There are a decent amount of companies that, if you haveworkedfor them, you will avoid their services or products like the plague. Unfortunately, most places will fire you if you start telling the public about what goes on behind the scenes.Someone asked“What is a corporate secret you can now safely tell because you don’t work there anymore?” and ex-employees spilled the beans. From tips and tricks to how to get around customer support and hotel staff, to horrifying facts about what goes on in a fast food restaurant. So upvote your favorites, comment your thoughts, and keeplearning!This post may includeaffiliate links.
There are a decent amount of companies that, if you haveworkedfor them, you will avoid their services or products like the plague. Unfortunately, most places will fire you if you start telling the public about what goes on behind the scenes.
Someone asked“What is a corporate secret you can now safely tell because you don’t work there anymore?” and ex-employees spilled the beans. From tips and tricks to how to get around customer support and hotel staff, to horrifying facts about what goes on in a fast food restaurant. So upvote your favorites, comment your thoughts, and keeplearning!
This post may includeaffiliate links.
Health insurance dude. When you file a claim, it is often denied because they’re counting on you not escalating it. Once you do, your case goes to a “medical management group” which ought to be called the “we don’t wanna pay” group.Keep escalating and involve your doctor. Fight for the insurance you paid for.
I did data entry for a church before, digitalizing all their wills and donations. Since my NDA has long passed, I can say that it’s ridiculous. People donating their entire wealth, millions upon millions to the church, even private estates and islands. There’s even old money trusts from like 1800s still pumping in money.It’s a sham and these churches are filthy rich. And it’s not even a “prosperity” megachurch.
Never put your information into any online financial form that claims to comparison shop for you.1. They don’t comparison shop for you.2. They sell your info to 4-5 of the highest bidders and your phone will be blown up with calls and texts for weeks with people trying to sell you their finance stuff.Sorry!
NDAs are a lot more common than one might think. In the US, as of 2022, aroundone-thirdof all employed people have an active NDA at this very moment. So perhaps it’s good that there are anonymous outlets like the internet out there where people can share whatgoes onbehind the scenes without risking their jobs.While most exist to protect the company from the sort of things we see here, there are many that are just to limit the spread of “trade secrets.” However, given the sheer number of NDAs out there, it would appear that “trade secret” is a pretty loosely understood term.
NDAs are a lot more common than one might think. In the US, as of 2022, aroundone-thirdof all employed people have an active NDA at this very moment. So perhaps it’s good that there are anonymous outlets like the internet out there where people can share whatgoes onbehind the scenes without risking their jobs.
While most exist to protect the company from the sort of things we see here, there are many that are just to limit the spread of “trade secrets.” However, given the sheer number of NDAs out there, it would appear that “trade secret” is a pretty loosely understood term.
Worked in nursing homes for years. Not sure how “secret” this is but a couple things: most of the staff does actually care about the patients, we just have many. But you yelling and screaming at staff because of how we treat your parent is almost certain to make us care much less. The people who are kind and patient get better care for their parents every time.Also lowkey: once your parent goes into a nursing home/independent living, they really do start to live a different life, with different social groups, norms, and daily routines. They usually adapt more easily than their kids do and when their kids visit and start hollering about every little thing, it causes the patient more stress and anxiety than anything else.
Not sure if it is all furniture stores, but they like to sell you stain resistant coating. It is literally a 6 dollar bottle of scotch guard in a spray bottle. We would charge 90 dollars per item sprayed.
That being said if something downright criminal is happening, most countries do have laws to protectwhistleblowers. After all,unethical practicesare, unfortunately, not always against the law. Indeed, legal experts have found that some companies make employees sign NDAs that they can’t legally enforce, for example having clauses that “prevent” them from complaining about discrimination or harassment.
Former data analyst for an alcohol monitoring company. I won’t say the name but they’re the big one with the ankle bracelet that measures alcohol from your sweat.Most of the time, the data is made up.We get a VERY vague idea of how the alcohol is being expelled from their body through sweat. Sometimes it’s enough to make some sense of it but most of the time we were “encouraged” to “find the event” through the noise or we would be fired. Because of this, I believe numerous people reported false information to the courts.This has ruined countless people’s lives. Their own and their families.I quit before the end of my 90 day probationary period.
I worked for a consulting service. 90% of our reports were just copy and pasted. We charged thousands for every one
My aunt worked building chicken houses for large poultry companies. When you pay the extra couple dollars for free range eggs, you feel you’re doing the right thing. A lot of these companies have “free range” chicken houses that leave the doors open. The chickens can come and go as they please. However, the companies install large fans at the doors that make the chickens afraid to leave the chicken houses, forcing them to stay inside. The whole free range thing is ultimately b******t.
Any lab who runs any type of genetic test on you is selling that data in one form or another.
when people submit their videos to viral social media pages, they immediately sign the rights of the video away to the company. but people rarely ever read the fine print on the submission forms so don’t realise
An open secret at a big orange box retailer of home improvement goods I used to work at was that they would accept pitches for new products from inventors, demand a sample for consideration before agreeing stock it in store, then ship the sample to China to create a similar product with just enough changes to skirt patent law, copyright, etc.
When I was young I worked at a meat processing/packaging plant. Hotdogs, bologna, pepperoni, etc. Not really a corporate secret I’m revealing. but the production of all that s**t was disgusting. Worse than you think.
Wayfair will buy and photograph competitor’s furniture and stuff that looks close enough to their own cheap st. We were told if a vase arrived looking like plastic cp, to go to West Elm or Target etc and buy a ceramic better looking one. Same.with couches, chairs, and so on. They are a C**P company to work for and their goods are 90% garbage.
The cheap.dole orange juice, medium priced Tropicana and expensive naked juice are all the same s**t.
Hotel industry: of course club members get priority when it comes to upgrades, but even if you’re not a member, you are more likely to get a free upgrade if you list “Dr.” as your prefix.
There’s almost always mold in the ice machine. Both my S.O. and I have worked in many restaurants. You’ll live but it’s still gross. I always ask for no ice.
The Radisson Hotel has a “Yes I can” policy. If they are capable of doing something for you as a guest and you ask directly, they are supposed to say yes and maintain a positive attitude towards providing you satisfying services. ALWAYS SHOW UP EARLY FOR CHECK IN AND ASK FOR AN UPGRADE. This is how I go from $250 a night in a regular room to $250 a night for a jacuzzi suite every time I travel.
I will flat out just say don’t trust any diamond grading report that is not GIA. I worked for another diamond grading lab that worked with retail jewelers and the boss would fudge the grades to help them.
the secret ingredient in jimmy john’s delicious tuna salad is soy sauce
If you’ve ever put your ID into a computer for a background check it’s probably been circulated to others regardless of whatever cybersecurity claims the company doing the background check claims.
Rental car companies: the upgrade price is made up on the spot.
When a Verizon rep tells you they fixed something but to call back in 2 hours or 2 days, it’s because 8 times out of 10 they didn’t solve your problem but if you don’t call back in within 2 hours or 2 days depending on department it won’t affect their stats.ETA: if ANY rep tells you that the credit department or ANY department can raise your finance limit (unless it’s an error), they are lying.
Lululemon comes in straight from Hong Kong to the US. Mostly made in Sri Lanka and Vietnam. Same with Mast Global, Lane Bryant, Torrid, Express, etc.
I can’t speak for other food/beverages, but I would safely assume it’s the same … i worked in a sauce factory. Kosher sauce is the same sauce, but the difference is when they are starting to cook it a rabbi is present there blessing it.Brand name sauce and off brand sauce are essentially the same. Barilla and Aldi’s are identical. Barilla ships out the door stacked nicely, pallet shrink wrapped properly. Aldi’s brand ships out stacked terribly, with a thin wrap of shrink wrap. Thats where the savings is. Loading Aldi’s sauce on to trucks you could guarantee there was going to be at least one or two pallets dumped.
Continue reading with Bored Panda PremiumUnlimited contentAd-free browsingDark modeSubscribe nowAlready a subscriber?Sign In
Continue reading with Bored Panda Premium
Unlimited contentAd-free browsingDark mode
Unlimited content
Ad-free browsing
Dark mode
Subscribe nowAlready a subscriber?Sign In
The insurance companies target for you paying on life insurance is about ten years. It’s long enough to have made back the commission and expenses plus some profit. After that, they will make it easier and easier for you to forget to pay for it, and have it lapse. There will suddenly be an issue with automatic payments…things like that. But why?If the policy is lapsed when you die, there is absolutely no payout despite ten years of premiums. That’s why.
I waitressed at a nice restaurant in a very upscale neighborhood. One day I went into work and the back dining room, which was devoid of customers, smelt like death. Literally one of the foulest smells I’ve ever come across. We were about to have a dinner rush, so I alerted my manager and she hurried back. This woman goes, “oh, the trap worked!”, pulls the seat off one of the booths, and picks up the largest decomposing rat I’ve ever seen. It was pregnant. An hour later someone was digging into their burger in that booth… Despite their upscale label, many high-end restaurants will have pests like rats and roaches. I once saw a roach crawling up an ice bucket. Management never did anything, just made sure the customers didn’t know. Also please think twice about ordering soft drinks, the machines are most likely not being cleaned properly and mold loves those areas.
Candy and chip packaging plant..The production lines didn’t change depending on the brand, just the package.The chips that were being produced went into a Kroger bag at $0.99, then a few thousand runs later, they switched the package to a name brand for $1.99.Outside of the label, nothing changed.
if you keep calling apple to get your phone repaired for free, eventually you will get the right person on the phone that can’t be bothered and will give you what is called a customer satisfaction code which can be used for a free repairs/replacement at the nearest apple store.don’t give up, always ask for a supervisor.also phone insurance is a scam. just put that extra $15 a month in a savings account account.
Having an insurance agent (auto/home) is about 20-30% more expensive than if you do it online yourself. I’m talking about the same exact policy from the same exact company.Also, almost all insurance companies sell the same exact policy but they just rename stuff to make it sound like they are giving you something else.Oh, and most of the time, the insurance agent has no fg clue about what they’re talking about. They just want you to buy whatever b*t they are selling. They are a step up from a used car salesman. Insurance is simple in terms of the coverage you get, YOU DO NOT NEED an agent.Your agent also doesn’t represent you. If you file a claim, they can’t do anything other than give you a claims number.
If you buy a new game from GameStop, and it’s not in the shrinkwrap, there’s a pretty decent chance that an employee has taken home and played that copy of the game.Edit: spelling
See Also on Bored Panda
Skin care companies make a butt load of money because the manufacturing costs of their products usually are just a few bucks. AHA for example just costs about a Dollar and a couple of cents then they are sold as $20 or more. I worked in supply chain so I handle the manufacturing, logistics and warehousing part of a well known skin care company.
Housing associations (UK)Many of the staff laugh at their tenants who are struggling.If your housing association runs care homes as well the office staff also look down at care staff. They also think it’s disgusting that you ask for a living wage.I f*****g hated working for one, bunch of pricks.
I worked in advertising for a large publisher. We used to sell digital ads called a fireplace (essentially three ads that surround the page on a desktop screen). The publisher would sell the impressions (how many times someone sees a page/ad) of these ads x3 for each page, instead of them being one page view.When I pointed out that this was fraudulent I was “made redundant” with a fat payout as long as I kept my mouth shut.That was at least 5 years ago now though so…
When one big name appliance manufacturer purchased another, their lab techs noticed something odd in their audit reports regarding product failures. All products are designed so that when they fail they do so safely. Any time it does not do so is notable.The techs noticed that the number of failures was well below what could be expected, it raised red flags. It turns out that their number of failures was higher than recorded. The executives had ordered that fires be officially recorded as phyre and leaks be recorded as leeks.As the buying company assumed the liabilities of the selling company, the buying company has turned around and sue the selling company and the company executives personally. In the end they could stand to win back all that they paid, retain the company and receive personal and punitive damages from the execs.I believe the case is still before the courts.
Hunter Douglas. The extremely expensive shutters are made of compressed cardboard.And your bonus for exceeding projected manufacturing goals is a pizza party.And Walt is a d**k.
High end, partner leveled lawyers do not care about your case. They will simply give it to the underlings and blame whoever worked on it if something goes wrong.Basically.. Corporate lawyers take all the glory and have job security as long as paralegals and low level lawyers do the work/blame.
CARMAX will sell a car that they have to tow from place to place, or get it into “good enough to start” condition, so you fill out the loan paperwork and get into a lemon that dies as soon as you get it home.Theyll blame it on you, and people are very afraid of taking a company like CARMAX to court over lemon laws.They exploit that enmass
Work in mortgages. Your initial closing disclosure is hot garbage designed to meet legal requirements. The company can and will increase fees on you and will find a way to pass it onto you. That was my entire job. Finding ways to pass fees onto customers.
Almost everything on a quote to work on your car is negotiable.Most dealerships use matrix pricing on parts. That means you’re paying more than MSRP. Most manufacturers have a 32-35% markup on parts.So if the part costs the dealership $100, average MSRP would be bout $135. I’ve seen dealerships that did a cost + 100% matrix so the customers would be charged $200 for that same part.Don’t be afraid to ask for a discount.
The secret sauce at Bronco Burgers is just ketchup and mayonnaise.
Used to work at Staples. We had a conversion report that came out every day. Basically, it was to monitor foot traffic in the store. Every single person who walked into our door had to be converted into a customer. No window shopping allowed. Even if you had to sell them a cheap item, it counted.God, I don’t miss retail.
Half the IT systems in the oil & gas industry were built in the 70’s and 80’s and have a handful of consultants that can even touch them. These guys get paid hundreds of thousands a year to be on retainer and sometimes go years without coming in.Worked with dozens of companies in the sector and yet to see a publicly listed one where this isnt the case. At the top they all pretty much use SAP….but there’s some wild st underneath that feeding information into SAP from a computer thats lucky if it runs DOS. I’ve seen floors of personnel dedicated to manually inputting that st.
Peloton has more than one manufacturer for the bikes and other equipment etc…. One manufacturer is better than the other and when you call in with a broken bike etc they know which one you have and so does the tech fixing it. Warehouse Employees used to pick their own bikes so they can make sure they get the “better” one . FYI Always get the warranty!
In a lot of cases, “premium” liquor is the same stuff with a different label. Lots of “small batch, handmade” stuff is bought in bulk from MGP, filtered and bottled. They’re not handmaking anything and a small batch is tens of thousands of gallons.
My first assignment at my new job for a fortune 500 company was to hack a security patch from slightly newer but still well past its end-of-life version of PHP into our own ancient version of PHP that we’d been custom building ourselves because we couldn’t get it pre-built for our operating system. Because we “cared” about security enough to cover our asses for a handful of high profile vulnerabilities, but not enough to run modern software.This wasn’t just used in some old machine off in the corner that ran a report once a month, this was an integral part of our core SaaS platform. They assigned me this despite having no indication that I knew anything about C code, I’d been hired for a job that included some light scripting and automation. If I was dumb and had screwed it up, it’d have been a Sev1 incident and quite expensive. If I was smart and nefarious, I could’ve hacked anything into that binary. I guess they judged well enough, because I did it without breaking things.
This was from a few years back but top flight golf balls are the exact same as the nice Callaway golf ballsBranding was the only difference.
That the flour Domino’s uses is so gross I have never eaten a pizza there ever since I worked for a certain transportation company that transported said flour 🤮
Blockbusters charity tins on the counter weren’t charity tins. They were to balance the tills at the end of each day with a made up charity on them.Friend used to work there, not a single penny ever got donated.
The dirty little secret of Silicon Valley is churn. At peak startup boom, you’d have companies valued at billions of dollars with something like 30% YoY customer retention. Which means that enterprises were spending millions of dollars on software licenses that their employees rarely used. In one startup I worked at, an account was considered “healthy” ( or unlikely to churn) if 5% of seats were utilized at least twice per month.
Dont trust best before dates. Its all about selling the product. If the production date is not suitable for the buyer, it will just stay in the cold room and be processed on the day that will match the expire date (21 days from production)So let’s say something is produced today (February 16) and is set to expire on March 18, but the buyer (some grocery store) wants it to expire March 21, the producing company will just let the goods sit in cold storage for 3 days before putting on best before label.
A lot of fancy wine is the same wine as the cheap stuff until it gets bottled and labeled. I used to service a larger wine maker as a route driver, and a guy showed me how the whole bottling process worked.They switched labels in the middle of a run, and he said the labels just tripled the price of the wine coming out of the barrel.
Former Byrne dairy cashier when I was in college.If you live near a Byrne Dairy (New York and North east U.s.) there is a good chance that the Walmart milk is also Byrne Dairy milk. Them and Stewart’s are the top milk providers in that region.Stewart’s and Byrne Dairy also have a huge rivalry .Don’t get ice from the ice machine, they don’t clean it often enough at Byrne convenience stores.It’s appropriate to ask the last time the coffee or soup was changed. Coffee is supposed to be refreshed every 30 min on a busy day. The soup sometimes gets icky and they just stir it rather than change it.Buy the Byrne dairy thermos. Coffee is suddenly a lot more affordable with the discount you get. It’s worth it .If the pizza looks dried out in the case, don’t get it, they should have thrown it out an hour ago.
GDPR is more of a guideline really. It’s been around for about 7 years, yet I’ve never seen any client suing over their personal info, or any entity trying to enforce it.Sites/apps/games keep insane amounts of personal info of their users, that go back 15 years+
I used to work at five guys. Complete scam one burger was $12 without fries or a drink after fries and a drink it’s $20 and the fries we could give you a whole bag of fries and you would still be overpaying. And they SEVERELY underpay their employees. We could’ve all made $20 an hour and they would still be in a very good profit margin but underpayed us “because you make tips as well”. And lied about the employee average wage on the front door. Another time someone OD’d in the bathroom, died, was resuscitated and the whole time we stayed open so all the customers saw a dead man getting CPR in the bathroom. If you had a mental issue, they didn’t care, panic attack? Didn’t care. One of the my coworkers who had been working there for 14 years tried to get workers comp because she fell on a hole in the floor and couldn’t even start the process “because she didn’t have a valid claim.” I could go on but I think this is enough. Best of wishes to you all.
Modal closeAdd Your Answer!Not your original work?Add sourcePublish
Modal close
Add Your Answer!Not your original work?Add sourcePublish
Not your original work?Add sourcePublish
Not your original work?Add source
Modal closeModal closeOoops! Your image is too large, maximum file size is 8 MB.UploadUploadError occurred when generating embed. Please check link and try again.TwitterRender conversationUse html versionGenerate not embedded versionAdd watermarkInstagramShow Image OnlyHide CaptionCropAdd watermarkFacebookShow Image OnlyAdd watermarkChangeSourceTitleUpdateAdd Image
Modal closeOoops! Your image is too large, maximum file size is 8 MB.UploadUploadError occurred when generating embed. Please check link and try again.TwitterRender conversationUse html versionGenerate not embedded versionAdd watermarkInstagramShow Image OnlyHide CaptionCropAdd watermarkFacebookShow Image OnlyAdd watermarkChangeSourceTitleUpdateAdd Image
Ooops! Your image is too large, maximum file size is 8 MB.
Upload
UploadError occurred when generating embed. Please check link and try again.TwitterRender conversationUse html versionGenerate not embedded versionAdd watermarkInstagramShow Image OnlyHide CaptionCropAdd watermarkFacebookShow Image OnlyAdd watermark
Error occurred when generating embed. Please check link and try again.
TwitterRender conversationUse html versionGenerate not embedded versionAdd watermark
InstagramShow Image OnlyHide CaptionCropAdd watermark
FacebookShow Image OnlyAdd watermark
ChangeSourceTitle
You May LikeGuy Works 50+ Hours/Week Only For His Successor To Automate Everything And Have Nothing To DoIndrė Lukošiūtė50 World’s Weirdest Jobs That Pay Out Quite WellAivaras Kaziukonis30 Painfully Relatable Posts From “Recruiting Hell” (New Pics)Greta Jaruševičiūtė
Indrė Lukošiūtė
Aivaras Kaziukonis
Greta Jaruševičiūtė
Work & Money
