“The markup on glasses (specifically frames) is stupid ridiculous. We can buy a frame for $4, then turn around & sell it for $160. Lenses too… lenses that cost us under $10 can easily be marked up to $100. I mean business is business but taking advantage of people who can’t see is sorta shitty lol”

“Many hotels often sell rooms multiple times. Used to work in an airport hotel. Knowing that chances are some guests won’t arrive due to missed or delayed flights so we sell more rooms that we have. You have guests checking out from 2/3 am due to early flights so even though the room is technically still theirs you quickly and sometimes poorly clean the room and tell the arriving unexpected guest or new booking there’s a random computer issue and to wait 20 mins and then check them into the departed guests room praying. Multiple times I’ve had to run a kettle under a cold tap to hide the fact the previous guest used it 15 mins before the new guest arrives”

“A lot of the time the engineer you talk to about your project (and decide to trust with it) delegates it to cheaper contractors as soon as you sign the paperwork. Their job is new business.”

“Ghostwriters in fiction. John Grisham, Danielle Steele, James Patterson, Janet Evanovich, etc., all those big names with an NYT bestseller every year use ghostwriters who are are never credited or mentioned. It’s barely even a secret.”

“Air traffic control (cue the Breaking Bad jokes) A diagnosis of virtually any mental illness…and a diagnosis of many physical conditions…is disqualifying and will end your career. For that reason, people avoid doctors like the plague.”

“How many people who work with children (teachers, childcare workers, etc.) don’t follow confidentiality guidelines. Gossiping about families with coworkers, talking about children’s home situations, creeping family’s social media, etc.”

“Sometimes librarians read the new books before registering them in the catalogue for the public. *evil laughter*”

“Archaeology. Sometimes we lick artifacts to quickly determine if they are bone or pottery (bone sticks pottery doesn’t). And then tap them on our teeth to determine if they are pottery or a rock (rock will hurt pottery won’t).”

“Padding paperwork (studies) to slow an auditor down. Every data point, all the minutiae of the calculations, unnecessarily dense explanations of statistical methods that go on at length with notes about distribution fitting. They (auditors) aren’t usually very technical, so they stop at each spot along the way without realizing they can throw half the thing out. If you’re good, you can balloon a 30 page document into 100 in a matter of minutes.”

“You know the people who write instruction manuals or user guides in things you buy? Half the time, they’ve never even seen or touched the product. Some dude just sends us pictures, a rough description of how it’s supposed to work, and that’s it.”

“Lots of performing musicians don’t ever really get over stage fright. Many of them take beta blockers to help with nerves. Although it’s less about the mental side of it and more the fact that you physically can’t perform if you get so nervous that your hands are shaking. That’s what beta blockers help with; you’ll probably still feel anxious mentally, but any physical effects like shaking or sweating will be gone. Not really a ‘dark’ secret, as there’s not usually bad side effects of beta blockers, but I guess some people might see that as cheating in a way. Personally, I find it kind of inspiring knowing that lots of people struggle with the same thing as me, and there’s a solution that isn’t just ‘suck it up and deal with it’.”

“There is at least one water bottle/soda can/energy drink/ spray paint can sitting on a piece of blocking behind your drywall somewhere in your house.”

“There is a problem in substance abuse treatment in the US called body brokering. Substance abuse treatment can be very expensive and insurance companies pay A LOT of money for a patient to be there. Treatment centers will hire “body brokers” to find addicts with the best, highest-paying insurance and entice them to check in to the specific center, the treatment center then gives the broker a commission from the insurance money. This can go as far as body brokers literally putting more drugs into the hands of some addicts before they come in, bc the higher level of drugs in your system upon admit, the more and longer the insurance company will pay to the treatment center.”

“When we take x-rays of your pelvis, we can see your penis. And we can see your labial folds.”

“At a very large pizza chain restaurant that remains widely popular, we had these perforated pans for thin crust and stuffed crust pizzas. They’d get washed in the dishwasher by the hundreds per day and at least half would still have burnt cheese and shit on them. Well, they were just stacked to dry. When making new pizzas in those pans, sometimes the pans that were left to “dry” overnight grew bits of mold around the burnt cheese. We were told just to put the dough on top because otherwise, we’d never keep up with the orders if we rewashed everything. The manager said, ‘don’t worry, it gets cooked'”

“Pretty much ALL the high-end ‘handmade in Australia’ jewelry in Australia is made at a secret factory in Bali. All the clients have to show an established business and sign confidentiality agreements.”

“Have you ever started filling out a form for a quote on something (insurance website, or literally anything) and then changed your mind and said “nah, I don’t want to give them my personal information”, and then abandoned the form before pressing “submit”? If you think that stopped them from getting your personal information, it didn’t. Most companies looking to capture leads will capture your info in real time as you enter it into a form. The submit button is just there to move you to the next step, not to actually send your information to the company.”

“Customs broker here. Every day hundreds of thousands of containers and air shipments arrive into US territory. The volume of customs entries entered every day is staggering. When we get licensed to be a customs broker we are trained and tested not just on knowledge, but ethics. We even take a pledge to partner with CBP to uphold the law, and cooperate with them should we come across anything suspicious. Why so much emphasis on this? Customs can’t actually screen everything coming in. I’m oversimplifying but CBP basically works on the honor system. You file an entry saying what the shipment is, and they just take your word for it. This happens hundreds of thousands of times a day. Maybe at best customs can screen 3-7% of what’s coming in, the rest of it’s just waived through…”