Employees Are Sharing Secrets Most People Don't Realize About Their Industry, And They're WAY Darker Than I Expected
Every job has its secrets. No matter what one's chosen field is, there are just some things that those outside the industry would never know. Sometimes, the secrets are small or trivial bits of information that make for interesting stories, but other secrets could ruin reputations or destroy the public's perception of a certain field.
So, when Reddit user u/zogbonk asked, "What's the dark secret about your profession that the general public doesn't know?" people were more than willing to discuss the darker aspects of their careers. Here are 14 of the most shocking responses:
Disclaimer: BuzzFeed has not verified the legitimacy of these claims. These individuals are speaking for themselves and from their own experiences.
1."A boutique hotel I worked at didn’t wash comforters unless necessary. And even then, you really had to push. I was pulled to help with housekeeping fairly regularly in the busy season, found a quilt with blood on it, and sent it to laundry."
"It was sent back in 5 minutes after being deemed 'clean enough.' My housekeepers told me it was normal. I was horrified. I cringe at staying at hotels and take a blanket when I can."
2."Funeral Director/Embalmer here: I don’t know that this is a particularly 'dark' secret, but despite the rising popularity, the lack of understanding around what cremation really is always shocks me. You do not get 'ashes' back."
"You get bone fragments back. In school, we had it drilled into us never to use the term 'ashes' because it is inaccurate and only perpetuates this misunderstanding. Your body is not reduced to a fine, powdery ash that will float off in the wind/water when scattered. It is reduced to large chunks of bone, which are then processed to attain a fairly uniform consistency. Much more like a heavy sand."
3."Security guard: In an active shooter event, we're not going to protect your ass. We're heading to the nearest safe exit and calling the cops."
"I’m an unarmed security guard, so I don’t know what else people would expect me to do in that situation. I get paid to observe and report, not protect and serve. I’m not even supposed to put hands on someone unless they try to put hands on me first."
4."Book editor: Unless you have a massive social media following/built-in audience already, chances are very small you'll get published by a major house."
"Chances are even smaller that you'll make money from your book. Just self-publish if you really want to get your work out there: the publishing industry is 95% about making money and 5% about publishing decent books."
5."I'm a lawyer: 1/3 of us are active alcoholics, 1/3 of us are in recovery, and the last third have a drinking problem. There is something about being on call 24/7, being expected to close a deal in days, efficiently, without making a single mistake in documentation."
"I'm getting shit from a client for a messed up schedule. Yes, we made a mistake, but bro, you gave us a term sheet 8 days before you needed to close. The whole team was billing 16-20 hours daily on that deal. There are going to be mistakes."
6."I worked in Housing & Dining at a big state university. Universities cover up a TON of bad stuff to keep a ‘safe and clean’ image."
"Not the worst, but during the remodeling of a building, a worker had an arm cut off by a moving elevator — never made any news.
However, there was a sexual assault incident that the administration quietly paid off. It involved a drunk male who passed out on a couch and woke up with a male appendage in his mouth. While a bunch of RAs knew about it, and of course, the campus police and college knew, not a word in the press. It’s like it didn’t happen."—u/GregoPDX
7."IT guy: I Google or Reddit half my problems. I buy your computers from a place you could buy them from, and I mark them up 35% or more."
"I could care less if you look at porn at work until I'm told to care. We talk about end users like they have the intelligence of a rock, and we judge you based on your technical skills. More techs than you want to know about will search your personal device for nudes given the chance."
8."I used to be a police officer: There were a lot of unspoken rules about making sure we had a high number of arrests. Demonstrating high arrest numbers meant we got federal/state grant money."
"This kept the prosecutor employed along with the entire court system and showed the town/city we needed a larger budget because of all the arrests. The entire criminal justice system is literally a giant business which [profits] off the backs of the public."—u/T-Rat93
9."I was a perfume sniper for a high-end store that may no longer be in business. Well, as part of the job, we had a quota of bottles to use up each shift."
"Our manager would check behind the counter to ensure we weren't spraying into the trash can. If we wanted to push a particular brand (more profit/commission), we'd dilute the competition's testers.
Our mantra: we spray, so you'll pay today."
*Perfume sniper typically refers to a sales associate in a department store whose job is to spray customers with fragrances in an effort to sell the product.
10."Professors are regularly pressured into passing failing students to keep up graduation levels. I even had the registrar go into the system and change grades."
"Let’s just say I have seen my fair share of students who failed my science course but were passed by admins. These students are now building your bridges, interstates, buildings, levees, and multi-level parking lots."
11."Veterinarians in the US have a high suicide rate. High debt, low income relative to that amount of debt and their level of schooling, a lot of client abuse and depressing cases, and access to euthanasia drugs."
"We're taught the gold standard medicine, but many clients can't afford the gold standard, so you've got this frustration where you want to help but can't, and then you're accused of being heartless or just in it for the money. I left clinical medicine after two years for a series of non-clinical roles.
The turnover rate of vet techs (the nurses in the vet hospital) is fairly high, estimated at about 30-35%, with an average time in the industry of just 5-10 years...and that's for your licensed techs that went to school for it. The school I used to teach at had similar findings in our own post-grad surveys, where a lot of our graduates would either leave the field entirely or leave clinical medicine for things like reference lab work, pet insurance, or pharmaceutical rep work after just a couple years."
12."I work in medical delivery strictly to hospice patients. As you can imagine, they die frequently. We pick the equipment up to be returned to the warehouse and sanitize it for redelivery to other patients. It’s a shoestring industry with tiny profit margins."
"Every single company out there is picking up mattresses, slapping a disposable cover on them, and putting them back out at the next stop. Logistically, there is no possible way that everyone in the industry isn’t doing it. I personally refuse to do it. I’ve had a regional VP complain about it and say we were in business to make money, not to deliver clean equipment to someone who was going to die the next day. Even if you don’t account for urine and fecal matter, there are still roaches and bed bugs being moved around all the time."
13."I worked at a mental health facility. They were all about image and money. Very few clients were ever discharged. They were far more interested in the money than actually helping people."
"Yes, I have worked with many mentally ill clients who were not able to care for themselves safely and were discharged as soon as their holds were up. It felt impossible to get them the help they needed, and many just ended up on the streets and died."
14."I work for a roofing supply company. Both in the warehouse and on the truck making deliveries. The amount of damaged materials we send out to people's houses, simply just to get it out of our inventory, is astronomical."
"This causes a few issues for everyone that isn’t us. To list a few, it could cause leaks in your roof, shingles to simply fly off in the wind, and vents to clog. The most common issue is the customer has to buy 'better material.' Which isn’t taken off the original ticket order and comes out of pocket. This means that sometimes people pay 150% to 175% more for a roof than what it would normally cost. So, a 20k roof turns into a 33k one, if not more.
All of that is simply so our material looks better to the eye when you come in to order stuff. Most of that goes into the salesman’s pocket via commission, so they won’t do much about throwing away anything or sending out better material unless a bigger company lines his pockets beforehand.
I advise not to get a roof redone unless insurance covers every bit of it."
Which one of these "dark secrets" shocked you the most? What secrets do people outside of YOUR industry not know about? Let us know in the comments!
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.
Dial 988 in the US to reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. Other international suicide helplines can be found at befrienders.org. The Trevor Project, which provides help and suicide-prevention resources for LGBTQ youth, is 1-866-488-7386.
The National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline is 1-800-950-6264 (NAMI) and provides information and referral services; GoodTherapy.org is an association of mental health professionals from more than 25 countries who support efforts to reduce harm in therapy.
If you or someone you know has experienced sexual assault, you can call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673 (HOPE), which routes the caller to their nearest sexual assault service provider. You can also search for your local center here.
