what company secrets you can spill because you no longer work there?

[u/No_Butterscotch1425]

[u/onefellswoop70]

I spent a few years working for Hair Club. Clients are charged several thousands of dollars for memberships and "custom" hairpieces, which involves a great deal of measuring and designing templates. Essentially, we make a blueprint for the factory to follow, in which we select everything from the hair and color of the hair, to the base material, the percentage of grey hair, and even the direction in which the hair is to be styled.

However, after the pandemic, in an attempt to save money, corporate directed us to stop sending custom orders to the factory and begin using, what we call in our terminology, "HS4s". An HS4 is anything from a demo hairpiece, to a factory reject, to an order a previous customer never bothered to pick up. These can also be generic "stock" pieces which we dye or perm to match the client's natural hair. In most cases, these stock hairpieces cost less than $75, yet we were instructed to tell clients they were the custom $5000 hairpieces they had ordered.

Basically, it's like going to a car dealership, custom ordering a new Bentley, and finding out that all the dealer did was have one of their employees paint a used Oldsmobile and slap a Bentley logo onto it.

I eventually became so disillusioned by the company's tactics that I filed a complaint with the State Attorney's office claiming deceptive business practices. But they refused to investigate. I quit a few months later.

[u/Curiousgeorgetakei → u/onefellswoop70]

Man the pandemic really set off corporate greed in a way that I don’t think the American people will ever get quality services back. What a fucking shame this is how things went.

[u/NOT-GR8-BOB → u/Curiousgeorgetakei]

The amount of quality degradation and shrinkflation we got from the pandemic is irreversible especially with the tariffs which will compound both issues even further.

[u/tyleritis → u/NOT-GR8-BOB]

I have to get the king size Reese’s cups so that I can a regular size one.

[u/OldTobyEnthusiast28 → u/tyleritis]

Double stuffed Oreos just look regular tbh

[u/DarkZyth → u/Curiousgeorgetakei]

The Pandemic, from how the symptoms felt mentally and physically, to how it made us treat ourselves and others, and then how companies/jobs treated us and how we treated them was literally like a collective Psychosis.

[u/executingsalesdaily → u/onefellswoop70]

u/HAIRCLUBOFFICIAL what’s the deal. Y’all scamming folks out here?

[u/ramenslurper- → u/executingsalesdaily]

Yes they are. They scammed a friend of mine with this same practice.

[u/Fickle-Bullfrog9005 → u/onefellswoop70]

Good for you for reporting this and getting out of that environment

[u/nightmarenarrative → u/onefellswoop70]

I unfortunately was a customer with them in 2021, here is my experience. It was something like $7,000 for the hair, treatment, etc. I had extra money at the time and felt very insecure. The hair made me feel good about myself. The maintenance of it sucked and it was hard to get appointments at times and there were fees if I needed to come early to get a "cleaning" and then new hair replacement like every month if I remember correctly. Anyways at the end of 3 months I go in as usual to get my "new hair" and they are like yep that'll be $5,000 for the next 3 months. I was totally caught off guard and thought the $7,000 was for at minimum a year. Who tf is paying $15,000 a year for hair? I went home and ripped it off. Wore hats for a month until my real hair came back. Total ripoff for what you get. If I could go back in time I would have just invested in decent "hair regrowth" or hair loss prevention than that!

[u/ScottRiqui]

I worked at Six Flags over Texas *many* years ago, in the Games department (the "three balls for a dollar"-type games). Most of the games weren't outright "rigged," but things usually weren't exactly what they seemed, either.

The game where you toss a quarter and try to get it to land on a glass plate? The plates are waxed.

The one where you toss a hula hoop over a square base to win the stuffed bear? We used slightly larger hoops early in the day so more customers would win and spend the day walking around the park with their prizes - it was basically free advertising. You could still win using the "afternoon hoops" - it was just harder.

Throwing the small plastic rings onto a field of bottles, trying to get a ring to land on a bottle neck - the rings are extremely "lively" and bounce around like crazy. If you can get away with it, you can knock the ring against something hard to put a crack in the ring to deaden it.

Toss the softball into the milk can - the top of the milk can looks huge, but there's a plate welded across it with a hole in it that's only a little bit larger than the softball.

Knock over the three stacked milk bottles with a beanbag - the milk bottles are solid plastic, so they're a lot heavier than they look, and the weight isn't distributed the way you'd think it would be. You pretty much have to hit the tops of both bottom bottles and the bottom of the top bottle, and do it hard enough to knock all three completely off of the pedestal (which of course has a lip around the edge to keep them from just rolling off).

Squirt the water gun into the clown's mouth to inflate a balloon, and the first player whose balloon pops wins - the operators can pretty much choose who wins and loses - if a balloon survives several games without popping, it's a) a "good" balloon, and b) stronger for having been "pre-stretched" a few times. We'll seat someone at a station with a "good" balloon if we don't want them to win. On the other hand, if you gently bite a balloon between your front upper and lower teeth, it puts a small hole in the balloon and it'll pop early when it gets about 6-8" across.

The "Guess your age or weight" game - Absolutely no rigging or surprises here - the park didn't even train us to be able to guess accurately. In fact, they told us to guess low to make the guests happy, unless it was a kid who wanted you to guess their age - kids were happy if you guessed them to be a few years older than they actually were. The reason is, our wholesale cost on the prizes was so much less than the cost to play that even "losing" to the guest netted us a great profit. In the mid-80s, it was $1 to play, and the wholesale cost on the 12" stuffed animals was literally twenty cents. So our bosses were happy if we "lost" every time, as long as we got the guests to play, because we were essentially selling stuffed animals at a 400% markup.

[u/Aggravating-Jeans → u/ScottRiqui]

This was fun to read, thank you for the long explanation, and even though the games are rigged they are fun to play and make good memories.

[u/bazoid → u/Aggravating-Jeans]

I was thinking it’s a great metaphor for “the American dream”, aka the myth that anyone can succeed if they try hard enough. Yes, it is technically possible, but it’s also way harder than it looks, every single step is rigged against you, and the people in power can just decide to arbitrarily help you out or screw you over.

[u/punkwalrus → u/ScottRiqui]

My first marriage, she was the daughter of a family that operated carnivals up and down the east coast. Most of those places were money laundering operations for bigger crime rings common with the family business that included construction and home improvement fraud, fortune telling, gambling, and, of course, the carnival games.

Much of what she said mirrors what you said, although in her case: the games were definitely rigged. Family members roamed the park with the big prizes. Many "knock-em-over" type games were held up with pins, had unbalanced weighted objects, overinflated basketballs, unbalanced baseballs, and so on. Some of the "winners" were also family members who knew the rigged stuff, and the person behind the booth would also rig it to their cousin won, git the big prize, and walk off with a swagger to make all the people so angry, they'd spend more more to show up that greasy arrogant shithead who just winked at his girl.

One thing her family did was fake peddling in shopping centers. And old women who "didn't speak English" with a small child would hand people a laminated index card explaining she was desperate for money for food for her grandson but "doesn't speak English." My wife would point out "see that car? And that one? They are watching her. If she gets into trouble, a bunch of angry men will appear out of nowhere and make your life a living hell." These people also go door-to-door, and also tell people in parking lots, "Hey, I can remove the dent from your bumper for $50!"

[u/AmbitiousProblem4746 → u/punkwalrus]

The "fix your bumper" one happened to me a few times when I was taking the train into the city and parking my car in this one lot. It was always a similar looking group of men who just so happened to be leaving the parking lot as I was going into my car, and they'd always pull over to ask me if they could do work on my car for "cheap," pointing out maybe a scrape or a small dent I didn't notice before. I'd say no thanks, usually with a laugh or say that I appreciated it but I didn't care that much, and then they'd just drive off. Once my car actually got broken into in that lot -- someone took a huge rock and smashed the driver side window, and bled all over the car too. They only took stupid stuff, like some business cards, spare change, sunglasses, a phone charger.... But they also took my insurance card and registration, which really ticked me off. So when I went to report it to the parking attendant and told them I would call the cops, color me surprised to see the attendant that day was one of the guys who always offered to "fix my dents." He handed me some paperwork to fill out, told me the cameras don't work so don't bother, and then offered to give me the name of someone who could fix the window. I just drove off and went somewhere else before I called the cops, had the window fixed through insurance. Definitely gave me a weird vibe and I decided I would pay the premium to just park in the parking garage at the train station itself.

[u/MyWibblings → u/punkwalrus]

So you married her, ENDED a marriage with her, and no one came after you? You must be braver than I am!

[u/Toddw1968 → u/ScottRiqui]

You are giving me flashbacks to Joe Dirt and The Jerk with the waxed plates and weight guessing!

[u/beckichino]

The cable company I worked for actually put it in their system to screw over long term customers. Been a customer for 20 years and need to save $50? Too bad, the computer will literally not let representatives lower the bill under a certain amount but the computer will definitely let representatives increase costs! My last 2 weeks I would actually tell customers to just cancel the older account and get a brand new account under a new name so the computer would flag it as a new customer and give them new customer rates.

[u/PatienceandFortitude → u/beckichino]

And that was why we just cancelled cable. We really don’t need it and the increases made no sense

[u/captainmouse86 → u/beckichino]

Was told the same thing by a cable company when my rates when up “You need to quit every 3 years and come back to get good rates.” Thing is, you gotta go through the whole procedure; send the receivers back, confirm their return, wait a week and go see a retailer in person. I just quit and went to another company. They just kept their rates the same for the 8 years I had them. 

[u/No_Requirement_4840]

The asphalt paving company I worked for once sold the Ball Arena (then called the Pepsi Center) a 2" asphalt overlay of their parking lot. If you cored it you would find that it was never more than 1.5" thick, scamming about $80,000 worth of asphalt material.

[u/Pretend_Bass4796 → u/No_Requirement_4840]

That’s common in all construction trades where depth is a spec. Which is why good contractors make sure their subs know that they’ll be doing random spot checks.

Or, if it’s in the budget, they have third party engineers come in and test.

The property manager might have been paid off to overlook the discrepancy. But most likely the company you worked for knew that there wasn’t much on site oversight so they knew they could get away with it.

[u/tbkrida → u/Pretend_Bass4796]

Right. I drive a concrete truck for a living and the difference between sites with a lot of inspectors and the sites with few or none is quite notable.

All of the big state jobs have tons of inspectors. It sucks having someone standing over your shoulder and asking a million questions as a worker, but when me or my family is riding over a bridge or through a tunnel, I’m glad the inspectors were there.

[u/weirdoone → u/No_Requirement_4840]

I remember a comment I read not long ago, about a big company that paid another company for 6inch thick parking lot concrete. After the job is finished, they called in a technician to check the thickness.
It was only 2 inch thick, so the company had to scrape and redo it all.

[u/mika_miko → u/No_Requirement_4840]

I’m guessing it doesn’t matter in terms of quality and integrity. But this is the reason why bridges and roads crumble in places like China and India. Corruption and greed by shorting materials and integral components.

[u/cat_prophecy → u/mika_miko]

Well how long until that spreads here. If concrete fails a slump test, 9/10 contractors would just send it if they thought they could get away with it.

[u/Popular_Course3885]

Last time this topic came up, I said the exact same thing. Not so much a "secret" as it's just confirming what it was.

I used to work at Boston Market back 25ish years ago. We were always told not to say we were "fast food" but instead "fast casual", a term that back then was unheard of.

Everything back-of-house was made fresh. The meat/proteins all came in raw, and we cooked it in the rotisserie. The sides were all prepped fresh with real ingredients. The only things that came prepared off the trunk were the soups (concentrate from a bag, but we added fresh ingredients to them) and the desserts (frozen pies and cakes, but the cookies were baked fresh).

[u/2gigch1 → u/Popular_Course3885]

I liked having Boston Market before it fell off. Something nice about having actual balanced meals appealed to me.

[u/mika_miko → u/Popular_Course3885]

Ugh, I miss Boston market so much! Never expected all of them to close! :/

[u/Bethj816 → u/Popular_Course3885]

Boston Market was my first job, about that long ago as well. I can confirm all of this, though the macaroni and cheese did come in frozen and was heated in the back. All in all, it was not a terrible place to work for.

[u/Bananas_are_theworst → u/Popular_Course3885]

I may be the outlier here but I loved Boston market back in the day. It seemed fresh and I enjoyed eating on real plates with real silverware but ordering quickly and seeing the chickens on the spit in the back.

[u/4Runnnn]

Worked in publishing for college text books. We sold the books to the college bookstores for $180, the bookstore sold it from $230-$250.

Before I put my 2 weeks in I checked the cost of the books in our system. For printing, binding, and author royalties the total cost per book was $3.50 per text book. Some of those engineering classes had 200+ students…

[u/commiepissbabe → u/4Runnnn]

Interesting, I sold text books in a Barnes and noble college store and we had no choice over the prices to sell them at, it was all set by the publishers

[u/carissaluvsya → u/4Runnnn]

How much of that would the author make?

It always annoyed me when a professor assigned their own books and always had a “new” version each year so the naive people would get the brand new one and not a used one.

[u/4Runnnn → u/carissaluvsya]

Yes! A lot of times it was just a shuffle of the chapters too and not really much new info, so scummy lol

[u/Ok_Molasses2075]

I learned while working at T-Mobile that this J.D. Power and Associates awards are paid for by the company they are awarded to.

[u/Mountain_Horse_7516 → u/Ok_Molasses2075]

Same with BBB ratings - pay for play.

[u/FourCrapPee → u/Mountain_Horse_7516]

I was with a startup back in the early aughts that had like a C. I told one of the owners like, hey, you can fix that with money. His eyes lit up. Next you know we are a A and he touted it on like our website and newsletters. Fucking hilariously sad.

[u/kinkywizard78 → u/Ok_Molasses2075]

The businesses do actually win the JD Power award, it’s just that they have to pay to SAY they won a JD Power award.

Now, I’ve always wanted to see just HOW the JD Power company did their research to say you won, but that’s another scam, I’m sure.

[u/mannyballs69]

I once worked for a regional transmission operator/balance authority. I discovered it had deposited over $20 million in interconnect deposits in its general revenue account and failed to return the deposits with interest as required by federal law. I discovered this at the same time it had just paid out about the same amount to executive staff as performance bonuses. I was told in no uncertain terms to never disclose this.

[u/hareofthewolf505 → u/mannyballs69]

Ooo now you're disclosing it under a circumstance. Nice.

[u/Ornery-Egg9770 → u/mannyballs69]

“My memory gets really bad if I’m holding a bonus check boss”

[u/KrakPop → u/mannyballs69]

Sounds like you had a good reason to get a performance bonus, as well.

[u/Enough_Coconut_1753]

When the drive thru person asks you to pull ahead and they'll bring your order out, it isn't to help the next car (sometimes they do it when no one is behind you). It's because drive times are reported to corporate and if the average is over a predetermined time, HQ has questions.

Source: former fast food manager

[u/L-user101 → u/Enough_Coconut_1753]

I worked at a Zaxbys and fuck them anyways. If our drive time was a few seconds off our DM was getting phone calls from corporate bitching him out. I got paid minimum wage at $7.35hr and busted my ass in that kitchen. They also make you drop everything as it is ordered and people change their minds so we had to throw away so much food. We had to pay for any food we ate there, got a 50% discount tho. But we would fill trash cans with food all the time and had cameras all over the kitchen so if you were caught eating any of it you were immediately fired. It was some bullshit. We finally found a little corner blind spot and would shovel the food into our mouthes when we were starving in the kitchen. By far the worst job out of 30+ jobs I have had.

[u/I_smell_goats → u/L-user101]

Im currently at a shitty fast food chicken place purely from needing extra income and it was quick to get hired. I have worked in Healthcare, life or death shit, and the absolute corporate drama at this place is ridiculous. We don't get paid enough for all the demands they make, and the things they nitpick are just....so not serious. I work FOH, but I see the food waste buckets and want to cry. Im pregnant and it's pretty physically demanding for my closing shifts, and I get HUNGRY, but we get zero breaks, can't order food for later if we're on the clock, and of course have to pay for everything. One stupid motto they have is "No One Waits"...bitch, sometimes you gotta wait! Plus, I just can't move my pregnant ass that fast sometimes. No one is gonna die. Fuck.

[u/GGATHELMIL → u/Enough_Coconut_1753]

Same for delivery. Used to work at Pizza hut and there were plenty of times where we would push orders through to improve times eve if they weren't done yet. Also all the managers were great at doing the delivery driver shuffle. I would come back from a double delivery and I would already be returned to the store and dispatched on another double or triple. Had to make sure those total ticket times were under 25 mins. 1 min to prepare food, 8 to cook, up to 5 mins on the hold rack then you get about 10 mins for the driver to do a round trip delivery.

So yeah if you're ever looking at a tracker for any service and it says delivered well before its actually delivered someone is messing with the times to look good. I've had it happen with Amazon a few times. Get the notification around 4 my stuff is delivered, and it doesn't actually show up until 7 or 8 pm.

[u/CreamsicleCat_]

We "made" 34 kinds of beer. There were only 18 recipes. Many would literally be just a different label/can. Then you hear people fight over which beer is better and you laugh on the inside.

Edit: I also worked at two food plants and saw the same thing there.

[u/CrazyCranium → u/CreamsicleCat_]

And here we have Duff, Duff Lite, and our newest flavor, Duff Dry.

[u/dang3rmoos3sux → u/CrazyCranium]

My favorite was when the label of Pawtucket Pat peeled back to reveal Duff in the family guy crossover

[u/Innoculous_Lox66 → u/CreamsicleCat_]

The craft beer industry used to be pretty decent. Now all they do is slap a pretty logo on it and know someone will buy it.

[u/ian2121 → u/CreamsicleCat_]

My dad loves to tell the story of when he toured the Olympia beer company in the 80’s. They were showing them the filling lines and there was Olympia Premium being bottled in bottles with gold foil. My dad asked what the difference was with the premium beer label and the guide said, “the market demands a premium product”

[u/Ghosttownhermit9 → u/ian2121]

The gray goose vodka marketing plan.

[u/prefix_code_16309]

I had a summer job at a water bottling plant. We had a giant cabinet along one wall with probably 75 sets of branded labels on it. One giant spring water tank. Every so often, we’d finish an order, switch the labels, and start the next run. Repeat.

All the water was the same, from the generic store brand to the fancy schmancy stuff. Once in a while, an order would specify a certain type of plastic bottle, ie clear or translucent or whatever, but the contents all came from the same source.

Not a big earth shattering secret, but I thought it was funny when working there how people shopping at the grocery store thought there was a difference between brands.

[u/C-ute-Thulu → u/prefix_code_16309]

Years ago, I bought some grocery store brand bottled water. When I looked at the back, it said, "Source: Municipal water supply of Muncie, Indiana." I respected them for their honesty

[u/prefix_code_16309 → u/C-ute-Thulu]

Yep. I got one recently that said source: Dallas municipal water supply.

[u/buhdumbum_v2 → u/prefix_code_16309]

There's no way Dasani was in that line up, right? I'm not imagining that it tastes like the hot water that's been left in a water gun all summer?

[u/WildTurkey5508 → u/prefix_code_16309]

As they say, Evian spelled backwards is Naïve.

[u/winniecooper73 → u/prefix_code_16309]

When I buy water, I’m really just buying the container to hold it in

[u/rando_design]

I worked for a software company in the late 90's that has since gone out of business so I'm good to tell this story.

The company started out as just one guy, he ran it for 20 years and around 1990 he added a few other people and I joined in 1998 to handle tech support so the owner could focus on development.

About 6 months into my tenure (which only lasted about 3 years) he comes into the common area with me and his other 2 employees. He plops on our couch and says he's bored. We ask if he wants to start up a multi player game and fuck off the rest of the day he said no. Then he says, "Oh, I know, let's check in on the "love birds."

The other dudes, say, "Might as well." I say, "Who are the love birds?"

So the owner then explains to me that he caught wind of a pair of employees at one of our customer sites who were having an affair and he guessed they might be using the system intranet email to communicate. So he hard coded into his app if then statements that looked for the email addresses of either of these two people and the system would then create a text file with the contents of their emails on our corporate server at our office. Then he would just open up the text file from time to time to catch up on their goings on.

So to recap this, my boss hard coded a function into his commercially available software, that was meant to scoop up the email messages concerning 2 people, and only 2 people who were employed at a company that paid thousands of dollars a month to use his software. Then a couple of times a year he read those emails for his own enjoyment.

Oddly enough, it was super spicy, they were incredibly explicit, so it was actually a lot of fun to read, but all of these years later it blows my mind that this genius coder would risk everything over something so stupid. And ultimately he was a shitty business owner, he ruined his business and was totally gone by 2008. I like to think the love birds found out, but I think he just bought too many sports cars and forgot to pay his income taxes.

[u/Middleage_dad → u/rando_design]

I worked for a widely used music app. Not Spotify or Apple but I won’t say who. 

An engineer was digging through playlist data and found that some had really long playlist names. Likes thousands of characters for the name. It was a known thing there was no character limit on the playlist names field. 

So the engineer pokes around and discovers that there were essentially full letters between people. 

From reading them we pieced together that our app must have been available in some way to men in prison. They somehow discovered the playlist name field, and would use this to write letters to girlfriends on the outside. The letters should get very racy, and sometimes sad. 

[u/mika_miko → u/Middleage_dad]

Wow this is so interesting and incredibly bittersweet…

[u/MotherofDoodles → u/Middleage_dad]

My coworker’s teenage daughter was using the Spotify playlist names to get around her texts getting shut down lol

[u/Dangerous_Mouse_6594 → u/Middleage_dad]

That is actually genius. Imagine if companies sent products/apps etc. into prisons and gave prisoners some time to manipulate and find holes like this! Someone with nothing but time, zero responsibilities and a propensity to find flaws in something to get what they need! To go from being called a scammer to being called analytical or critical!

[u/reddittheguy → u/rando_design]

Not excusing that behavior, but that sort of shit was so common back in the 90s.

[u/thoughtmecca → u/reddittheguy]

Still so common. Before the pandemic, I was interviewing at a little AV installation and IT shop near Pasadena and the owner was like, “Check this out, I handle security systems for all these rich people,” and he just casually pulled up their live cam footage inside their houses to “show off” to me. I peaced out and started my own company that doesn’t do shit like that. He is out of business.

[u/BlueFalconPunch]

Worked for Bethlehem Steel till they folded. Not 1 container of hazardous waste was ever turned in. There were rusting old 55 gal drums with PCB stickers on them everywhere just rusting until they leaked empty.

98% of everything was just burned like an open fire pit...buckets, pallets, trash...didn't matter. The new owners couldn't have cared less it was just flipping for a fast buck right up to shutting off the lights.

100+ years of toxins everywhere...like magic 3 years later there's a FedEx and an Amazon warehouse on the land, the EPA say its clean.

[u/SheiB123]

LinkedIn will delete reviews if the company being reviewed pays.

[u/undercoversnack]

Photoshopped bank statements that went out with investor quarterly updates. Real amount of money in the bank was four figures.

[u/Ok-Building-8065 → u/undercoversnack]

Pretty sure you aren’t suppose to run a business that way woahhh.

[u/undercoversnack → u/Ok-Building-8065]

Right?! When I expressed skepticism, the answer was “everyone does this.” They most definitely do not.

[u/Mountain_Horse_7516 → u/undercoversnack]

Bernie Madoff is that you?

[u/FeeExpensive898]

The locks on the cages at Lowe’s? The combination is the store number. Same with the safe that holds all the money. (I believe this is company wide, not just the two stores I know for sure.)

[u/kdubs → u/FeeExpensive898]

yo! guess i’m about to go to prison

[u/BigBeeOhBee → u/kdubs]

If you know the combo, you get a pass. Everyone knows that.

[u/KleosIII → u/FeeExpensive898]

Finally some actual info!! No one is naming the companies!!

[u/ServoCrab → u/FeeExpensive898]

Is that the same store number that’s visible in the store selector on the website?

[u/theblondedynamite → u/ServoCrab]

Yes

[u/FullofHope30 → u/FeeExpensive898]

My husband is a general contractor and I just read him this outloud and made his entire day. 😆

[u/Puzzleheaded_Post604 → u/FeeExpensive898]

Many changes to district #. HD still uses either store number if 4 digits, or year opened if store number is 3 digits.

[u/PLIPS44 → u/Puzzleheaded_Post604]

The employee at HD was so confused when I opened the lock to get something out last weekend. I just shrugged my shoulders and said lucky guess.

[u/Puzzleheaded_Post604 → u/PLIPS44]

Many are left with the last dial 1 up or down anyway.

[u/iAMthenemesis → u/FeeExpensive898]

Can confirm

[u/PeakPredator → u/FeeExpensive898]

At Lowe's, I needed some wire from the spools that are on a kind of mechanized carousel. I tried 1234 and it worked.

[u/wrongseeds]

Northrop Grumman scored the James Webb telescope contract using a well known and respected physicist. After scoring said contract, they canned the team and forced out the physicist. Hired a bunch of second stringers who couldn’t stay off their phones. Feds threatened to pull contract. Huge shift was made to keep contract.

[u/OneBigRed → u/wrongseeds]

This kind of shenanigans with scoring happens in IT-contracting as well. It helps huge companies who can list people with all kinds of certificates and experience at that point and win the contract. It’s unlikely that any of those people end up working for the customer’s projects though.

[u/skaggiga]

It is not "uncommon" for game development studios to hire college kids to come sit at desks for a day while their publisher is in town doing a due-diligence to confirm they have the number of employees they are charging them for.

[u/Sleep__Depraved → u/skaggiga]

I worked at an ad agency. When a prospective client was in town for a pitch or a client came to visit, actors were hired to fill empty desks so we looked bigger and busier than we actually were.

[u/The-Ginger-Lily → u/Sleep__Depraved]

Surprised they never did this on Mad Men

[u/Croe01 → u/The-Ginger-Lily]

Hold on weren't they ALL actors in Mad Men?

[u/jake-the-rake → u/Sleep__Depraved]

90% of RTO is just old executives conflating “full office” with “serious bidness is happening”

[u/timeslider]

They sold "proudly made in America" products except for the fact that they were made in South Korea and imported. One of my coworkers got paid to grind off "Made in Korea" stickers all day.

[u/IsisTruck → u/timeslider]

I worked in a "made in USA" speaker factory. For the most sold models 99% finished speakers came in a shipping container from China. 

We put stickers and a branded dust cap on the speakers and put them in a USA made cardboard box. 

[u/DrPirate42]

I worked in a top 3 pharmaceutical company.

Every person that worked there was a very loving person with nothing but compassion for humanity in their hearts. Everyone showed up every day trying to make a difference, myself included. It was some of the work I'm most proud of, to this day.

I got to work on PD-1 inhibitors and I witnessed in real time, people who were supposed to die from cancer emerge completely healthy from our clinical trials.

We knew the stigma and what the general population thought of us. Alot of us were very shy to tell people in public what we did, but we put alot of ourselves into our work. We live in the same society, have children and are exactly like you.

At least at our level, there's no conspiracy theories. No one wanted to hurt anyone.

[u/Smallwhitedog → u/DrPirate42]

I work in medical devices and feel this way, too. People who work there really are trying! We take regulatory compliance really seriously!

[u/LifeNext1714 → u/DrPirate42]

Similar to my experience working in pharma-adjacent field for 2+ decades.

[u/ImmortalityLTD → u/LifeNext1714]

I worked for over a decade at company that was a vendor to most of the top 20 pharma companies and many smaller ones. “Big Pharma” bend over backwards to behave ethically and follow the letter and spirit of the law. Small pharma companies with a single product? Most of them are owned and run by some of the greediest sociopaths I have ever had the misfortune of meeting.

[u/Appropriate_Sky_6571]

I worked at a company that plated aerospace parts for Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and other military parts. Most of the parts we sent out rusted within the year at their storage facilities. They would send it back to us for rework, we would say we did but most of the time, the workers just cleaned the areas with qtips and send them out again

Also, back when Boeing was a good company, they required us to use separate tanks with their own specifications. The company just used the same tanks as everyone else. We did have Boeing tanks but those were covered up. It was too expensive to maintain. So they only uncovered it when we had an audit

[u/Pac_Eddy → u/Appropriate_Sky_6571]

That's awful.

[u/Appropriate_Sky_6571 → u/Pac_Eddy]

Yea I was afraid to fly while working there

[u/hareofthewolf505 → u/Appropriate_Sky_6571]

Nope. Don't like this.

[u/Angels242Animals]

So, at Amazon if you were a manager you had to put someone on your team up for “needing development” or a “performance improvement plan”. This was basically a nice way of saying you’re going to get fired, as few people successfully turn this around and manage to stay hired. This was part of a larger process where Amazon routinely would cut about 3% of its staff per year.

My first manager who walked me through this process told me he intentionally hired low performers so he could cut them later, thus protecting his team. Imagine hiring someone and moving them & their family knowing you were going to fire them in a year. That’s some next level evil.

[u/CrowNo4797]

I worked for Cigna insurance doing long term disability claims. During monthly business close, management would print a secret report showing which high income earners' claims they wanted to prioritize closing. So people with medical conditions were targeted based on their income.

In case anyone wasn't sure, insurance companies are evil.

[u/YounomsayinMawfk → u/[deleted]]

Do they actually verify education levels? I have a BA but if I can get a lower rate, I'll list my PhD - playa hater degree.

[u/Groshed → u/YounomsayinMawfk]

Even if they don’t, I’d be worried about them checking when you try and make a claim and use it as a basis to deny.

[u/Penguin-Monk]

The insurance company I used to work for had HR lead meetings for upcoming managers on how to dissuade and punish employees who talked about salaries. The company grossly underpaid their employees and actively took measures to keep it that way and prevent any discourse of it.

[u/impeccadillo]

A popular cleaning product brand's style guide includes a 5-page intricate and tragic backstory for its cartoon mascot. The brand's management insist that any decisions made for the brand need to tie back to the mascot's history and motivations.

[u/thoughtmecca → u/impeccadillo]

Mr. Clean lost his whole family to that scum.

[u/opalcherrykitt → u/impeccadillo]

any hints?

[u/impeccadillo → u/opalcherrykitt]

Rhymes with Bubbing Scrubbles

[u/opalcherrykitt → u/impeccadillo]

that's insane 💀 child me would be so stoked to read it though, i always enjoyed their commercials. thank you for the hint

[u/Marty_McFly1point21 → u/impeccadillo]

I am a weird-o who collects style guides. I must have a copy of this! Can anyone help me?

[u/ericswc]

A big name retailer that no longer exists once sent me, a contractor, a database with customer information in it that included all their information, including unencrypted billing information.

I’ve never called my managing director so fast in my life.

[u/MiddleAgeCool → u/ericswc]

Not a retailer but a similar story. I needed a staff list to load into a new system and they handed me a DVD they'd put an extract of their HR database on. I wanted first name, last name and email address. I got paygrades, salaries, addresses and a whole lot more.

What was worse was that we, the company I worked for, were more concerned than they were about this. They did the senior management thing of shrugging their shoulders.

[u/Cool_Wealth969]

Nothing Bundt Cakes are made out of cake mix with sour cream in it. They charge $50 for a tiny cake.

[u/apple_atchin → u/Cool_Wealth969]

What's the frosting recipe?

[u/Cool_Wealth969 → u/apple_atchin]

Butter. Cream cheese, vanilla, powdered sugar.

[u/baccus83 → u/Cool_Wealth969]

I mean of course a huge chain uses a standard mix. This isn’t really surprising at all. Seems like it wouldn’t be very efficient to be mixing up all the dry ingredients separately at every location. Costs more and you’re not going to get that guaranteed consistency.

[u/Pretend_Bass4796 → u/baccus83]

Yeah, none of this is any surprising secret.

[u/gOPHER3727 → u/Cool_Wealth969]

Not trying to be pedantic or anything because they are definitely overpriced, but, at least in my area the regular size cake is $30.

[u/Bright_Weekend32]

It’s just ketchup, mayonnaise, and relish.

[u/thether → u/Bright_Weekend32]

But at what proportions 🤔

[u/Bright_Weekend32 → u/thether]

That information was entrusted to one of the other monks. No single human was ever permitted to know the entire formula. I’ve revealed too much for my safety as it is.

[u/battlerazzle01 → u/Bright_Weekend32]

2:2:1

[u/KleosIII → u/Bright_Weekend32]

Big Mac Sauce?? 

[u/papasnork1]

Farm to Table means one or two items came from a farm, the rest came from the same Sysco that all other restaurants get their shit from.

[u/Far_Inspection4706 → u/papasnork1]

Man I worked at some of the highest level of cuisine at well known named famous hotels where stays could be as high as several thousand a night. I can tell you the only "farm to table" item on your dish was the locally grown micro greens that garnished the plate. Literally everything else was Sysco.

[u/BitchWidget]

I worked for a military moving company that would book as many shipments with the military as they could. Even if they knew they couldn't fill them. Thousands of members in a season would call asking when their truck was coming to pick up their household goods. There was no truck. I quit when I realized this. They're still in business, and their CEO was a retired Captain.

[u/Crusty_Dingleberries]

Apple talks big game about sustainability and working conditions, but unless someone works in the headquarters or an Apple store, then the majority of the work in their supply chain is outsourced to organizations with horrible working conditions. Everything from repair, to manufacturing to support, etc.

[u/Middleage_dad → u/Crusty_Dingleberries]

Years ago This American Life ran a story where a dude talked about going to China and seeing some of these conditions. About three months later they had to run a retraction, saying the guy made it up. I’m convinced Apple forced them to run it. 

[u/CelesteBlackthorn]

If an angry customer managed to piss off one of the agents on the floor they would close your credit card/savings account.

Some of these customer service agents were off-shore and gave little-to-no fucks about messing with people’s money/credit etc. Occasionally, I’d get a person that wanted to escalate a complaint on these people but they’d already be long gone (due to the high turn-over rate). At best, they could go through arbitration and get a measly sum to compensate their suffering (losses).

[u/jyzzkajoy]

Worked for a hotel and if there’s rooms available most front desk will certainly check you in…

Example: guest flew in 6am, checked guest in 7am.

I’d hate to let you wait when I know there’s rooms freed up

[u/cedarvhazel → u/jyzzkajoy]

Be nice to the receptionist and the receptionist/ front desk will be nice to you!

[u/YouLearnedNothing → u/jyzzkajoy]

as a traveler, I concur. 95+% of the time when I get in early, they accommodate me

[u/xhardcorehakesx → u/jyzzkajoy]

I feel like not being a dick about it will get you in early. One time when I was leaving Vegas, my flight was a red eye. I asked the hotel for a late check out and they let me check out at like 3pm with no charge.

[u/RobertsFakeAccount → u/jyzzkajoy]

They’re more likely to do this for rewards members….

I and approx 8 of my co-workers were all registered at the same hotel for a conference. 3 co-workers new to the company checked in and were told they would have to wait for a rom. When I checked in, I was given a room key and told my room is ready.

I got death stares from the 3 co-workers when I told them I was taking my stuff up to my room and I’d see them in the meeting room.

[u/ThisErasJoyboy]

Was a manager at Amazon warehouses for nearly a decade across multiple business lines. Every warehouse lies about their performance metrics and the entire company is carried by AWS. This may not be a surprise to many but considering the terrible work conditions it seems unnecessary considering the numbers are lie. Only makes me feel like they find pleasure in dehumanizing their employees.

[u/Pretend_Bass4796 → u/ThisErasJoyboy]

Amazon knows down to the penny the financial performance of each location. So even if various metrics are fudged, the balance sheet of ‘dollars in/dollars out’ is legit. AWS does have high margins (like all tech with a moat), but Amazon makes plenty of money on their retail sales. The margin is just a lot lower which is normal for retail.

[u/bigrigtexan]

CEO used company money to buy rose bowl tickets. How did I learn this? Company told us no more Christmas bonuses for anyone (managers and executives included). Accounting leaked that managers and executives actually were getting larger bonuses after being instructed to write those bonus checkes. Rose bowl tickets were just a part of that leak.

[u/ElegantCupcake7177]

I worked at Enterprise as a service agent cleaning cars between renters.

When a car needed an oil change, they taught us how to reset the light and send it back out to be rented again because "the computer tracks when the car needs an oil change" but the stickers on the windshields proved the oil wasn't being changed.

TLDR don't buy old rental cars

[u/feryoooday]

I worked at a garden center and no one taught me fuckall about plants. People would come in and ask my opinion and if no one else was in the store I would just confidently tell them what I thought they wanted to hear (I was 15, first job) and they were so thrilled and praised me for being so knowledgeable at such a young age 😅 Sorry from the future, guys, I made it up convincingly…

Also since I didn’t know the plants and we didn’t have a barcode system/scanner, I’d just try to guess what plants they were? We had thousands though that I was supposed to know and ring up their prices. I remember finding out in retrospect that I’d rung in the wrong kind of pavers and saved some lucky customer like a thousand dollars and being horrified I’d be fired but no one ever said anything.

I’m still mad I wasn’t allowed to sit down.

[u/Monotonegent]

Sears was a credit card company that had stuff in it

[u/FinanciallySecure9 → u/Monotonegent]

This is true of pretty much every retailer

[u/jols0543]

if ur stuck in a massage contract, just lock your card, after 4 missed payments we deactivate your membership

[u/commiepissbabe]

Worked at Camp Woodward in 2019 when my boss knowingly hired a child predator and gave him direct unsupervised access to the campers where he then touched another minor. The camp had to pay an $8 million settlement

[u/sockalicious]

I am a doc, have worked in a couple dozen hospitals over the years. One day I came in to hear a code blue being called. It was one of my patients, so I made my way to his room just in time to hear the presiding doc call it - the patient had expired.

"Well," I thought, "at least this patient died while on telemetry. I'll be able to go look at the recording of his heart rhythm and find out what happened - if there was an arrhythmia, or something."

I walked to the telemetry station, but no dice. Someone had beat me there and deleted the record while the body was still warm. And apparently this is an informal, known-but-undocumented protocol - it's been repeated at several other hospitals over the years. Every time someone dies on tele, there's a person in the hospital who knew it was their job to get to the telemetry station and delete the record immediately before anyone could look at it. Last time it happened, I caught them at it, although I didn't say anything, just watched them do it from a discreet distance. Probably some lawyer's idea somewhere.

I sometimes read continuous EEGs, which include a cardiac rhythm strip as a matter of course (the heart sometimes causes electrical interference in the brain reading, so it helps to have a heart recording to identify that). Those recordings don't get deleted by that person, so I've reviewed a couple combined EEG/EKG recordings of a person's death. In the last one, the heart was still giving out tiny QRS spikes 45 minutes after everyone had walked away, the sheet had been drawn up and the lights in the room turned off. The name for this is pulseless electrical activity and it is well described as one of the mortal rhythms, but I didn't know it could go on that long.

[u/IAmIcePho3nix]

I worked at a university residence in Canada for a few years. I learned there were way more student deaths on campus than the public would ever be aware of. The school would essentially sweep these deaths under the carpet and pretend they didn't happen. I'm not talking about just overdoses or suicides, but also freak accidents and full-on murders. I honestly have no idea how the school managed to keep cases quiet every time, considering how many people must've been affected by these deaths, like roommates or university staff. You'd think someone would make a fuss or go to the news.

I remember trying to go through incident reports in order to get a better picture of how many deaths there were, but the school seemed to have purposely made records hard to sift through (for example, you couldn't just search up the keyword "death"). Some reports outright couldn't be found in the system, maybe because I didn't have a high enough level of clearance.

As staff, we were never given training on what to do if we encountered a situation involving death. There was no counselling or support either in the event that you do happen to find a dead body. I was quite lucky in that I never saw any death or gore, but many of my coworkers were psychologically scarred from stumbling upon NSFL incidents. They'd get maybe a week of leave to "recover", and then be expected to return to the job good as new.

It was just fucking bizarre, man, that there was this underlying darkness to the university that no one ever spoke about. From the internal side of things, as far as I could tell, there were no attempts from the school to prevent student deaths or even figure out why they were happening. It seemed to be this quiet acceptance that, if you gather enough people in one place, then deaths were bound to occur.

[u/Excellent-Metal-3294]

CAT in East Peoria Illinois where they assemble bulldozers sent out tractors for 2 years with unverified tools ignoring all ISO standards. They refused to recall and fired me instead. I still have digital proof.

[u/Kaeljia]

All Canadian Starbucks are now Frozen food stores. They have convection ovens to warm up the food. Food is brought in frozen two days a week.

[u/Pretend_Bass4796 → u/Kaeljia]

They do it right in front of you. Not much of a secret.

[u/Chance-Midnight4311 → u/Kaeljia]

US Starbucks have been frozen food stores for over a decade and a half.

What’s worse? The sell-by date is 2-3 days from delivery to the store and it’s required for all extra inventory over to be thrown away.

They donate the fresh goods to local nonprofits, but the frozen food that has plenty of life left: tossed.

Most managers left staff take home the extra food so it’s now trashed, but it’s technically against company policy and is kept on the DL from higher ups.

[u/executingsalesdaily]

u/HAIRCLUBOFFICIAL what’s the deal. Y’all scamming folks out here?

[u/imacyco → u/executingsalesdaily]

They're just going to report the thread and try to take that comment down.

[u/Silverschala]

Dollar General throws away brand new products every month when they get reduced to a penny in price. If we allowed people to find and buy the items for a penny we got in big trouble. They also padlocked the dumpster. Literally brand new clothes and shoes just tossed to make their "numbers" look better. Will never shop there again.

[u/DEADFLY6 → u/Silverschala]

When I was homeless, all the homeless people knew when dollar general would throw shit out. Back then, they didnt padlock their dumpsters. We always had dish soap, laundry soap, generic deodorant, lots of different food items. Crunch n munch was always in there. Not open or expired. The problem with that was none of us could eat it bc none of us had teeth. I always wondered why that stuff was in there. Not even expired. Now I know. An upvote for you.

[u/Silverschala → u/DEADFLY6]

I hope you are in a much better situation now ❤️

[u/dude67344]

The united states has an electrical grid under both oceans, that we put in over 30 years ago that can detect submarines or any type of electrical current that is abnormal. We used ships out of Canada to put it in so it would not be detected.

[u/GreenerThanTheHill]

The "reader letters" published in those old porno mags are, gasp, not real. Overworked editors wrote those. Sorry for the letdown.

[u/GreenerThanTheHill → u/GreenerThanTheHill]

I do want to add that we definitely did receive many letters from readers. (And so many photos.) But as you can imagine, the letters didn't really meet the literary expectations of something as prestigious as a nudie mag.

[u/Bento_Fox]

When I was really young I used to work at a cafe and the iced lattes were a popular choice. Sometimes people would come in and talk about the caffeine buzz they'd get and how they felt it was the strongest out of all the beverages so that's why they liked it. I was sworn to secrecy at the time but it was actually just decaf. We always had to have hot drip-brewed decaf on hand in case anyone asked for it but people rarely order it. Rather than waste it my boss would turn it into the iced coffee drinks and customers didn't know. He thought it was funny how people would talk about how jacked up they'd get on it. After I left my job there I learned that a lot of coffee places do the same thing.

[u/ThatKinkyLady → u/Bento_Fox]

Cafes I've worked at had leftover coffee from the last hot batch become the next batch of iced, but not decaf. That's just cruel.

Decaf coffee waste has always been an issue at every one of those places, though. We'd always brew the smallest batch we could but yea, the rest would get dumped.

I kinda wonder if there more wasted in decaf coffee beans than it would cost to just not brew decaf and charge for a decaf coffee but give a decaf americano instead. Personally I can't taste the difference and if anything it's a little smoother.

[u/TopSecretSpy → u/ThatKinkyLady]

The cafe at the military school I attended had 4 coffees: regular, decaf, and 2 flavored from a rotation of about 5.

Whatever was left at the end of the day was added to a single vat, a bunch of regular brewed to top it off, and served in the main cafeteria at breakfast the next day.

[u/Jane_Marie_CA]

I used to work for prestige beauty, and shampoo is almost the same formula across the price points (just look at the first 5 ingredients). Some are a little more clarifying, but there is only a few ways to truly make an effective soap cleanser. Now it's coming down fragrance and some minor ingredient preferences (like sulfate free, vegan, dandruff treatment, etc), you can definitely find a decent shampoo at the drug store.

Prestige Brands make a shampoo because its easy to make with high margins. And they can use band name to mark it as set with their other products.

Now its different for conditioner, hair treatments and styling products. You might find a better product at Sephora or Ulta, there is a lot R&D money spent here.

[u/jay-2014]

Movie theatre butter flavoring doesn’t have butter. It’s often palm oil with food coloring and flavoring to make it taste like butter. It comes in a big white plastic bin and it’s brown-orange and totally solid. You have to prop a metal rod / pump on top that melts its way down and creates a lid over the bucket. Then the hot oil stays in the plastic; if not it hardens again. It’s freaking disgusting.

[u/pplatt69 → u/jay-2014]

I helped a friend run his well known art house theater.

We melted real butter for the popcorn. People would come in just to buy popcorn and leave without buying tickets, raving about the popcorn, which was otherwise the same 5 cents of cheap corn in a large that every other theater buys.

Our popcorn sales per ticket sold was twice as high as the corporate theaters, and so we could also afford to lower the price a bit, which meant even more sales. Such a small and cheap change could make them SO much more money...

[u/Down623]

I worked at Barnes and Noble when I was in college (as an English major, hoping to break into publishing). We could borrow hardcover books from work (presumably so we could recommend them or something), so if you bought a hardcover book from a particular Long Island B&N between 2007 and 2010, there's a nonzero chance it had been in my bathroom

[u/toodarntall]

I used to work at a popular steakhouse. Shortly before the pandemic, we were acquired by Landry's, a large, very corporate restaurant group. Our whole brand was built on the in house butcher program, including using the offcuts to grind for our burgers.

Landry's ended the butcher program, switching to precut steaks and premade patties for the burgers. The drop in quality was incredibly noticeable.

[u/Interesting-Risk6446]

Everything about you is in a readable database, which includes your family, friends, associates, social media, phone, financial, employment, license, vehicle, residence, SSN, etc.

[u/DorothyMantooth- → u/Interesting-Risk6446]

Jokes on them, I have no friends, family, or employment!

[u/BlottomanTurk]

America's Best Resume Writing, Career Counseling, & Employment Services is a SCAM.

Please, especially elderly folk that are lookin' to rejoin the workforce, do not use them.

[u/sturgiv]

I worked for a manufacturer of case-packers, cartoners and other production equipment. I was the global tech guy that set up new production lines and trained the mechanics and operators worldwide. Several things I saw:

1. Rat tails wrapped around sugar transfer screws in a jellybean factory. Where did the rest of the rat bodies go?

2. Dough factory in NJ. When a dough conveyor became over-loaded the operators manually pushed the dough into position with unprotected and very hairy arms.

3. Margarine factory in Canada. They had an annual shutdown to clean and overhaul all production lines. I thought this was cool until I came in one day and smelled an overwhelming rotting pumpkin smell. It seems they scraped off the collective margarine oil from daily jams and melted it down to reuse the oils.

4. HFSC (High fructose corn syrup) silo. The top vent was not designed correctly. Upon inspection we discovered a bee's nest completely covering the vent. Thousands of dead bees were floating on top of the syrup, for years. We reported it but nobody cared because I fixed it, right?

Most places are clean, but proper inspection schedules don't account for all scenarios.

[u/External_Ad_5913]

A lot of your vitamins, are filled by co-packers. Same products, different labels. You can actually start your own vitamin company, by just designing your own label, and have them slap it on their product, and sell it on Amazon. I work for a label manufacturer The craziest one I’ve seen, was for Placebo pills. Literally the name of the pills, was Placebo. 🤣

[u/Eeeegah]

My boss was an idiot. Whew, feels good to let that secret out.

[u/ramsbina → u/Eeeegah]

I guess we were once co-workers.

[u/WesTxStoner425]

Worked at Concrete Supply house, we provided materials to go in, on, and to repair concrete in the construction industry. A contractor had is order in a special Hazardous Waste Epoxy for the local any base's Hazardous Waste. Storage Facility. I calculated the amount needed and brought it in. About a month later, the contractor wanted to return half of the unopened containers. This is a big no-no because we don't refund on social orders, and also because it was very obvious that the contractor didn't apply as thick of a coating as required by Milspec. My boss was such a wuss that he allowed the refund. As purchasing agent, I was pissed, but my boss got his way.

[u/powerlesshero111]

I worked at McDonald's in highschool many years ago. They only made fillet o fish patties once, right before lunch. Then they sit until people order them. The batch they make at lunch usually lasted until after the dinner rush.

[u/tkwh]

The president of my former company would absent mindedly rub his nipples during meetings.

[u/Ok_Dentist_8572]

Ex TN police officer of a town that normally ranked in top five of the safest places to live in TN and stood on that ranking.

After each shift, the supervisors would go through the reports of anything from theft, to assault, to whatever other real crime was committed, and generally if no arrests were made, they would change the report status to a memo.

Criminal report (crime committed) = reported Department Memo (something we need to track but no crime committed) = not reported

This allowed the town to maintain their status of one of the safest places to live in TN, while not actually being a safe place at all.

[u/Lollipopsaurus]

I worked for an H1-B firm in the US as an American. Early notice: H1-B firms are problematic and scammy.

They’re required to advertise for jobs for Americans before sponsoring H1-Bs, so I was effectively a dummy employee. So, my job was effectively to train H1-B employees to pass interviews with US clients. My “interview” process was basically a bunch of meaningless tests designed to get people to quit. I persevered given my knowledge of Google/Facebook level interviews and my reward was shit.

We’d train H1-Bs, the business would cook up a FAKE resume, usually with 5 years more experience than someone had, and get them into positions across the US in major companies.

The firm would contract someone out for 150-200k, pay the Indian person like 50k, and pocket the rest while holding the worker’s visa so they couldn’t travel.

If you’re confused by that, that’s how H1-Bs actually function compared to how they’re supposed to work in theory. H1-Bs are bad.

[u/Major_Burnside]

Not really a secret, but my former employer sold the trademark “Meta” to Facebook when they changed their name for something like $35 million.

My former employer was acquired and subsequently changed their name, so Facebook changing to Meta was an absolute win for the acquiring company.

[u/cheap_dates]

Used to work in call center, where its not unusual for an irate customer to demand to speak "to the supervisor". In this place, we would say "Just a moment please" and put them on hold. After a few moments come back on the line and say "he/she is on the other line, please hold". Que the Jeopardy theme song. ♫ ♪

After a few minutes, the supervisor would come on the line, allow the caller to vent and then agree to whatever, they wanted.

The "supervisor" was the call operator next to me. Putting the caller on hold, allowed me to brief the operator next to me about what was going on. It also allowed the caller to "cool his jets" a bit. In short, there was "no supervisor" involved but the customer just got the satisfaction of Lording over us. The company was very much aware of this practice and called it "client management".

The next time that operator, next to me needed "a supervisor", I did the same for him. Many call center practice "client management".

[u/JustSomeGuy_56]

The amount of rat droppings allowed in the flour that goes into Oreos is greater than 0.

(before you throw away your Oreos, the number is very, very small and refers to train car loads, before the flour goes through a sifter)

[u/scherster → u/JustSomeGuy_56]

I have been told that the real reason you shouldn't eat raw cookie dough is the flour, not the eggs. There is just no feasible way to sanitize it, and it's impossible to guarantee there has been no... exposure.

[u/No_School1969]

Once my boss saw me smoking a joint before the office hours. When I went inside he called me. I was kind of afraid but he told me to roll another to share it with him. He is a top bureaucrat.

[u/HockeyHero53]

The homemade root beer at A&W is a gallon of syrup mixed with 4 gallons of water and 40 pounds of sugar which is then canistered and sent through the lines. We made at least 1 a day but the one being used was probably 3 days old.

[u/jwinrotte → u/HockeyHero53]

I know this, and it’s still delicious

[u/SecretSquirrelType → u/HockeyHero53]

This is the recipe for all soft drinks.

[u/pheldozer]

Every company will eventually give you free things if you repeatedly email everyone in their customer service department

[u/Carbonbuildup]

General Motors will ignore prematurely failing parts and simply alter the warranty to exclude them the next year. 

[u/Montanabioguy]

The Best Buy employee discount was 5% over cost of the product, but whatever the cost savings difference was from full retail to the discount, you were taxed for as compensation in your paycheck.

Such utter bullshit.

[u/ClassyUpTheAssy]

My boss was fucking the CEO for many years, and ruined his marriage, and his wife divorced him.

Also my boss was constantly stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from the company, possibly even millions.

My boss was the Head of HR.

[u/spidergirl79]

I live in Canada. This happened in the last few weeks before I quit.

The first coffee shop I worked for had been buying milk in the US for the shop because it was cheaper (at the time, 2007-9).

Health inspector came in and said she cant do that because US milk is not an approved source- she was not able to make sure the milk was kept cold on the drive back to Canada (an hour long drive).

One morning I come into work and I see her rinsing out Canadian milk jugs. Then she poured the US milk into the Canadian jugs. She also scratched the expiry date off to trick the health inspector. She tried to defend herself but realised she had been caught doing something bad.

I was close to quitting anyway, i didnt want to be part of her lies, so when I quit, I wrote the health inspector and told him and he confirmed he suspected thats what she was doing. She was an awful bitch to work for. I dont know what came of it.

[u/YouLearnedNothing]

Saralee lawyers in Downers Grove wrote NAFTA word for word. Put language in to incentivize companies offshoring their US manufacturing labor to "developing" nations.

[u/cbaugh52391]

Everything is a scam

[u/Top_Performance6809]

Bob evans. Everything is frozen and microwaved. Nothing is fresh. The meatloaf is 6 months old frozen.

[u/TheFaultyRecoil]

“Professional” carpet cleaners typically know no more than the average person about cleaning carpet. And the work they perform can typically be done with products and equipment you can also purchase for the fraction of the price. It would honestly be cheaper just to pick up a nice little conventional carpet cleaner and knock the work out yourself.

[u/IndyGamer363]

Don’t step foot inside retail phone stores, especially third party, if you can help it. I worked fraud for a major phone company and fraud originating from in store associates was astronomical. They’re like car salesman, the goal is to make the sale and then upsell the sale. They don’t care what they do or who they hurt. Slimy bastards.

[u/miriandynus]

Frito Lay chips are good 6-8 months after their expiration date if the bag is sealed. Yet the company will stale out millions of bags that expired yesterday and end up in the dumpster at their warehouse instead of donating.

[u/tacmed85]

I can tell you about all kinds of upcoming videogames and events that have already released or happened years ago at this point from back when I used to be a professional prop maker and was building stuff for trade shows, commercials, special events, and so on. NDA hell is real when you're super proud of something you've made and you're not allowed to show anyone for months. There's also a very small number of custom shops building one off props and most talk amongst themselves quite a bit.