10 People Reveal the Dark Underside of Their Jobs

You’re not alone if you’ve ever been curious about what really goes on in other professions. This article dives into real-life confessions from people in all kinds of jobs, sharing surprising industry secrets most of us never hear about.

• Back when I was cleaning at a movie theater, I was pretty used to the usual mess—popcorn everywhere, sticky soda puddles, all that. But one day, I looked under a seat and saw something truly gross: there were tiny bugs crawling through leftover food bits.
  I asked about it, and the response shocked me. They said it was totally normal. Apparently, the crumbs stuck in the seat cracks are nearly impossible to clean completely, so bugs just come with the territory.

• I worked as a hotel maid for two years. Part of my job was refilling the little shampoo and shower gel bottles in every room. The disgusting truth, which our guests didn’t realize, was that we were actually using products that had been expired for years. Honestly, if you can’t find an expiration date on those toiletries, it’s better not to use them.

• I worked for a website creation company back in 1999, managing the website for a big brand / large bank that was sponsoring a round-trip paid ticket to the Super Bowl. I worked on the website that collected all the entries, and I posted the rules that the company’s legal department wrote to describe the rules of the contest.
  A random winner was to be selected for the prize, and I wrote a software tool to randomly pick the winner to be used when the contest was over. When the contest ended, I was told to forget my tool, forget the rules, just look in the database and find someone in South Florida (where the Superbowl was in 1999), so the company wouldn’t have to pay for airfare. © midnitewarrior / Reddit

• The hotel had no internet connection starting around 1 am to 6 am. Like clockwork, every night. I don’t know if it was just a system fault or if it was cost-cutting. But without internet, the security cameras didn’t work or record anything.
  The fire alarm system didn’t work either (the alarms go off, but it doesn’t call for help). So, if we had a fire that started at 3 am, then I’d have no idea what’s happening unless someone else who’s driving by reports it. © blackmobius / Reddit

• I worked at a cancer charity. Half the people would order things for themselves and charge it to the charity. An eye-opening job for a 16-year-old. © redpaloverde / Reddit

• I worked at a startup that tracked employee happiness, supposedly so they can make employees happier. In practice, it seemed that they were preemptively getting rid of unhappy employees. No need to wait for them to quit. © MiyagiJunior / Reddit

• I worked for a healthcare facility that started collecting private patient information to share with insurance companies in order to secure better contracts. This wasn’t diagnosis data; it was lifestyle data, including spending transactions (they were trying to find ways to obtain that information when I was leaving).
  When I asked if patients were aware, they always gave a vague answer, which essentially meant no. © Objective_Regret2768 / Reddit

• I worked at a grocery store. We had lots of prepackaged produce and other baked goods. I was told to pull off all the expiration date stickers and replace them with new dates because “they still looked good.”
  There were so many things they did that probably could have gotten them fined heavily if I had known better and reported them. They were a local chain that had like 10 stores. Apparently, they only have one store left now and are very close to going out of business for good, according to my parents. © pops992 / Reddit

• Many years ago, my dad was a manager of the meat dept at a chain grocery store. A new store manager came in and told him that whenever steaks started looking a bit gray, rather than mark them down a bit (they were still ok to eat, just older and unappealing in appearance), he was to slice them laterally, position the bright-pink interior up to repackage, and keep them the same price.
  My dad soon quit over that, as he couldn’t in good conscience do it. © who-took-my-hat / Reddit

• Every single cooking competition show you watch is rigged. The judges have no say over who wins. The winner is chosen prior to filming by the executive producer(s), and then the show is crafted around that winner to mimic a story or journey they can sell to audiences. © Unknown author / Reddit

Hotel stays can go either way—they might feel like a mini luxury escape or turn into something you’d rather forget. If you want to make sure you’re in the know before your next trip, check out this article, where 15 hotel workers spill all the secrets.