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“‘Military Grade’ Doesn’t Mean Anything”: 65 Work Secrets People Don’t Need To Hide Anymore
As consumers, we usually see only the final product — the beautifully plated meal at a restaurant or the spotless waiting room at the dentist — and rarely get to know what’s happening behind those swinging doors. Plenty of businesses know this and don’t hesitate to take shortcuts.
Current employees might speak up occasionally, but no one spills the beans quite like former workers. For instance, a former cook once revealed the secret recipe behind McDonald’s Big Mac sauce, while a military aircraft mechanic exposed the real truth about “military-grade” equipment.
If you want some of the juiciest secrets from industry insiders, scroll down, take notes, and maybe check from where your local deli is actually sourcing its mozzarella.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
I used to work for a credit card company, they automated any dispute under $200, so if you claimed id theft, they would take your word and resolve it without much investigation. It was cheaper than to do a complete investigation.
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#2
McDonald’s Big Mac sauce is just mayo, sweet pickle relish, mustard, and white wine vinegar, colored with paprika with no ketchup. You can make it easy at home.
Upstaged75 1 hour ago
I always thought it was just thousand island salad dressing. Probably close to that I guess.
#3
Before vet school I worked for a veterinarian who was a born-again christian. Anytime she had any unwed couple or a lgbtq+ couple come into the clinic with their pet she would trash talk them after the appointment and talk about how they were going to hell and that she would pray for them. I got my letter of recommendation as fast as I could because she was the only vet who would hire me as someone with no experience prior to working at a vet clinic so I could get into vet school. On top of all that she was a complete narcissist and blamed me for so many things she was responsible for as the vet. I felt terrible at the time but now that I am a vet I know it was on her, not her staff. She was so toxic. Haven't spoken to her since I quit after I got my letter and have now been a practicing vet for almost 6 years. Currently work for a clinic in a LGTBQ+ heavy community and is family owned by LGBTQ+!
While HR departments love to talk about how much they value employee feedback, the reality on the ground is a bit different. Most workers wouldn’t dare speak up about the shady stuff they see every day.
A recent survey found that six out of ten employees are terrified to speak up at work. They figure their bosses won’t listen anyway — or worse, that speaking out will destroy their careers. About 67% of HR professionals also admitted that employees stay silent often.
#4
My laptop has an app that is the only thing keeping $20m in robotics running. I quit and soon IT will deactivate my account. Once it goes everything stops.
#5
My colleague and I took our lunch breaks at the same time. It was against company policy, but we were alone in our building so noone knew.
We'd take the phone with us to the kitchen and if somebody called just told them we had a client/meeting/whatever and would call them back in half an hour. On paper we always took breaks alternatingly.
It made the whole day so much better. She was much older than me, but we read similar books and would talk about them while having soup or salad.
It was one of the reasons I never wanted to move to the big office, where out boss worked.
#6
I was an aircraft mechanic in the military for 20 years. When something is advertised as "military grade" it doesn't mean anything.
Fungus John 2 hours ago
it basically means the lowest quality possible that can still get the job done
Current employees' fears aren’t just paranoia. According to data from the Institute of Business Ethics, nearly a quarter of workers saw illegal or unethical behavior at their jobs last year alone. Yet, a third of those witnesses stayed completely silent. Why? Over 40% of them were convinced they’d get fired on the spot if they said anything.
Even for the brave souls who spoke up, it didn’t end well — about half suffered direct retaliation from their managers.
“At a moment where so many companies are laying people off, people are afraid to say the truth,” says Kim Scott, a CEO coach and the co-founder of Radical Candor.
#7
I worked at a college and it would only take me from 8:30-11:30 to get my work done for the day. Then I would have a quick 15 minutes lunch at my desk -and then walk around noon-3:30/4. I lost 25lbs doing this. My bosses thought that I would walk around campus to get work done. They never figured it out.
Upstaged75 1 hour ago
As long as they were getting the work done who really cares? Although it sounds like it should really only be a part time job.
#8
Worked a five star resort in Darwin Aus with a swim up pool bar. The housekeeping team were given one cloth pershift and used it on everything. No different colours for bathroom and the cups on your desk. Management were crazy racist and flat out told me it's why they don't hire white girls when I complained about the health/hygiene aspect.
#9
One of the dentist was keeping the gold or any metal from teeth and selling it and using the money for the Christmas party.
Laws technically protect whistleblowers from getting fired for safety concerns. But companies are sneaky. Instead of firing someone for blowing the whistle, bosses often just write them up for being “five minutes late” or claim they have a “bad attitude.”
When you’re still on the payroll, speaking out is a massive gamble that just isn’t worth the risk for a lot of people living paycheck to paycheck. But once someone quits or gets fired, you bet the gloves are coming off.
#10
Having worked for banks & credit unions…They relish - and count on - credit-cardholders that carry a balance. We called it “perma-debt” and it padded the bottom line.
Thank you, funded my 401K.
Pro-tip: use cards carefully. Do not over-extend or make dreaded minimum payments. Ever. Pay balance in-full, on time, each month. Or…GO WITHOUT!
Upstaged75 1 hour ago
I was reckless with my cards as a young person. It took me until my late 40's to clear out all my debt. I no longer carry any sort of balance - I use a card that's attached to my bank account. I only spend the money that I have. It's been life changing. I thought I was going to be paying things off after I was d.ead. 😁
#11
I worked at multiple market food vendors. All of them had serious health violations. Picking up food from the floor and selling it, giving out spoiled products, mixing food on the floor, and the equipment only got cleaned when I got to it, sometimes weeks apart.
#12
I worked in a national retail pharmacy chain in the late 2000s that stored patient credit card numbers in plaintext. When one of the computers I was working on started overheating and slowing down, I could load a patient profile and see the entire 16-digit card number displayed, until one-by-one it replaced the first 12 numbers with asterisks.
Even when someone wants to speak up through official channels, they rarely know where to turn. Larger companies have massive HR departments full of directors, managers, and executives, which can be confusing and intimidating for a regular employee to navigate.
But what about smaller workplaces? If you work in a chaotic restaurant kitchen or a tiny dental office, HR simply doesn’t exist. If your coworker accidentally drills into the wrong tooth and covers it up, there’s no anonymous hotline to call. There’s no system, no safety net, and no one to report it to.
For many current workers, staying quiet is their only option.
#13
Any customer order from ANY warehouse, ANY company. Your package has 100% been thrown around, stepped on, knocked on the floor. Doesn't matter if it says fragile.
Chich the witch 5 minutes ago
Read of one small company that had their boxes labelled as "Bull Semen" which seemed to solve the rough use problem
#14
Worked at Pfizer, number one goal is to come up with expensive medicine that keeps you alive, but doesn't cure you - so you need to be on them for life.
There is no money to be made curing diseases, and Pfizer has cured ZERO.
#15
Most small businesses run their personal expenses through the business as business expenses. Flowers for the wife? Office supplies. Kid needs a laptop for college? Technology expense. I've worked at many small/medium businesses and its incredibly common. And they get pissed if you call them out on it.
Upstaged75 1 hour ago
This person must have worked at some sketchy places. I've never seen that anywhere I've been. It's a great way to get your business in big trouble!
This pattern isn’t happening only in corporate offices. A 2025 survey of California fast-food workers exposed the unsettling reality behind the counter. Nearly half of all staff — 47% — admitted to witnessing serious, health-hazard-level food safety violations at their jobs over the previous year. Employees reported raw meat cross-contaminating fresh ingredients, food left sitting at unsafe temperatures for hours, active rodent infestations, and staff explicitly instructed to serve expired or spoiled food to paying customers.
In that same survey, workers revealed that reporting these violations almost guaranteed immediate workplace retaliation — from cut hours and nightmarish shift assignments to outright termination.
#16
I worked at a local deli when I was 18 and 19.
They loved to advertise their fresh homemade mozzarella, which was really just fresh mozzarella bought from a wholesaler that they would unwrap and stick in a bin with water and sell at the deli counter.
#17
Chili at Wendy’s is made with leftover cooked burger meat.
Beer steins and mugs generally contain the same amount of beer but steins are made of thicker glass and looker bigger so they can charge more.
Legal protections are also catching up, giving former staff more freedom to speak out. In early 2023, the US National Labor Relations Board ruled that employers can no longer legally force most departing workers to sign non-disparagement or confidentiality clauses just to collect their severance pay.
This means that while companies have traditionally used broad severance agreements to hide internal misconduct, harassment, and toxic work environments, ex-employees are now legally protected when airing an employer’s dirty laundry.
However, experts note that deep-rooted workplace culture — and the fear of being blacklisted or labeled a “troublemaker” while job hunting — means many former staff still wait until they are fully secure in their next role before spilling the truth.
#19
If you take clothes to the dry cleaners we put it in the washing machine unless the care tag says dry clean only.
#20
A manager backed into the blood drive bus and drove off. I was donating while this happened. I didn’t actually see him do it but the trucks description matched his truck, kept my mouth shut. I’m still there, he’s not. I sat on that for a least a year. No one was surprised when I finally mentioned it.
#21
i used to be an intern writer at a magazine publication. i was at the interior design magazine, and i also had intern friends from the fashion and lifestyle magazine. in their magazine they used to have a zodiac/horoscope page that gives out monthly life predictions for every zodiac sign. i remember one time my friend working on this page was on such a rush to finish and submit the article that they asked me and other people around the office what our zodiac signs are and what we would wish to happen next month they also said “we can’t make it too overly lucky and good coz it might come off sketchy, better come up with some struggles you might face as well” i never believed those magazine horoscopes ever since.
Upstaged75 1 hour ago
You believed them before that?? 😂 That's exactly how they're ALL written. Someone is just making c.rap up. 🤷♀️
Online forums like Reddit, Glassdoor, and Indeed give former employees a safe, anonymous platform to finally vent and spill their secrets. These forums let ex-staffers speak freely about subtle workplace issues — things that might not cross the line into illegal conduct but still cause major internal problems.
That broader scope is exactly why these platforms work so well. “They are not even designed to detect misconduct, which is part of what makes this work — employees feel much more comfortable talking than they might in a narrower platform,” says Dennis W. Campbell, a professor at Harvard Business School.
According to Campbell, board members and company executives can also use these public forums to monitor internal employee communications and spot toxic cultural issues before they spiral out of control.
#22
I was burnt out in my last job for the final six months. We had a restructure and went through a redundancy process which I followed through with. Anyway... we worked from home 3 days a week. Id complete my work by midday and just play Xbox, making sure id move the mouse to show I was online.
#23
The dentist I was working for accidentally started drilling the wrong tooth, realized and switched to the right tooth, but never repaired the tooth he started to drill.
Every single day, you spend your hard-earned money based on the trust that businesses are playing fair. When current workers are forced to stay silent, you’re the one left paying for their cover-ups — whether that means eating contaminated food or paying for fake repairs.
That’s why don’t just treat these confessions as mere gossip… they’re our best defense as a consumer. And if you have any workplace secrets of your own, don’t hesitate to drop them in the comments below — we promise we won’t tell your boss.
#24
Worked for a place that rented out furniture and appliances. Beds, mattresses, couches, washer and dryer, refrigerators.
If people didn’t pay we would repossess. They’d send us out to repossess bug infested appliances and furniture. Mattresses and couches would be heat treated, vacuumed, shampooed and rented out to the next customer. Didn’t matter how bad a bed bug infestation was. They send us in wearing full body suits and masks to get their stuff. Horrible job.
María Hermida 56 minutes ago
Who tents s mattress? I'd rather sleep on the floor with some cardboard and a blanket below
#25
Worked at UPS, I didn't know where your package was either and was praying it would turn up. The inhouse system for tracking was as bad as the customer one.
#26
It’s not a secret but many civilians working on a certain military base worked maybe 10 hours a week and were only held up by a few workhorses. That’s government work for you.
I was younger in my career so I took as many projects as I could and filled my time plenty, but if I wanted to I could genuinely work for about 2 hours a day and nobody would bat an eye.
It was a great work life balance but it was also depressing lol.
#27
One of the supervisors has random women come to the workplace on night shift in the middle of the night to cheat on his wife. His wife found out and legitimately brought a freaking gun to the workplace to confront her spouse/the supervisor/the side piece. Our manager is BFFs with the police and managed to make the whole thing go away quietly. Lots of us wanted to quit afterwards.
#28
Sunoco gas stations sometimes sell regular gas as premium.
Blix Timboe 1 hour ago
If your car actually needs a higher octane, it's pretty obvious. A Ferrari runs like cr@p on 87. 91 doesn't make your Jetta faster.
#29
Produce is OLD by the time it gets to the store
Asparagus, Blueberries, blackberries, etc can be up to 1 month old
Onions, potatoes, apples, etc can be a year old.
Blix Timboe 1 hour ago
I was a commercial fisherman in Alaska for 10+ years. Most frozen seafood is at least a year old. It's a commodities market and this season's losses are made up by raising the price of last year's catch that is being sold this year. "Once you've seen the sausage made..."
#30
My first job was McDonald’s. When I went into the kitchen to learn the ropes they showed me the timing trays for burgers, nuggets, filet o fishes, etc. Now for those that don’t know, after you would cook a pack of 10 burgers or whatever at a time, you would put them in a tray and press the timer button. It would count down 30 or 45 minutes or whatever the “safe/good” time was (sorry this was 18 years ago my memory is fuzzy). When that time was up we were supposed to throw out the burgers if there was any left in the tray because they were unsafe. I was told to just re-press the button…
#31
Former bartender - the owner would reuse plastic cups frequently. So did other college bars in the area (Wisconsin).
And no, it wasn’t a dishwasher method. It was a hot water and bleach rinse, followed by a soap and water rinse. No scrubbing. Sometimes I’d notice chewing gum stuck to the bottom of a reused plastic cup. I now only drink from beer bottles and cans.
#32
Not any company but worked in a spare parts shop and some parts are very rare to sale that we forget the rate to sell so we just blabber some high price according to the behavior of customer we even sell those parts at half price too so that we can get rid of those parts.
#33
Instead of going for individual blood test always ask if there are packages available. Usually have a discount of 50% upwards.
Insurance is your best friend if you are admitted in a private hospital. They regulate the prices for you.
Doctors might seem like wonderful people on the outside. But on the inside are the most vile & money minded people.
#34
Worked in a start up in the past which was fairly popular in the industry now and most people here would have heard the name.
All the user passwords used to be stored in plain text. This was not fixed till 2018 although most of the dev know how severe this is. And given the lack of security awareness, some of the people used to have same password for gmail and Facebook as well. There was no unsual login activity mails either back then. So, I was sure some level of snooping took place on some innocent users.
#35
A well known insurance / assurance company asked me to put together an online quote / order pay system. I knocked out a quick demo to show them how the UI would work. They couldn't understand how this (2 days work) was different to the actual system (6 months for a full team of developers). The fact that their was no quote engine, no database, no back office, no payment mechanism, no document production etc was beyond their understanding.
In the end they made me alter the demo so it made the user fill in endless forms then ignore everything except the name and phone number. Instead of getting a quote a message would pop up saying "Our Database is offline at the moment". They would then print out the name and phone number as a text file and give it to their salesmen who would do the whole transaction by phone.
There was no "online system", no "immediate quotes" no "database" and no "online payments". People would spend hours filling in all the fake online forms just so the company could capture a phone number and then cold-call them.
#36
This won't be groundbreaking information, as we all know call centres are high volume and low quality organisations. But I used to work in a call centre for one of the "Big 6" energy companies. If you've ever wondered why your call might spontaneously drop, it's because you either sounded like you were about to complain, or weren't likely to buy a new service. Agents would just hang up on a customer if they were difficult to avoid having a complaint against them, or to rush onto the next call to try and push a shite service they were scored on selling. But they were canny by physically hanging up the phone and not ending the call through the outdated software, that way it wasn't recorded as deliberately ending the call but a hardware issue or customer hanging up.
#37
My dad was in logistics and transport in the '80s. He worked for a US owned pharmaceutical company based in the south of England, they made an anti flea and lice shampoo.
Two of there biggest buyers back in the 80s was Iran and Iraq while they were at war with each other, but had they known the shampoo was made by a US owned company these no way they would have bought it
To get around this, the company hired Turkish drivers who would pick up the pallets of shampoo, drive it to a small Turkish 'office' where it was given Turkish paperwork and then on to Iraq/iran, where it was sold as a Turkish product. Doubt they would get away with that these days.
#38
Lidl, Aldi, Sainsburys, M&S home-brand tea is all the same tea.
Asda, Waitrose, Holland & Barret home-brand tea is all the same tea.
I know surprising Asda same quality as the posh shops. And M&S going budget. At least this was the case a few years ago, might have changed since.
Rose the Cook 36 minutes ago
Home brand products are always made in the big brand factories and depending on the product seldom vary.
#39
At the grocery store where I worked, I caught one of my managers stealing from a till, and he gave me $300 to shut up. Then, like three days later, an entirely different employee got caught stealing and took the fall for all the missing money
#40
I worked at McDonald's Express in 2003–2005, when I was in high school. We all ate so much food, because we knew we'd just end up tossing it at the end of the holding time. No customer cared about waiting three extra minutes for fresh food if we happened to grab the last one. We also got our employee meal on top of that. OMG, and the frozen cookie dough — we ate so much of it!
#41
Instead of throwing away the expired (been to long in the tray to
Keep warm) chicken nuggets in McDonald’s I ate them.
#42
The education industry and also basically the special education industry is an industry that is running on scams and also which are just harming vulnerable children and their parents and also at times, creating false labels and creating issues for them.
michael Chock 2 hours ago
Trust me. My son is special Ed, no labels needed. Those people working with him are saints.
#43
All of the other preschool teachers were sleeping with parents of the kids.
Rusty’scate 26 minutes ago
Omg 😳 I read that wrong the first time, I didn’t see of the kids, I thought it said or the kids.
#44
I worked at this one pizza place in a northern California town many years ago. They were quite successful from 2010 to 2015. Around 2012 they had opened a second location.
After a few months people, employees, and the owners began to notice a funky smell in the area. One of the bosses blames it on the faulty sewer system of a town founded during the gold rush. Some people just assumed it was from the refuse of partying tourists who flood the downtown during the weekends.
In 2015, the owners of this pizza place decided to move the original location to a bigger building, close the second location, and consolidate the workers into one spot. The official statement was to simplify operations.
This wasn't the truth.
There had been complaints by customers that they were find slugs in their drinks. Drinks were a soda fountain so it was obviously self service. No way an employee would be able to plant a slug in the cups before a customer would go use the soda fountain. One of the bosses even thought it was sabotage. Well, they shortly discovered what the problem was:
The drain for the soda fountain went directly under the building and dumped everything onto the foundations. The soda was laying under the building in a pool of fermenting and rotting sugar. Slugs would travel up into the drain following the source of the delicious nectar. The cost of repair would have been enormous so the owners decided to leave and let someone else fix the problem.
It was absolutely insane, lol. I haven't worked for that pizza spot since 2020. I still, to this day, get people saying they miss that second location and I tell them the story of why it actually shut down.
#45
They were absolutely committing accounting fraud, claiming both the Work-in-process and the raw materials that went into them as assets concurrently so that they could borrow against both.
I had no idea at the time, just doing the inventory transactions the way the boss said to. Later when I was in business school it dawned on me, "Oh! That was fraud!"
#46
I still work there at a different area, but when I worked in the warehouse we'd have to use forklifts that ran on gasoline and LPG, one of them had been having engine troubles where it was overheating frequently after being on for a few minutes. We'd let the lead know about it, stopped using it and were told it would be fixed ASAP. The issue more or less got pushed under the rug despite my shift's concerns about it, and eventually one day, someone forgot, turned it on and left it idle while they went to get breakfast, and it managed to catch fire. My coworker (not the one who turned it on) managed to sprint over to a fire extinguisher and put it out before it got too bad, but it was near 2 other forklifts, and we may have been seconds away from half the warehouse exploding because of it. I just end up thinking about that from time to time...
#47
The nursing home was haunted.
Blix Timboe 1 hour ago
Nursing homes can be a sad place. If you don't have much family or can't travel for the holidays, consider reaching out to local nursing homes, etc. and asking if you can volunteer over the holidays. I did for a few years in college and it made a difference for both of us. I missed my family, they missed theirs.
#48
I use to deliver at disneyland. They have an abundance of pallets in the back because of all the semi trucks that do drop ship. I would go home each day with at least 40-60 pallets. I sold them to a pallet yard, their buying price was $8.25 a pallet. 5 days a week 40-60 pallets x 8.25 do the math.
#49
The big printing companies use their rejected,scrap and salvaged paper in the middle of big jobs. The beautiful nice perfect stuff is used at the beginning and end if the customer is there okaying the job or checking progress. The customers billed for the name brand stuff.
#50
I work in one of the big4 accounting firms and when my manager is too busy, they would ask me to send out a draft directly to client without their review.
#51
Everything the client gets delivered is ChatGpt. They charge lakhs of retainer for generating stuff. Waste of money and time (and water).
#52
All buffet restaurants - the food is all prepackaged and/or frozen. Nothing is scratch made.
#53
I have too many such stories...this is one the unfortunate outcomes of working for short stints in multiple places...
A. The PR lead of one of my companies while I worked at Pune around 16-17 years ago..he was gay...he used to hire good looking gents at junior temporary positions under him all the time. He came out later, some 10 years afterwards....but I knew from then on as I was privy to his internet activities...he is a friend and we are in touch now....but I could not tell him that I knew since then onwards..
B. The HR head and the Receptionist of a very famous company of Ahmedabad were having a roaring affair...they had the usual flirting over IM (desktop to desktop in the same building). They used to visit the company guest house on Saturdays some times. The guest house caretaker was given special instructions to disappear during that time. He was bengali and I had good relations with him..(once in a while when he cooked good food he used to keep aside some for me). He told this to me..and I could not share this with anyone while I was there. Later on I came to know that few other people had suspected this.
C. This incident is different. 1999. City of Rourkela. Not connected directly with me. But with a fried, but I was a direct witness. My friend was the branch manager at a private bank. Once every 2-3 months he would get intimation from the owner of a mine from a place called Joda, to be ready for a large cash deposit. The vehicle would come late at night, around 11 pm or so. Since large amount of cash was involved, he had to make provisions for extra security but at the same time very few people would need to be present. The customer himself used to provide additional security from his side and food for all the people for counting the cash. The incident where I was present the amount was some 2.5Cr..and the notes were stuffed into the bags like clothes..all denominations..sorting and ordering them took the larger part of the night.
#54
I work for a games publisher. You'll be able to guess which one easily.
- The Football Manager games on PSP were literally nothing more than roster updates after the first time.
- The Xbox One/Series X version of FM 2021 is literally the mobile version repurposed for a controller. The main game will run on a toaster - unless you don't have a PC I wouldn't bother.
- The Total War games have run on the same engine since Empire. Same issues and limitations pop up with every new release. There's a lot of technical debt with Warscape but they don't want to put the series on hold just for a major rework.
- Most of the team that worked on Sonic Colours and Sonic Generations are no longer working for the dev team. There wasn't much confidence in Sonic Forces from the off and it ended up being released as a budget title and priced as such. Though it sold quite well considering. From what I've heard about the new one they're working on, they've once again proved to have not learned their lesson.
#55
The instore baked hot cross buns you buy from supermarkets are not made with ground mixed spices as you might expect. They use something called spice bun concentrate, which if you put your nose too close to it will make your sinuses explode.
#56
Not top secret but definitely not widely known. The egg you get in McDonald’s breakfast wraps comes from a carton that looks like off yellow/orange milk when raw (the McMuffin egg is fresh and is the freshest item on the menu).
#57
Most stuff in spoons is microwaved. Even the poached eggs ( vacuum packed pre poached from Brakes ) when it was busy we would run out of McCain chips we would run over the road and buy the cheapest frozen ones instead. During busy period most food like burgers were bulk cooked on a grill and stored in a thing to keep stuff constant temp using water.
#58
So I worked for a supermarket that starts with M whilst in college/part way through university. It had a few major management and working restructures whilst I worked there.
The first when I started was the introduction of loads of gimmicks to make our food look fresher than it was. The mist they sprayed over they fruit and veg? Did nothing but customers loved it, when they got rid of it they were genuinely upset enough to say they'd shop elsewhere.
Dalton Philips was brought in and it seemed like all of his ideas were misplaced or poorly timed. I remember in my induction with a handful of other people one lady asked about Online Shopping as the shop didn't do it yet. The words of the trainer at the time was simply "We will never do online shopping, the customer loves the in-store experience far too much." Even at 17 I thought that was really stupid. They have online shopping now but only after Dalton was sacked.
Same with their local stores. They opened so many in weird locations and were far too pricey compared to tesco express or the co-op. Loads of staff were encouraged to move to the locals if it was closer for them and that way the stores would either lower staff costs or be able to train new staff in the big shops. Which on paper sounds alright but when all the locals were shut down lots of long working staff lost their jobs as their was no room for them back in their old stores.
They opened a child and baby type chain store that once again was overpriced and they all flopped.
Two new uniforms and logos in a two year stint. Despite being in the red.
The bonus card and vouchers were literally costing the company money, which is why now the deals are so lackluster compared to 2012ish. After Dalton's 5 year stint he left with a stupid amount of money and the company was in massive debt.
So on to the next shake up, from top tier level all the way down to the store front. New plan was make everyone at a certain level a manager. The checkout manager and deputies? Now all managers on equal level and pull. Same with every other department. Checkouts suffered worse as too many chefs in the kitchen. Couldn't do right from wrong, but you could easily play the system to get annual leave approved. I got caught out once and feigned ignorance. What could the manager who said no do? One of the other managers said I could have the time off.
Checkouts tried to make members of the team "runners" you didn't get paid more but sometimes you got to hold the keys to the DVD case and stand by the checkout desk. Caused massive discourse when new 17 year olds were given it over women who'd be in the company since the Safeway days.
That lasted for about six months, then all the shop floor mangers were given new roles so their power didn't overlap.
For a time when pretty much every store was in the red there was a lot of cross department work to save on overtime/expenses. Checkouts are quiet but the fresh pizzas need to be made? Or the cafe needs someone in pot wash. Have fun! No training or spare uniform/PPE are provided though. On many occasions I'd be in the pot wash a good few hours then back on tills in a dirty shirt that's had dirty dish water sloshed on it.
All the benefits and stuff was slashed to save money and all the good mangers jumped ship. I think it's doing better financially now. I'd never go back but at times I do miss the chaos that was retail.
#59
Toyota (had) a reputation for no redundancies when you were hired.
The easiest way to achieve this was to have 50% contractors and be very reluctant to make anyone permanent. Downturn and the contract line workers could be booted no problems.
The mechanics/line engineer subcontractor was raking it in and billing £120/hour because they knew Toyota needed them and didn't want to play along to get on staff.
A well known opticians (that you should've gone to) operates as mostly franchises. As an organisation they offer lots of very good opthalmic training for franchise staff free, but the franchise owners don't tell the staff about it as the owner doesn't want to promote them or pay them more.
Also a fair amount of the franchise owners drive shitboxes to work and, say, an Aston Martin at home, to keep staff in the dark.
#60
Worked at checkatrade for a bit after they got bought out by homeserve. Apparently it used to be a good company that did work for its members, but when I started there it was like walking into a dumpster fire every day. Insane yearly monthly prices (highest was about £140 pm) would be decided by your trade and how well you seemed to be doing through the site, so the more reviews you got the more your page would be boosted, but likely your monthly membership would shoot up when it came to your renewal date (which, by the way, was automatic if you didn't say no), but we were not supposed to tell members that's how prices are decided, we just had to 'convince them it's worth it'. seemed like it was verging on a pyramid scheme to me.
Not to mention the absolute state of management and staff as a whole, processes would change almost every week so no one actually knew what the hell they were doing and ending up with really pissed off builders screaming down the phone at them. Having to try and keep a straight face whilst explaining to a window cleaner why their monthly membership has almost tripled was near enough impossible, made worse by the fact you had to pull a reason out of air because you had no idea either.
Was only there for about 6 months temping, but by the sounds of things it's not got any better.
Also that annoying radio ad was purposely made to get stuck in your head and drive you crazy.
#61
Bud Light (the official beer of the England men's football team) is made using rice and fish bladders.
#63
I used to work at a family artisan pasta factory called "La Tua Pasta" in Park Royal, London. We also used to make free-range egg pasta that was made from the same batch as the non free-range one.
The owners were Italians and the production manager was a Slovak.
One day, rhe manager kindly pulled us aside, and explained that with eggs, unlike with meat, there is no difference, and no one can check.
It is unnecesary to say that the free range products were way pricier...
Recently I checked their website and saw that the place was bought by an English couple. I don't know if they still do the same things.
#64
My boss could not read or write. I can expose it - he’s still there, but I won’t. I covered for him a lot. I think he knew I knew.
#65
PR is a scam. I worked with a ceo once and he had a bit of a narcissistic streak. We paid less than 70,000 and had his interviews in 2 magazines from Hyderabad and 2 newspapers in 3 months. Even tried getting him into Forbes but that was costly and in lakhs.
I started my career in a BPO type job in Raheja mind space. During the night shift, they would use the pregnancy room to hook up (no cctv cams or pregnant women at night thanks to company policy). Some people hooking up were married.
One of my friend works in a FAANG in Hyderabad. He is stupid af. He only got in because his wife is HR in that company and his BIL is a very senior person in the same company. I spoke to him 3 days back and he never heard of ChatGPT apparently and fyi he works as part of the companies operational innovation department. FYI he makes 30 LPA. Works 2-3 hours a day. Just emails and basic reports.
Another friend joined Wipro and was on the bench for 1.5 years. He would go to office, sign his name (for benched people access card isn’t attendance for some reason). Every time they put him on a project he got out. In that time he finished his MBA at OU and was consistently being paid. He left the company lied on his resume and now works someplace else (but now works very hard and is on track to becoming a VP).
In my first job post MBA I would hire Pakistani/ Bangla Financial analysts on fivver and make them create financial models. Never got caught. Was offered a promotion within 6 months of joining but I left the company out of guilt.
In one of my other companies there was a team lead (FE lead) and his GF/now wife was a Jr Dev. She worked on a project with me and I always noticed she never delivered anything on the same day. Later found out she would go home and ask her husband to do the work so she would always deliver one day later. I didn’t care since the work was getting done and code quality was awesome.
My friend works as a very senior financial person for a SaaS company, and it is true. You are all numbers on an excel sheet and layoffs decision are nothing but marking you in red background. So yeah, don’t d*e for your company.
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