6 hours ago
3
It's no surprise that once you start working in a certain industry, you eventually become familiar with all its quirks, shortcuts, and secrets. From coworkers sharing their little-known workarounds to discovering certain unwritten rules yourself, there's A LOT to be uncovered in just about every line of work. And I can say that from experience. Over the past 10 years, I've worked at a movie theatre, multiple clothing stores, a tea shop, on movie sets, at a radio station, and more. And let me tell you, every. Single. One. had its own little secrets.
So when Redditors were asked, "What's your work industry secret?" people came flocking. Here are 19 of the most shocking work industry confidentials I came across:
1. "I worked in politics, and most people don't realize it's a bunch of 22-year-old staffers writing our laws."
"I worked at a very legit private polling firm, like one of the top two in the country (we didn't do publicly released polls), and a lot of the messages we tested and then gave to our clients were written by me. I was 22 years old and was just pulling random shit from Oppo research docs to test."
2. "I cleaned hotels for a year or so in my early 20s... we'd always switch out the pillowcases and bedsheets, and that was basically the most intensive cleaning I'd do for the most part..."
3. "Depending on the environment and the access of individual workers, IT can see almost everything you do on a company-owned device. You should assume you have zero privacy. The amount of pornography people consume on work devices is fucking astounding. I've seen executives who watch hours of porn per day on their PCs, and onboarded new hires who pulled up Pornhub or something similar within days of being hired. I have never reported someone unless I thought they were doing something illegal, the activity was interfering with IT, or management specifically requested something about an employee. That being said, we absolutely know and see what you're doing, and 100% form opinions about you based on that information and have zero issues laughing about it with the rest of the tech people. Keep your weirdness to your personal phone."
"What about using my own phone on work wifi? Can they still monitor that traffic?"
"They can see what websites you're connecting to, but the traffic itself will probably be encrypted. Basically, they'll know you visited PornHub but not know about your step-sister's foot fetish. You could use a VPN, but personally, I'd suggest keeping it to cellular and just not mixing your personal business with the company's."
4. "I'm in the trades, and 99% of the stuff I do can be learned with a few YouTube videos and an investment in proper tools. Most certifications don't require trade school; you can learn on your own and pay $50-100 to take the final exam. Trade school is just beating the answers into your head. Even the 'hands-on' doesn't really apply once you're out in the field."
"Framers in the US have 0 training. It blows my mind."
5. "95% of clothes that are sold at outlets or discount stores like Nordstrom Rack/T.J. Maxx/Marshalls are all price-engineered and developed to hit full margin at the fake discounted price. Brands like Prada even have separate design and development teams for products sold at their outlets or for asian retail exclusives with inflated margins."
"Yet they're still noticeably less expensive."
"Because they're made with cheaper materials and labour."
6. "Hostesses will give you a wait time roughly 15 minutes later than the actual time for your table to be ready, so you can be pleasantly surprised/positive when you're beeped/called up (among other reasons, like less hassle for cleaning)."
"When I was a hostess, I would say there was a 2-hour wait for tables when I didn't want a long line of people waiting while the restaurant was really full and busy LOL."
7. "I don't know if it's exactly secret, but fancy private schools aren't any better at teaching than the nearby public school. They have high teacher turnover, parents that argue their failing kids into passing, drugs, and sexual assault. The only real advantage is that you can name-drop your fancy school that had a poet laureate as an English teacher, never mind the fact that they were terrible at actually teaching. All for around 50k a year."
"I mean, this heavily depends on your nearby public school LOL. At the middle school near me, 6% of kids do math at grade level, and 11% read at grade level. They have fights constantly, and more than 25% of kids are chronically absent. Even if the teachers, facilities, and classes offered were exactly the same between this school and a private school, a child being in class with kids whose parents are at least mostly around, sending them to school every day, and generally caring about what happens to them/that they can read and write, is a massive improvement. Even smart kids can't learn when 15-25% of their class, at any given time, is either so disruptive or so far behind that the teacher has to devote more than half their energy to dealing with a few students."
8. "Nobody in social work/law/medicine/emergency actually follows the rule of not telling their friends and family everything. It actually bothers me how people assume any of these people actually make it a moral obligation not to gossip about the shit they see/hear at work. I know an orthopedic surgeon, and he loves saving and sharing pics and stories of fucked-up stuff that comes through his OR. I know an elementary school guidance counselor who, after two margaritas, will expose any sordid secret any kid ever told her, as well as any particularly juicy dramas and traumas she hears about. The gossip mills inside schools and hospitals would make TMZ blush, TBH."
9. "Designer sunglasses are a huge racket, and the vast majority of them are manufactured by the same three companies. The $1000 ones are made by the same manufacturers who make the $200 ones."
"If you put in a bit of work, you can get amazing reps of Persol and other nice sunglasses for like $60/ea. FYI. I feel that sunglasses are one of the best things you can buy because you'll lose/break real ones anyway. The sellers that sell them for $60 (vs. the cheap AliExpress bullshit) basically make them identical to retail down to the gram weight and hinges.
I bought my optical glasses from a Chinese seller and got some GREAT niche designer titanium frames with the best possible lenses (all the shit they offer on most optical sites) for like $70, and threw on a pair of Gentle Monster × Maison Margiela sunglasses for $50 to get free shipping. They were at my door in a week and a half, and they're both fantastic. Put some effort in and stop supporting the Luxottica people, who leaked a shit ton of your data, BTW."
10. "People who work in libraries 100% judge what you are checking out and mentally profile all the regular patrons."
11. "I feel like a lot of people know this one, but less than 6% of 'recyclable' plastics that make it to a recycling center are actually recycled. Any plastic bottle or container that says 'made with recycled materials' probably has only 1-2% recycled plastic. Any more than that and it's impossible to dye evenly. You can only add a little bit of recycled plastic without changing the whole design. Brands only do it so they can say they did it. Anything that has recycled plastic also can’t be recycled again, since it's a mixed material."
12. "I've worked on the construction of over 100 different buildings, and every single one has had regulatory violations that just get buried or written around. No building actually adheres completely to safety regulations."
"I have witnessed building inspectors get bribed, or contractors pulling some outright trickery to not get caught on something during an inspection."
13. "Most postal supervisors become supervisors within their first three years. This is the only job where you raise your hand to become a supervisor. And if you cause enough trouble as a supervisor (EEO, Grievances, A genuine litany of crimes), the post office just moves you."
14. "Not really a secret, but airlines are investing hundreds of millions in dynamic pricing models that are super predatory on consumers. They will use it to squeeze even more juice out of you. The EU is better protected than other places due to GDPR, but it's happening industry-wide."
15. "Supermarkets/grocery stores track you and wait till you rack up an arrestable amount over multiple petty thefts (boooo)."
16. "Not super revelatory, but from my days in mineral exploration: it's actually fairly easy to find a gold, nickel, etc. 'deposit'. Shit is everywhere. What's tricky is defining the boundaries of a deposit that will get you a sufficient amount of investment to mine it economically. I helped define a 3-plus million-ounce gold deposit, for example, that is still sitting there untouched fifteen years later because no one wants to go through the hassle. Same with three other nickel projects."
17. "Talent agents like myself formerly were rent seekers. Get a law degree and go into talent management instead"
19. "If you go to a QT with one of the new machines and get club soda/carbonated water and tell the clerk it's a refill, they'll probably just let you have it for free."
What's your work industry secret? Let us know in the comments or use the form below to remain anonymous!
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.
English (US) 