Scandal-Worthy Company Secrets Shared by Former Employees

One nice thing about leaving a job is that you can spill all the juicy tea on your former employer's shady deeds (unless you signed an NDA), and things you got away with on the job that might have gotten you fired if your boss ever found out. A popular question is often posted to r/AskReddit—"What's a company secret you can share now that you don't work there?"—and the answers rarely disappoint. In this thread, a common theme seemed to be companies that deliberately lie to customers. It's validating, in a way, to hear a bunch of former employees confirm what we were always suspicious of. 

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  • “What's a company secret you can share now that you don't work there?” Posted by u/broadway96

  • 01
    Rectangle - BayBel 1d I worked at L'Oréal. The cosmetics from L'Oréal and Lancôme are practically the same. But Lancôme costs like $20 more. Reply 3.4k
    via r/AskReddit
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  • 02
    Rectangle - Perendinator • 1d In a broadband company I worked for I was tasked with editing thousands of complaints to avoid huge Ofcom fines. Reply 2.7k
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  • 03
    Human body - Metropolis Pt31. 1d We sometimes made up letters to the editor. ... Reply 8.1k
    via r/AskReddit

    "What? How are there not enough opinionated retirees in your area?" said u/lablackey27.

  • 04
    Rectangle - 6billionyearsold. 1d 1 Award Olive Garden breadsticks are just Franz brand breadsticks, garlic salt, and butter ETA: It's margarine, not butter. I forgot there is a difference :p ... Reply 19.4k
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    "Yeah but I'm not buying Franz sticks when Olive Garden will give me an unlimited amount that are already prepared" said u/canehdian78.

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  • 05
    Rectangle - Bariatric Pressure • 1d 1 Award If you were on Live Chat with Customer Care, I could see what you were typing before pressing send. I watched people work through grotesque, racist, sexist statements, fraudulent lies and mistruths, meticulous grammar fixes, and their whole range of emotions in real time before deleting and typing "ok." ... Reply 12.3k
    via r/AskReddit

    "Guilty. The worst part is, I know they can see it." said u/___cats___.

    "Yeh, I started typing my responses in notepad and pasting them over because of my need to be seen as an adult" said u/ThrowawayUk4200.

  • 06
    Font - JoshM-R 1d In the United States. One company's bread and butter was simply reboxing and relabling computer monitors from China to make it seem like they were from the company and made/assembled in some way by them. Reply 11.4k
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    "I work for a wholesaler. You would be surprised how many companies simply source merchandise and sell it without ever touching it. We ship it direct to their customers for them, just swap the return address for theirs." said u/NativeMasshole.

  • 07
    Font - atari26k 1d ● Worked at a major cable/ISP and there 4 billing cycles. They upgraded the billing system, but did something wrong, and all but the current cycle got a late charge. But instead of fixing it immediately, we were told to credit their account if the customer called in. I did the math, and for the size of our city, and the 3/4 of people wrongly charged, it was over a million USD. Most people just pay their bill and don't look to close. Edit: it was Time Warner, which was bought o
    via r/AskReddit

    "Comcast. They do this all the time. Not really worth the hour plus it takes on the phone for them to not steal from you but it's worth it to them to steal from thousands of people." said u/Top-Kaleidoscope-751.

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  • 08
    Mammal - _Zoko_ • 1d If you pick up a wall phone at Home Depot and push '7' it activates the store wide intercom. This works in every store in my province afaik Reply 6.6k
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    "Pound symbol then 35 at Lowes" said u/thebeautifulseason.

  • 09
    Font - ZealousidealWay1139 • 1d I worked at a comic book store that offered a service where you paid a small premium to have sent in rare comics to have them graded at CGC. A few months later we had many customers coming in to check the status of their comics. We contacted the owner to see what was going on, and he would always claim that there was some distribution problem. Fast forward a few months, we found out he was taking customers graded copies and selling them online while trying to retu
    via r/AskReddit

    "How did this dude think that comic collectors who were sending in comics to be graded, wouldn't recognize they weren't receiving their original comic back? Lol. I'm sure a few newer to the hobby wouldn't be the wiser, but man." said u/kuebel33.

    "That's what we all said. My friend and I were managers and had absolutely no idea this was happening. It was a smaller town comic shop and all the customers sending in comics to be graded were good friends of ours. But the plot gets thicker. Turns out his wife was signed for the business, so the 'owner' wasn't really the owner. We called her and explained what was happening, she was in tears. She came to shop to meet the wronged customers and she took graded comics from the 'owners' collection and let the customers pick out comics to equal to the value of their GRADED comics in return for the mishap. Fast forward a few months, she closed the store, gave us our paychecks and even some 'I'm sorry' money. It turns out the guy was doing all kinds of other shady shit. She divorced him, and I'm like 99% sure he went to jail for fraud. He's also banned from CGC and all of the licensed big comic cons lol." said u/ZealousidealWay1139.

  • 10
    Font - inkseep1 • 1d I used to work surveillance at a casino. From something like 3 stories high ceiling, we could zoom in on money on the table games and read the serial numbers of the bills. We could see the pips on the dice. Policy was to not look down blouses. Reply 27.7k
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    "This is true and also very annoying because I work on the floor and the guys in surveillance can't be bothered to do their job and give us a lot of 'hrmm can't really see anything' when we call them." said u/MarMar201.

    "They're busy looking down a blouse." said u/CatoblepasQueefs.

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  • 11
    Font - actuallyjohnqmind. 1d Your luggage at an airport isn't really handled with care ... Reply 14k
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    "I worked baggage at an airport. Nothing is handled with care. If it's marked fragile, your only hope is nice baggage handlers. You should avoid packing breakable things at all costs. Edit. Not totally true. I never had one, but we were trained on how to properly handle a casket. The training was 'Be very careful, don't drop it, and for the love of God, don't sit on it like it's a horse.' True story. That's what our boss said." said u/FatTim48.

    "'don't sit on it like it's a horse.' That's a warning that exists because someone's done it before." said u/Scyhaz.

  • 12
    Font - Lunar Gato 1d Maple sap can be trucked in from other states and where it's turned from sap to syrup decides on the state it comes from, not the location of the trees. Reply 22.8k ...
    via r/AskReddit

    "You need a maple syrup cartel, like in Quebec." said u/wordnerdette.

  • 13
    Font - zerbey • 1d The difference between the high quality deli meat sold at M&S and the regular deli meat sold in other grocery stores is that we changed the label. We would literally stop the production line, wait for the guy who ran the label machine to swap them out and then start it back up again. ... Reply 13.7k
    via r/AskReddit

    "I used to work for an online craft-type store, and one of the things they sold was 'premium craft sand.' It was literally sand from the hardware store. They'd buy 50 lb. bags from Home Depot for $8, separate it into 1 lb. bags, and sell those for $4 each." said u/DimitriV.

    "The funny thing is whoever sells it to Home Depot buys it for $20 per ton and does the same thing." said u/GrannyLow.

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  • 14
    Font - Pariahdog119. 1d 4 Awards The vehicle modification shop at Chillicothe Correctional Institution in Chillicothe, Ohio dumps waste coolant from the machine shop into a storm drain that empties directly into the Scioto River, because the chemical disposal tank is a 55 gallon drum in the paint shop, and that's much too small. They can't throw me into solitary confinement for complaining anymore. Edit: this happens about once a year, when the machine's coolant reservoirs are emptied and the co
    via r/AskReddit

    "What the fuck. Contact your local news organizations." said u/LowPermission9.

    "Contact the fucking EPA" said u/herefishyfishy1.

  • 15
    Font - Following_the_Sun. 1d Inbound call center - the "We are currently experiencing an unusually high call volume" message is permanent. They just didn't staff adequately. ... Reply 22.5k
    via r/AskReddit

    "Also, I suspect the menu options have not recently changed." said u/AdhesivenessLivid959.

  • 16
    Rectangle - Sullyville • 1d Used to work at a graphic design firm. All our Adobe software was pirated. Reply 28.7k
    via r/AskReddit

    "Back when photoshop came out it put a lot of the old school lithographers out of business. My dad was one of these. When he got laid off he copied the stack of floppy disks with photoshop on them, bought an apple computer, and started his own company." said u/SuperBrett9.

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  • 17
    Font - saybeller. 1d I worked for a restoration company. One time an elderly woman called them to clean her house. She was a hoarder or there had been a fire. I can't remember. Anyway, the company charged $57,000 for the work to be done, but in actuality they couldn't even get the charges to add up to $20k. She couldn't file this on her insurance. There are other examples of gross overcharging, but this is the worst I know of that wasn't on the large loss side. The lesson here, if you have water
    via r/AskReddit
  • 18
    Rectangle - samiam871. 1d 2 Awards I worked for a MAJOR hotel chain in housekeeping for over 10 years. The number of suicides and people who die naturally in their rooms is a lot higher than you'd think. I worked at a huge convention hotel with over 1000 rooms and it happened quite often. Unless it was a pretty gnarly mess it would just get cleaned like normal and the next guest had no idea. ... Reply 9.1k
    via r/AskReddit
  • 19
    Font - NoAnTeGaWa • 1d 1. Ford parts from Mexico are way more reliable than Ford parts from Detroit, or at least they were before 2020. I worked in Detroit and we had some customers who were fussy about us always doing repairs with Michigan parts, but when we had a problem that wouldn't stay fixed we would always secretly switch to the Mexican parts (which did solve things). 2. I was a prison guard a decade ago and we installed some facial tracking software in the surveillance cameras. One of th
    via r/AskReddit
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  • 20
    Font - solitarytrees2 • 1d I'll say it. A place similar in name to Past Face Urgent Care (at least in the region I worked at) banned their front desk from informing customers that they have a credit balance to use toward their services and still required us to charge customers the full price on top of what we already owed them. Some accounts had like 500 dollars of copay that should have een refunded but weren't. I was actually reprimanded for applying the credit balance, because despite finance
    via r/AskReddit
  • 21
    Font - Ineedtwocats • 1d I still work here but EVERYONE PLEASE get a copy of your Medical Records from every place you've been to. keep a hard copy, in your home because I have horror stories from working in Medical Records since 2007 ... Reply 4.4k
    via r/AskReddit

    "When one of my doctors retired, I requested my records so I could take them to my new provider. According to said records, I've had a child, breast biopsy, tonsillectomy, thyroidectomy, AND I'm 390 years old. I have had exactly none of these things." said u/caryb.

  • 22
    Font - Ginker78 1d · Worked at Best Buy 20 years ago. Employee discount was 5% over cost and I needed a new printer. Decided to splurge on the gold plated USB printer cable that we sold for $40. Rang up $1.78. Reply 11.9k
    via r/AskReddit
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  • 23
    Font - mgt15. 1d 1 Award I used to work as a receptionist at an upscale salon. While I was there, the salon introduced a new line of products marketed towards men (up until that point most of our products were marketed towards women, but the execs saw that we were getting more male customers). Every item in the men's product line was about half the cost of our other products. The "men's" shampoo was the exact same shampoo the salon had been selling for years, but because they put it in black pac
    via r/AskReddit

    "Which the exec was happy about, because he saw good sales for the male shampoo he introduced" said u/leonme21.

  • 24
    Font - anitabonghit705 • 2d Ice manufacturing - my shift manager dropped a 7gram bag of weed, in a bag of ice. It Went out for delivery. No one ever phoned in to complain though. Reply 10.4k
    via r/AskReddit

    "Aye, but did anyone phone in to thank you?" said u/ColsonIRL.

  • 25
    Font - sunward_Lily. 1d 1 Award This isn't a company secret, but: I worked part time at a Domino's franchise in college. The owner was, at first glance, a short-tempered, critical penny-pincher who did everything he could to save business money, right down to watching over your shoulder to make sure you didn't put too much cheese on a pizza (cheese is called "white gold" in the pizza industry, even back in 2002), but after working for him for a while, you realized why he was so specific about th
    via r/AskReddit
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  • 26
    Font - the UttermostSnark • 1d Health insurance dude. When you file a claim, it is often denied because they're counting on you not escalating it. Once you do, your case goes to a "medical management group" which ought to be called the "we don't wanna pay" group. Keep escalating and involve your doctor. Fight for the insurance you paid for. ... Reply 280
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  • 27
    Font - Haephestus. 1d I used to work in college admissions. Rich donors, athletes, and other VIPs have lower admission criteria. They still have minimums, but they're super easy to reach, even for a "selective" university. In the case of the university I worked for (BYU), children of General Church Authorities also got this. Reply 553
    via r/AskReddit
  • 28
    Rectangle - iate3pepperoncini • 1d 10 Awards I used to work for a company that rhymes with Muzzbeed and we used to have somebody post this question every few months for material for one of our clickbait articles. Reply 35k
    via r/AskReddit
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