

Panera has significantly decreased its quality. Not sure if any of it ever was fresh but it all seems microwave junk now

5points

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#26

I used to work for an adult live streaming site. A lot of women would complain that they weren't getting enough traffic. It's because we would curate the front page and put certain women at the top. We were told to do this for women with large social media followings or worked for agencies that we had partnerships with. A woman could also get their stream pushed to the bottom of the list for reasons too (looks, bad camera quality, bad wifi connection, etc). A lot of us also had "burner" accounts and the company would load up our wallets with tokens so we could tip certain women and make them think they were getting a lot of traffic/engagement.

Kalistoga Report

Final score:

53points

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Oskar vanZandt 5 months ago

Censorship is a financial construct... in every industry.

15points

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#27

29 Things Employees Can’t Reveal To Customers Under Any Circumstances That you overpaid on your insurance deductible, co-pay, or co-ins which is a credit on your account. If you don’t know then you won’t ask for a refund.

StunningInfomercial , Mikhail Nilov / pexels (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:

52points

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Shane S 5 months ago

Not a universal truth. I’ve done billing for several doctors offices and credit balances screw with the bottom line. I cut many refund checks to patients who overpaid. And yes some doctors hated signing the checks, but they did.

20points

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#28

29 Things Employees Can’t Reveal To Customers Under Any Circumstances From my buddy who worked at a factory that boxed and made cereal. The only thing that will change on production lines is the box the bag gets into.

Aeokikit , Samantha Gades/ unsplash (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:

38points

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Bouche and Audi and Shyla, Oh My! 5 months ago

Cinnamon Toast Crunch and the Malto Meal and Walmart versions have a different texture and taste. Kellogg's Frosted Flakes and Malto Meal's have a different flavor or amount of sugar. Lucky Charms and several generic brands have different textures in the cereal bits, although the marshmallow bits are the same.

36points

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#29

I worked for a fruity phone maker. Despite claiming phones cost 100s of dollars to make, in actuality the phones cost $9.50 (including shipping) (in 2015 money) and the rest was just tacked-on "R&D" to make it *seem* like customers weren't being ripped off by a x100 markup.

notverytidy Report

Final score:

-4points

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Mat O'Dowd 5 months ago

This rumor has been constantly debunked. The cost of making an iPhone is roughly50 to 60% of the retail price. https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0912/the-cost-of-making-an-iphone.aspx

42points

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What do you think ?

DB 5 months ago

That electrical part you returned to the auto parts store you swore you didn't install but we know you really did goes right back on the shelf for someone else to buy.

8points

2WheelTravlr 5 months ago

I always look at threads, nut faces, and anywhere else a part would get wear during installation. I've only caught used parts a couple of times, but still worth a look before you leave the store.

2points

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Adam S 5 months ago

A lot of this is illegal in most OECD countries

7points

Your health insurance knows much more about you than you probably realize. There are codes for everything that your doctor sends to your insurer. Diagnosis, vital signs, sexual history, living situation, family medical history and so much more. That one time you got a rash after that one-night-stand? Yeah your insurance knows about that. Or when you admitted to your doctor that you had been drinking a lot lately? Yeah they know about that too… Also, before I get any anti-US-health insurance comments, this is true regardless of whether you have private or government insurance.

No it’s not. Complete b******t. Just because you live in a place that doesn’t care about privacy doesn’t mean it’s the same everywhere. A doctor using codes to inform ANYONE, especially interested third parties, about any aspect of your health would have their licence revoked. Stop with your delusions.

10points

Shane S 5 months ago (edited)

I’m a certified medical coder. What are your qualifications? It’s not delusional. There are ICD10 codes for high risk sexual behavior, alcohol abuse disorder, and social determinants of health. I’m sorry you just don’t want to hear the truth. If you’re in the US, next time read the privacy disclosure instead of just signing it. If you’re not in the US, I never said this was a universal truth and maybe you shouldn’t call Americans living in America who know how the system works, delusional.

-1point

Daggie_style 5 months ago

And yet the dumb@sses always screw up my claims.

3points

Yeah but the NHS treats me regardless 🤷‍♂️

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