You ever really know what goes on in a specific industry until you spend time in the trenches.
And it can be quite eye-opening when you do!
Luckily for us, we don’t have to work any of these jobs because Reddit users were nice enough to give us peeks behind the scenes of all kinds of different jobs.
Let’s take a look!
It’s tough out there…
“I own a sign shop, and I can tell you with 100% certainly that almost all businesses fail within the first year.
If you think you are going to open a restaurant or a boutique, you are about to lose a bunch of money.
Also, no matter what business you want to start, go talk to your local sign guy and ask how many businesses have been in that location and failed.
Trust me, we know which locations are cursed.”
College stuff.
“The grad students teaching your classes sometimes have more direct power over your grade than your professor.
Please be nice to us.
Not even to get a good grade, just please be nice to us because we’re stressed and tired.”
Lab life.
“I worked at Alta Sciences for a while, a pre-clinical testing facility.
They tested the safe dosages of meds before human trials on rats, mice, dogs, etc. They like to say they do the best for the animals as the necessary evil sorta situation but the place is abysmal.
Painting over mold and literal ****, mold in ceilings, never fixing any machines and just expecting people to make it work, hiding bad procedures from visitors, not firing people who straight up kick the animals because they are leads. Taking away perks because higher ups made stupid decisions and we payed for it.
IACUC, FDA, USDA also are basically useless as well since we got enough heads up to scramble a spit shine on the place. The stuff I reported only one change happened and that was cleaning the chemical barrel room. Also trying to report these things is a pain in the *** on top of it.
Any actual “fixes” are the most half ***** fixes made by someone who is not qualified in the slightest so it’s just gonna break again.
There are people who genuinely want to do good by the animals and help push research to help people but corporate greed combined with burnout makes for a bad time. Also the pay sucks.”
Sounds about right.
“Enterprise Rent-A-Car buys their cars straight from the manufacturers at a price lower than dealerships get.
After they rent them for a year, they sell them to the public at a price higher than they originally paid.”
That’s messed up.
“Work in large scale construction.
Large developers effectively borrow on the credit of all of the smaller players who are their subcontractors.
You have billion dollar companies asking smaller companies to pay for them with a promise to pay later. The larger the developer, the slower the process is to get paid.
If a project goes bust, it’s these small guys that get hit because all of the developers have LLC’s that are project specific. No assets to speak of.”
I knew it!
“I used to work in radio and we totally didn’t take caller 10.
We maybe counted 1-6 and then sorted through the callers until we found an excited sounding voice that fit the target demographic.”
Man…
“I work in the medical field.
This isn’t really about my field exactly but an adjacent field: health insurance. There is a guy reviewing our notes looking for reasons to deny a claim.
The guy reviewing generally has no clinical knowledge whatsoever, but they are looking for certain key works so they can stamp the “denial” on the claim.
For this reason, I will omit certain things on the clinical notes if it isn’t directly applicable to what I am treating because I know from experience that they will use that word as in indication that the proposed treatment is “inappropriate” and therefore denied.”
I did not know that!
“This one is fairly well known, but I’m just confirming its truth as some one that used to work in a factory.
The brand you buy doesn’t always matter. Sometimes it’s all the same stuff that comes out of the same vats, but just labelled differently and sold at different price ranges.”
All the same.
“I work in a bottling plant, its an independent Pepsi bottler.
We make Aquafina and also our own labelled water. Its 100% the same thing. Same bottle, same water, same standards, same caps.
Only difference is the label. We don’t even stop running when we switch from aquafina to our water, they just stop the labeler, change the label, and keep going.
Never buy name brand water.”
Shocker.
“I am working at a sports club with way over 2,000 members and I can tell you, you might sign some paper about data security and how we handle data, but believe me, your data will go places you dont want it to go.”
Don’t tell me that!
“I’m no longer shocked by the vast amount of software we all use on a daily basis that is rushed into production, shoddy, insecure, held together with spit and band-aids, etc, etc.
I’m amazed everything hasn’t just collapsed into dust already.”
Good to know.
“Drugs don’t turn into poison the second they expire – most medications are going to be effective for YEARS after they expire.
Manufacturers put expiry dates on their stuff to cover their assets – they have to guarantee 95% effectiveness until that date.
As long as it isn’t an antiviral or antibiotic, you can probably use it for years after it expires with no issues.”
Hotel life.
“I used to work at a Marriott hotel.
If you had something bad happen to you, or are angry at something you booked not working out, make a bit of a fuss. You can usually get free food/drinks or a free nights stay.
Don’t be a jerk about it, accidents happen and its often not the fault of the person you will be interacting with. But hotels bend over backwards in order to not get a bad review.
At the hotel I worked at, every review lower than a 9 or 10 was considered a 0. So, get your money’s worth.”
Well, I feel like we’ve all learned something today…
If you thought that was an interesting story, check this one out about a man who created a points system for his inheritance, and a family friend ends up getting almost all of it.