Former Employees Are Exposing The Problematic, Disturbing, And Unhinged Things That Went On Behind Closed Doors At Their Jobs, And I'm Speechless

We can all deny it as much as we want, but everyone is a little bit nosy. It's natural to be curious about what goes on behind closed doors at other people's jobs...even more so when said secrets are scandalous or just plain shocking.

So, recently on Reddit, ex-employees answered the question, "What’s a work secret you can expose now that you don't work there?" and the responses have me absolutely BEWILDERED. Here are the secrets people revealed about a ton of different industries:

1. "I was a pharmacist. We knew exactly who belonged to the swingers club because they all frequently needed the same medications for it (STIs, UTIs, and genital issues like swelling, bumps, or smells). We didn't care when it was those 'I don't want the pharmacist to judge me' situations. We didn't care. We didn't care about your feelings; we cared about giving you the right pills, amounts, correct instructions, and ensuring that you got from us what you needed. We do care, however, when you provide us with photo evidence of the problem with your genitals. I, a straight woman, have seen more vaginas up close than most men will see in a lifetime."

—NoshameNoLies

2. "I'm a former bartender. The owner would reuse plastic cups frequently. So did other college bars in the area. And no, it wasn’t a dishwasher method — it was a hot-water-and-bleach rinse, followed by a soap-and-water rinse. No scrubbing. Sometimes I’d notice chewing gum stuck to the bottom of a reused plastic cup. I now only drink from beer bottles and cans."

—Fabulous-Method7993

3. "I worked for a place that rented out furniture and appliances. If people didn’t pay, we would repossess the item. They’d send us out to repossess bug-infested appliances and furniture. Mattresses and couches would be heat-treated, vacuumed, shampooed, and rented out to the next customer. It didn’t matter how bad a bed bug infestation was; they'd send us in wearing full-body suits and masks to get their stuff. It was a horrible job."

—Historical-Steak5212

4. "I used to be an intern writer at a publication. I wrote for the interior design magazine, and I had friends who interned for the fashion and lifestyle magazine. In their magazine, they used to have a horoscope page that provided monthly life predictions for each sign. I remember one time, my friend working on this page was in such a rush to finish and submit the article that they asked other people around the office, including me, what our zodiac signs were and what we wished would happen next month. They also said, 'We can’t make it too overly lucky and good, because it might come off sketchy; better come up with some struggles you might face as well.' I never believed those magazine horoscopes ever since."

—Dependent-Prompt-555

5. "I used to work at a family artisan pasta factory in London. Our free-range egg pasta was made from the same batch as the non-free-range one. One day, the manager kindly pulled us aside and explained that with eggs, there is no difference, and no one can check. It's unnecessary to say that the free-range products were way pricier, so they were just trying to save money."

—deportesguerra

6. "A lead salesperson at a car dealership I worked for was having sex with women in a rarely used upstairs breakroom. We called it 'roach credit,' because he'd assure them they were getting better deals on the cars they were trying to buy. But they weren't actually getting better deals! It was owned by a stereotypical skeevy car salesperson, and this slimeball wasn't the only garbage human there. The dealership was shut down by the manufacturer and the manufacturer's credit unit."

—BigWhiteDog

7. "Most small businesses run their personal expenses through the business as business expenses. Flowers for the wife? Office supplies. Kid needs a laptop for college? Technology expense. I've worked at many small and medium businesses, and it's incredibly common. And they get pissed if you call them out on it."

—Jude_the_obscurest

8. "I worked at a five-star resort in Australia with a swim-up pool bar. The housekeeping team were given one cloth per shift and used it on everything — no different colors for the bathroom and the cups on your desk. Management were racist and flat-out said, 'That's why we don't hire white girls,' when I complained about the health and hygiene aspect."

—sortakindanah

9. "I worked at multiple market food vendors. All of them had serious health violations, including picking up food from the floor and selling it, giving out spoiled products, and mixing food on the floor. Plus, the equipment only got cleaned when I got to it, sometimes weeks apart."

—Wise_Heart_3255

10. "McDonald’s Big Mac sauce is just mayo, sweet pickle relish, mustard, and white wine vinegar, colored with paprika with no ketchup. You can make it easy at home. I think Thousand Island dressing is basically the same thing, so that would just save a few steps."

—AdventurousStrikeOut

11. "The education industry, and also basically the special education industry, is running on scams. It's just harming vulnerable children and their parents and, at times, creating false labels and issues for them. Because of misdiagnoses and stigma, some students don't get any teacher support, and when you are a teacher, it creates a lack of accountability. For example, this one 6-year-old student's mother had him diagnosed with ADHD and conduct disorder. He would make his teachers' and his peers' lives a living hell. I got blacklisted twice for refusing to cover up the report and instead telling the parent (who is also a teacher) that her son could go to jail one day if there is a lack of intervention. It's bizarre, as I was the longest-serving aide for him."

—PrimaryInspector1284

12. "I used to work for a credit card company. They automated any dispute under $200, so if you claimed ID theft, they would take your word and resolve it without much investigation. It was cheaper than doing a complete investigation."

—ILiftBIunts

13. "I worked at a local deli when I was 18 and 19. They loved to advertise their fresh homemade mozzarella, which was really just fresh mozzarella bought from a wholesaler that they would unwrap, stick in a bin with water, and sell at the deli counter."

—boboddy42069

14. "At the grocery store where I worked, I caught one of my managers stealing from a till, and he gave me $300 to shut up. Then, like three days later, an entirely different employee got caught stealing and took the fall for all the missing money."

—elon_sucks_dongs

15. "I was an aircraft mechanic in the military for 20 years. When something is advertised as 'military-grade,' it doesn't mean shit."

—guylikestoast

16. "Having worked for banks and credit unions… They relish — and count on — credit-cardholders that carry a balance. We called it 'perma-debt,' and it padded the bottom line. Thank you, funded my 401(K)! Also, pro tip: Use cards carefully. Do not over-extend or make dreaded minimum payments. Ever. Pay your balance in full, on time, each month. Or…GO WITHOUT!"

—Birddogfun

17. "My laptop has an app that is the only thing keeping $20 million in robotics running. I just quit, and soon, IT will kill my account. Once it goes, everything stops. I don't wanna get specific about what exactly the app is, but it's essentially replaced a timed system of tasks that broke after a code change."

—zimforfun

18. "When I worked in the warehouse for this company, we'd have to use forklifts that ran on gasoline and petroleum gas. One of them had been having engine trouble, overheating frequently after being on for a few minutes. We'd let the lead know about it, stopped using it, and were told it would be fixed ASAP. The issue was more or less pushed under the rug, despite my shift's concerns. Eventually, someone forgot, turned it on, left it idle while they went to get breakfast, and it caught fire. My other coworker managed to dead-sprint over to a fire extinguisher and put it out before it got too bad, but it was near two other forklifts, and we may have been seconds away from half the warehouse exploding. I just end up thinking about that from time to time."

—MBV-09-C

19. "I worked at a major drug company. Their number-one goal is to come up with expensive drugs that keep you alive but don't cure you — so you need to be on them for life. There is no money to be made curing diseases, and this company has cured ZERO."

—FastSort

20. "Before vet school, I worked for a veterinarian who was a born-again Christian. Anytime an unwed couple or an LGBTQ+ couple came into the clinic with their pet, she would shit-talk them after the appointment. She'd say they were going to hell and that she would pray for them. I got my letter of recommendation as quickly as I could because she was the only vet who would hire me with no experience, so I could get into vet school. On top of all that, she was a complete narcissist and blamed me for so many things she was responsible for as the vet. I felt terrible at the time, but now that I am a vet, I know it was on her, not her staff. I haven't spoken to her since I quit after receiving my letter, and I've been a practicing vet for almost six years now. I currently work for a clinic that is family-owned by LGBTQ+ people!"

—DragonJouster

"In my experience, shitty vets aren't that uncommon."

—sssssspace

21. "Every landscaper you've seen with a closed trailer has smoked weed in front of your house."

—papadoc2020

22. "I worked in a national retail pharmacy chain in the late 2000s that stored patient credit card numbers in plain text. When one of the computers I was working on started overheating and slowing down, I could load a patient profile and see their entire 16-digit card number displayed until, one by one, it replaced the first 12 numbers with asterisks."

—Turbolence88

23. "If you take clothes to the dry cleaners, we put them in the washing machine unless the care tag says dry clean only. The detergent is unscented, so no one ever suspects it. They just assume it went into the dry cleaner."

—pickleddresser

24. "I worked at McDonald's Express in 2003–2005, when I was in high school. We all ate so much food, because we knew we'd just end up tossing it at the end of the holding time. No customer cared about waiting three extra minutes for fresh food if we happened to grab the last one. We also got our employee meal on top of that. OMG, and the frozen cookie dough — we ate so much of it!"

—Positive_Flan_5035

25. "At the dental office I worked at, one of the dentists was keeping the gold or any metal from teeth and selling it and using the money for the Christmas party."

—SoftSad499

26. "Any customer order from ANY warehouse, ANY company: Your package has 100% been thrown around, stepped on, and knocked on the floor. Doesn't matter if it says 'fragile.'"

—IllNinja5329

27. "The nursing home was haunted. Rooms where people died would have call lights going off, but nobody in that particular room. Lights coming on, doors opening, weird noises...and yeah, it was after COVID, and half the residents died within a year. Things would move by themselves, according to the nursing assistants."

—Ok_Chest_6426

28. "A certain major solar panel brand has a major problem with electrical hot-spot dead shorts if certain parts are touching. A certain quality tech has to catch those every time, or they can catch fire once they are installed on people’s roofs. Also, certain solar panels are graded as A, B, C, and D on back-end inspection. The C-grade panels were donated for a tax break for the company; a certain quality tech was highly, highly, highly strict with the grading criteria so that more of them got donated."

—Sufficient-Wafer1071

29. "I worked in a Catholic hospital, and there were a lot of people who were having sex in the hospital on the night shift. It was wild how many stories I heard — and it was many different employees, not just one."

—moonieforlife

30. "A manager backed into the blood-drive bus and just drove off. I was donating blood while this happened. I didn't actually see him do it — just felt it happen — so I kept my mouth shut. I'm still at the company; he’s not. I sat on that information for at least a year. No one was surprised when I finally mentioned it."

—Kindly_Raccoon_8412

31. "Any delivery service that is not USPS generally does not care about your packages. The handling of them is done by the lowest-of-the-low workers you’ll find. Even more so during the holidays. When you call and complain, you become the topic of conversation to laugh at amongst colleagues."

—TheOnlyDJk

32. "We didn't let customers use our bathroom, because that's where we kept the gaming consoles."

—VeeDubBug

33. "At basically all buffet restaurants, the food is prepackaged and/or frozen. Nothing is scratch-made."

—561beachbich

34. "The dentist I was working for accidentally started drilling the wrong tooth on a patient, realized, and switched to the right tooth, but never repaired the tooth he started to drill."

—Appropriate-Safe-49

35. "My boss could not read or write. I can expose him — he’s still at the company — but I won’t. I covered for him a lot. I think he knew I knew."

—harinonfireagain

36. "All of the other preschool teachers were sleeping with parents of the kids."

—berrysalad22

37. And lastly, sadly: "Everything the client gets delivered is written by ChatGPT. They charge tons of money for AI-generated stuff. It's a waste of time and money (and water)."

—MindCandyy

What's an "open secret" in your current or previous job that most people don't know about? Share it anonymously in this form, or in the comments below!

Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.