20+ People Shared Details From Their Jobs That Will Keep You Awake at Night

Every day, we meet the representatives of different professions starting from bus drivers and postmen to doctors and pilots. Most often, our knowledge about what working with people is like is quite superficial. Meanwhile, they have a lot of things they would like to share with us — from useful tips and warnings to cries from the heart.

We at Bright Side appreciate the work of those whose work is connected with people, that’s why we decided to give them a nod today. We have collected the professional tips, secrets, and claims of the workers who, for whatever reason, can’t talk about them openly.

• Seller in a fish market. The red snapper you are buying could be any number of different fish, but it’ll be sold as snapper regardless. Name changing is pretty common since few people can tell the difference between the different species. © brokendownandbusted / Reddit
• Waitress. I work in a fancy Indian restaurant. The changeover is very quick. I’ll spray and wipe the table, but I might not always sweep if there isn’t much of a mess. © Connie Mills / Quora
• Foodservice worker. “What’s your favorite thing on the menu?” In response to questions like this, we are obligated to offer something that is either about to expire or something that costs more. So here is a piece of advice: If you are not sure about what to choose, ask the staff to help you and opt for the opposite thing. © ExFanta / Pikabu
• Restaurant worker. I’ve worked at 4 restaurants in my life and lemons and ice are by far the most disgusting things you can get there. © hardshell1919 / Reddit
• Pizzeria worker. The more items you get on your pizza, the fewer of each item you will get while still being charged the same price per item. © only_male_flutist / Reddit
• Worker in the meat department of a supermarket. Hopefully, things have changed, but our manager was insistent on using past due meat to make burgers, sausages, etc. I once got in trouble because I threw out the ammonia scented chicken tenderloins that had expired 2 weeks prior, rather than grind them up for chicken patties. © sorrythankyouno / Reddit

• Poultry industry worker. When hatched, a chick costs $0.25. Over its lifespan of only about 30 days, it consumes about $1 worth of feed, which is the largest cost to the company. When killed, very little of the chick is left to waste. The feet are mostly shipped to China, and the blood is used in fertilizer. Feathers are often ground up and fed back to the birds. © SushiJuice / Reddit
• Restaurant worker. Don’t go to a restaurant within 30 min or so of its closing time. The cooks have already cleaned in an attempt to go home — at best you’re getting the scraps left on the counter, at worst, well you’ve pissed off the cooks. © Tkpf18 / Reddit
• Farmer. When they say you should wash your produce thoroughly at home, they’re not joking. © me878 / Reddit
• Bartender in a pub. Everything comes in frozen to pubs: soups, curry, cakes, bread, Sunday dinners, meat, fish, chicken. So that really nice meal you got where the chicken had the nice char-grill marks on it and everything was so juicy... I microwaved everything and shot the chicken on the grill for an 30 extra seconds. I laugh when people say, “Oh, so you’re a chef?” Haha. No, I’m a microwave technician! © Dannyboi93 / Reddit

• IKEA worker. Our store always has trial samples for every single item we sell. But, still, many people open packages. The other day I saw a woman tearing open a transparent package with a pillow, while the sample was lying right in front of her. I asked her to stop doing it politely and to stop spoiling the goods, and she replied in a rude manner, “I need this one. I am going to buy it, so I can do whatever I want.” As you might have already guessed, once I turned around, she threw the package and its contents on the floor and took another packaged pillow. Grrrr! © 59Block / Pikabu
• Customer service operator. Customer service also has mute buttons, and they use it to laugh at you and/or call you names while you’re busy complaining. © Acicin / Reddit
• Guide. Frankly speaking, leading a tour is an uphill task. In the best case, only 30% of people are listening to you, some geeks might start to debate, touch everything around them, or get lost, while you need to continue doing your work and not get distracted by the chaos around you. © zybykon / Twitter

• Hairdresser’s husband. My wife used to work as a hairdresser and hated it when she was asked to “just do what you think looks best!” Here she sits, cutting a well-to-do middle-aged woman’s hair, meanwhile my wife has tattoos, facial piercings, and half her head shaved. What she likes is NOT what you like.© viking**** / Reddit

• Italian footwear chain manager. Some customers like to visit the store a couple of minutes before it closes. It’s 9:58 PM, the mall closes at 10 PM, we have already recorded today’s sales and calculated all the money. A mother and her daughter come in and start to try on every pair of shoes they see. Other stores have already dimmed their lights and the security guard comes to check and see if everything is OK. They are still trying on shoes. It would be fine if they made a purchase but they say, “We’ll think about it,” and leave with a proud look. A couple of times my workers have had to stay on late because of people like this, and as a result, they were late for their bus (because they live in the countryside) and had to go home by taxi. The mall wrote out warnings to us, saying we should close the store on time. Then I came up with the following trick: I warn the client that the lights will go out at 10:05 and unnoticeably switch them off by myself. © NataLu13 / Pikabu
• Moderator on a dating site. Men lie about their height, appearance, and career. Women just lie. The most frequent question to technical support is, “How do I remove my profile?” In order to increase traffic, the option of removing a profile was thoroughly disclosed in the user agreement that no one ever reads. © DeltaInsane / Twitter
• Teacher. After meeting parents, 90% of the time I think, “The apple didn’t fall far from the tree.” © estrogyn / Reddit
• Hairdresser’s husband. My wife hates it when girls with 12-inch long jet black hair with split ends come in and expect to leave an hour later with bright blonde hair the same length. © dirtdoctor90 / Reddit

• Musician. I attended a songwriting workshop at Berklee School of Music, and Anna Wise (Grammy-winning songwriter, Kendrick Lamar collaborator) told the audience during a presentation that whenever someone “magically” blows up on SoundCloud or YouTube, that it’s not authentic. A label will sign the artist in secret, and then suddenly boost their viewership tremendously to make it look like the independent artist did it on their own. © ben_levy2 / Reddit
• Crowd scenes actor. In shows like the Walking Dead, not every zombie goes through the same makeup process. We have 4 “tiers” of zombies. The select “hero” walkers, who have the full prosthetics and interact with the cast, the “mid-walkers” who get spray painted all sorts of deathly shades but not much else, the masked walkers, who, well, wear a mask, and then the back walkers, who don’t have any makeup at all, just the clothes. These clothes are rarely washed and you wear the same outfit for weeks sometimes. And to get the makeup off? Shaving cream. At the end of the day, we’re all herded to the shaving cream station to rub it all over us and wash it off with water. It actually works really well. © clcliff / Reddit
• Photographer. Some clients say, “Yes, I can edit photos.” My heart cries bitterly and my monitor explodes from shame when I see the photos edited by these people. It’s even worse when these masterpieces are published on the internet and they credit you as the photographer. That’s kind of a “double kill.” © PlutoThePlanet / Pikabu
• Advertising agency employee. In sofa/couch commercials, they use smaller actors/models to make the sofas/couches look bigger. © YammothyTimbers / Reddit
• Cinema industry worker. When a movie trailer has shots that turn out to be “missing” from the actual movie, it’s not because scenes were cut. Those shots never existed in the movie. The trailer didn’t test as well as they wanted, so the studio inserted scenes specifically made for the trailer during “additional photography.” © [deleted] / Reddit
• Radio worker. Nearly every caller you hear on a top 40 radio station is either an intern or someone else close to the studio, everything is fake. © Puff_puff_*** / Reddit

• DJ. Most EDM DJs are not doing anything by turning that knob during their set. Some DJs just push play and have all the music preprogrammed. The dancing and fake knob turning is purely for your entertainment. © braq*** / Reddit

• Hotel employee. In some hotels, the housekeepers do something called “popping the sheets.” They wipe off crumbs and straighten the sheets out to make it look like they made it with fresh linen. The thing is, it just depends on the housekeeper. © boogiemange / Reddit
• Maid. I worked in a hotel, and while we did wash the sheets and pillowcases between guests, the comforters and blankets were a different story. They were washed just twice a year — once in the spring and once in the fall. © [deleted] / Reddit
• Guide. Whether you like it or not, me and the driver will get you to a souvenir shop because the company we work for makes us do it. Oftentimes, souvenir shops give the guide and the driver a pack of sweets or some cash as gratitude. This is all because there are so many souvenir shops and they are doing their best to try to get clients. © applinariask / Twitter
• Hotel worker. Check the seals on the things in the minibar. I once had a guest who drank the contents and then peed in the bottle, closed it, and put it back. © Roslagen / Reddit
• Hotel administrator. The best way to cancel your reservation without getting charged if you’ve waited after the cancellation time, is to call first and say you’d like to change your stay to a later date, then call back within a few hours, (Hopefully getting a different clerk) and the cancellation fee will be bypassed, because there’s now a new cancellation time on the new date. © druumer89 / Reddit

• Kindergarten teacher. Your child might take their first step or say their first real word while at daycare. But we aren’t going to tell you that. © OutsideBones86 / Reddit

• IKEA worker. No IKEA sofa bed is designed for everyday sleep. It’s not announced anywhere in order to not decrease sales. All sofa beds are positioned as guest beds. Therefore, if you are picky about your sleeping space, think twice before buying a sofa that you plan to use as a bed. © ArXangelS / Pikabu

• Skincare industry worker. None of the products cost more than $2 to manufacture, but they retail anywhere from $20 to $150 per product. It has always amazed me how much people would shell out for creams containing volcanic clay or snake venom. © DWeb338 / Reddit
• TV worker. A lot of people probably know that when a TV show goes into syndication, some scenes will be cut from episodes to make them slightly shorter, to fit in more commercials. What people don’t know is that the show can be slightly sped up as well, to squeeze in just a little more advertising. © borkencode / Reddit

• Preschool teacher. Your children tell us nearly everything about what goes on in your home. © gingerjedi3 / Reddit
• Bank worker. If you are wondering what’s taking me so long to process your loan application, it’s probably because I forgot about it. © Honest_Banker / Reddit
• Teacher’s husband. A couple of times a year, when she is absolutely buried in work, I will take a stack of essays and grade them for her. I sit down with an ink pen and get to work. I’m throwing out A’s like Oprah’s giving away cars. It’s a good time and those little hooligans better appreciate it. © maninblack458 / Reddit

• Surgeon. Sometimes surgeons Google how to do things while they’re already in surgery. You’re welcome. © mechaoprah / Reddit

• Doctor. If you find yourself waiting forever to be seen in the ER, that’s probably a very good thing. We get to the serious stuff back there pretty dang quick. For clarity’s sake, a whole lot of pain doesn’t automatically make something serious. A broken arm is something that hurts like hell, but we’re going to take the guy who’s sweating and says his chest feels a little tight, before we take you. Because he might be dying and you definitely aren’t. © pause_and_consider / Reddit
• Teacher. At the beginning of each course, I have to memorize a lot of names in a very short period of time. Usually, I do this by making notes next to each name on my attendance list. Some of these notes could probably get me fired if anyone found out. © sodabr***el / Reddit
• Teacher. Sometimes students are given a better grade than they should get because we are too tired to really give a shit anymore. Sometimes they are given a worse grade because of this, but those teachers suck. © anfminus / Reddit

• Assistant at a bridal salon. I had a lady try on 2 dresses, a $900 dress that made her look like a fat bumpkin, and a $550 dress that looked beautiful. The lady asked me for my opinion and I told her the truth. My boss was standing right behind me and fired me that day because I “lost her money.” © [deleted] / Reddit
• Sales associate at a cosmetics store. The products in our store are normally $50+ and I can’t afford them, so when people ask me how they work I lie as hard as I can. © carecher / Reddit
• HR at a popular clothing retail company. We were told we weren’t supposed to hire people based on their looks, yet we would get in trouble for hiring unattractive people. © ayohriver / Reddit
• Customer support employee. Printer ink cartridges are meant to signal that they’re empty after a certain number of pages, even if they still have some ink left. © cogenix / Reddit
• Post office worker. The word “FRAGILE” on a box means nothing to us, so make sure you pack your stuff properly. © Kevoguy / Reddit

• Flight attendant. Flight attendants and pilots don’t get paid during boarding, deplaning, and delays. So when you’re delayed and angry, so are we. We’re not making money and still have to be there. © boozeandarrows / Reddit
• Bus driver. If you’re the only one standing at a stop served by multiple routes and I’m a bus that you don’t want, signal to me that you don’t want my bus, so I don’t have to waste my time stopping for you. Shake your head, turn away from us, step away from the stop, or something. © susitucker / Reddit
• Flight attendant. I ALWAYS recommend that you never, ever, ever, EVER use or put anything in the seat pocket. They are cleared of the rubbish, but are never “cleaned.” I have pulled out and seen all sorts of things from there. Dirty tissues, sick bags, underwear, socks, people’s feet, gum, half sucked sweets, apple cores... and then on the next flight, you go and put your phone/laptop/iPad in there. © HausOfDarling / Reddit

• Nursing home employee. One of my clients was a former pilot that finally quit when he realized in the middle of a flight that his dementia had progressed and he couldn’t remember where he was supposed to be flying to. Meaning he had been flying for a commercial airline, with dementia, for quite some time before that. © Giftofnarwhals / Reddit

• Aviation journalist. If you are able to request a special meal, go for the kosher option, so you know it was prepared that day. © penguinopusredux / Reddit

• Pilot. I discovered that some low-cost airline companies will set the humidity on the AC to a lower value than normal, to just the minimum legal value, this will make you more thirsty and more likely to buy drinks or water at their absurdly high prices. © Wings_008 / Reddit

• Freight train conductor. We have to blow the horn at EVERY street crossing. So no, when we’re coming through your neighborhood at 3 AM, laying on the horn, we aren’t doing it to be jerks.
  Also, we have speed limits too. So when we’re moving really slow through town, holding up traffic, we aren’t doing that to be jerks either. © FrankZx14 / Reddit

Are you aware of any secrets that your profession has, that people outside of your specialization would never guess? Please share your professional secrets with us and our readers!