Employees Are Sharing Truly Appalling Secrets From Their Companies, And OMG
A little while ago, Reddit user u/rasutii posed the question, "What's a company secret you can share because you don't work there anymore?"
CBS
And people came through with the juicy secrets! Here are some of the top-voted responses:
Note: Please keep in mind while reading that none of these are confirmed! They’re just stories shared by strangers on the internet.
1."I used to remodel fast food restaurants. Arby's kitchens were the cleanest I've ever seen anywhere. KFC had grease residue, but still clean. Wendy's wasn't bad, just not as thorough. Well, a certain pizza restaurant had me swear them off for life and continue to confirm that opinion for the next 20+ stores. I've not eaten there in 25 years. My kids have never eaten their pizza."
—[deleted]
"Former health inspector. Out of these four, the pizza restaurant was absolutely always the worst. They were constantly understaffed and always overworked their employees, so cleaning fell to the wayside. Probably saw dust buildup that was older than me in some locations."
2."I worked at a trampoline park, and the whole place is nasty. Kids go to the bathroom everywhere, and we can't clean piss out of the foam pit — no one wants to touch it. So, chances are, you are jumping into pee-soaked foam."
—ec37
3."My old boss would inflate quotes by thousands and get the contractor to discount them at invoice, then he'd use the remaining balance as a credit to renovate his own house. For example, the client would have $15,000 to redo a roof. My boss would charge them $15,000 when, in fact, it only cost $10,000, and then get the contractor to discount him or credit the remaining $5,000 for his own renovation in his own house. I'm pretty sure that is called insurance fraud."
4."Pawn shop. If you pawn or sell your laptop, phone, or camera, delete nudes or personal pictures. I had a boss that would go through each device. This idiot would go through and try to show me pics like I gave a fuck. And he legally could because the customer signs a waiver. Delete your shit, peeps."
5."I worked at a popular clothing store in 2008. Sales associates were called 'models.' There was a look policy and a bunch of books for managers to look at pictures of people who had 'the look.' Managers basically got promoted based on their ability to recruit attractive employees. Associates who were not as attractive could work in the back and be part of the Impact Team.
"Every few months or so, the top five attractive girls and the top five attractive guys would get together for a 'cast of photo.' I have no clue what the point of this was, but it got sent to corporate. I remember a lot of hurt feelings around this because many people wouldn’t be asked to be in it. The store did not sell any black clothing at that time. Associates could not wear eye makeup, lipstick, blush, or nail polish. If you had any of these on, a manager could send you home or ask you to take it off in the back. Everything needed to be folded to perfection, and the message I got was that making the store look nice came before customer service.
"The previous CEO has been gone for a long time, and it’s totally different now. They rebranded to be more like other fast fashion chains. I don’t think a store could survive like that in 2022; some of the practices were so controversial."
6."Worked at a deli. The decaf coffee was just regular coffee in a pot with an orange top."
7."We used to throw any donuts, bagels, or muffins out at the end of every night at a popular donut store. One week, around Christmastime, we would donate the food, but other than that, it was all waste, and if we took any home ourselves, we would get charged for it."
8."I worked at a dodgy UK firm for elderly and disabled people back in the mid 2000s. Their racket was selling stairlifts and mobility scooters to old people. They would install a stairlift for £3000 to £5000, then keep tabs on the customer with courtesy calls until the old person passed. They'd offer to remove and resell the stairlift for the bereaved family, then sell the stairlift on to the next old person at full price. Around 90% of the time, the stairlift sale would get lost in the admin of dealing with the death/house sale/funeral after a loved one passed.
"The family would just forget. If the family did call us, we were instructed to tell them we still had it in stock, but it hadn't sold. Even if they really pressed us for the stairlift, we had a pile of old broken ones in the mill building attic. But who has space to store a big pile of railing and chair. I left the company when they tried to make me force sales on confused old people."
9."Used to work for a big box retailer. They purposely under-scheduled your hours, so you wouldn't qualify for full-time benefits, including health insurance.
"In order to be considered full-time, you need to work more than 33 hours consistently for three months. If you're anything less than 33 hours, you're considered part-time. My schedule was always 33 hours or more for exactly two months and three weeks. My very last work week of the three-month time period would be 32.5 hours exactly, and every three months, this would happen. I asked my manager why this kept happening, and she lied to my face every time. Different excuses each time, too."
10."Care companies make a fortune by running short-staffed (this was happening pre-pandemic, too) to the point where it's part of the business model. A care home funded to have 10 staff on shift per day manages to keep everybody clean, fed, and watered on just six workers. You think they refund the council for all those extra hours? Nah, straight into the profit column."
"Worked in a care home for a private company (not council-run) and was constantly understaffed, even though they said they were constantly hiring. This is a 5-star company, paying minimum wage with staff struggling to pay their bills and living paycheck to paycheck. But the owners all had massive Range Rovers with customized license plates, and the big owner, the mother, had a gold Bentley. But they wouldn’t allow their staff to eat food leftovers from meal services and would quite happily throw it out."
11."At a popular lingerie store, I would measure women's bra sizes. We only sell up to 38DDD in store. I was told by my managers that if someone measured over a 38DDD, to just lie and say a close size.
"For people who were 44, 46, or 48, we always had to say 38 band size anyway, get them a bra, and convince them to not try it on in store. That way we made a sale. I always was honest to the customer about their size, and because of that, a lot of women walked out because we didn’t carry their size. But my managers were very number and sales heavy, and they would sometimes come over and lie about the women's size if they saw me measuring 'wrong.'"
12."There’s a ton of employee theft that occurs at certain furniture outlets. Employee wants a new couch? Then just type up an invoice saying this $3,000 sofa was damaged while being moved around the showroom, and it was then discounted and sold for $299. Got a sectional that was delivered but doesn’t show up on your inventory sheet? Just take it home and post it on Facebook marketplace.
"One guy was even so brazen that he would sell something, then fudge the numbers to make it look like it was sold at a lower price and pocket the difference. For instance, a sofa was listed at $1,000, but it had been sitting for a while, so he had some leeway to offer a discount. Well, here came a customer who bought the sofa for $1,000. The salesperson reported that the customer negotiated the price down to $800, and he pocketed the extra $200. That dude stole into the tens of thousands of dollars and got away with it for years. When the regional management finally figured it out, they just fired the guy and kept the whole incident quiet."
13."The dollar store I used to work at kept the key to the store...under the rug in front of the front doors."
14."A few years ago, a major wedding dress store announced that regular and plus-sized wedding gowns would be the same price (like, a size 24 wouldn't be $150 more than its size 4 counterpart). They did this by marking up the regular sizes to match the plus-sized prices."
15."Worked for a certain sports network for years. They used to charge people to be an Insider, which gave you fantasy advice if you sent an email. Those 'experts' were myself and other randoms here in Omaha, Nebraska, in a call center. No training, just our opinions lmao."
16."I have worked for a recycler and know others who work in waste management. Most of your recycling is sent to the dump. A lot of people mix trash and plastic bags in with their recycling, and now that most places mix all recycling into one bin, it makes it worse. Once a batch of recycling is considered contaminated, the whole thing is sent to the dump. Plastic isn’t nearly as recyclable as the bottle says it is."
17."I worked at a large 'organic food' grocery store. Most of our produce wasn’t organic. Some people would buy produce, slap a 'certified organic' sticker on them, and sell them to us. We knew it, but it didn’t stop us because it meant much higher profits."
18."I worked in a camera shop as a kid. Owner used to make an extra print of the nudes and kept them in a photo album he hid in the back of the shop. Thought it was funny as a 15-year-old. Seems pretty fucked now."
19."Travel site warnings like 'book quickly because there is only one room available in this hotel' are bullshit."
20."At the car shop I managed, brake pads are free after the first purchase. This shouldn’t be a secret, but apparently, it is for most people. I noticed the brake pads have a lifetime warranty, but most people think that means if the brake pads have a problem, then they can get a new set. They don’t, however, realize that includes normal wear.
"It’s lifetime of the vehicle, not the pads themselves. So when your brake pads wear out, you can just come trade them in for new ones at no cost for as long as you own that vehicle."
21."I used to work for a credit card company. On their applications website, there was a check box for 'priority processing.' This cost £10 and ensured that you jumped the queue when applications were processed. In reality, there wasn't any such queue jumping facility. Everyone who paid extra for priority processing was automatically declined as they were deemed 'too desperate for credit.'"
22."Most clothes that get donated to this nonprofit organization get thrown out. At a normal store, they go through donations, and if it isn't good enough (stains or tears on clothes, electronics that don't work, etc.) or if it's been in the store for a month, it gets sent to an outlet store.
"Those are cheaper, but a lot of things still don't get bought there. If they're at the outlet store for long enough, they're just thrown out. You wouldn't think it would be that many clothes, but in the few months I worked there, about half our donations got sent to the outlet stores, and most of the stuff there gets thrown out eventually."
23."A MAJOR insurance company I wrote software for was very big on security. If we needed to make an update, we weren’t allowed to remote into the server (even though you physically could, it was just against policy).
"To make an update, you had to put your changes onto portable storage, show your ID to the security guy, use your key to open the door, get escorted to the server, then they’d observe you via cameras. The login? 'Admin.' The password? Blank. Literally no password."
24."I worked for a huge makeup company for 10 years, and I know that A LOT of my fellow artists did not thoroughly clean their brushes in between their makeup appointments."
25."When we put you on hold without music, we can hear you."
"And in many of those website help chat apps, the agent can see what you're typing before you hit send."
26."Hotels and motels are all different. I used to be a housekeeper at a really cheap motel, and everything got scrubbed from top to bottom. Then, I worked at a very high-end hotel, and we had time limits on how long each room could be cleaned. It was nasty.
"I lost my job because I took too long cleaning everything correctly. Check the drawers, check under the bed, and if there's crap, it hasn't been cleaned properly. Most housekeepers have 10-15 minutes on single room, a double, and if they're lucky, a whopping 15 minutes on a suite before the boss [says] you need to move on to the next room — finished or not."
27.And finally, "I worked for a very large lingerie company. We would get returned underwear, and while you’d think they’d just get damaged out because who knows if they were really worn, they don’t. We put them right back out on the floor. Also, when we were closed and restocking, those panties were all over the floor getting organized. Trust me — wash your panties before wearing them."
Do you want to share any secrets about a place you used to work? LMK in the comments below!
Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.
