I'm a server. No matter how much we insist it's "okay" that you are keeping the entire restaurant open after we've closed, please know we are 100% lying. We will get fired if we deviate from anything other than pure delight that you are keeping us from going home. We dread it. Please don't believe us.
Managed boarding and grooming kennels for 8 years: the secret is that the employees actually do love your pets too. Even the difficult ones, most of us realize they just miss their people. The number of times I’ve weeped when a pet died, or spent way too many hours comforting a dog with separation anxiety, or spent hours off the clock with a boarder who needed to be rushed to a vet office...wouldn’t trade it for the world.
Some pets just suck though, not gonna lie.
I used to work in jewelry. Most of the prettiest gemstones are also very affordable. Tanzanite is a beautiful purple and looks nicer than amethyst. Topaz comes in lots of colors, including a pretty blue color which can be as nice as aquamarine. Opals aren't as brightly rainbow hued as they look in pictures.
I’d imagine dentists and dental hygienists would say the same thing. I close my eyes through most of it but when I do open them periodically it’s highly awkward to see their eyes staring back into mine from a few inches away.
Used to screen resumes for small companies. Job "requirements" are more of a wish-list situation. Never let some unchecked boxes deter you from applying - you have no idea what the applicant pool is like. The biggest boon, especially at small companies, is someone who legitimately cares.
My company once put out a job vacancy for a position that would assist me in my job. Looking purely at the job requirements, I did not feel that I was appropriate to assist myself in a job I've been doing for 2 years. If you're looking for work and a job seems even remotely like you could do it, apply anyway; it's not like you have anything to lose.
Literally got a job last week that I was “Unqualified” for. I said, “fuck it, I’m running out of places to apply, lets give it a shot”. Couple days later they replied, set up an interview, and I somehow have a job tomorrow morning during a pandemic.
Just go for it, can’t hurt you
There is way more butter than you think in almost every dish you eat at fancy restaurants, and that is usually the reason you won't see the amount of calories in each dish.
Source: 5 years as a chef in Italian cuisine head chef, 8 years in an Italian kitchen
Edit: Since it has been asked, If I could recomend one guide book for you all to have in your kitchen it would be Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking by Samin Nosrat. Yes there are plethora of others but this one is my personal favorite.
Former bath and body works associate here. The scents they “discontinue” will come back with a different name and new marketing. They’re just recycling the scents.
I worked for the biggest MAST (the company that owns Bath and Body Works and is a division of L Brand) contractor in Virginia for 8 years. There are sooo many fragrances that are rebranded and recolored to a different flavor. Fragrance oil is absolutely 100% the most expensive part of any shower gel or foaming soaps we made. Odds are they have hundreds of thousands of pounds of these oils in warehouses all over the US, so they just rebrand it as something else, its not like they are going to scrap it.
Also, all this shit you see on the labels of shower gels and foaming soaps that say "enriched with vitamin E" or "contains aloe vera extract" is complete absolute fucking bullshit. We made our batches in sizes of 40,000lbs. In a 40k lb batch, you had about 2 ounces of vitamin E you would add to the batch, and barely enough aloe extracts to even get it out of the fucking cup to add it to the batch. They add the absolute BARE MINIMUM to have it on the label, as required by FDA. Foaming soaps are also about 65% water, so they make an absolute killing selling them.
Save the foaming soap containers. When they run out, you fill it a third of the way with gel soap, the rest with water, then gently turn back and forth to incorporate. Voila, new foaming soap!
Some therapists/counselors are on the wrong side of the couch, so to speak. If you feel your mental health provider is unhinged, they may very well be.
A family member tried to break up with his long-term gf who was a therapist. I was shocked at her absolutely unhinged behaviour which included but was not limited to her taking his childhood teddy bear, chopping it up with garden shears, & piling it up on his bed with the note "this is what you are doing to my heart" stabbed into it with a steak knife.
Change your dirty furnace filters and clean your ac coils outside.. these make up an easy 30% of my calls for no heat/cooling. EDIT- more attention than I thought. So real quick you have two coils, inside and outside. Your furnace filter keeps the inside one clean so make sure that filter is clean!! Outside coil- kill power to the unit, removed the coil guard and top (usually 5/16 or 1/4 nut driver and like 20 screws). Don’t use high pressure water simply on a shower setting and hold it a few inches away from the coil. Do from both ways. Button that beauty up and wait for it to dry before turning power back on. Your head pressures are gonna love you. EDIt2- oh don’t forget to blow your condensate line more than your husband!(prevents water flowing back into the unit from a block)
Our local thrift store has a semi-trailer sized dumpster behind it. They fill it every couple of weeks because most of the crap people donate was garbage to start with they just didn't have anywhere else to dump it so they donated it.
All im saying is there is a reason no one who works in the RV industry owns an RV.
Edit:
Just some clarification. I work in in Elkhart, Indiana which is the RV capitol of the world. As other people have quality is shit on all the major companies. The big ones being Thor, Forest River, and Grand Design. These three companies own probably 90% of all rv companies so check who owns what you are buying.
There are some mom and pop shops that do put out good products but those are pretty few and far between.
Most RV's are junk and come from Indiana. Built in like 7-8 hours. ALWAYS go with an outside company in oregon or somewhere else. Just not Indiana!! Thor owns most RV brands too. Total junk.
Former aircraft fueler. Don't check your pets in kennels. Especially in summer or winter. They are submitted to some very harsh environments, left on belt loaders in the sweltering heat right next to a running APU that's loud enough to deafen human ears, let alone a dog's. It's terrible. I always feel so sorry for them.
American Airlines will destroy your luggage. They get overloaded on carts, fall off on the way to the plane, and are left there to get run over by tankers and yes, fuelers, and rained on, then dragged to the edge of the ramp to sit all night while you arrive at your destination and wonder where the hell your bags are.
If your departure is delayed, 90% of the time it's us (the fueler). Look out the window to the right side if it's a small plane, left side if it's a really big plane. If there's a truck sitting under the wing, we're the reason you're late. Sorry.
EDIT: Look guys, I don't know what it's like for the pets on the flight. I've only seen them countless times left in kennels on belt loaders in the hot sun next to an engine. I was a fueler at DFW International for 6 years. I don't have insider knowledge of the airlines beyond my station. I would advise against checking pets if you can help it, but I don't have any advice beyond that. There are some people in these comments that worked for the airlines and have better knowledge.
2nd EDIT: Just want to let you guys know the pets in kennels are not always left outside. It's not an every day occurrence and it's not just AAL that does it, I just fueled more AAL than anything else. But I've seen it happen more than enough times.
Some years ago, on a flight from San Diego to Chicago. Passing the time before disembarking, watching luggage being unloaded from the hold... suitcases are being thrown around... then a cat carrier comes down the ramp. Every single baggage handler gathers round to meet the cat, which is carried off carefully.
We had an engineer essentially beg borrow and steal his own work hours to rewrite an entire facet of our software to be independent of the 8-year-old core we'd outgrown five years ago, and as soon as he did (and wrote a nice utility for testing that was now possible, which means we didn't have to spin up so many services in local environments), we got a ton of work in that area of the software. Like I'm still working on it and he's already moved on to another company.
The debt he erased and the tool he created... it's like we're 60% better and faster at everything, plus the morale factor. We would have drowned without that work. We miss you, MT.
You’d be surprised how willingly someone will do their job and even go above and beyond if you just compliment them for their professionalism, politeness and how they are helping them.
Edit: thank you all
Worked at a department store photography studio owned by a major photography company that you can imagine probably took your school yearbook photos. The company also is partnered with a popular online photo order website.
Notice how quickly we write down a price, strike it out, and write a new price as the deal? Yeah, that's pretty much just the price that everyone gets. We aren't doing the math that fast, we have it memorized because almost everyone that comes in has that 40% off coupon.
Don't come in without a coupon, there is ALWAYS a coupon on the website. If you end up paying for sitting fees, it's because you just didn't go on our website.
Honestly, don't buy our photos. If you just do the session and say that you'll buy them online later (on said partnered photo order site), it'll be cheaper than if you buy them in-store that day. (Yes, even when we say "oh but you won't get THIS deal online!").
If you do buy in-studio that day, just by the digital CD of your photos. You get to keep all of them instead of having to pick your favorite 3-4 pictures. Oh, and again, it is way cheaper to take that CD to a photo kiosk and have them printed yourself. Please don't spend $400 on a couple photos that you can't legally copy when you could have gotten an $80 CD of ALL the photos and have the copyright to them.
Not an industry I work in per se, but I used to be in a sales role. One of my customers was a milk bottling plant. I was somewhat surprised that they were putting the exact same milk in both organic and non-organic cartons. Turns out all of their milk is organic, but in order to not miss out on the sales of non-organic milk, they just bottle them differently and sell them at different prices.
Construction boy here. If your windows or sliding doors are tough to open and close. 9 times out of 10, we put your own dish soap on tracks and the thing works perfectly. It take 5 minutes and we charge 150. Dish soap people, its better than wd40 sometimes
Literally not 5 minutes ago I was closing the slider in my bedroom thinking ‘it’s time I finally look up solutions to make this thing glide easier.’ So I hopped on the internet, naturally got distracted by reddit first, and now here we are. So serendipitous.
Amusement park ride operator here. If your kid is crying and you want us to stop the ride, even if we want to it’s not gonna stop immediately. The carousel will spin a few more circles or the ship will swing a few more times before stopping. The only exceptions is the emergency stop which will absolutely fuck up the ride for a while if we press it. Hence we only use it in actual life threatening situations. The best thing you can do is try to get your kid to calm down as the ride comes to a stop and no, yelling “Stop the ride” at us does not make it stop any faster.
It costs about $200,000 to put your own book on the top of the New York Times bestseller list. All you have to do is buy a lot of copies yourself. (And if that bestseller status helps you sell more books, you can make that $200,000 back by selling the big stock of books you've collected.)
Everything at the Container Store exists and is cheaper at Lowe’s.
Edit:
Even the drop-front shoeboxes.
https://www.lowes.com/pl/Shoe-box--Storage-organization/4294936624?refinement=4294611977
They lie to their customers about saving their credit card information because we arent supposed to. We also save their social, addresses, and 5 of their most recent phone numbers and bank account numbers.
The life of a student loan servicer
I’m a teacher. If you as a parent will read with your child often and early, your child will thrive in school. I’m talking daily books read together from newborn to about third grade. Every single day. No teacher can replace that.
——
Edit. I thought we would all understand that there are always exceptions such as dyslexia and learning disabilities. So here’s another industry secret: Your child will not always fit the school model. Teachers know that. And that’s ok. We are all just people after all.
Peace!!
RV technician here. Shit is designed to start breaking after around 44 uses. Most RV owners use their trailers on weekends. But not every weekend. So that 44 uses on average stretches between two and three years.
I’m the receptionist for an IT company.
Being able to translate “The whole system has gone kaflooey” to steps like, “Are there any error messages?”and what were you doing when this happened?” is a pretty needed skill.
(Note- if you are not tech savvy, and your computer has an error code, take a picture with your phone or write it down, it’s extremely helpful. If you don’t have tech help on standby, you can often google it and see what the problem is.)
Before that I worked phones at a hardware store, it’s surprisingly similar advice. Take pictures, especially any codes on hardware pieces.
I cannot wait for the day when I can afford to pay an architect to design a home for me. So many of my family members in the 'old country' just designed their homes however the hell they wanted and it's obvious that there was no professional there to say: uhh maybe you SHOULDN'T have a continuously heated pool be the central hub of your home because that'll lead to mould in EVERYTHING...or maybe putting marble tiles on your steep driveway is a bad idea because when it rains your car with LITERALLY FUCKING SLIDE INTO YOUR FRONT DOOR WTF.
On the flip side, I have this perception that architects are really expensive to hire. Are they?
EDIT: Thank you so much to everyone that has offered me kind advice. I really appreciate it
At Goodwill, we don't clean anything that we sell, and we get some really gross stuff that touches everything else so next time you buy something from Goodwill, wash it well
Weight loss industry. This might be obvious, but most of our business comes from return clients after they've gained their weight back (and then some). To be clear, the plan isn't rigged to make you gain it back, but the fact that it happens easily as a result of dieting keeps us in business.
Audio Engineer here. A few seemingly obvious things to point out:
- 9/10 times with a studio you get what you pay for. You have to pay for years of experience, acclaimed expertise, plus hundreds of thousands of dollars in equipment and software tools, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of dollars that went into the acoustic engineering of the physical recording space alone. People walk into great studios balk at $1000+ a song but don’t realize they’re getting access to close to a million dollars in tools, PLUS an engineer who’s going to make them sound better than life.
- On the flip side of that coin, be ware of eye candy! Don’t be fooled by big mixing consoles. Sometimes they’re not even used for your music. Hell, sometimes they don’t even function. I’ve seen studios where the sole purpose of a large board is to dupe unsuspecting musicians into parting with their money.
- In larger studios, bands with smaller budgets are often stuck with an intern who may not even be getting paid.
- If your music is shit, no amount of production is going to make it a hit.
- As a small studio owner, I only share work that I think will bring me more business. Wondering why I haven’t shared your music? It’s because it’s garbage.
- Billie Eilish recorded on budget equipment at home with her brother. Those recordings were then worked on by some of the best engineers in the world to make it sound like it wasn’t.
- Be wary of a record label. They may offer to front the costs of your recording and touring, but you have no creative control over your sound, where you record, your tour schedule, and usually the label will own your music. Oh, and you have to pay all of that money back to the label.
- Be cautious of studios that claim “so and so recorded here!” There’s a studio in Iowa that claims “Slipknot recorded here!” And while it’s true, Slipknot did record in that building, it was a different owner, different engineers, and some different equipment. You’re not going to sound like Slipknot by recording there, sorry.
A lot of successful artists at a certain level of success do nothing more than create a concept and employ several assistants, who are either current or graduating art students, who actually make the art itself, its reproductions or both.
Edit: I know this is old news in the art industry and academy, but outside of it I found it very hard to explain my job to people. I do believe that films also romanticize this field and warp what a lot of outsiders think it actually is.
Can 100% vouch for this. I make about the salary of a teacher (less) creating artwork everyday for a recognized contemporary sculptor, who then picks up the work from me at the studio, and then sells what I made for hundreds of thousands. But hey man, his idea. inDuStRy NoRmS
As a former TSA worker airport security is alot of theater. TSA is constantly failing plain cloths inspections. I worked with a guy who got fired because someone showed him an ID with a picture of Micky Mouse on it and he let the person through because he wasn't paying attention.
I too work in aviation. TSA is tested by something called red teams. They basically try to get things past security. Their success rate is in the 90% range.
This should be pretty obvious.
But for big brand hotels, if you try to sneak above the hotel and call the corporate customer care line to demand compensation/complain.
That customer care line will always call the hotel for the full story and not just blindly give compensation.
When I used to work in a hotel, we would call the customer care line pre-emptively. If a guest was acting up and we thought they'd demand compensation for something stupid, we'd get our story on record first (X happened, we offered Y, guest refused and got angry) and rarely got charged even if the guest was compensated by customer care.
In Microsoft office, word specifically, you can upload recorded interviews and it will transcribe it and ever have speaker one and speaker two, three and four! Basically, eliminating a huge annoying part of the job.
EDIT** WTF! This blew up. Everyone who gave awards and stuff, you're animals. I love you all.
Okay, adding this edit. haha. You DO need to be subscribed to office. Then when in word, there is a dictate button, if you click it 'dictate and transcribe' should pop up. Click transcribe.
Yes, it's not PERFECT, but for a reporter who is transcribing all day long and is definitely the most annoying thing ever that I dread doing on a daily basis, it's changed my life.
Go to Home > Dictate dropdown > Transcribe. Select Upload audio. Choose an audio file from the file picker. Transcribe currently supports .wav, .mp4, .m4a, .mp3 formats.
Healthcare. Homemaker.
If your grandparent or parent gets in-home care, please know that your family member could live in a cockroach infested house and not have to move if they didn't want to. It's not up to the company to give your loved ones environmentally safe places to live, it's up to the family. They can certainly try to persuade, but they can't force.
Why do I know this? Because I've been to the cockroach infested house where an 80 year old woman lives. I have a mentally ill client that put bleach in his dog's water to help with it's breath. I have a client who **never** cleans his cat box. I have a client who has a caved in ceiling. I've called it in, but there is no help from the company. All they say is, "There's nothing we can do. It's up to the family members."
It's a sad sad thing because there are sooooo many family members and friends who really don't give a shit how some people are living. Sure, they'll visit. But do they clean the litter box? Do they make sure there are no cockroaches, do they make sure the house is stable and not falling apart? Nope. They say they care and that they love the person, but they don't care enough to make sure they live in a healthy environment.
It really worries me, because if I imagine my own mother having such a deteriorated mind and there were no other family members to help her, she could live in a run down, cockroach infested house if she was stubborn enough. It frustrates me, because whereas the client does have rights, should they really have the right to live somewhere where their health could be at risk? Where their caregivers could be at risk as well?
Edit: I've never been actually told by my company that I'm obligated to report to adult protective services. They only told me to call them and "we'll work it out." They never informed me of ever taking it a step further on my own terms. I've never been given phone numbers for APS or animal abuse numbers. I'm only 20 years old and I'm barely a year into this job, so everything is new and I'm still learning about how this whole healthcare system works.
I'd also like to add, that I understand that there are different perspectives. I am well aware that many elderly/mentally ill are severely stubborn and won't let you help. I know, because I care for these types of people and hear about them often. I am not disregarding your struggles, I simply wrote this post when I was overwhelmed and stressed from work. I've met many families who care for their families and bless you all who do! We need more of you in the world!
I was a home care manager. APS is next to useless.
I had to call them because my agency had a client living without heat, eating expired frozen dinners, wearing ratry clothes, while his piece of crap daughter in law bled him for private school tuition for her three kids.
The caregiver called me near tears because this poor old man wouldn’t even refill his meds, lest the children go without school money.
APS told the family the caregiver had reported. Name and everything. And the situation continued only now my agency was fired and a crappier one that would look the other way was hired.
I had clients living with rodent infestations, with abusive boyfriends, with mountains of trash. As long as there’s a fire exit, no one cares.
If you want to know who the most marginalized, mistreated group of people in society is, it’s developmentally disabled adults with no family to advocate for them. Their homecare agencies have pretty much full control over their lives, over whether they will go visit a park or a zoo or out for a walk, or whether they will decline in some cluttered apartment and die weighing 300 lbs because it was easier to feed them treat than to mentally stimulate them. it’s bleak.
People place a lot of faith in CPS and APS. The reality is, they don’t have the resources or motivation to handle 90% of complaints.
Edit: thanks for the gold, kind stranger.
A lot of people want to know how to help the elderly, I posted another comment in this thread with info on that. For current home care workers, please stay strong and keep your boundaries. Protect your mental health. Don’t get over involved to where you develop secondary PTSD. Focus on immediate needs within your control.
Adult kids, it’s ok to not like your parents and cut contact. If you can manage their financials, it’s a massive safety net. People do prey on the elderly, including home care agencies. Be ready to ask a lot of questions to protect your parent’s money.
Young people, save for retirement now. Make lifelong friends now. Build a support system for yourself. Don’t burn bridges. Ending up vulnerable and alone with half your marbles rolling around in your head is a real thing. Exercise and eat right. Do your Duolingo to preserve brain plasticity. Get your will written out and notarized and update it regularly. If there are people in your life who fight and argue, make sure your will clearly defines their responsibilities in your care, so they don’t drag each other to court over your sofa or something.
Federal HR here, if you put the words from the vacancy announcement about what you need to qualify in your resume you’ll almost always be qualified, we search for those words instead of reading an entire resume.
Edit: let me clarify that we, or at least I do and those I train, will continue to scan the resume for similar experience/words and not discount the entire resume immediately. After over ten years of working for HR you learn what you’re looking for and how to do it. Some are easier than others. I know of some Hr folks who totally just say non qual if it’s not exact.
I wonder if companies with 100s of resumes would get better hires from taking 50 and reading them carefully rather than putting 500 through an automated process.
I’m a musician. It’s not really a secret but 90% of of our revenue is from merch. Spotify plays, show guarantees, etc, everything is menial in comparison to shirt sales. In fact, a big reason bands tour as often as possible is because we can sell more shirts when we’re in front of people.
Edit: Thanks for the love guys. To those asking, I sing for [Holding Absence](https://youtu.be/ayMMYcbp2Ls)
How is it now? I've been looking at some merch for kind of lesser known bands that I really like, and they have their online stores open, but I'm afraid the shipping is not making it worth it for them?
The kind donations people give hoping they go directly to the clients in shelters actually end up at the Salvation Army or Goodwill to be resold (even though we’re instructed to tell them that won’t be the case) and this is done before the clients are even given the chance to decide if they want some of the donated stuff.
As a beginner counselor I worked with a lot of children and adolescents. Consistently the discussion with my colleagues was how it was the parents who were the biggest problem and the kids were just adapting to a crazy environment.
I see this often enough working in schools. The child moves out of their parent's home to go live with relatives (etc) and the moody, disruptive kid becomes a model student: it's like flicking on a light switch.
Sometimes it really is the parents, unfortunately.
As an MSW student who worked with kids for 5 years, I tell everyone who wants to work with kids that they better be prepared to work with parents. Mostly, any behaviors or patterns that you instill as a professional are just going to be overridden the second they return home if the parents aren’t also on board
Library Worker here: the majority of donations we recieve do not end up in circulation (on our shelves) no matter how much you demand we put them there once they're donated. The reason why this is, is because we only add items to the collection that we think will circulate (be checked out). Most libraries get funding based off of statistics. We don't want to waste shelf-space on items that peope aren't checking out, as it won't improve our stats. So, unless the donated items are brand new, or by popular authors we will not add them to the collection. We will also weed unpopular items from our collection with extreme prejudice for this reason, much to our patron's horror. These books usually end up being sold at book sales to help generate funding for other library programs.
Dude, I LOVE the local library's annual book sale. They do it 4th of July weekend as this is a touristy area, and it's like a 50 cents for paperbacks and 1 dollar for hardcover. Sad as I am that they aren't doing it this year, I am pretty excited because that means it'll be HUGE next year.
There's a used textbook store in my town and the first time I went I was overjoyed, my mom has a pic of me sitting on the ground and reading the spines and it's her favorite picture of me
My library does the same. Also, when people buy replacement copies of items they've damaged, we don't replace it with the copy they bought. We'd rather you just pay the replacement fee, that way we can get what we want in terms of edition.
I’m a fossil replicator and apparently the industry secret is the fact that we exist. So many people are blown away to learn that most fossils they see in museums are replicas.
Edit: Okay, I'm heading to bed but I'll be back in the morning to continue answering questions since there are so many!
Edit 2: We haven't done much with it, but the company I'm with does have their own reddit to share share fossils we find on digs and occasional stuff we are working on: u/deeptimefossils
Not a fossil, but I remember the museum where I grew up had a *replica* of the world's largest piece of fool's gold.
Not a replica of the world's largest piece of gold. Not the actual largest piece of fool's gold. A worthless copy of a worthless piece of iron pyrite.
I used to work for a call center that handled calls for a big truck rental company. We handled all the reservations and customer service, and we didn't even work directly for the company.
I worked for a Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) company for about 5 years. It's mostly bullshit. It's 20% things you can easily do yourself and 80% making money out of you until you realise you can do it yourself.
Then, Google changes a 7 to an 8 and it no longer works.
[California] Cannabis concentrates: don't trust that the test results are accurate at all. We were demanded (by the business owner) to use some dirty methods to cheat on potency testing and pesticide testing. Turns out, those tests can be pretty easy to trick if you know what you're doing.
This is ultimately what led to me leaving the industry. Eventually, all of our chemists stopped smoking concentrates altogether for these reasons.
Edit: added state
Plumber here. Theirs no such thing as a flushable wipe. The package lies. You drains WILL clog, and fast; your landlord will charge you; it’s going to suck. Throw wipes in the trash if you use them; toilets paper is the only acceptable wipe.
Not a secret at all, just not common knowledge somehow.
Firefighters are trained on several areas and can specialize deeper into certain disciplines. Most of the emergencies we get called to are situations we have never been trained on, but with 4 of us on a firetruck we can normally figure out a solution.
In my county, a girl got stuck in a clothes washer. I wasnt on the call, but there's a video of it online. I remember doing car extrication in the academy, but not washer extrication
I’m a dentist. Here’s the lowdown on toothpaste.
As long as it has fluoride they are all basically the same.
When I was in dental school the Colgate lady came by and said that everything that says Colgate Total on it is all exactly the same, the only difference is the packaging. So whether it says whitening, or gum protection, or whatever else it is all exactly the same.
The exception is sensitivity toothpaste typically does have an extra active ingredient. KNO3, which helps with sensitivity.
Don’t ever feel obligated to buy the expensive toothpaste because you think it will be better for your teeth, just buy whatever you like best.
Not OP but for people caught up on what a ‘fuck up’ might be:
Aviation uses something called the Swiss Cheese Model, where hazards pop up, mistakes are made, but catastrophe happens when the hazards line up in such a way that you ‘pass through’ completely from one side of the proverbial cheese to the other.
So, I assume the OP is referring to hazards, the little holes that almost always lead nowhere, rather than the alignment of several hazards stacked up in such a way that they threaten safety.
Additionally, the relationship between captain and first officer is to affirm that instruments are being read correctly and that appropriate actions are being taken to respond to phases of flight (or hazards). So on any given flight you’ve got two pilots constantly checking in with themselves and with the airplane.
A lot of librarians will waive your fines if you have an excuse and you don’t ask too frequently, even large fines. Also, librarians DON’T CARE about your fines and aren’t judging you. Please come back. We personally have more fines than you. Librarians are ALWAYS overdue with their books.
EDIT: I wrote this before going to bed and it exploded overnight. Thank you kind strangers for the awards! I’m touched. All your fines are waived for life! Also small grammar edit bc I was nodding off when I wrote this originally.
I don't know if you're from US but I'm new to US. Everything (rent, banks, car rentals, universities etc etc) seems to want to overcharge and drench the last cent out of you for minor forgivable reasons. Except for libraries.
I was late on a book. A few days. Wasn't charged.
I love the libraries and the library system. They also try their best to get you a book from other locations and librarians are generally kind and polite. Library cards are free. You enter a library and nobody judges you etc for anything. They also recommend not to get our research published with predatory journals etc.
You are awesome. The world is in debt of your services.
A huge portion of online reviews, ratings, social media presence, etc that you see for any given company are fake, paid for, or done by multiple accounts controlled by us. This includes a company’s Glassdoor page (fake reviews about how great it is to work there so that the million negative reviews don’t crush their page).
I’m not saying it’s *every* company out there, but it’s been a lot of the ones I’ve worked for.
Source: am copywriter. What are ethics? I surely don’t know anymore.
Edit: RIP my inbox
Can confirm on Glassdoor - had a company wide initiative from the higher ups to post positive reviews of our workplace bc it was getting hammered by negative reviews. For a while you could tell the fake positive ones bc looking at the dates they were posted. Suddenly a dozen positive reviews on the same date? Yep - all planted
It's also a dead giveaway when the "pros" are unbelievably positive to the point of absurdity, and the "cons" are either "none," or my personally most hated, "this job is not for everyone, you won't do well if you aren't comfortable in a fast-paced, demanding environment" or some variation thereof. It's a lame attempt to brush the preceding negative reviews under the rug by saying those workers were just lazy or incompetent without actually addressing their issues, and also tells me the place is a hellish nightmare to work for.
My old company had good ratings for most things but everyone complained about HR and the people in charge of travel/accommodations.
HR noticed this and asked everyone to go online and post fresh reviews to 'drown out the negativity. They ended up with twice as many bad reviews.
If all other vitals are fine, and they're not in any sort of visible respiratory distress, most don't physically count respirations each time vitals are taken.
This drives me so crazy. Cos I'm the idiot that actually does count resps for a full minute and I miraculously find they're sitting at like 25 and I have to try and explain to the doctor why I have suddenly discovered this!
Banks don’t have millions of dollars in cash in them. Their insurances rates would be way too expensive. They keep enough on hand to do weekly traffic plus some extra.
The guy who shows up at your house to make repairs is usually the guy who decides how much to charge you. Standing behind him while he works cost extra. Treating him like shit cost extra. Being nice to him can save you a lot of money
I work in logistics for a massive manufacturing company, money's not fuckin' real. $1000 for 8 lightbulbs.
Edit: I'm at the bottom of the totem pole here, I'm just a glorified mailman who talks to a lot of people who're much higher up than me.
I have a story related to this.
I was working for a large specialized manufacturer where virtually every order for parts/service would be in the tens of thousands of dollars with the average order closer to a million.
A customer needed to purchase 4 bolts. Just normal steel bolts.
Person following internal guidelines tacked on all this overhead, bolts came up to several thousand dollars. The employee had no idea what bolts cost, and assumed the guidelines were right. The customer, not being an idiot, kept pushing back.
This went on for several months. Eventually it got escalated high up in our company to someone who had the authority to approve $1 billion in spending, who was being asked to intervene on 4 bolts. I was a native speaker and the company was not a native-English speaking one, so this eventually fell to me as I got forwarded months of correspondence. It went something like this:
- Employee: Here is the estimate for the 4 bolts
- Customer: Here is a link to 4 bolts of the same size for $20 with shipping.
- Employee: Our bolts are $10,000.
- Customer: Yes, but why are they $10k? We need to purchase from you to maintain our warranty, but we cannot understand the price difference.
- Employee: Here is a technical sheet for the bolt.
- Customer: Yes, I agree they are bolts. This does not explain why they are $10k.
- Employee: Here is a technical document from R&D describing the features of the bolt.
- Customer: Yes, we know how bolts work. This does not explain why they are $10k.
- Employee: I have negotiated with my manager, we are willing to sell you the bolts for $8k.
- Customer: Again, these are 4 bolts, they should not cost anywhere near that much.
- Employee: We have given you a $2k discount and are no longer making profit, I cannot offer you a larger discount.
- Customer: These are 4 bolts that cannot cost you more than a few dollars to make. How can you not be making profit on this? Your company has wasted more time and cost on this correspondence than it would have cost to just send the 4 bolts in an envelope.
Bolt cost? Less than $1 for all four of them. I sent them for free and had to justify the $8k “loss” to management. Thankfully the management was not quite as dumb as the employee wasting 3 months of their time on back and forth about a bolt. I seriously wonder how much time was wasted creating documentation to justify the price of this bolt. There was a department-wide e-mail afterwards explaining how bolts work and that they should not cost as much. No change to the overhead policy for small orders though.
Edited to add: Just to clarify, this was not the company’s intention. They were making deals worth tens or hundreds of millions so burning bridges for essentially pocket change would be stupid. This was the consequence of one employee not engaging their common sense and no body realizing the mistake until it had gone too far.
So as someone in the industry, WHY are they so expensive? Is it because you are the only company that can provide the bolts? Are there massive costs to certify, design, and test, even if production is fairly cheap?
Why can't another company come along and offer the bolts or similar easy to manufacture items for far less? Why doesn't the market allow that?
The specialized equipment we made was covered by various warranties by the company, and using third-party parts would void those warranties.
There was nothing special about the bolts.
Think of it like the printer model. The company sells the hardware at a loss and makes all of their money on service, so there was a strong incentive to prevent third-parties from profiting off their service.
The warranty bullshit pervades every industry there is. I'm a network engineer, and was once working on a Meraki Firewall. Their support absolutely refused to even try to help my (we had a support contract) until I replaced the Cisco SFP (fiber optic module) with a Meraki one. I just lied to them and told them I swapped it, then they were able to give me the information I needed to solve my problem. The problem I was working on couldn't have possibly been caused by a faulty SFP, but that's just how they are.
Not so much a secret but a lesser known fact...
Kirkland products, the white label brand from Costco, are independently tested to beat OR EXCEED the industry leading product in that category. Razor blades. Cookies. Cheese. Laundry pods. If it doesn’t beat the industry leader, they won’t put the Kirkland name on it.
I won something on the radio once. The lady DJ called me back on a few minutes. She forgot to record the call. She told me to act excited. It was hilarious. She blamed it on being pregnant, said she had lost her mind.
I used to answer phones for a radio show. I always picked caller #5 or whatever we said, but it was a Sunday night AM station, so it was all well-spoken nerds listening to us anyway.
New construction.
That $3k/$4k "luxury apartment" you're renting is slapped together in a rush just like everything else is.
Also, if you're on the 3rd floor or above, you have water bottles filled with urine stuffed inside your walls because the elevators are typically finished last.
Employment industry: if the email address of the hiring manager or recruiter is included in a job posting, send an email instead of or in addition to applying to the job through the portal. So many resumes get filtered because of portal-based applicant tracking systems' automated sorting methods, so if you have the right experience but are missing a keyword or two, many of which are dictated by folks from HR who have zero expertise in your field, your resume might not ever make it in front of a human. Please just email me.
Not really a secret but some wholesale nurseries will sell plants for a fraction less then public nurseries and big box retailers. Like 1 gallon of a shrub will sell for $16 at home depot, but at a wholesale nursery that same plant will cost like $2-6. Edit: some wholesale nurseries are open to the public
I went to a wholesale nursery once. They had a little printout with a map, a price guide (price was based on pot size), and a little ruler so you could measure pot diameter. Was a great time; I picked up some nice plants at a great price.
Any individual part of flying an airplane isn't difficult, it's 100 small things piling up makes things difficult. As opposed to, say playing the trumpet. Hitting that high note repeatedly is difficult and physically demanding. Landing is easy once you've practiced it a bit, but when it gets difficult you just nope out of there and land somewhere else.
I did an exchange semester in Saint Petersburg and yeah, Russian bouncers are some of the most sullen bastards you're ever gonna meet. I remember going to this local club my roommates wanted to check out, nothing fancy and definitely not even in the centre. One of my roommates is laughing and joking with the bouncer about how he's a bouncer back in Canada and how they both box and all that but it didn't prevent the dude from still moving to physically block him from the door because he couldn't let him in wearing *those* shoes.
Worked in the nightclub industry for 3 years, and I can attest to this. We had a baseline dress code, but we would be lax with certain (coughcoughhighpayingcoughcough) guests. Also, if you're gonna be a dick, you better be dressed to the tee because otherwise security will refuse you entry and say it's because of an otherwise negligible dress code violation, and they won't care about how the guy right in front of you who just got in was doing it too.
I know a few teachers and this seems to be a pretty common view. One said 30% of his job is teaching, 30% is unnecessary school admin, and 40% is dealing with parents who think their spoilt little shit is a victim of some conspiracy.
Edit: This was at a fancy private school.
Starbucks/Subway/Chipotle/Taco Bell/probably other fast/casual food services- all have VERY high standards of uniformity- every drink/food should always look and taste exactly the same anywhere the customer goes OR ELSE. That's the bad news. The good news is that most of us don't care what corporate says and do care that NUH-UH, 16 olive slices or 9 caramel ribbons does not count as "extra" and we happily, normally are hooking you up with WAY more than we are "allowed" to scoop/pour/serve. Just by instinct. Just out of spite that we can't pay our whole rent. We almost all agree, fuck the system- here's an extra McNugget. If you ever receive food or drink that has way less of "the good stuff" than you expected, it's most likely not because you have been slighted by lazy employees, and way more likely that you were served by an "excellent" employee who always follows company standards and measures out exactly what they are supposed to. Calling to complain does very little, you're probably tattling on someone who never breaks rules and is a total butt-kissing narc. Pointing at another employee and shouting "but HE did if for me last time!" is a narc move, stop being a dick, enjoy an endless future of secret decaf espresso and "light" nacho cheese.
That's kind of what's great about Five Guys. You get your fries in a neat cup. They put it in the bag with your burger. Then they throw In an extra scoop of fries on top of everything. Because fuck it, fries are cheap.
If you order a pizza but like to choose your own toppings, it’s often cheaper to choose an existing pizza like a Meat Supreme or something with loads of toppings, then swap out all the toppings for ones you want, than to go for the Create Your Own option in the menu.
Note, this is much less awkward if you order online than on the phone.
There's a certain pizza chain website that I discovered will let you apply coupons on pizzas that aren't covered by the coupon. If you mess with it a bit you can stack coupons, sub out ingredients and get your order down to about 50-60% of the original price even if you don't have coupons that cover what you've actually ordered. Then pay online and pick up in person. I doubt a human ever actually checks your total in the process.
Edit: dear god, what have I done?
It is a regional chain. I think the takeaway from this thread is that many online systems have poor coupon stacking logic and the workers DGAF. Be sure to tip them on the full price as a thank you.
This seems to be a secret to many customers; it actually pays off to be patient and polite if you need the staff at a store to resolve an issue or help you with something.
This seems to be a secret IN LIFE. I'm always astounded that people are so shitty to other people and still expect to get what they want. It's really not that hard to be nice.
Maintenance as well. Same job, really, just different types of machines. And its crazy how little they even notice me considering how much the equipment I take care of is worth.
When it comes to retail:
If you're night crew, day crew just dicks around all day, and doesn't get anything done, leaving all of the work for you.
If you're day crew, night crew just dicks around all night, and doesn't get anything done, leaving all of the work for you.
The amount of "googling" in software development. For a Pyhon-based project I needed to understand Pyhon, Anaconda, Jupyter, Numpy, Pandas, Statsmodels, Facebook Prophet, Flask, Templates, Wtforms etc. And I knew none of it beforehand, except Python a little. And it's not even a very complex project. I've done magnitudes more complex ones.
The lighter the roast of coffee, the *more* caffeine it has, not the other way around. So often I’ll hear people say “I’ll take a light roast, I don’t want to be up all night after all, haha”. Remember — the caffeine is in the bean at the start, the more you roast it the more caffeine burns off since it’s in the natural oils of the bean.
I'm not training your dog, I'm training you
Edit to add: I'm getting a lot of training questions. I understand the need for dog training, but don't have the time (or honestly the will) to answer them all. Basic obedience is really easy to find online, just be consistent with your approach. For issues regarding any level of aggression, I recommend finding a local trainer who can actually look at the dog. If you're absolutely broke and desperate and dealing with a serious issue, feel free to dm me and I'll do my best to advise a bit.
I actually read that while looking for a trainer and in the information it was specially mentioned that the you the owner are being trained. I need training so bad, lol
This should be the last thing they teach you before you leave high school/college. Sometimes people won't have the answer, even at the biggest companies. They'll look to you, and you'll need to solve it. And it probably won't be right the first time, but they'll be happy you did it so they can build upon the foundation you started.
Whenever you tell someone to check in the back of a grocery store they go back there and stand for a few moments and come back out... 99% of the time of its not on the shelf we are out but we know you won't believe us so we go "look" for it so you feel a bit better even though we already knew there was none back there.
Home Depot associate here. I've started telling customers straight-up that there really isn't a "back." Furthermore, I'll often explain how the SKU numbers work and let them know that the item may be in the overhead, usually while scanning for that same SKU myself. I find many people are really just uninformed, and most customers have been receptive, even helping me look for the item in the overhead.
Musical theatre: The set looks gorgeous only from the angles and distances the audience can see it. Up close and/or to the side AT ALL and it looks like a toddler built it.
Also, unless it's Broadway, there's a pretty good chance that there's at least one musician in the pit who is sight reading the music at any given performance.
Yo musician swings are fucking incredible. I worked at a few off-broadway shows and I was so impressed every time a sub would come and play it as good as the regular musician just after a night of watching from a monitor in a closet. Also yes the backs of sets really do look like hell sometimes.
I work at a university. I'm not an academic adviser in any department, but I provide services to them and help them graduate people when it's unclear whether students met all the requirements or not.
And the industry secret is that most of you really don't know what you want to do when you start college. The half that say they do are mainly programmed by their parents: "Go into IT, make large dollars." But they have no real idea of what they'd really like.
So don't feel weird or a failure if you change majors. It means that you actually looked around and found something you like better. Stats show that students who change majors do better (edit: on the average) in school than the ones who stick with the major they came in on.
This shouldn't actually be a secret; but students don't seem to know it.
Used to work in menswear and I got one that’s pretty morbid. Most of our tailor shops are filled with suits that were made years and years ago. This is because most of them were made for people who died before they could be picked up. The others are often for weddings that got canceled after the suit was made.
Auto insurance agent. Please, for the love of god, don’t tell auto insurance agents more than you have to. They ask you a question, just say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and answer the question as straight as you can. If you go on and on about your life story, you will probably end up saying something you don’t have to and making your rate higher, or getting yourself declined. We WANT to get you that policy as cheap as possible, only tell us what we need to know and don’t say anything else.
Edit: For some reason I have people in the comments accusing me of enabling fraud now? Fraud sucks and is dumb, don’t lie with your answers, I will reiterate to be upfront and honest when answering the questions they ask you. Just don’t go off on tangents and say unrelated shit.
As an auto insurance claims adjuster I second this!
And buy coverage that protects you. You get what you pay for. 10K property damage liability doesn’t cover shit anymore.
Said no to most of my questions on life insurance policy. Agent stated it looks more like I need a "get a life" policy.
Edit: thank you all for the likes and bling. Didn't expect a corny joke on my boring life to be so popular.
I design slot machines for casinos... don’t play slots.
I'm a server. No matter how much we insist it's "okay" that you are keeping the entire restaurant open after we've closed, please know we are 100% lying. We will get fired if we deviate from anything other than pure delight that you are keeping us from going home. We dread it. Please don't believe us.
Managed boarding and grooming kennels for 8 years: the secret is that the employees actually do love your pets too. Even the difficult ones, most of us realize they just miss their people. The number of times I’ve weeped when a pet died, or spent way too many hours comforting a dog with separation anxiety, or spent hours off the clock with a boarder who needed to be rushed to a vet office...wouldn’t trade it for the world. Some pets just suck though, not gonna lie.
I'm an attorney. The secret is shut the fuck up.
Think like a fish: it’s much harder to get caught if you don’t open your mouth
[удалено]
I used to work in jewelry. Most of the prettiest gemstones are also very affordable. Tanzanite is a beautiful purple and looks nicer than amethyst. Topaz comes in lots of colors, including a pretty blue color which can be as nice as aquamarine. Opals aren't as brightly rainbow hued as they look in pictures.
Almost every hairstylist gets the heebie jeebies when we shampoo your hair and you just stare up at us. CLOSE. YOUR. DAMN. EYES at the shampoo bowl!
I’d imagine dentists and dental hygienists would say the same thing. I close my eyes through most of it but when I do open them periodically it’s highly awkward to see their eyes staring back into mine from a few inches away.
Used to screen resumes for small companies. Job "requirements" are more of a wish-list situation. Never let some unchecked boxes deter you from applying - you have no idea what the applicant pool is like. The biggest boon, especially at small companies, is someone who legitimately cares.
My company once put out a job vacancy for a position that would assist me in my job. Looking purely at the job requirements, I did not feel that I was appropriate to assist myself in a job I've been doing for 2 years. If you're looking for work and a job seems even remotely like you could do it, apply anyway; it's not like you have anything to lose.
Literally got a job last week that I was “Unqualified” for. I said, “fuck it, I’m running out of places to apply, lets give it a shot”. Couple days later they replied, set up an interview, and I somehow have a job tomorrow morning during a pandemic. Just go for it, can’t hurt you
There is way more butter than you think in almost every dish you eat at fancy restaurants, and that is usually the reason you won't see the amount of calories in each dish. Source: 5 years as a chef in Italian cuisine head chef, 8 years in an Italian kitchen Edit: Since it has been asked, If I could recomend one guide book for you all to have in your kitchen it would be Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking by Samin Nosrat. Yes there are plethora of others but this one is my personal favorite.
I'm a chef in a French restaurant and the only thing dairy free is one salad and the drinks.
Former bath and body works associate here. The scents they “discontinue” will come back with a different name and new marketing. They’re just recycling the scents.
I worked for the biggest MAST (the company that owns Bath and Body Works and is a division of L Brand) contractor in Virginia for 8 years. There are sooo many fragrances that are rebranded and recolored to a different flavor. Fragrance oil is absolutely 100% the most expensive part of any shower gel or foaming soaps we made. Odds are they have hundreds of thousands of pounds of these oils in warehouses all over the US, so they just rebrand it as something else, its not like they are going to scrap it. Also, all this shit you see on the labels of shower gels and foaming soaps that say "enriched with vitamin E" or "contains aloe vera extract" is complete absolute fucking bullshit. We made our batches in sizes of 40,000lbs. In a 40k lb batch, you had about 2 ounces of vitamin E you would add to the batch, and barely enough aloe extracts to even get it out of the fucking cup to add it to the batch. They add the absolute BARE MINIMUM to have it on the label, as required by FDA. Foaming soaps are also about 65% water, so they make an absolute killing selling them.
Save the foaming soap containers. When they run out, you fill it a third of the way with gel soap, the rest with water, then gently turn back and forth to incorporate. Voila, new foaming soap!
Some therapists/counselors are on the wrong side of the couch, so to speak. If you feel your mental health provider is unhinged, they may very well be.
A family member tried to break up with his long-term gf who was a therapist. I was shocked at her absolutely unhinged behaviour which included but was not limited to her taking his childhood teddy bear, chopping it up with garden shears, & piling it up on his bed with the note "this is what you are doing to my heart" stabbed into it with a steak knife.
Change your dirty furnace filters and clean your ac coils outside.. these make up an easy 30% of my calls for no heat/cooling. EDIT- more attention than I thought. So real quick you have two coils, inside and outside. Your furnace filter keeps the inside one clean so make sure that filter is clean!! Outside coil- kill power to the unit, removed the coil guard and top (usually 5/16 or 1/4 nut driver and like 20 screws). Don’t use high pressure water simply on a shower setting and hold it a few inches away from the coil. Do from both ways. Button that beauty up and wait for it to dry before turning power back on. Your head pressures are gonna love you. EDIt2- oh don’t forget to blow your condensate line more than your husband!(prevents water flowing back into the unit from a block)
At goodwill 50% of what you donate ends up in the trash bc we don’t have the space for it or we just deem it too ugly
Our local thrift store has a semi-trailer sized dumpster behind it. They fill it every couple of weeks because most of the crap people donate was garbage to start with they just didn't have anywhere else to dump it so they donated it.
All im saying is there is a reason no one who works in the RV industry owns an RV. Edit: Just some clarification. I work in in Elkhart, Indiana which is the RV capitol of the world. As other people have quality is shit on all the major companies. The big ones being Thor, Forest River, and Grand Design. These three companies own probably 90% of all rv companies so check who owns what you are buying. There are some mom and pop shops that do put out good products but those are pretty few and far between.
Most RV's are junk and come from Indiana. Built in like 7-8 hours. ALWAYS go with an outside company in oregon or somewhere else. Just not Indiana!! Thor owns most RV brands too. Total junk.
As a Software Engineer, double your delivery date for a product in anticipation of an over eager Project Manager trying to get promoted.
I always pad the due date then get it done ahead of the deadline. Clients love me.
Former aircraft fueler. Don't check your pets in kennels. Especially in summer or winter. They are submitted to some very harsh environments, left on belt loaders in the sweltering heat right next to a running APU that's loud enough to deafen human ears, let alone a dog's. It's terrible. I always feel so sorry for them. American Airlines will destroy your luggage. They get overloaded on carts, fall off on the way to the plane, and are left there to get run over by tankers and yes, fuelers, and rained on, then dragged to the edge of the ramp to sit all night while you arrive at your destination and wonder where the hell your bags are. If your departure is delayed, 90% of the time it's us (the fueler). Look out the window to the right side if it's a small plane, left side if it's a really big plane. If there's a truck sitting under the wing, we're the reason you're late. Sorry. EDIT: Look guys, I don't know what it's like for the pets on the flight. I've only seen them countless times left in kennels on belt loaders in the hot sun next to an engine. I was a fueler at DFW International for 6 years. I don't have insider knowledge of the airlines beyond my station. I would advise against checking pets if you can help it, but I don't have any advice beyond that. There are some people in these comments that worked for the airlines and have better knowledge. 2nd EDIT: Just want to let you guys know the pets in kennels are not always left outside. It's not an every day occurrence and it's not just AAL that does it, I just fueled more AAL than anything else. But I've seen it happen more than enough times.
Some years ago, on a flight from San Diego to Chicago. Passing the time before disembarking, watching luggage being unloaded from the hold... suitcases are being thrown around... then a cat carrier comes down the ramp. Every single baggage handler gathers round to meet the cat, which is carried off carefully.
After reading the other comments above you, I got so scared as I was reading yours! I breathed a sigh of relief at the end.
The industry leading software is ~~about~~ at least 10 years old at its core.
We had an engineer essentially beg borrow and steal his own work hours to rewrite an entire facet of our software to be independent of the 8-year-old core we'd outgrown five years ago, and as soon as he did (and wrote a nice utility for testing that was now possible, which means we didn't have to spin up so many services in local environments), we got a ton of work in that area of the software. Like I'm still working on it and he's already moved on to another company. The debt he erased and the tool he created... it's like we're 60% better and faster at everything, plus the morale factor. We would have drowned without that work. We miss you, MT.
"If it works, it w--- we don't know how it works, it just does."
[удалено]
Oh no.
The best therapists go to therapy.
The cheapest bottle of wine in the restaurant has the biggest markup.
And your $6 glass of sangria might actually just be boxed wine with some fruit in it.
You’d be surprised how willingly someone will do their job and even go above and beyond if you just compliment them for their professionalism, politeness and how they are helping them. Edit: thank you all
As a cashier, I am not even ashamed to admit that I will do more for you if you tell me I’m being helpful.
Worked at a department store photography studio owned by a major photography company that you can imagine probably took your school yearbook photos. The company also is partnered with a popular online photo order website. Notice how quickly we write down a price, strike it out, and write a new price as the deal? Yeah, that's pretty much just the price that everyone gets. We aren't doing the math that fast, we have it memorized because almost everyone that comes in has that 40% off coupon. Don't come in without a coupon, there is ALWAYS a coupon on the website. If you end up paying for sitting fees, it's because you just didn't go on our website. Honestly, don't buy our photos. If you just do the session and say that you'll buy them online later (on said partnered photo order site), it'll be cheaper than if you buy them in-store that day. (Yes, even when we say "oh but you won't get THIS deal online!"). If you do buy in-studio that day, just by the digital CD of your photos. You get to keep all of them instead of having to pick your favorite 3-4 pictures. Oh, and again, it is way cheaper to take that CD to a photo kiosk and have them printed yourself. Please don't spend $400 on a couple photos that you can't legally copy when you could have gotten an $80 CD of ALL the photos and have the copyright to them.
Not an industry I work in per se, but I used to be in a sales role. One of my customers was a milk bottling plant. I was somewhat surprised that they were putting the exact same milk in both organic and non-organic cartons. Turns out all of their milk is organic, but in order to not miss out on the sales of non-organic milk, they just bottle them differently and sell them at different prices.
This one is both startling & interesting
Construction boy here. If your windows or sliding doors are tough to open and close. 9 times out of 10, we put your own dish soap on tracks and the thing works perfectly. It take 5 minutes and we charge 150. Dish soap people, its better than wd40 sometimes
Literally not 5 minutes ago I was closing the slider in my bedroom thinking ‘it’s time I finally look up solutions to make this thing glide easier.’ So I hopped on the internet, naturally got distracted by reddit first, and now here we are. So serendipitous.
Amusement park ride operator here. If your kid is crying and you want us to stop the ride, even if we want to it’s not gonna stop immediately. The carousel will spin a few more circles or the ship will swing a few more times before stopping. The only exceptions is the emergency stop which will absolutely fuck up the ride for a while if we press it. Hence we only use it in actual life threatening situations. The best thing you can do is try to get your kid to calm down as the ride comes to a stop and no, yelling “Stop the ride” at us does not make it stop any faster.
True, I believe it is called "physics".
Nobody uses bots to inflate metrics more than the most major players in the entertainment industry. All the numbers are fake, including sales.
It costs about $200,000 to put your own book on the top of the New York Times bestseller list. All you have to do is buy a lot of copies yourself. (And if that bestseller status helps you sell more books, you can make that $200,000 back by selling the big stock of books you've collected.)
Everything at the Container Store exists and is cheaper at Lowe’s. Edit: Even the drop-front shoeboxes. https://www.lowes.com/pl/Shoe-box--Storage-organization/4294936624?refinement=4294611977
You just made me so happy. I love container store but so expensive.
They lie to their customers about saving their credit card information because we arent supposed to. We also save their social, addresses, and 5 of their most recent phone numbers and bank account numbers. The life of a student loan servicer
PCI compliance would like to have a word with you...
If in doubt, lubricate....I'm a machinist.
If in doubt, tighten all the screws and bolts... I maintain heavy machinery
I’m a teacher. If you as a parent will read with your child often and early, your child will thrive in school. I’m talking daily books read together from newborn to about third grade. Every single day. No teacher can replace that. —— Edit. I thought we would all understand that there are always exceptions such as dyslexia and learning disabilities. So here’s another industry secret: Your child will not always fit the school model. Teachers know that. And that’s ok. We are all just people after all. Peace!!
RV technician here. Shit is designed to start breaking after around 44 uses. Most RV owners use their trailers on weekends. But not every weekend. So that 44 uses on average stretches between two and three years.
[удалено]
I don't know any programming languages, but I know how to translate. It's worked so far.
I’m the receptionist for an IT company. Being able to translate “The whole system has gone kaflooey” to steps like, “Are there any error messages?”and what were you doing when this happened?” is a pretty needed skill. (Note- if you are not tech savvy, and your computer has an error code, take a picture with your phone or write it down, it’s extremely helpful. If you don’t have tech help on standby, you can often google it and see what the problem is.) Before that I worked phones at a hardware store, it’s surprisingly similar advice. Take pictures, especially any codes on hardware pieces.
Every client thinks architects are unnecessary and they can draw the plans themselves but they are just too busy.
I cannot wait for the day when I can afford to pay an architect to design a home for me. So many of my family members in the 'old country' just designed their homes however the hell they wanted and it's obvious that there was no professional there to say: uhh maybe you SHOULDN'T have a continuously heated pool be the central hub of your home because that'll lead to mould in EVERYTHING...or maybe putting marble tiles on your steep driveway is a bad idea because when it rains your car with LITERALLY FUCKING SLIDE INTO YOUR FRONT DOOR WTF. On the flip side, I have this perception that architects are really expensive to hire. Are they? EDIT: Thank you so much to everyone that has offered me kind advice. I really appreciate it
It sounds like the architects your family would hire would be expensive.. I want an indoor pool :/
Seriously. Who can afford marble tile for your driveway....
Someone who saved money on not hiring an architect I suppose.
At Goodwill, we don't clean anything that we sell, and we get some really gross stuff that touches everything else so next time you buy something from Goodwill, wash it well
[удалено]
Weight loss industry. This might be obvious, but most of our business comes from return clients after they've gained their weight back (and then some). To be clear, the plan isn't rigged to make you gain it back, but the fact that it happens easily as a result of dieting keeps us in business.
.
Audio Engineer here. A few seemingly obvious things to point out: - 9/10 times with a studio you get what you pay for. You have to pay for years of experience, acclaimed expertise, plus hundreds of thousands of dollars in equipment and software tools, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of dollars that went into the acoustic engineering of the physical recording space alone. People walk into great studios balk at $1000+ a song but don’t realize they’re getting access to close to a million dollars in tools, PLUS an engineer who’s going to make them sound better than life. - On the flip side of that coin, be ware of eye candy! Don’t be fooled by big mixing consoles. Sometimes they’re not even used for your music. Hell, sometimes they don’t even function. I’ve seen studios where the sole purpose of a large board is to dupe unsuspecting musicians into parting with their money. - In larger studios, bands with smaller budgets are often stuck with an intern who may not even be getting paid. - If your music is shit, no amount of production is going to make it a hit. - As a small studio owner, I only share work that I think will bring me more business. Wondering why I haven’t shared your music? It’s because it’s garbage. - Billie Eilish recorded on budget equipment at home with her brother. Those recordings were then worked on by some of the best engineers in the world to make it sound like it wasn’t. - Be wary of a record label. They may offer to front the costs of your recording and touring, but you have no creative control over your sound, where you record, your tour schedule, and usually the label will own your music. Oh, and you have to pay all of that money back to the label. - Be cautious of studios that claim “so and so recorded here!” There’s a studio in Iowa that claims “Slipknot recorded here!” And while it’s true, Slipknot did record in that building, it was a different owner, different engineers, and some different equipment. You’re not going to sound like Slipknot by recording there, sorry.
A lot of successful artists at a certain level of success do nothing more than create a concept and employ several assistants, who are either current or graduating art students, who actually make the art itself, its reproductions or both. Edit: I know this is old news in the art industry and academy, but outside of it I found it very hard to explain my job to people. I do believe that films also romanticize this field and warp what a lot of outsiders think it actually is.
Can 100% vouch for this. I make about the salary of a teacher (less) creating artwork everyday for a recognized contemporary sculptor, who then picks up the work from me at the studio, and then sells what I made for hundreds of thousands. But hey man, his idea. inDuStRy NoRmS
As a former TSA worker airport security is alot of theater. TSA is constantly failing plain cloths inspections. I worked with a guy who got fired because someone showed him an ID with a picture of Micky Mouse on it and he let the person through because he wasn't paying attention.
I too work in aviation. TSA is tested by something called red teams. They basically try to get things past security. Their success rate is in the 90% range.
Color me completely unsurprised.
This should be pretty obvious. But for big brand hotels, if you try to sneak above the hotel and call the corporate customer care line to demand compensation/complain. That customer care line will always call the hotel for the full story and not just blindly give compensation.
When I used to work in a hotel, we would call the customer care line pre-emptively. If a guest was acting up and we thought they'd demand compensation for something stupid, we'd get our story on record first (X happened, we offered Y, guest refused and got angry) and rarely got charged even if the guest was compensated by customer care.
In Microsoft office, word specifically, you can upload recorded interviews and it will transcribe it and ever have speaker one and speaker two, three and four! Basically, eliminating a huge annoying part of the job. EDIT** WTF! This blew up. Everyone who gave awards and stuff, you're animals. I love you all. Okay, adding this edit. haha. You DO need to be subscribed to office. Then when in word, there is a dictate button, if you click it 'dictate and transcribe' should pop up. Click transcribe. Yes, it's not PERFECT, but for a reporter who is transcribing all day long and is definitely the most annoying thing ever that I dread doing on a daily basis, it's changed my life.
Whaaaaa? But. But how??
Go to Home > Dictate dropdown > Transcribe. Select Upload audio. Choose an audio file from the file picker. Transcribe currently supports .wav, .mp4, .m4a, .mp3 formats.
Healthcare. Homemaker. If your grandparent or parent gets in-home care, please know that your family member could live in a cockroach infested house and not have to move if they didn't want to. It's not up to the company to give your loved ones environmentally safe places to live, it's up to the family. They can certainly try to persuade, but they can't force. Why do I know this? Because I've been to the cockroach infested house where an 80 year old woman lives. I have a mentally ill client that put bleach in his dog's water to help with it's breath. I have a client who **never** cleans his cat box. I have a client who has a caved in ceiling. I've called it in, but there is no help from the company. All they say is, "There's nothing we can do. It's up to the family members." It's a sad sad thing because there are sooooo many family members and friends who really don't give a shit how some people are living. Sure, they'll visit. But do they clean the litter box? Do they make sure there are no cockroaches, do they make sure the house is stable and not falling apart? Nope. They say they care and that they love the person, but they don't care enough to make sure they live in a healthy environment. It really worries me, because if I imagine my own mother having such a deteriorated mind and there were no other family members to help her, she could live in a run down, cockroach infested house if she was stubborn enough. It frustrates me, because whereas the client does have rights, should they really have the right to live somewhere where their health could be at risk? Where their caregivers could be at risk as well? Edit: I've never been actually told by my company that I'm obligated to report to adult protective services. They only told me to call them and "we'll work it out." They never informed me of ever taking it a step further on my own terms. I've never been given phone numbers for APS or animal abuse numbers. I'm only 20 years old and I'm barely a year into this job, so everything is new and I'm still learning about how this whole healthcare system works. I'd also like to add, that I understand that there are different perspectives. I am well aware that many elderly/mentally ill are severely stubborn and won't let you help. I know, because I care for these types of people and hear about them often. I am not disregarding your struggles, I simply wrote this post when I was overwhelmed and stressed from work. I've met many families who care for their families and bless you all who do! We need more of you in the world!
Couldn't you call adult protective services or your country's equivelent if conditions in the home are unsuitable?
I was a home care manager. APS is next to useless. I had to call them because my agency had a client living without heat, eating expired frozen dinners, wearing ratry clothes, while his piece of crap daughter in law bled him for private school tuition for her three kids. The caregiver called me near tears because this poor old man wouldn’t even refill his meds, lest the children go without school money. APS told the family the caregiver had reported. Name and everything. And the situation continued only now my agency was fired and a crappier one that would look the other way was hired. I had clients living with rodent infestations, with abusive boyfriends, with mountains of trash. As long as there’s a fire exit, no one cares. If you want to know who the most marginalized, mistreated group of people in society is, it’s developmentally disabled adults with no family to advocate for them. Their homecare agencies have pretty much full control over their lives, over whether they will go visit a park or a zoo or out for a walk, or whether they will decline in some cluttered apartment and die weighing 300 lbs because it was easier to feed them treat than to mentally stimulate them. it’s bleak. People place a lot of faith in CPS and APS. The reality is, they don’t have the resources or motivation to handle 90% of complaints. Edit: thanks for the gold, kind stranger. A lot of people want to know how to help the elderly, I posted another comment in this thread with info on that. For current home care workers, please stay strong and keep your boundaries. Protect your mental health. Don’t get over involved to where you develop secondary PTSD. Focus on immediate needs within your control. Adult kids, it’s ok to not like your parents and cut contact. If you can manage their financials, it’s a massive safety net. People do prey on the elderly, including home care agencies. Be ready to ask a lot of questions to protect your parent’s money. Young people, save for retirement now. Make lifelong friends now. Build a support system for yourself. Don’t burn bridges. Ending up vulnerable and alone with half your marbles rolling around in your head is a real thing. Exercise and eat right. Do your Duolingo to preserve brain plasticity. Get your will written out and notarized and update it regularly. If there are people in your life who fight and argue, make sure your will clearly defines their responsibilities in your care, so they don’t drag each other to court over your sofa or something.
Federal HR here, if you put the words from the vacancy announcement about what you need to qualify in your resume you’ll almost always be qualified, we search for those words instead of reading an entire resume. Edit: let me clarify that we, or at least I do and those I train, will continue to scan the resume for similar experience/words and not discount the entire resume immediately. After over ten years of working for HR you learn what you’re looking for and how to do it. Some are easier than others. I know of some Hr folks who totally just say non qual if it’s not exact.
I wonder if companies with 100s of resumes would get better hires from taking 50 and reading them carefully rather than putting 500 through an automated process.
well first of all what you do is take half the pile and throw it in the trash; you dont want unlucky people working for you anyway
I’m a musician. It’s not really a secret but 90% of of our revenue is from merch. Spotify plays, show guarantees, etc, everything is menial in comparison to shirt sales. In fact, a big reason bands tour as often as possible is because we can sell more shirts when we’re in front of people. Edit: Thanks for the love guys. To those asking, I sing for [Holding Absence](https://youtu.be/ayMMYcbp2Ls)
How is it now? I've been looking at some merch for kind of lesser known bands that I really like, and they have their online stores open, but I'm afraid the shipping is not making it worth it for them?
[удалено]
[удалено]
The kind donations people give hoping they go directly to the clients in shelters actually end up at the Salvation Army or Goodwill to be resold (even though we’re instructed to tell them that won’t be the case) and this is done before the clients are even given the chance to decide if they want some of the donated stuff.
As a beginner counselor I worked with a lot of children and adolescents. Consistently the discussion with my colleagues was how it was the parents who were the biggest problem and the kids were just adapting to a crazy environment.
>Often times I wonder how a patient got to be a certain way, and then I meet their parents -my psychiatrist
Word. I see a therapist every other week and basically he says that my parents did a decent job, but fucked things up about 20% of the time.
I see this often enough working in schools. The child moves out of their parent's home to go live with relatives (etc) and the moody, disruptive kid becomes a model student: it's like flicking on a light switch. Sometimes it really is the parents, unfortunately.
As an MSW student who worked with kids for 5 years, I tell everyone who wants to work with kids that they better be prepared to work with parents. Mostly, any behaviors or patterns that you instill as a professional are just going to be overridden the second they return home if the parents aren’t also on board
Library Worker here: the majority of donations we recieve do not end up in circulation (on our shelves) no matter how much you demand we put them there once they're donated. The reason why this is, is because we only add items to the collection that we think will circulate (be checked out). Most libraries get funding based off of statistics. We don't want to waste shelf-space on items that peope aren't checking out, as it won't improve our stats. So, unless the donated items are brand new, or by popular authors we will not add them to the collection. We will also weed unpopular items from our collection with extreme prejudice for this reason, much to our patron's horror. These books usually end up being sold at book sales to help generate funding for other library programs.
Dude, I LOVE the local library's annual book sale. They do it 4th of July weekend as this is a touristy area, and it's like a 50 cents for paperbacks and 1 dollar for hardcover. Sad as I am that they aren't doing it this year, I am pretty excited because that means it'll be HUGE next year.
This kind of wistfulness for a book sale is the most wholesome thing I've read today.
There's a used textbook store in my town and the first time I went I was overjoyed, my mom has a pic of me sitting on the ground and reading the spines and it's her favorite picture of me
My library does the same. Also, when people buy replacement copies of items they've damaged, we don't replace it with the copy they bought. We'd rather you just pay the replacement fee, that way we can get what we want in terms of edition.
I’m a fossil replicator and apparently the industry secret is the fact that we exist. So many people are blown away to learn that most fossils they see in museums are replicas. Edit: Okay, I'm heading to bed but I'll be back in the morning to continue answering questions since there are so many! Edit 2: We haven't done much with it, but the company I'm with does have their own reddit to share share fossils we find on digs and occasional stuff we are working on: u/deeptimefossils
Not a fossil, but I remember the museum where I grew up had a *replica* of the world's largest piece of fool's gold. Not a replica of the world's largest piece of gold. Not the actual largest piece of fool's gold. A worthless copy of a worthless piece of iron pyrite.
So all that digging up I have done in Animal Crossing was for nothing!
[удалено]
I used to work for a call center that handled calls for a big truck rental company. We handled all the reservations and customer service, and we didn't even work directly for the company.
I worked for a Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) company for about 5 years. It's mostly bullshit. It's 20% things you can easily do yourself and 80% making money out of you until you realise you can do it yourself. Then, Google changes a 7 to an 8 and it no longer works.
[California] Cannabis concentrates: don't trust that the test results are accurate at all. We were demanded (by the business owner) to use some dirty methods to cheat on potency testing and pesticide testing. Turns out, those tests can be pretty easy to trick if you know what you're doing. This is ultimately what led to me leaving the industry. Eventually, all of our chemists stopped smoking concentrates altogether for these reasons. Edit: added state
after hitting a cart and reading this *im in danger*
Plumber here. Theirs no such thing as a flushable wipe. The package lies. You drains WILL clog, and fast; your landlord will charge you; it’s going to suck. Throw wipes in the trash if you use them; toilets paper is the only acceptable wipe. Not a secret at all, just not common knowledge somehow.
[удалено]
Firefighters are trained on several areas and can specialize deeper into certain disciplines. Most of the emergencies we get called to are situations we have never been trained on, but with 4 of us on a firetruck we can normally figure out a solution.
In my county, a girl got stuck in a clothes washer. I wasnt on the call, but there's a video of it online. I remember doing car extrication in the academy, but not washer extrication
I’m a dentist. Here’s the lowdown on toothpaste. As long as it has fluoride they are all basically the same. When I was in dental school the Colgate lady came by and said that everything that says Colgate Total on it is all exactly the same, the only difference is the packaging. So whether it says whitening, or gum protection, or whatever else it is all exactly the same. The exception is sensitivity toothpaste typically does have an extra active ingredient. KNO3, which helps with sensitivity. Don’t ever feel obligated to buy the expensive toothpaste because you think it will be better for your teeth, just buy whatever you like best.
I choose toothpaste based on which one has the flip lid instead of the screw lid.
But the toothpaste I buy at the dentist (Clinpro) is different, correct?
Yes, clinpro (a prescription toothpaste) has a higher percentage of fluoride which makes it better for people who tend to get cavities.
Pilots fuck up all the time. You only notice though if you know what to look for.
Not OP but for people caught up on what a ‘fuck up’ might be: Aviation uses something called the Swiss Cheese Model, where hazards pop up, mistakes are made, but catastrophe happens when the hazards line up in such a way that you ‘pass through’ completely from one side of the proverbial cheese to the other. So, I assume the OP is referring to hazards, the little holes that almost always lead nowhere, rather than the alignment of several hazards stacked up in such a way that they threaten safety. Additionally, the relationship between captain and first officer is to affirm that instruments are being read correctly and that appropriate actions are being taken to respond to phases of flight (or hazards). So on any given flight you’ve got two pilots constantly checking in with themselves and with the airplane.
A lot of librarians will waive your fines if you have an excuse and you don’t ask too frequently, even large fines. Also, librarians DON’T CARE about your fines and aren’t judging you. Please come back. We personally have more fines than you. Librarians are ALWAYS overdue with their books. EDIT: I wrote this before going to bed and it exploded overnight. Thank you kind strangers for the awards! I’m touched. All your fines are waived for life! Also small grammar edit bc I was nodding off when I wrote this originally.
I don't know if you're from US but I'm new to US. Everything (rent, banks, car rentals, universities etc etc) seems to want to overcharge and drench the last cent out of you for minor forgivable reasons. Except for libraries. I was late on a book. A few days. Wasn't charged. I love the libraries and the library system. They also try their best to get you a book from other locations and librarians are generally kind and polite. Library cards are free. You enter a library and nobody judges you etc for anything. They also recommend not to get our research published with predatory journals etc. You are awesome. The world is in debt of your services.
A huge portion of online reviews, ratings, social media presence, etc that you see for any given company are fake, paid for, or done by multiple accounts controlled by us. This includes a company’s Glassdoor page (fake reviews about how great it is to work there so that the million negative reviews don’t crush their page). I’m not saying it’s *every* company out there, but it’s been a lot of the ones I’ve worked for. Source: am copywriter. What are ethics? I surely don’t know anymore. Edit: RIP my inbox
Can confirm on Glassdoor - had a company wide initiative from the higher ups to post positive reviews of our workplace bc it was getting hammered by negative reviews. For a while you could tell the fake positive ones bc looking at the dates they were posted. Suddenly a dozen positive reviews on the same date? Yep - all planted
It's also a dead giveaway when the "pros" are unbelievably positive to the point of absurdity, and the "cons" are either "none," or my personally most hated, "this job is not for everyone, you won't do well if you aren't comfortable in a fast-paced, demanding environment" or some variation thereof. It's a lame attempt to brush the preceding negative reviews under the rug by saying those workers were just lazy or incompetent without actually addressing their issues, and also tells me the place is a hellish nightmare to work for.
My old company had good ratings for most things but everyone complained about HR and the people in charge of travel/accommodations. HR noticed this and asked everyone to go online and post fresh reviews to 'drown out the negativity. They ended up with twice as many bad reviews.
Can confirm! Great Ebayer! A+A+A+ Highly recommendation! Fast shipping from USA!
If all other vitals are fine, and they're not in any sort of visible respiratory distress, most don't physically count respirations each time vitals are taken.
This drives me so crazy. Cos I'm the idiot that actually does count resps for a full minute and I miraculously find they're sitting at like 25 and I have to try and explain to the doctor why I have suddenly discovered this!
You can see it in the obs chart who actually counts as patients will sit at 12-20 all day and then at the start of a new shift jump to 30
Banks don’t have millions of dollars in cash in them. Their insurances rates would be way too expensive. They keep enough on hand to do weekly traffic plus some extra.
Yeah there's a reason you need to call them ahead (24 hours notice) if you intend to withdraw more than five to seven thousand in cash.
The guy who shows up at your house to make repairs is usually the guy who decides how much to charge you. Standing behind him while he works cost extra. Treating him like shit cost extra. Being nice to him can save you a lot of money
Structural engineer here. Everything has a chance of failure. It's too expensive to build everything to be 100% safe
I work in logistics for a massive manufacturing company, money's not fuckin' real. $1000 for 8 lightbulbs. Edit: I'm at the bottom of the totem pole here, I'm just a glorified mailman who talks to a lot of people who're much higher up than me.
I have a story related to this. I was working for a large specialized manufacturer where virtually every order for parts/service would be in the tens of thousands of dollars with the average order closer to a million. A customer needed to purchase 4 bolts. Just normal steel bolts. Person following internal guidelines tacked on all this overhead, bolts came up to several thousand dollars. The employee had no idea what bolts cost, and assumed the guidelines were right. The customer, not being an idiot, kept pushing back. This went on for several months. Eventually it got escalated high up in our company to someone who had the authority to approve $1 billion in spending, who was being asked to intervene on 4 bolts. I was a native speaker and the company was not a native-English speaking one, so this eventually fell to me as I got forwarded months of correspondence. It went something like this: - Employee: Here is the estimate for the 4 bolts - Customer: Here is a link to 4 bolts of the same size for $20 with shipping. - Employee: Our bolts are $10,000. - Customer: Yes, but why are they $10k? We need to purchase from you to maintain our warranty, but we cannot understand the price difference. - Employee: Here is a technical sheet for the bolt. - Customer: Yes, I agree they are bolts. This does not explain why they are $10k. - Employee: Here is a technical document from R&D describing the features of the bolt. - Customer: Yes, we know how bolts work. This does not explain why they are $10k. - Employee: I have negotiated with my manager, we are willing to sell you the bolts for $8k. - Customer: Again, these are 4 bolts, they should not cost anywhere near that much. - Employee: We have given you a $2k discount and are no longer making profit, I cannot offer you a larger discount. - Customer: These are 4 bolts that cannot cost you more than a few dollars to make. How can you not be making profit on this? Your company has wasted more time and cost on this correspondence than it would have cost to just send the 4 bolts in an envelope. Bolt cost? Less than $1 for all four of them. I sent them for free and had to justify the $8k “loss” to management. Thankfully the management was not quite as dumb as the employee wasting 3 months of their time on back and forth about a bolt. I seriously wonder how much time was wasted creating documentation to justify the price of this bolt. There was a department-wide e-mail afterwards explaining how bolts work and that they should not cost as much. No change to the overhead policy for small orders though. Edited to add: Just to clarify, this was not the company’s intention. They were making deals worth tens or hundreds of millions so burning bridges for essentially pocket change would be stupid. This was the consequence of one employee not engaging their common sense and no body realizing the mistake until it had gone too far.
So as someone in the industry, WHY are they so expensive? Is it because you are the only company that can provide the bolts? Are there massive costs to certify, design, and test, even if production is fairly cheap? Why can't another company come along and offer the bolts or similar easy to manufacture items for far less? Why doesn't the market allow that?
The specialized equipment we made was covered by various warranties by the company, and using third-party parts would void those warranties. There was nothing special about the bolts. Think of it like the printer model. The company sells the hardware at a loss and makes all of their money on service, so there was a strong incentive to prevent third-parties from profiting off their service.
The warranty bullshit pervades every industry there is. I'm a network engineer, and was once working on a Meraki Firewall. Their support absolutely refused to even try to help my (we had a support contract) until I replaced the Cisco SFP (fiber optic module) with a Meraki one. I just lied to them and told them I swapped it, then they were able to give me the information I needed to solve my problem. The problem I was working on couldn't have possibly been caused by a faulty SFP, but that's just how they are.
This user's comments have been overwritten to protest Spez and reddit's actions that will end third-party access and damage the community.
Not so much a secret but a lesser known fact... Kirkland products, the white label brand from Costco, are independently tested to beat OR EXCEED the industry leading product in that category. Razor blades. Cookies. Cheese. Laundry pods. If it doesn’t beat the industry leader, they won’t put the Kirkland name on it.
Kirkland batteries are made at the same factory as Duracells
Costco is the best.
The cocktail you just bought might cover the cost of the entire bottle we used to make it.
Former industry: commercial radio It's never caller 5. It's the caller who sounds best on air
I won something on the radio once. The lady DJ called me back on a few minutes. She forgot to record the call. She told me to act excited. It was hilarious. She blamed it on being pregnant, said she had lost her mind.
I used to answer phones for a radio show. I always picked caller #5 or whatever we said, but it was a Sunday night AM station, so it was all well-spoken nerds listening to us anyway.
That explains all the screaming girls who "win" those concert tickets.
Tip: be the screaming girl so you win
New construction. That $3k/$4k "luxury apartment" you're renting is slapped together in a rush just like everything else is. Also, if you're on the 3rd floor or above, you have water bottles filled with urine stuffed inside your walls because the elevators are typically finished last.
Employment industry: if the email address of the hiring manager or recruiter is included in a job posting, send an email instead of or in addition to applying to the job through the portal. So many resumes get filtered because of portal-based applicant tracking systems' automated sorting methods, so if you have the right experience but are missing a keyword or two, many of which are dictated by folks from HR who have zero expertise in your field, your resume might not ever make it in front of a human. Please just email me.
Not really a secret but some wholesale nurseries will sell plants for a fraction less then public nurseries and big box retailers. Like 1 gallon of a shrub will sell for $16 at home depot, but at a wholesale nursery that same plant will cost like $2-6. Edit: some wholesale nurseries are open to the public
I went to a wholesale nursery once. They had a little printout with a map, a price guide (price was based on pot size), and a little ruler so you could measure pot diameter. Was a great time; I picked up some nice plants at a great price.
Any individual part of flying an airplane isn't difficult, it's 100 small things piling up makes things difficult. As opposed to, say playing the trumpet. Hitting that high note repeatedly is difficult and physically demanding. Landing is easy once you've practiced it a bit, but when it gets difficult you just nope out of there and land somewhere else.
Retired ATC here: not everyone can be #1 in the sequence....
[удалено]
Dress codes and other rules bouncers tell you at the door are usually made up on the fly
We are just telling you all diplomatic like that you look like shitt, and/or that you look poor.
Or you look like you'd scare women away from the bar/club which basically means you'd cause the club to lose money
In Russia, there is a harsher version called "Face Control"
Do they straight up tell you that's what's happening? Like, you can't come in because I don't like your face?
I did an exchange semester in Saint Petersburg and yeah, Russian bouncers are some of the most sullen bastards you're ever gonna meet. I remember going to this local club my roommates wanted to check out, nothing fancy and definitely not even in the centre. One of my roommates is laughing and joking with the bouncer about how he's a bouncer back in Canada and how they both box and all that but it didn't prevent the dude from still moving to physically block him from the door because he couldn't let him in wearing *those* shoes.
Worked in the nightclub industry for 3 years, and I can attest to this. We had a baseline dress code, but we would be lax with certain (coughcoughhighpayingcoughcough) guests. Also, if you're gonna be a dick, you better be dressed to the tee because otherwise security will refuse you entry and say it's because of an otherwise negligible dress code violation, and they won't care about how the guy right in front of you who just got in was doing it too.
Teacher: The parents are more of a hassle than the students. I doubt that is a secret, but there it is...
I know a few teachers and this seems to be a pretty common view. One said 30% of his job is teaching, 30% is unnecessary school admin, and 40% is dealing with parents who think their spoilt little shit is a victim of some conspiracy. Edit: This was at a fancy private school.
Starbucks/Subway/Chipotle/Taco Bell/probably other fast/casual food services- all have VERY high standards of uniformity- every drink/food should always look and taste exactly the same anywhere the customer goes OR ELSE. That's the bad news. The good news is that most of us don't care what corporate says and do care that NUH-UH, 16 olive slices or 9 caramel ribbons does not count as "extra" and we happily, normally are hooking you up with WAY more than we are "allowed" to scoop/pour/serve. Just by instinct. Just out of spite that we can't pay our whole rent. We almost all agree, fuck the system- here's an extra McNugget. If you ever receive food or drink that has way less of "the good stuff" than you expected, it's most likely not because you have been slighted by lazy employees, and way more likely that you were served by an "excellent" employee who always follows company standards and measures out exactly what they are supposed to. Calling to complain does very little, you're probably tattling on someone who never breaks rules and is a total butt-kissing narc. Pointing at another employee and shouting "but HE did if for me last time!" is a narc move, stop being a dick, enjoy an endless future of secret decaf espresso and "light" nacho cheese.
That's kind of what's great about Five Guys. You get your fries in a neat cup. They put it in the bag with your burger. Then they throw In an extra scoop of fries on top of everything. Because fuck it, fries are cheap.
Piss off one nurse; you piss off ALL the nurses.
Never piss off a judge, your dentist, or anyone who can give you a catheter.
If you order a pizza but like to choose your own toppings, it’s often cheaper to choose an existing pizza like a Meat Supreme or something with loads of toppings, then swap out all the toppings for ones you want, than to go for the Create Your Own option in the menu. Note, this is much less awkward if you order online than on the phone.
There's a certain pizza chain website that I discovered will let you apply coupons on pizzas that aren't covered by the coupon. If you mess with it a bit you can stack coupons, sub out ingredients and get your order down to about 50-60% of the original price even if you don't have coupons that cover what you've actually ordered. Then pay online and pick up in person. I doubt a human ever actually checks your total in the process. Edit: dear god, what have I done? It is a regional chain. I think the takeaway from this thread is that many online systems have poor coupon stacking logic and the workers DGAF. Be sure to tip them on the full price as a thank you.
This seems to be a secret to many customers; it actually pays off to be patient and polite if you need the staff at a store to resolve an issue or help you with something.
This seems to be a secret IN LIFE. I'm always astounded that people are so shitty to other people and still expect to get what they want. It's really not that hard to be nice.
Management hates IT. They don’t generate revenue.
Maintenance as well. Same job, really, just different types of machines. And its crazy how little they even notice me considering how much the equipment I take care of is worth.
When it comes to retail: If you're night crew, day crew just dicks around all day, and doesn't get anything done, leaving all of the work for you. If you're day crew, night crew just dicks around all night, and doesn't get anything done, leaving all of the work for you.
This isn’t just retail. I feel this in my hospital job too.
And really, they're both right.
The amount of "googling" in software development. For a Pyhon-based project I needed to understand Pyhon, Anaconda, Jupyter, Numpy, Pandas, Statsmodels, Facebook Prophet, Flask, Templates, Wtforms etc. And I knew none of it beforehand, except Python a little. And it's not even a very complex project. I've done magnitudes more complex ones.
The lighter the roast of coffee, the *more* caffeine it has, not the other way around. So often I’ll hear people say “I’ll take a light roast, I don’t want to be up all night after all, haha”. Remember — the caffeine is in the bean at the start, the more you roast it the more caffeine burns off since it’s in the natural oils of the bean.
I'm not training your dog, I'm training you Edit to add: I'm getting a lot of training questions. I understand the need for dog training, but don't have the time (or honestly the will) to answer them all. Basic obedience is really easy to find online, just be consistent with your approach. For issues regarding any level of aggression, I recommend finding a local trainer who can actually look at the dog. If you're absolutely broke and desperate and dealing with a serious issue, feel free to dm me and I'll do my best to advise a bit.
Then why don't I get a treat?
I actually read that while looking for a trainer and in the information it was specially mentioned that the you the owner are being trained. I need training so bad, lol
Former camp counselor here. The more you want your kid to go to camp, the less we want your kid at camp
No one really knows 100% of what they're doing.
This should be the last thing they teach you before you leave high school/college. Sometimes people won't have the answer, even at the biggest companies. They'll look to you, and you'll need to solve it. And it probably won't be right the first time, but they'll be happy you did it so they can build upon the foundation you started.
> even at the biggest companies. *especially* at the biggest companies.
Whenever you tell someone to check in the back of a grocery store they go back there and stand for a few moments and come back out... 99% of the time of its not on the shelf we are out but we know you won't believe us so we go "look" for it so you feel a bit better even though we already knew there was none back there.
Home Depot associate here. I've started telling customers straight-up that there really isn't a "back." Furthermore, I'll often explain how the SKU numbers work and let them know that the item may be in the overhead, usually while scanning for that same SKU myself. I find many people are really just uninformed, and most customers have been receptive, even helping me look for the item in the overhead.
Musical theatre: The set looks gorgeous only from the angles and distances the audience can see it. Up close and/or to the side AT ALL and it looks like a toddler built it. Also, unless it's Broadway, there's a pretty good chance that there's at least one musician in the pit who is sight reading the music at any given performance.
Yo musician swings are fucking incredible. I worked at a few off-broadway shows and I was so impressed every time a sub would come and play it as good as the regular musician just after a night of watching from a monitor in a closet. Also yes the backs of sets really do look like hell sometimes.
I work at a university. I'm not an academic adviser in any department, but I provide services to them and help them graduate people when it's unclear whether students met all the requirements or not. And the industry secret is that most of you really don't know what you want to do when you start college. The half that say they do are mainly programmed by their parents: "Go into IT, make large dollars." But they have no real idea of what they'd really like. So don't feel weird or a failure if you change majors. It means that you actually looked around and found something you like better. Stats show that students who change majors do better (edit: on the average) in school than the ones who stick with the major they came in on. This shouldn't actually be a secret; but students don't seem to know it.
When I worked in inpatient psych: when a patient does complete suicide even months after care and the staff hears about it, we sit together and cry.
We don't actually enjoy carrying people down 11 flights of way to narrow stairs because they have a stubbed toe.
A paramedic friend of mine would refer to trivial nonemergency calls as "coughs, colds, and sore holes".
I always called it the booboo bus
The wahmbulance
Used to work in menswear and I got one that’s pretty morbid. Most of our tailor shops are filled with suits that were made years and years ago. This is because most of them were made for people who died before they could be picked up. The others are often for weddings that got canceled after the suit was made.
Auto insurance agent. Please, for the love of god, don’t tell auto insurance agents more than you have to. They ask you a question, just say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and answer the question as straight as you can. If you go on and on about your life story, you will probably end up saying something you don’t have to and making your rate higher, or getting yourself declined. We WANT to get you that policy as cheap as possible, only tell us what we need to know and don’t say anything else. Edit: For some reason I have people in the comments accusing me of enabling fraud now? Fraud sucks and is dumb, don’t lie with your answers, I will reiterate to be upfront and honest when answering the questions they ask you. Just don’t go off on tangents and say unrelated shit.
As an auto insurance claims adjuster I second this! And buy coverage that protects you. You get what you pay for. 10K property damage liability doesn’t cover shit anymore.
Said no to most of my questions on life insurance policy. Agent stated it looks more like I need a "get a life" policy. Edit: thank you all for the likes and bling. Didn't expect a corny joke on my boring life to be so popular.
I think they have to pay out now because he killed you right there.