Professionals Divulge Insider Secrets No One Knows About Their Profession
Reddit user pocketcrackers asked: 'What fact is common knowledge in your field, but almost unknown to the rest of the population?'
As much as we know about the world around us, we can't know everything. This is especially true when we think about a field or profession we're not directly involved in or with,
The film industry is a good example. Unless we're directly involved, we really know nothing about what it's like to make movies. How much of that computer hacking scene is based in reality? Is that a real disease? Did the actor do that entire stunt himself, or was there a stunt double helping?
Reddit is full of professionals who know the secrets of their industries and are ready to share.
It all started when Redditor pocketcrackers asked:
"What fact is common knowledge in your field, but almost unknown to the rest of the population?"
Let's Get Out Of Here!
"People almost always try to exit through the same door they entered. In a crowded venue ALWAYS take a second to find your exit and then find a second exit. Mark them in your brain just in case. In an emergency most of the crowd is going to go for the main door they came in through. Knowing where another exit is can save your life."
– Spiritual_Worth
Be Aware Of Symptoms
"UTIs will often cause confusion in people over 70."
– silly-billy-goat
"I work in the mental health field. Often I’m told a loved one has dementia, Alzheimer’s, etc. I will ask about symptom onset and they’ll say “a couple days” or something similar. A round of antibiotics later and the loved one is usually back to their baseline. UTIs in older folks are wild."
– ChicagoOwls
Stronger Than You Think
"When you're taking Imodium you're actually taking an opioid. But it's designed to only interact with the opioid receptors in your digestive tract to slow down your intestines. Scientists were like hey. You know that anti-diarrhea medication heroin? Well what if we made a version of that without the pesky side effects of getting you high?"
– NotMyDogPaul
Come On, Stand
"Your calf muscles act as a pump for your lymph fluid, which is basically the garbage pick-up and immunity doordash of your body. Without flexing your calf, the fluid has no way of moving against gravity. Each time we walk, the muscles contract, squeezing the fluid back up towards the core for processing.That's why sitting for long periods causes swelling in the legs."
– Orange-Enough
If We Could Only Speed Up...
"Trucker here and we don't want to be anywhere near you either."
"Go around or stay back don't just ride right beside us. We can't see you very well when you are beside us and if sh*t happens you're gonna go splat."
"It is very very very rare that any driver wants to slow you down it's not like we get our rocks off on making you late. We work extremely long hours on very little sleep and we just wanna get where we are going without getting in an accident and killing someone."
"Trust me if we could go faster we damn sure would."
"Also if you give us the fist pump to honk our horn you just made our whole week. That's one of the greatest joys in a truckers life."
"Be safe out there!!"
– MissPatricia024
Not Your Fault
"Bed bugs don’t make you a nasty person with a nasty home. An infestation isn’t due to a sanitation issue. They’re an imported pest, which means they hitched a ride on something you brought into the house. Usually luggage or furniture."
– LosPetty1992
Real Or Not Real
"In any given nature documentary, the protagonist animal you’re rooting for is ‘played’ by several different ‘actors’ - i.e. that one brown bear’s story is patched together from footage of a bunch of different bears. And in about 90% of the ‘animal reacting’ shots they’re reacting to the camera crew. Nature documentaries are heavily constructed."
– BootsyRootsy
"Also all those amazing closeups of bugs and small critters burrowing and stuff are done on a set in a studio."
"Honestly, when you learn about all the work that goes into creating such a documentary, it's even more impressive."
– donkeyhawt
"I refuse to believe that one iguana running from all those snakes was multiple iguanas. Little man (woman?) ran its little heart out and earned its place in this world!"
– nozer12168
Gathering Info
"The point of most loyalty programs isn't to give you points so you'll shop more (though that isn't a bad thing) it's to gather data (i.e. where do you shop, how often, how much do you buy there, what sort of things at what price points, etc etc.). For us marketing types, data is king (even small things like if a cashier asks for your zip code)."
–inostranetsember
Grey's Anatomy Lied
"When a person “flat lines” you cannot shock them out of it."
– unassumingtoaster
"Chest compressions!! Chest compressions!! Chest compressions!!"
"- Dr. Mike"
– thedanishgirl02
The Movies Also Lied
"Movie hacking: "I've decrypted the firewall and begun a brute force method on the internal systems, but they have a quantum lock on the googleplex, I'll be sure to upload a dinglehopper and slay the Jabberwocky.""
"Real hacking: "I called a random employee and pretended to be IT, they gave me admin privileges in 5 minutes.""
– wererat2000
Ick.
"When I worked as a barista: how much f**king syrup is in flavored drinks. At the cafe I worked at, we measured flavoring by grams. If you got a large mocha, that motherf**ker would have like 110 grams of chocolate sauce in it."
"If you want a little bit of flavor, I suggest only 1 pump. 2 max."
– miss_queeferson
Verify, Don't Trust
"Historian here: everything you read, regardless of source, has the biases of whoever wrote it woven throughout. I will tell a much different account of a Roman Battle if I am a Roman citizen than if I am a Gaul. Same goes for modern times, I will tell a much different account of an event as a liberal woman than if I was a conservative man. That's why checking and vetting sources is our biggest advice, remember the context that the author is writing from when you're reading!"
– Chutzpah3
"The world runs on MS Excel."
– Boulavogue
How very true!
Do you have any tea to spill? Let us know in the comment below.
People Confess The Best Insider Industry Secrets From Their Profession
Girl do I have some tea for you.....
Everything is a shady lie. That is a fact we just all have to get used to apparently. In most businesses corners are cut and the magic is fabricated. So many of the companies and businesses we support are harboring secrets and are always just one disgruntled ex-employee away on Twitter from a public meltdown. Beware the rip-off!
Redditor u/WoOoOoOoShHhHh wanted to see who was willing to loosen some lips and give workplace details the public may not be privy to by asking.... What's an industry secret in the field you work in?SHHHH!!!
I'm an attorney. The secret is shut the heck up.
Wishing on a Hire....
Used to screen resumes for small companies. Job "requirements" are more of a wish-list situation. Never let some unchecked boxes deter you from applying - you have no idea what the applicant pool is like. The biggest boon, especially at small companies, is someone who legitimately cares.
JACKPOT!!
I design slot machines for casinos... don't play slots.
There's literally no tactics to any of it. All RNG and will pay when it's ready. Worked in the industry for 15 years; if you can't afford to lose the money, don't find it fun... Don't play them. You'll never get the money you lost back, so cut your losses and walk away.
"discontinue"
Former bath and body works associate here. The scents they "discontinue" will come back with a different name and new marketing. They're just recycling the scents.
Samin Nosrat....
There is way more butter than you think in almost every dish you eat at fancy restaurants, and that is usually the reason you won't see the amount of calories in each dish.
Source: 5 years as a chef in Italian cuisine head chef, 8 years in an Italian kitchen.
Edit:Since it has been asked, If I could recommend one guide book for you all to have in your kitchen it would be Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking by Samin Nosrat. Yes there are plethora of others but this one is my personal favorite.
Follow the Coil....
Change your dirty furnace filters and clean your ac coils outside.... these make up an easy 30% of my calls for no heat/cooling.
EDIT- more attention than I thought. So real quick you have two coils, inside and outside. Your furnace filter keeps the inside one clean so make sure that filter is clean!! Outside coil- kill power to the unit, removed the coil guard and top (usually 5/16 or 1/4 nut driver and like 20 screws).
Don't use high pressure water simply on a shower setting and hold it a few inches away from the coil. Do from both ways. Button that beauty up and wait for it to dry before turning power back on. Your head pressures are gonna love you.
EDIT 2- oh don't forget to blow your condensate line more than your husband! (prevents water flowing back into the unit from a block).
Tossed....
At goodwill 50% of what you donate ends up in the trash bc we don't have the space for it or we just deem it too ugly.
Our local thrift store has a semi-trailer sized dumpster behind it. They fill it every couple of weeks because most of the crap people donate was garbage to start with they just didn't have anywhere else to dump it so they donated it.
Not no Shiny Objects....
I used to work in jewelry. Most of the prettiest gemstones are also very affordable. Tanzanite is a beautiful purple and looks nicer than amethyst. Topaz comes in lots of colors, including a pretty blue color which can be as nice as aquamarine. Opals aren't as brightly rainbow hued as they look in pictures.
"this is what you are doing to my heart"
Some therapists/counselors are on the wrong side of the couch, so to speak. If you feel your mental health provider is unhinged, they may very well be.
A family member tried to break up with his long-term gf who was a therapist.
I was shocked at her absolutely unhinged behavior which included but was not limited to her taking his childhood teddy bear, chopping it up with garden shears, & piling it up on his bed with the note "this is what you are doing to my heart" stabbed into it with a steak knife.
Delivery....
As a Software Engineer, double your delivery date for a product in anticipation of an over eager Project Manager trying to get promoted.
I always pad the due date then get it done ahead of the deadline. Clients love me.
Careful of Bulk....
If you're someone who purchases bulk nuts, grains, etc. Just know that those bins are probably rarely cleaned, and even when they are "cleaned", odds are they were just rinsed out/wiped down to look clean.
I used to be a bulk buyer at Whole Foods Market and when I took over our bulk department had no cleaning logs or sanitizing procedure. The bins had moths/insect colonies and mold in them. Our store was opened nearly 5 years prior.
We Love Them
Managed boarding and grooming kennels for 8 years: the secret is that the employees actually do love your pets too. Even the difficult ones, most of us realize they just miss their people. The number of times I've weeped when a pet died, or spent way too many hours comforting a dog with separation anxiety, or spent hours off the clock with a boarder who needed to be rushed to a vet office... wouldn't trade it for the world.
Some pets just suck though, not gonna lie.
RV Ways...
All I'm saying is there is a reason no one who works in the RV industry owns an RV.
Edit: Just some clarification. I work in in Elkhart, Indiana which is the RV capitol of the world. As other people have quality is shit on all the major companies. The big ones being Thor, Forest River, and Grand Design. These three companies own probably 90% of all RV companies so check who owns what you are buying.
There are some mom and pop shops that do put out good products but those are pretty few and far between.
40% off....
Worked at a department store photography studio owned by a major photography company that you can imagine probably took your school yearbook photos. The company also is partnered with a popular online photo order website.
Notice how quickly we write down a price, strike it out, and write a new price as the deal? Yeah, that's pretty much just the price that everyone gets. We aren't doing the math that fast, we have it memorized because almost everyone that comes in has that 40% off coupon.
Don't come in without a coupon, there is ALWAYS a coupon on the website. If you end up paying for sitting fees, it's because you just didn't go on our website.
Honestly, don't buy our photos. If you just do the session and say that you'll buy them online later (on said partnered photo order site), it'll be cheaper than if you buy them in-store that day. (Yes, even when we say "oh but you won't get THIS deal online!").
If you do buy in-studio that day, just by the digital CD of your photos. You get to keep all of them instead of having to pick your favorite 3-4 pictures. Oh, and again, it is way cheaper to take that CD to a photo kiosk and have them printed yourself. Please don't spend $400 on a couple photos that you can't legally copy when you could have gotten an $80 CD of ALL the photos and have the copyright to them.
Go Cheap
The cheapest bottle of wine in the restaurant has the biggest markup.
Dairy Daze....
Not an industry I work in per se, but I used to be in a sales role. One of my customers was a milk bottling plant. I was somewhat surprised that they were putting the exact same milk in both organic and non-organic cartons. Turns out all of their milk is organic, but in order to not miss out on the sales of non-organic milk, they just bottle them differently and sell them at different prices.
Shut It!
Almost every hairstylist gets the heebie jeebies when we shampoo your hair and you just stare up at us. CLOSE. YOUR. DAMN. EYES at the shampoo bowl!
It's all a fraud....
Nobody uses bots to inflate metrics more than the most major players in the entertainment industry. All the numbers are fake, including sales.
It costs about $200,000 to put your own book on the top of the New York Times bestseller list. All you have to do is buy a lot of copies yourself. (And if that bestseller status helps you sell more books, you can make that $200,000 back by selling the big stock of books you've collected.)
"Stop the ride"
Amusement park ride operator here. If your kid is crying and you want us to stop the ride, even if we want to it's not gonna stop immediately. The carousel will spin a few more circles or the ship will swing a few more times before stopping. The only exceptions is the emergency stop which will absolutely mess up the ride for a while if we press it. Hence we only use it in actual life threatening situations. The best thing you can do is try to get your kid to calm down as the ride comes to a stop and no, yelling "Stop the ride" at us does not make it stop any faster.
Soap it up...
Construction boy here. If your windows or sliding doors are tough to open and close. 9 times out of 10, we put your own dish soap on tracks and the thing works perfectly. It take 5 minutes and we charge 150. Dish soap people, its better than WD40 sometimes.
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With the news the way it's been lately, not a day goes by that we don't hear the word "corrupt" in one way or another.
Whether we're talking about politics, police, demons (or gems for you Steven Universe fans)—corruption is everywhere.
Reddit user imbasargarepa asked:
"What line of business is generally more corrupt than people realize?"
What line of business is generally more corrupt than people realize?
Turns out there are about a zillion more examples of rampant corruption than many people initially thought. What really made this thread interesting wasn't just the businesses and industries that people pointed out.
It was the fact that a lot of the responses came from people with behind-the-scenes access, insider information, and knowledge that the average customer or person would never have.
The loopholes, angles, and technicalities that some of these industries exploit are honestly kind of stunning. Take a look.
Towing Trouble
Towing. Companies who tow cars are shady as AF. I had my car towed from the scene of an accident, and I couldn't get an insurance estimate for 4 days because the tow company claimed they didn't have it. Then they charged the insurance company for 4 days of "storage" after I went to their lot myself and took pictures of my car sitting there.
- dickskittlez
Here in WA, towing companies can sell your car at an auction if they have it for 100 hours. A friend's car got towed from an accident and it took him nearly that long to find it. I gave him a ride there, and they already had his car on a car carrier to take to an auction. He almost lost his car.
- Frequent_Albatross
We have an automatic tow policy at my apartment complex. My husband and I got back from a trip with a rental car, and just parked it. Stupid on our part
They towed within 2 min. That leads us to believe they were watching, knew who/where we were, and had no interest in giving us actual time to move it - which sucks, but fine.
We went to go get it from the tow yard because we had to take the rental back the next day and their credit card machine was broken. It was -10 degrees, three a.m, and they wouldn't/couldn't give us our car back because of the card machine.
We asked "Well when will you have your card reader fixed?" They said they didn't know.
"Do you take cash?" They said no.
Then how the hell were we supposed to get our car back? They had no real answer. Well then you pretty much have just stolen our car.
- 5sheDoesntEvenGoHere8
Pinkwashing
Susan G Koman and the other disease 'awareness' charities. Most of the money donated does not reach the scientists and doctors actually researching cures and treatments.
- Packpeach
To add to this, the pink breast cancer ribbon isn't trademarked. Meaning anyone can slap it on anything to make it seem charitable when it's really just shady marketing. It's a practice called pinkwashing, a company slaps a pink ribbon on a product to make buyers think they're supporting breast cancer research, but they don't actually donate anything. The worst in when products with ingredients known to cause cancer do it. And they do it a lot.
- kimjongchill796
As a former cancer researcher, I can confirm. They also reject any grant application that studies any treatment than can work on other cancers because they then feel like other cancer organizations are 'stealing' from their "brand" of cancer. However, scientific standards dictate that all potential treatments must be studied on several different cancer types in the lab and in vivo to be considered a legit study. So it's a catch-22. Do you have an amazing new discovery that could cure breast cancer but also works on prostate or colon cancer? Sorry, no money for you!
Sadly, because the US government cut NIH funding so badly over a decade ago, more and more labs have to rely on charity and industry funding, which leads to biased results or good research getting defunded and tossed in the circular file. Entire labs are shutting down because of it.
Also, look at who Komen takes money from. A lot of food and chemical companies. Dairy consumption is a known cause of breast cancer, but Komen takes money from yogurt companies and lets them slap pink ribbons all over their packaging to give it a false health halo to increase profits. It's hypocritical at best. If Komen was truly interested in preventing breast cancer, they'd stop taking money from the companies that cause it and start educating the public about how to prevent it. Full stop.
- boatswainblind
Mortuary Services
Mortuary services. You do not need to be embalmed, you do not need an expensive casket, and they are overcharging you for everything. It's a disgusting extortion racket no one does anything about.
- beatthinker
Worked in the funeral business, can confirm. I used to be written up on evaluations for not up-selling caskets, vaults, and urns to families. Legally you don't even need an urn, if you provide the funeral home with a container they have to use it. I put someone in a coffee can once just like Donnie in the Big Lebowski.
- Mortician-For-Hire
Pest Control
Pest control. You can buy almost every single thing we use yourself online without a license. For the price you pay for one service you can get enough stuff to do it yourself for years. Also, almost all major companies now will spray the outside only if you aren't there because we're required to complete a certain number of jobs a day.
So if you never confirmed the appointment we made for you that you never even knew about, guess what, you're still getting sprayed - and billed. I work for one and the policy now is that the techs have to do the outside only if no one is there. My boss even told me to not call the customer if we thought no one was home because they may try to reschedule. Just spray exterior.
- ThotsAndPIayers
Worked as a pest control tech for a summer and can confirm some of this, though at our company we would call if you weren't there and leave a note to reschedule the indoor treatment later. Also, training for this job took like 1 hour, and basically amounts to "hit corners, crevices, openings, and humid areas." People thought I knew a lot more about pest control than I did.
- Akomatai
The Temp Employee
Hiring temp employees.
Besides the low pay and zero respect there is also the health insurance scams. I had an agency charge me $8,000 per year automatically for a health insurance package that only covered $5,000 AFTER my initial up front costs of $5,000.
In short I had to pay $13,000 just to get $5,000 worth of coverage.
Which was of course denied claiming a pre-existing condition. Being hit by a car is, "pre-existing," apparently. I was hit that day. It's why I was at the doctor.
They denied paying for the CAT scan stating the injury occurred prior to being refereed by the doctor.
- ambermage
I had health insurance through a temp agency like a dozen years ago that didn't actually cover anything. It was weird. They had a network, no one was in network.
- GirlWhoWrites2
My husband was once hired as a contractor through a temp agency. The company who contracted him promised they'd make him a full time employee with benefits after a year.
I don't consider it a coincidence that he was fired less than a month before that year was up. Worse, he didn't qualify for unemployment since he was a temp.
It's a racket.
- Lady_L1985
Megachurch Megabucks
Former Altar boy here. All that money people give to churches makes me sick. Most of it isn't going to good works. It's going to the mega umbrella corporations, the Vatican, building Joel Osteen's mansion, and getting your pastor a new Benz. They take poor peoples last few dollars and hoard it or use it to develop their brand. It's just another business. The people who pay the price for their greed is societies most vulnerable like the elderly.
- Obladi
Mega Churches in the US: These guys are stealing money hand over first through the use of flashy sermons and trumped up versions of how the Bible actually works. Not to mention the fact that most of the donations they receive help the people that own the church pay for private jets and mansions. Remember that mega church pastor who "needed" a private jet so he wouldn't have to share his flight with "sinners?" Yeah...
Even if there's a catastrophe in their neighborhood they can't be bothered to send some money their way. After that last tornado in Missouri a local mega church didn't donate a dime, meanwhile a local casino donated a large sum of money to the victims.
- mbattagl
Yup, Joel Osteen didn't do sh*t here in Houston during Harvey. I lived right by the church and there was NO water like he tried to say. Meanwhile Mattress Mack opened all his stores for people and did a ton to help.
- Mper526
Joel Osteen couldn't be bothered to open the doors to his as a shelter, without a ton of pressure, after Harvey flooded Houston. His own congregation was basically told to suck it. Megachurch operators are ghouls, to their rotten cores.
- BlackBetty504
My grandmother is destitute and relies on my mother for everything now despite having been well set for retirement, all thanks to the "prosperity gospel" preached on TBN. She sent them everything, on the promise that God would return her "investment" seven-fold. If hell is real, I have no doubt those snakes will be there with me.
- haveyouseenjeff
Not all businesses are created equal... or fair.
Do you have companies you'd like to add to the list?
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