'There are rats in the kitchen': 30 employees and servers share the industry secrets their bosses do not want them to reveal

Author image for Ben Weiss
Ben Weiss • Writer and Editor
Nov 4, 2024 4:00 PM EST

In every industry, there are things that folks outside of said industry would not necessarily want to know about. For instance, if you're eating at a restaurant and you learn that they don't clean the kitchen nearly enough, you might never want to eat there ever again. If you work at a company and you learn that the truth behind who gets promoted and who doesn't has absolutely nothing to do with merit, you might be discouraged. 

But like all secrets, the truth is bound to come out, and while it may shock some in the moment, it may be best for society as a whole in the long run. If you're the manager of that restaurant, you may want to start implementing real plans to create and maintain a safe and clean kitchen. And if you work at that company and you learn you're not likely to be taken seriously for a promotion, you may be encouraged to jump ship and find better opportunities elsewhere. 

Keep scrolling below for this collection of juicy industry secrets. For more content like this, here are some funny misspelled signs.

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    via Unsplash+ (Getty Images)

    This image is for illustration only, and the subjects are models; the image does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

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    What's a secret in your job that people aren't supposed to know about?
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    _Externails_ 17h ago. . Working for giant companies, it's comical how many systems are raggedy messes of bare-bones functionality. All available. money gets thrown at certain projects, leaving everything else to work on complete shoe-strings.
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    DecadentLife 14h ago . • I was a server at a chain barbecue restaurant. Yummy food, & they played blues all day. The secret was what they put in the potato salad that was so good... celery seeds. When I was first hired & doing training, they told us we would lose our jobs if we told anyone. It's been > 25 yrs, I think I'm safe to blow the secret.
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    Ghosts1ght 16h ago Restarting your computer will fix so many problems. you call your IT dept for when you don't restart the thing for 8 months...
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    . . i.. 15h ago Edited 2h ago · I'm your IT guy. I just google everything. I'm just good at googling.
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    flacotron 17h ago . there are rats in the kitchen
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    Neither_Bug 16h ago Olive Garden Server: You can get 3 free wine samples every time you go.
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    BackInTheReal... . 17h ago The IRS doesn't have the budget to enforce tax law, and will drop any issues they feel would cost more than they will collect. There has been more than one instance where a client comes to us after years of arguing with the IRS and we will literally just reprint their prior letters on our letterhead to have the IRS drop the whole matter.
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    JasmineRider27 17h ago When I was temping for a large company, I was told if anyone called to say any of their property / vehicles had been damaged they couldn't make an insurance claim because they weren't covered, when in fact they were but the company didn't want their premiums to increase and caused problems with their budgets.
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    villettegirl 14h ago . It's insanely easy to be a "bestselling" novelist, and just because you are doesn't mean you make any money. I'm a true-blue USA Today Bestselling Author and I've made $5ish in 2024.
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    bubbz41 17h ago. That fancy touchscreen thermostat we installed in your office is just a screen you are changing the number on. The logic controller we installed in your heating/ac unit uses a different sensor and is predetermined what temperatures it is set at.
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    Marieberbi 14h ago • • Sometimes students are given a better grade than they should because we are too tired to really give a sh anymore. Sometimes they are given a worse grade because of this, but those teachers
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    CubanBird 13h ago . ALWAYS WASH OFF THE CAN BEFORE DRINKING
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    • . [ 16h ago Edited 14h ago · Not my job... but... soda machines and icecream machines at fast food places are rarely properly cleaned.
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    zenos_dog 17h ago • . It's not really a secret but there's a lot of bad programmers out there. You get frustrated with their code everyday.
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    . Isarge442 17h ago I answer the phone a lot and if someone asks for me I say I'm unavailable and send them to voicemail
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    Key_Neighbor... 15h ago. If you ask internet customer service reps politely to credit you for every day of outage in your area on that billing cycle you can easily get 70% discount on your bill. Most outages happen overnight and nobody notices but most providers keep record of them
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    FondleGanoos... . 16h ago We don't f with your food but we certainly talk sh about you.
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    becooltheywat... • 16h ago Any part I can get, you can get too. The only difference is I mark it up by 30%.and then charge you labor and taxes
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    AmberRose OF... 16h ago. . Most meetings could honestly just be an email, but we have them anyway to look productive.
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    Rainbow-Rat95 . • 16h ago • We are infested with bugs and rats. The garbage room has a colony of rats you'll see occasionally when emptying food bins. The staff are excellent at cleaning up after the rats. There are roaches and flies in every department all year round. To their credit, it was only this year that german cockroachs came, before it was just the tiny roaches.
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    . PapaHop69 • 17h ago The bosses make 3 times as much as actual producers, they drink and spend their time watching YouTube and bidding on auction sites at work.
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    TeaJazzer 13h ago You can call multiple entirely separate company customer service departments and talk to the exact same agent at the exact same desk who has been trained in all of them.
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    puddyspud 12h ago . • Night shift gets more sh done because we're able to wear headphones while daytime isn't. We focus on our work while listening to podcasts while AM will spend hours worth in bathroom breaks
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    Kitten LaserFists • 17h ago I spend a lot of time on Reddit
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    No_Relationsh... • 16h ago . Become a pro at pretending to be busy when you're actually done with the work alr
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    TheUglySpud02 • 16h ago I work for a magician so just about everything is supposed to be a secret.
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    willthesane • 12h ago Tour guide here, most of what I know is from reading wikipedia
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    Ariyverd 10h ago • . When I tell you to turn the router off and on again, it's not because I have no idea what is going on and hope the issue will sort itself out. There are all kinds of logs where I can see what the problem is. When you restart the router, these logs
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    get updated. Also, when you lie and tell me you restared the router already a bunch of times and it didn't resolve the issue, I can tell that you didn't the logs are right - there, and the last time it was restarted was 3 months
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    ago. I can't tell you that I know you are lying, but it definitely goes in the documentation so everyone knows that everything you say needs to be double checked.
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workplace-stories secret employee work stories toxic-workplace job server work Horrible Bosses reddit thread Reddit company toxic-work-environment
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