18 Job Secrets Bosses Don’t Want Employees to Know About

According to a study, a significant 42% of employees report experiencing a lack of transparency from their leadership, which can erode trust and engagement. Concealed practices can range from undisclosed performance evaluation systems to stringent non-disclosure agreements, all contributing to an environment where employees may feel isolated or undervalued.​ That’s why people feel so free when they can finally reveal this information and share it with the world.

• You're allowed to talk to your coworkers about pay. The amount of people I've run into who thinking discussing wages is honestly a crime absolutely blows my mind. Discuss what you make and if you're not making as much as someone else, question it. ©BrewertonF*** / Reddit
• How much the top execs are making. I thought I was making an ok salary, and then my company went public. In IPO filings, it turned out the CEO was pulling in 40 million a year. Really made me think about all those year-end 3% raise conversations. ©Arete108 / Reddit
• If you work for a large enough company, they literally have a department that pays people just to make sure unions don’t get formed. It’s usually called something like labor relations, and the main crux of their job is to assess unionization risk of every move the company makes. Couple that with the tactics company leaders use to disrupt/influence union votes, and it’s apparent that they are all scared of this. ©AreYouJealous / Reddit
• Microsoft has special pricing for non-profits that is about 1/10 the regular price. They don’t advertise this, so a lot of resellers still sell the software to their non-profit customers at the regular price and enjoy the higher profit margin. ©IAmNotScottBakula / Reddit

• You cannot be fired for jury duty. Most jury duty summons will explicitly state this outright on the summons itself. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to your face. And no, at-will employment does NOT supersede this protection here in the US; jury duty is federally protected, even in at-will states.
  Even if you get fired under different circumstances, the timing alone could subject your employer to the court's scrutiny, which in many cases will NOT end well for them, especially if they cannot provide a legitimate paper trail. My friend's former boss learned this the hard way.
  Sure, you can fire anyone for nearly any reason or no reason... BUT they can also QUIT for any reason or no reason. And they do not need to give you 2 weeks notice. If I tell you I quit, that means I QUIT, and you cannot stop me. ©B***lessCubone / Reddit
• "Free rewards" program everyone wants you to sign up for these days is not actually free. The company is selling your data to advertisers. That is where the real money comes from. ©jimnobodie / Reddit
• A lot of "urgent deadlines" are completely made up — just pressure tactics to squeeze more output without paying more. ©Rich-Television-9846 / Reddit
• Oh! I used to work for a big-in-my-region farm company that grew berries as well as bought berries from other farms. They packaged them and sold frozen berries under their own name as well as for big grocery stores.
  The farms they bought berries from were supposed to get certain checks done before we would accept their fruit (make sure their water source didn’t contain E.coli, test the soil, have people look through the berries to remove bugs, prove their fertilizer and pesticides were approved by my company, etc.) and, at the end of the season, maybe two of the fifty or so farms we bought from had actually done everything.
  We’re just happily letting people get duped by their frozen fruit. ©c*** / Reddit

• They def don't want us knowing how much we actually bring in vs what we get paid. Like if everyone actually knew the profit margins and how our work is the reason these big execs get their bonuses. Wild how that transparency could flip things on its head. Make you think twice about those extra unpaid hours. ©Heavenly_Ariana / Reddit
• Insurance aka "Corporate-Owned Life Insurance" (COLI). It's when a company takes out a life insurance policy on an employee, almost always without their knowledge, and names the company as the beneficiary. If the employee dies, the company gets the payout. They can profit off of your death.
  Often, they will profit MORE from an industrial accident than they will have to pay out in settlement or insurance premiums going up. But they will also profit from a non-work related death, like if you get hit by a car on the weekend. And if the policy is kept even after the employee leaves, it's still good. ©ImprovementFar5054 / Reddit
• I had a sales job once where I got in trouble for doing training at work and refusing to do it at home. Straight-up asked if I was getting paid for the time I was on the training, boss said no, so I told her I’d do it at work between customers then. She did not like that. I just shrugged about it. ©Deastrumquodvicis / Reddit

• I had a manager one time at the pizza chain I worked at. She would make sure her closers clocked out right at closing, but still made them do their closing duties off the clock. I told her if she ever did that to me, then I was going home the second I was clocked out.
  Managers got a bonus if they hit payroll and hours and such. That was her way to always get it. Coincidentally enough, I was never scheduled to close, and she didn't last long. ©s***nado3 / Reddit
• Health insurance. When you file a claim, it is often denied because they're counting on you not escalating it. Once you do, your case goes to a "medical management group" which ought to be called the "we don't wanna pay" group.
  Keep escalating and involve your doctor. Fight for the insurance you paid for. ©LuckySunshine3 / Reddit
• My aunt worked building chicken houses for large poultry companies. When you pay the extra couple dollars for free-range eggs, you feel you’re doing the right thing. A lot of these companies have "free-range" chicken houses that leave the doors open. The chickens can come and go as they please.
  However, the companies install large fans at the doors that make the chickens afraid to leave the chicken houses, forcing them to stay inside. The whole free-range thing is ultimately fake. ©GobbleGobbleSon / Reddit
• I worked in advertising for a large publisher. We used to sell digital ads called a fireplace (essentially three ads that surround the page on a desktop screen). The publisher would sell the impressions (how many times someone sees a page/ad) of these ads x3 for each page, instead of them being one-page view.
  When I pointed out that this was fraudulent, I was "made redundant" with a big payout as long as I kept my mouth shut. ©Cycho-logical / Reddit

• The secret most companies would die to keep hidden: they have NO IDEA what their employees actually do all day. I watched this play out at my last company in the most infuriating way.
  Our VP mandated a "productivity tracking initiative" where we had to log every task for two weeks. When the results came in, they showed our team was handling triple the expected workload with outdated tools while two entire layers of management contributed almost nothing measurable.
  What happened to this eye-opening data? It disappeared. Completely buried. Why? Because they would have to admit they'd been underpaying the people actually keeping the lights on while overpaying people who mostly create PowerPoints about "synergy."
  The kicker? Three months later, they laid off 20% of the doers and kept all the managers. Then they couldn't figure out why deadlines were suddenly impossible to meet. So they hired expensive consultants who recommended - you guessed it - more managers to "oversee productivity improvements." ©PixelPulse** / Reddit
• There's almost always mold in the ice machine. Both my S.O. and I have worked in many restaurants. You'll live but it's still gross. I always ask for no ice. ©Canis71 / Reddit
• Your 401k money might be held at a large reputable company, but it’s likely managed by a different and much smaller company you’ve never heard of. And maybe that small company’s IT sucks so much that your social security number is stored in raw text on multiple very old and insecure databases. ©Unhappy_Seaweed4095 / Reddit

Every job hides many secrets, and sometimes businesses go out of their way to maintain this information hidden. However, people online aren't afraid to reveal even the deepest job-related secrets.