People Are Sharing The 'Dirty' Secrets About Their Jobs, And This Feels Illegal To Read

Yahoo

3 days ago

Be honest, it's fun to gossip and talk shit with your coworkers. Sometimes, a little work drama helps to keep things interesting.
Recently, Reddit user gloomy_gumball posed this question to AskReddit: What's a dirty secret about your workplace that people shouldn't be knowing? Hunny, the answers are as juicy as they are shocking. Buckle the hell up.
1."I worked for a medical research company. All those research methods that they're not supposed to do because it's illegal here? Yeah, they just go to other countries to do that. I had to handle all the research and information on the experiments they were doing in South America."
—u/wearelegion1134
2."I used to work in the hotel industry, and a lot more people die in hotels than get publicized."
—u/TraditionalTackle1
"One of the worst things I came across in the industry was a woman who was basically trying to starve herself to death in the room.
The manager of the hotel next door that we sometimes would share business with personally brought her over to us, saying that she was staying with them but they had to ask her to leave (which was a red flag, looking back).
She didn't give our staff any problems, but after she overstayed her reservation by a couple of days, she never came to the desk to get her keys reprogrammed, and none of us had had any contact with her. Housekeeping was concerned because she had the 'Do Not Disturb' sign up, and they heard her dog barking.
After a wellness check, a friend of hers came to pick her up, and she explained what happened. It turns out she had sold her house, but the one she was trying to buy fell through, and with nowhere else to go, she just planned on lying there until she died."
—u/saxy_for_life
3."I work in lab testing high fructose corn syrup. You'll be surprised how much bacteria, yeast, mold, and metal pieces Coca Cola and Pepsi allow in!"
—u/ColdWar82
"I worked in food chemical manufacturing, and we have a '20 bug or less' policy in our 55-gallon drums of food chemicals!"
—u/-TheFourChinTeller-
4."No longer employed there, but when I worked at a certain big box retailer of home improvement products, we would occasionally see hopeful strangers sitting in our lobby with boxes or other packaging waiting for meetings. These people were small-time inventors of new products and were trying to get them on the shelves of our retail locations. What they didn't know is that, as a condition for consideration of carrying the product, they would be required to turn one or more samples over to the company to be examined by the product teams."
"If the product showed promise, one of those samples would be shipped to another country where it would be thoroughly dissected and analyzed so that an equivalent product could be developed under the house label (with enough modifications to not infringe on any patents, of course) and that product was what would end up on the shelf. From what I heard, a lawsuit pretty much ended the practice, and now they don't allow pitches from independent producers anymore. They just wait to see what other retailers are already carrying (and selling well) and copy those."
—u/Jackieirish
5."I used to work in radio, and part of my job was editing and producing 'bits' done by morning shows. Those phone calls where the hosts 'trap' a cheater and confront them? All fake. There are services that provide voice actors to play the parts, and people like me would edit the calls to fit within a specified amount of time to keep people listening."
—u/gogojack
6."A lot of awards you see large corporations tooting their own horn over are just bullshit that they just essentially pay for. A common one I've seen is something along the lines of 'Location X's 100 Best Managed Companies'. I've worked for one of these 'best managed companies,' and it was actually the worst-managed place I'd ever worked for."
"It was an utterly dysfunctional business that had horrible retention problems both for employees and management. Higher-ups would get fired for theft or embezzlement, alcohol or drug abuse, sexual harassment or assault, etc. They were constantly losing contracts for failing to fulfill them, but then bribing individuals to get the contract back. They just paid for the sizable application fee to get the award because it looked good on their advertising and attracted both clients and entry-level employees to be part of the meat grinder. Well worth it for them. Personally, whenever I see any sort of company with that particular kind of award, I avoid them like the plague."
—u/MZM204
7."I work in a plastic bag plant. Everything in here runs on electricity. The owners tapped into a power line that runs through the property, and for more than 10 years, they didn't pay a dime. They made tens of millions. When the fraud was found out, they blamed an employee (who was from Latin America) and were given a $200K fine. You can't find the story online anymore, they used their community connections to have it erased. And flat out deny it ever happened. Who says 'crime doesn't pay'?"
—u/dirtybird971
8."I work in a grocery store. Bulk produce items do fall on the floor regularly. We just pick them up and put them back on the shelf if it isn't damaged. If a container of berries or tomatoes pops open, we'll just put them all back in and put it back on the shelf. Nothing is rinsed off first."
"We also don't clean the lids of the yogurt or sour cream tubs if the lid falls off. We just put it back on the product. It can fall on the floor, in a puddle of milk, doesn't matter. At most, we might wipe it off on our apron or with a paper towel if available.
Almost nothing is actually made in the bakery. Everything either comes in already-made or in portioned pieces of dough that they throw into the oven. The only thing they really do is decorate cakes, donuts, bread, and bagels. Even most of the cakes come in with icing already on them. They just add some extra decorations.
All of the seafood comes in frozen and is kept frozen, even though the sign says never frozen. In fact, the seafood people will grab bags of frozen shrimp off the shelf and put it in the display case. You are literally paying more for some thawed-out shrimp."
—u/trickster9000
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9."I worked for a nonprofit that focused on a specific medical condition. They did good work and the local chapters were great, but the staff at the national level was... unhinged."
"One year at the national conference, top-level staff had bloody letters shoved under their hotel doors. They had forced out the national director because it came out that she'd left the country permanently with her assistant whom she was having an affair with and hadn't actually done any work in more than two years. The letters threatened to trash the org's reputation and ruin the work they were doing if any of it came out. They'd just received a massive donation and couldn't risk it. So the whole thing was hushed up."
—u/i_am_the_archivist
10."If you buy DVDs from places like Amazon, and they were produced before 2020, they are not new. They are purchased by the sellers at thrift stores or other places, disc cleaned of scratches, new plastic wrapped around the case, and sold 'new' for the full price."
—u/sovietarmyfan
11."I'm a handyman. Contractors' favorite saying is 'Can't see it from my house.' You ever see those videos from home inspectors pointing out all the crooked or broken shit in brand new construction? It's because the builders don't fucking care. And then once all the cracks start forming in your walls, they go, 'Oh, that's just the house settling.' Nope, they built it shitty in the first place and now their shoddy work is shining through."
—u/the_xxvii
12."Someone died in my Amazon warehouse during peak season. He was covered with delivery boxes until the coroner could make it. They still required everyone to work that day."
—u/RevolutionaryBoss648
13."I work in tax collection for the DMV. The majority of employees here are highly incompetent and are consistently collecting taxes and fees improperly, sometimes charging too much or too little based on the situation. The supervisors are usually too busy to be able to always correct mistakes and double-check the fees."
"Since the taxpayers usually don't know all of the laws in regards to vehicle tax collection, the mistakes just go on and on with no one knowing about the errors. In the collector's defense, there are so many tax codes and they are difficult to understand. That and they are constantly changing when lawmakers rewrite the rules."
–u/Late_Rate_3959
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14."Universities get most of their money from the tuition fees of overseas students. They will accept weak applicants and overlook poor performance if it means the overseas tuition money keeps rolling in."
—u/LittleBitOdd
15."I worked at a clothes donation sorter/exporter for cash under the table. Many of those donation bins you see in parking lots with different charities written on them are all owned by one company that donates a tiny percentage to charity to be able to use the charity name. All clothes and shoes are exported to Africa for profit, everything else is trash and goes in the garbage (toys, books, art, digital media, electronics)."
—u/DonConZie
16."My company ships dangerously corrosive chemicals across the country in tanks that have repeatedly failed safety inspections. Very few get pulled over, so it's cheaper for the company to pay the fines instead of repairing the tanks or buying brand new ones. And with all the slashes to funding, firings, and relaxation of environmental regulations, it's getting even easier to do so."
—u/80s_dystopia_is_now
17."Early in my career, I worked at a place that wrote and sold curriculum. We needed to show that our stuff was effective, so we hired a research firm. During the process of interviewing and selecting a firm, each one basically said, 'We'll make sure to give you whatever results you need.' That's when I stopped believing any 'third-party research' funded by the company being researched."
—u/riverdoggg
18."Don't ever buy anything marinated from a butcher/meat case. It is how the older meats are sold, the marinade covers the smell."
—u/Big-Melvin
19."'No kill shelters' just transfer animals to county animal shelters to take care of the tough part. 'Rescues' come through the county shelters and take all the "cute" animals and then turn around and charge hundreds for them."
—u/WhereAmIHowDoILeave
20."I work in the defense industry, specifically in the US. Part of the reason the military is so expensive to update and maintain is the fact that the government basically just pays whatever the companies tell them things cost without looking into it. A valve costing $3 is sold to the Navy for $30, a computer costing $900 is sold to the Army for $2400, etc. Don't get me wrong, a lot of stuff is genuinely expensive, but I guarantee that the military is paying way too much for it."
—u/JackCooper_7274
21."Recycling and garbage have different bins, but at the end of the night, they go in the same dumpster."
—u/BallinBrown23
22."My company will openly hire you based solely on physical appearance. My boss has told me that he feels that if there are young, attractive females in the office, more employees will want to come in because they'll want to flirt/talk with these girls."
—u/Tall-Performer2500
23."I'm a teacher. Students' rapidly dropping attention spans and critical thinking are something you see or hear about, but it is very much real. Over the past three years, I've noticed kids are less able to focus for more than five minutes without starting to draw or talking to the person next to them."
"Further, with the addition of strong AI like ChatGPT, they are not being 'punished' (academically) as they should be. They can get entire course notes in 10 seconds and just cram a few days before tests. This will certainly be an issue in about 20 years when kids raised on generative AI and low attention spans become our central workforce, but I'll be long retired by then."
—u/hdueeyd
24."It's wild how much access developers and engineers have to PII (Personally Identifiable Information) of users, even though that data is supposed to be encrypted/protected."
—u/Just-Control-9815
25."As someone who works in corporate finance, let's just say those offshore accounts get away with a lot of things. But because it's outside of US jurisdiction, there is nothing my company will do to report because the company gets paid regardless."
—u/Cheetodude625
26."I can't go into too much detail, but I once worked in a lab at a very prestigious university that was committing copyright infringement by paying several people to manually copy data out of textbooks eight hours a day. They were also not paying the data entry people the full hours that they worked (and paying them close to minimum wage on top of that). They were also underpaying me, so I quit and moved to a job that gave me a 100% raise LOL."
—u/skettyvan
27.And finally, "I used to work in a drug/alcohol probation office. Everyone working there was doing drugs or was a drunk driver. One probation officer was trading pills with her neighbor just to find out the neighbor was on probation in our office with a different officer. Some employees stole pills from probationers when they photocopy the pill bottles for the client file."
—u/DarkDaysDoll
Does your workplace have any secrets you want to share? Let me know in the comments!
Note: some answers have been edited for length and/or clarity.
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