When one is using their money to support only companies that support the world, and have always supported the world, you find it is nearly impossible these days. There is no such place that lacks a history of "issues." Well, unless it's a newer company, like from this year.
Many of the old guard are steeped in so much grey area when it comes to morality, that at this point, if the history means that much to you, we all need to grow our own food, darn our own clothes and build are own cars and electronics. It's best to know and start confronting some hard truths. Many of these corporations are begging for a mea culpa.
Redditor u/beta_nerd wanted to be aware of what major corporations may not deserve our time and money because of past misdeeds by asking... What's a company that's viewed pretty positively today but has a dark DARK history?Poison
confused mark ruffalo GIFGiphyDupont is still one of the largest textile companies in the world and "Dark Waters" was a true story.
If you haven't seen it do. It's about how making teflon poisons everything forever.
General Smedley Butler
United Fruit is responsible for the overthrow of nearly every government in Central and South America in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
General Smedley Butler, USMC, one of few recipients to earn the Medal of Honor for gallantry twice. Struck down many of these "insurrections" against legally elected governments. He performed his duty admirably and with distinction.
However, after his retirement, he spoke out against his service. Stating, he felt, he and his Marines were nothing more than mercenaries protecting the corporate interests of a few men and law makers, while he was slaughtering thousands of peasants.
Pills
Bayer. They paid to test its drugs on unwilling human subjects. These included paying a retainer to SS physician Helmuth Vetter to test Rutenol and other sulfonamide drugs on deliberately infected patients at the Dachau, Auschwitz, and Gusen. They also had prisoners purposefully infected with typhus so that could test anti-typhus drugs. IG Farben also manufactured the cans of Zyklon B gas that were used in Auschwitz's gas chambers. (IG Farben was a massive conglomerate that included Bayer and other major companies such as BASF, Hoechst (Aventis), and AGFA).
Bananas
fruit GIF by Dead Set on LifeGiphyDole (the fruit company) organized the overthrow of the indigenous government on Hawaii so it could join the USA.
WW2
Continental Tires. Stock for Mercedes and other luxury cars. They tested their durability by making WW2 camp prisoners walk in shoes made with their rubber soles upward to 30 miles each day. Many collapsed and died from dehydration and from being malnourished already.
EDIT: the ones administering the quality control test didn't care if the shoes fit the tester. Imagine walking 30 miles in shoes a couple sizes too small.
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-nazi-past-continental-tires/a-54719878
EDIT 2: the company makes more than just tires, but it's mostly known for its tires. From a New York Times article:
"While supplying the German military with tires, bullet-resistant fuel tanks, gas masks and brakes for battle tanks, Continental and its subsidiaries also produced consumer products like soles for shoes and hot water bottles that helped fulfill the regime's promise to deliver prosperity to the German people."
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/27/business/german-auto-parts-continental-nazi.html
I was watching those WW2 documentaries and one of the episodes focused on companies that benefitted from the war. A good portion of the episode mentioned Continental (a company who is reconciling with its past and is making positive commendable effort to not hide it) and other companies (I forgot which big company that was mentioned, but it's still not taking any responsibility for abusing war prisoners). Total coincidence that I had replaced all four Continental tires with another set two days prior.
The Game
Parker Brothers and the story of Monopoly. Charles Darrow essentially took an open source game originally made by Lizzie Magie and sold it to Parker Brothers, who learned about the original game and bought rights to the patent. They tried to sue Ralph Anspach for making Anti-Monopoly in the 1970s, but the early history of Monopoly worked against Parker Brothers and they eventually had to settle with Anspach.
Charles Darrow and Parker Brothers may have popularized the game, but credit for the game should go to Lizzie Magie.
Computers will kill us all...
IBM sold the Nazis punch card computers to keep track of every person in concentration camps. The computers also kept the trains running on time.
This is the one I was looking for. They founded Dehomag specifically to distribute IBM's Hollerith system to Nazi Germany, beginning with Prussia.
Watson himself traveled to Germany and subsequently increased his investment upon learning just how "lucrative the Hitler regime could be".
IBM claims they can't know what happened with the business during those years due to wartime destruction of records. So I guess one day they woke up with money in the bank, products being rolled out, but no memory or ledger of where or why. Right.
The Industry
hollywood GIF by The Academy AwardsGiphyNot a specific company, but an industry: Hollywood.
During the late 1930s Hollywood put a ban on anti-Nazi propaganda in films since they had a big market in Europe and didn't want to step on toes. The notable exception was Warner Brothers. Jack and Harry Warner family left Germany and came to America. The brothers saw the threat of Facism. They were the first studio to create anti-Hitler content.
Bad Henry
Henry Ford helped with the invention of square dancing because " Ford hated jazz; he hated the Charleston. He also really hated Jewish people, and believed that Jewish people invented jazz as part of a nefarious plot to corrupt the masses and take over the world—a theory that might come as a surprise to the black people who actually did invent it." citation
Graham crackers were created to keep people from masturbating.
Stealing Labor
disdain smh GIF by BJ The Chicago KidGiphyH&M is now recognized and beloved as a sustainable, eco-friendly company with great worker rights but they used to be really corrupt and would use underpaid workers in 3rd world countries who worked in horrible and dangerous conditions, they also used to use horrible cheap materials that would cause massive pollution and wouldn't be able to be recycled... oh wait, they still do that, my bad you guys!
Eat a Peach
Chiquita. They once funded rebels in a South American country to overthrow the government, in order to have land to build banana plantations. Banana plantations are famously laborious places. If you've ever heard the song "come mister tally man, tally me banana", that's what it is about.
Poison Roar
Food lion, which goes by many different names throughout the world, had a scandal in the early nineties where they bleached meat and repackaged it.
There was a case about 20 years ago where an undercover reporter slipped into a Food Lion and filmed what they were doing. What they were doing was pretty bad. Food Lion actually sued the reporter and news organization for trespassing, and kind of unbelievably, they won. This was quite the landmark case in undercover journalism.
Pinkwasher...
Embarrassed Shame GIFGiphySusan G. Komen. More people volunteer their time and money for it than any other breast cancer charity.
I vaguely recall they kept almost half of the donations for themselves (they called it administration expenses). They've also been labeled with pinkwashing, defined as organizations getting disproportionate publicity for donating very little.
Charity Navigator had rated them one of the worst charities for breast cancer. Bottom ten percent.
Buy Honda...
Let's not forget Mitsubishi used P.O.W. slave labor during WW2.
Had a great grandpa who was a marine who fought in the pacific theatre, and hated Mitsubishi with a passion. Refused to speak to my dad for 2 weeks after my dad bought a Mitsubishi car. never understood why until my dad handed me a model of a Mitsubishi Zero and then explained to me how he watched a lot of his buddies die due to kamikaze pilots flying Mitsubishi zero's crash into hangers and buildings.
thief
Baby Tech GIF by Hacker NoonGiphythe fact that the person that made the .zip stole it and got praised for it.
leaving scars...
DeBeers diamonds. They've distanced themselves from the blood diamond trade recently by claiming 'conflict-free' mining and starting programs focused on local entrepreneurship, but the scars across Africa remain today. Millions have been killed.
Oats are Out...
Quaker Oats! They fed radioactive oatmeal to autistic and disabled children to study the effects, without informing the children or the parents. This was from the mid 1940's to the mid 1950's.
ETA: There's actually a LOT of sources. The two most prominent places this occurred are Wrentham State School and Fernald School. Basic overview helpfully packaged for anyone who doesn't want to google "quaker oats radioactive" Also, the youtuber Illuminaughtii did a video on this and she lists her own sources in the description.
Sabotage...
Microsoft under Bill Gates and Steve Balmer paid staff to sabotage competitor's software. Later on, one of the first instances of this got named "DOS isn't done until Lotus won't run". As an analogy, pretend Microsoft made and sold Michelin tires; it was like they paid people to go in to parking lots and slash your car's tires if you had bought Bridgestone, Goodyear, Yokohama, or Pirelli. It did make Bill Gates one of the richest men in the world, though.
Fraud permeates all parts of our public lives. The food were eat probably isn't as "organic" as we think and the clothes we were are probably hand stitched in more dark sweat shops then we'll ever be able to prove. So a lot of the time we believe what we're sold, how can you not. But don't let that stop you from learning more about where you spend your money and place your beliefs.
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Reddit user New-Low5765 asked:
"People who work in the airline industry, what are some of the craziest things you have seen?"
Don't Drink And Tow Aircraft
"Worked as ground crew. 2nd day on the job we were issued a notice to gather."
"So when you check in every morning you’re supposed to always take a breathalyzer test to prove you can like you know, ride around the tarmack, use pushbacks on planes, etc..."
"For whatever reason this dude hadn’t taken it/got past without taking it."
"He was not sober."
"He was tasked with pulling a 370 [aircraft] into a hangar."
"He eyeballed it for whatever reason."
"So here we are watching a video of this absolute loon break the whole wing off while damaging the hangar in the process."
"Because he was drunk, insurance doesn’t kick in."
"We were promptly told that Christmas bonuses might be a bit smaller."
~ ProbablyChe
Occupational Hazard
"Someone had the tip of their finger cut off when closing the door to the plane and didn't say anything until the flight landed at the arrival gate and when the door was opened the chunk of finger fell out."
"The staff then said, 'Oh yeah, that's my finger. you can throw it away'."
"I guess he just bandaged and wrapped his own hand."
"It was about 1/4 of his finger including the nail that was cut off. The cutoff portion wasn't particularly bloody and it was really pale."
~ If_I_remember
"A plane I got on once almost left without half of its aircrew on it."
~ BeerisAwesome01
"'Let’s just go, they can meet us there'."
~ InformativePenguin
"Plot twist. That included the pilots."
~ Windyandbreezy
Excess Baggage
"Coffin with dead body inside being left off the flight due to overload without notice either to us or the family and the family realising it by seeing it while the plane was leaving and screaming to us."
~ elenivog
employee of the month ups GIFGiphyNoped Out
"Saw the pilot walk into the passenger area and say 'I'm not flying this piece of sh*t' and get off the plane."
"All the passengers followed him."
~ Jaded-Session8422
"Hell yeah, I'm following the pilot off the plane if something like this happens!"
~ lukaron
Giphy"I had something similar happen, but never got on the plane."
"It was sitting there seemingly ready but they never started boarding."
"Eventually the pilots walk off the plane and a few of us heard them say ‘This junk isn’t going anywhere’."
"Flight ended up getting cancelled a short time later."
~ potatocross
"I was threatened with [pilots walking out] multiple times a week as an aircraft dispatcher."
"Auxiliary power units (APUs) run the air conditioning (AC) in the aircraft and they were always broken down and not fixed quickly, so when the pilots show up it is hot as hell inside and there's no ground crew to connect the external AC."
"So I would get a call from the Captain telling me he is not going to fly this piece of shit because it is too hot."
"Then they'd go on a tirade about how bad the company sucks because they don't do maintenance."
"I would agree with them completely."
Giphy"Then by the end of the call they'd say they will take it but the company sucks and needs to fix the APU."
"Occasionally the captain would refuse it, but then the ground crew would hook up the AC and they would always get back inside and fly it."
"For sure there were issues that popped up where the AC had an unsolvable issue and it would result in a cancelled flight."
~ Winchery
"I’m Dallas-Fort Worth based. No APU/AC in November? Meh, whatever."
"No APU/AC in August in Texas?"
"I’m not going on that airplane. Ground just can’t keep up."
~ poser765
☣️ Bio-Hazard ☣️
"Flight diverted to my airport because a girl in hotpants got uncontrollable diarrhea from the laxatives she took before the flight to help get over her weekend binge in Vegas."
"She sh*t in her seat and down the aisle and all over the bathroom."
"Five other passengers had uncontrollable vomiting because of this and the panic on the plane from the crew and rest of passengers caused the plane to make an emergency landing."
"They ended up having to cancel the remaining leg of the flight to decontaminate the plane."
"Police were sent and interviewed her and her friends and no charges were filed. I don't know if the airline put her on any kind of no-fly list or tried to have her pay for damages."
~ If_I_remember
GiphyHighly Unsuccessful
"There were two suitcases checked in that were full of nothing but weed."
"The police arrested him in the gating area & confiscated the bags."
~ Traditional_Pair4840
"Something similar happened when I was a ramp rat back in the 1960s."
"Law enforcement was going to do the arrest at his destination."
"The weed disappeared before they got there."
~ endadaroad
Stealthiest Catch
"As a baggage handler I once had a shipment of live Alaskan crabs escape their container on the ramp."
"Flights were delayed."
"Turns out those guys scatter when they panic and try to hide under anything and everything."
~ Gregwaaah
"My significant other worked doing maintenance checks on commercial planes."
"This explains why they once found a bunch of dead crabs under the floorboards in the cargo bay. It was a mysterious mystery."
~ Highly_Referential
Avoiding A Strip Search?
"A fully naked woman just walked through the terminal and tried to walk through security like she wasn’t fully naked."
~ Commercial-Chance561
"She was just very considerately trying to make it easier for TSA."
~ TrooperJohn
"They make you take off your shoes but they don't say that's all you can take off."
~ smartguy05
Language Barrier
"I witnessed this in the security screening of a large American airport."
"And to be fair, there was a language barrier as the passenger in question seemed to be speaking mainly French, and struggling to understand the TSA agent's instructions in English."
"Female passenger (tall, attractive, and sophisticated-looking) was wearing a business suit with a pencil skirt and matching jacket, which was buttoned closed, going through security."
"The TSA agent told her she had to remove the jacket. She ignored and tried to go through anyway."
"He stopped her and told her again more loudly (that's when everyone started noticing)."
"She said no. He insisted. She refused again, and tried to walk through."
Giphy"He got angry."
"She tried to explain something but it was unclear because her English was poor."
"It went back and forth."
"They both started getting angry and frustrated. It started holding up the line and other passengers were getting agitated."
"A few people tried to intervene and explain more calmly that she needed to put her jacket through the x-ray machine."
"Finally, near tears, she blurted out 'fine' and removed her jacket, revealing that she was wearing nothing at all underneath, and walked through the screening machine topless."
~ SigmaSeal66
I'm a nervous flyer so it's not something I do often, but I still feel a little cheated that nothing this bizarre has happened while I was traveling.
Has something ever happened during your travels?
Share it in the comments.
A good friend is not always the one with whom you share laughs and fun experiences.
The friendships you want to keep include those who won't abandon you in a time of need or someone who supports you in a variety of complicated situations where not even a family member can be relied upon.
Unfortunately, many of us have experienced a time when a person's true colors revealed to us that the so-called "friend" we've always trusted wasn't one at all.
Curious to hear examples of this, Redditor Aesthetik_1 asked:
"What made you instantly realize This 'friend' is not a real friend?"
These Redditors didn't realized at the time that they were being used.
Recurring Favor
"When he only called me when he needed something. It didn't hit me until much later."
– Queasy-Location-9303
"I have one of those 'friends'. She always gushes about how we're friends but she never initiates contact unless she wants me to do something for her."
– StiffAssedBrit
The Errand Girl
"Several years back, I had a friend who introduced me to this new boy she was seeing. Maybe a year later, their relationship blew up in a fury of bs (whole other story), but by the time they split, I was equally friends with both of them. He and I were both photographers at the time, so the friendship was instantaneous."
"One day we started talking about her, neither positively nor in poor taste, just kind of in general."
"He then asked me 'when she texts to hang out, what does she usually want to do?'"
"I paused. I thought. Holy sh*t, she'd either be asking for a favour or for help with some kind of errand. I was her f'king errand girl."
"She texted me a month or two later, just a 'hey'. I never responded. She never texted again."
"I'm still friends with her ex, though. That dude is genuine as heck."
– ChamomileBrownies
Testing The Friendship
"When you decide to let them be the one to reach out. And you never hear from them again."
– plzdontgetmad
"Yup. Made plans with a friend three times, she cancelled each time. I finally told her to let me know when she was free, we haven’t hung out since."
"She was a good friend for the season, but not a lifetime."
– NoMrBond3
People were shocked to discover the moment they realized they didn't really know who their "friend" was anymore.
The Chaperon
"I had been giving rides to a girl I thought was my friend. To and from school in high school. She wasn’t really suppose to ride with other teens but due to her mothers work hours we could easily pull this off. I thought we were close."
"One day while on the way home my brakes went out. We were about 2 blocks from her gated neighborhood. I managed to roll in safely and parked at her house to call a tow truck."
"She flipped. Told me I couldn’t stay. She knew my brakes were not working as she had also been terrified when we couldn’t stop. She said she wanted to go to a movie that weekend with other friends and her mom would ground her if she saw me at the house. I offered to lie and say I only stopped there as my car malfunctioned on my way home. I had to pass her neighborhood on my way home anyways."
"She refused. Started to scream at me. She didn’t care what happened I had to go. Started to call the guard at the front gate to tell them I had broken in and was threatening her."
"I left her and that friendship that moment. I managed to roll my car slowly to a mechanic not too far away but never forgot the shi* feeling of knowing I could have been seriously hurt and she wouldn’t have cared. She wanted to see a movie. She had the nerve to sheepishly call and ask me a couple days later if I could give her a ride to school. Told her I was too busy and no longer had time… after all I wanted to help her obey her mom's rules. She rode the bus til she graduated."
– Duffarum
Unwilling Companion
"I had this friend in school. Each year there was a funfair in our city, all students received vouchers for a drink and something to eat. This friend complained the whole day that she had no one to accompany her to the funfair. So, stupid me offered to go with her."
"Once we arrived we met another friend of hers. And another, and another... until we were a group of 5 or 6 people. I didn't know anyone and was basically just walking behind them. This friend took me aside and said, 'My friends think you are annoying, and we would like you to leave.'"
"It was a pleasure to see that she failed her exams a year later."
– Auldale
There's the spirit of competition, but when it's taken seriously, we're no longer game for these friendships.
I Can Do It Better
"Constantly 'one ups' me. A real friend is happy for you."
– Complex-Half8338
"That one time I got a fake bag but she doesn’t know and then 2 weeks later messaged me that she also bought a luxury bag… Then when I got a bf, she also went to get a bf within 3 months which is TOTALLY fine but she constantly messages me for us to go on a double date. Anyways, sadly they didn’t last long :( I mentioned that I wanted to go to Cuba, she went ahead and bought herself a ticket to Cuba but I didn’t end up going lol"
– Hot-Coffee-8465
Never Steal The Spotlight
"When they loved the idea of me shining, but behind their shadow, I could never do or achieve anything above them, and when I did, they would get jealous."
– Jasssin23
"Yes! I recently ghosted a friend because of this kind of behavior. She was trying to compete about EVERYTHING. Like she bragged about how her mom’s car accident was more traumatic than my elderly MIL’s - which is not even an appropriate thing to compare. She would also try to 'outshine' celebrations of my milestones and was mean to several of my friends for no apparent reason. She was a loose cannon at best."
– thefifthtrilogy
All About Me
"ALL she talks about it herself and her problems. Granted she has a a lot but never asks about me or my life until she realizes she just bypassed my attempt to want to talk about something in my life bothering me and continued to talk about herself."
– PokemomOnTheGo
People can just be so rude.
"When I got really sick. Very few came to help."
– Tofflus1
"Same here. I got cancer and everyone I knew was over the top supportive for the first six months and then all but three of my friends just vanished. I saw one of them at a Halloween party while I was going through chemo and she told me that my bald head made people uncomfortable. I was dressed as Captain Picard, it was awesome and she ruined it."
– CatGoNoTail
Not Missing High School
"At lunch, she was sitting with her boyfriend, I was sitting with our friend circle. She came up to me, guilted me into sitting with her and her boyfriend, and then proceeded to ignore me for the rest of lunch."
"She didn't care about me, she just didn't want me talking to the friend circle that she had abandoned for her boyfriend. When I pointed this out to her, she called me a jealous b*tch."
"Ah, high school. How I don't miss thee."
– Symnestra
These examples actually served as a good reminder for me to take a moment and assess my friendships.
Not so much about how I've been treated but more about checking myself to see if I'm respecting the people I call my friends.
We've all been guilty of casually mentioning future plans to get together. I embarrassingly wait for people to initiate something, which is terrible.
Show up for your friends. Make them feel important like the individuals they are.