Ex-Employees Are Revealing The Very Shocking Secrets The Companies They Worked For Don’t Want You To Know

No matter where you work, there’s usually some version of “how the sausage gets made” that you only learn from the inside. Maybe it’s something small, like a CEO who talks a big game about the environment but doesn’t actually walk the walk. Or maybe it’s something much bigger, like the company quietly scamming its customers on a huge scale! Either way, most people on the outside have no clue what’s really going on.

Recently, redditor Wonderful-Economy762 wanted to know what behind-the-scenes things ex-employees aren’t holding back anymore when they asked: “What’s a company secret you can share now that you don’t work there anymore?”

The thread got a lot of responses. Here are some of the things people alleged were happening at their jobs that nobody knows about:

1.“That cute little bakery I worked at was nothing more than a facade. It wasn’t homebaked, it was cookie dough from Gordon Food Service and rotting apples.”

—Alice_600

“I worked for a bakery that used Betty Crocker cake mixes. She charged extra for her homemade cakes.”

—southdakotagirl

2.“A bar I worked at sold Bud Light as regular Budweiser. The price difference back in the ’90s for kegs was about 50 dollars. Always get bottled beer.”

—ThatWomanNow

3.“A high-end clothing retail company I worked for intentionally destroys thousands of expensive garments on the reg in an incinerator. Why? Because flooding the market with too much inventory brings the demand and the brand’s value down.”

—No-Performer-6621

4.“I did maintenance for a convenience store like 10 years ago. It’s best to think twice before getting ice from the fountain drink machines. About 9/10, I opened it up and it was filled with mold.”

—GoodResident2000

“We owned a restaurant for about 10 years and paid extra for the soda and ice machines to be cleaned/maintained regularly. Our maintenance guys said they would only get soda from the places they knew that got cleaned because otherwise the machines were full of mold, and most places do not clean them regularly themselves.”

—Pianic07

5.“Companies that made maps for car navigation systems would find out where senior executives of their major clients lived and played. And then made extra sure that these areas were super perfect and free of any error, and the rest of the city, it was a case of ‘rough enough is good enough.’ The accurate location of golf courses and sailboat marinas was of particular importance.”

—downright-radiating

6.“I did an internship at a water treatment plant. Your city is still running Windows 98/Windows XP machines with education versions of LabVIEW. This controls all of your drinking water purification. If we have one bad power outage or someone reboots a machine, your city will most likely lose the ability to test and treat drinking water. The city had an IT budget in the millions, and these machines/software could not be replaced.”

—elitejoemilton

7.“Some online poker, betting, and casino companies scrape customer accounts for cents and nobody notices.”

—vantasma

8.“Most of the time when we said the ‘ice cream machine is broken,’ it wasn’t. Either the cream hasn’t solidified yet (still churning) or we were cleaning it. You can take a guess where I worked.”

—bulbateas

9.“Electricity is expensive to generate, transmit, and distribute. That’s from the last company. From the previous company, retail markup on high-end clothing is f*cking ridiculous.”

—sr1sws

“High-end and budget clothing is all made in the exact same factories. The rest is value engineering, branding, and marketing. You can get annoyed about sweatshops, but machine-made clothes are all made in sweatshops.”

—LycheeMangoJamun

10.“Concrete block manufacturers try to get away with putting as little cement into their products as possible.”

—WWDB

11.“I worked at a place that sold a client a fully automated product with all data backed up in the system and updated each month. The client had paid HUGE sums of money for this service. Truth told, there was no automation, and all the data was being done manually. It was a huge shit show. If I said the name of the client, you’d be shocked. They were one of the biggest corporations in the USA.”

—Middle_Process_215

12.“In our local city government, if the individual departments do not use all the money budgeted to them, it is taken back and put in the general fund. You would think each department would be able to use what they need and save the rest for later. Nope.”

—Mission_Selection703

“It’s very well known in government and big corporations that your department must spend all of your allocated budget or even go over budget, or your budget will get decreased next year. So lots of wasteful spending at the end of the year just to get rid of it.”

—sudomatrix

13.“If you tell your server, ‘It’s so cold in here, can you turn the heat up?’ No. They’re never gonna do it. Even if they say yes, it’s a lie.”

—drinkwhatyouthink

14.“That casino host that magically appears and offers you tickets to a concert or a comp meal isn’t there to reward you; they’re there to break your winning streak.”

—CallMeLazarus23

15.“At some point, even in the fanciest of restaurants, you’ve eaten food that has fallen on the floor.”

—coydog1111

16.“Soda, as an ex-employee here. The floor had to be redone every few years due to the corrosion from the mixing of ingredients/chemicals, and we drink it. I still drink soda, but with moderation.”

—Tested18

17.“The homeopathic cough medicine you give your kids is a sweetener and grape flavoring. Melatonin is added if it’s nighttime.”

—joecrane66

18.“Worked for a place that granted ‘wishes.’ The politics of which kids get what is quite interesting. If a donor isn’t behind a kid, they are unlikely to get one of the big ones.”

—Objective_Regret2768

“This breaks my heart.”

—hardhatgirl

19.“We can waive any fee if you’re nice, but if you’re the c-word, I’m going to make you beg for it or not give it at all.”

—Extension_Silver808

20.“I worked for a health insurance company. We were overcharging loads of people in error, and once it was detected, we had to refund tens of thousands of dollars after a 12-month audit. Staff were retrained so the error didn’t happen again, and also because the government gave us a pass on it, but warned that if it ‘happens again, you’re done.’ I can confirm the errors happened again and were swept under the rug, and no doubt to this day people are being overcharged again 😡.”

—Western_Yoghurt3902

21.“My friend worked as an in-house legal at a huge insurance company. If too many claims were being paid out, she got into trouble. All the staff below her were trained to say no and to make it as difficult as possible for people to claim.”

—DearTumbleweed5380

22.“We made a popular product and marketed it as the last of its kind made in the USA. In fact, it was 10% assembled in the USA and software was downloaded to it. Mainly by immigrant labor.”

—RanDumbPlay

23.“Cheap chocolate ice cream is a mix of all flavors that don’t have fruit pieces or nuts in them.”

—Willy121821

24.And lastly, “Blockbuster. We could write off anyone’s late fees that we wanted. We just did it if you were a prick about it. If it was a genuine mistake and you asked nicely, most of the time we could amend your account.”

—Agent4777

“Wish I had known this 30 years ago.”

—Jojopaton

You can read the original thread on Reddit.

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