Every industry has its hidden side that may be unappealing. It’s akin to visiting the kitchen of your favorite restaurant and seeing how grimy and untidy it actually is from behind the scenes. 

Much of this insider information remained concealed until someone posted this question on Reddit: “What’s the dark secret about your profession that the general public doesn’t know?”

People didn’t hesitate to respond, revealing what happens behind closed doors among lawyers, healthcare workers, educators, and service industry employees, to name a few. 

Many of these answers may shock you and make you question the fabric of society. But if you want to read about juicy industry secrets, scroll through this list.

#1

Former heavy machinery worker. Everything from in facility work to road and construction work.

Every single guy...I mean every guy, that operates a backhoe or asphalt roller or bulldozer absolutely LOVES and gets a kick when we see kids watching and being interested in what we are doing. We all want to stop and let them on the machine and allow them to run it, but are only forced to not to because of rules and insurance.

When we get together for lunch we aren't talking about the women we saw. We're talking about the little boy in the red hoodie who clapped when we dumped a shovel. And not one guy teases you for thinking it was great, because otherwise the job is just grinding and our bosses suck.

I figured we needed a bit of positivity on this thread.

Image credits: killbillydeluxe

#2

It is entirely possible that your veterinarian will kiss your kitten's belly when you are not looking.

Image credits: catdoctor

#3

I used to be a police officer: There were a lot of unspoken rules about making sure we had a high number of arrests. Demonstrating high arrest numbers meant we got federal/state grant money. This kept the prosecutor employed along with the entire court system and showed the town/city we needed a larger budget because of all the arrests. The entire criminal justice system is literally a giant business which [profits] off the backs of the public

Image credits: T-Rat93

#4

The number of completely incompetent employees working in health care settings is appalling.

Image credits: ParfaitThat654

#5

Security guard: In an active shooter event, we're not going to protect your a*s. We're heading to the nearest safe exit and calling the cops.

Image credits: HeyTuesdayPigInAPoke

#6

80% of women with developmental disabilities will experience SA. The statistics are already horrible for neuro typical women but most people outside the field have no idea it's so high. It is horrific.

Image credits: wylderpixie

#7

I work in the gas pipeline industry and there's been massive accidents and terror attacks people have no idea about and were never reported nor ever will be. All over the world.

Image credits: LuciusSweetsCrown

#8

When they make a pain cream, they put in ingredients to make you "feel" something, like menthol, because it's associated with "doing something" or "working". Simple not feeling anything (or less pain) is not associated with effecacy.

Image credits: ThePainCream

#9

Professors are regularly pressured into passing failing students to keep up graduation levels. I even had the registrar go into the system and change grades. Let’s just say I have seen my fair share of students who failed my science course but were passed by admins who are now building your bridges, interstates, buildings,levees, and multi-level parking lots.

Image credits: BagelwithQueefcheese

#10

Book editor. Unless you have a massive social media following/built-in audience already, chances are very small you'll get published by a major house. Chances are even smaller that you'll make any money from your book. Just self-publish if you really want to get your work out there: the publishing industry is 95% about making money and 5% about publishing decent books.

Image credits: ergo_slump

#11

Persuasive design is unbelievably effective on websites.

A little scarcity message there, a little was/now pricing, a big ol' prominent "buy now" button in just the right place, badly designed filters that limit your ability to see the cheapest products.

Lots of websites are utterly garbage, and some might *look* garbage and have obviously annoying experiences (Amazon anyone?) but it's like that because you spend more money, and cost the company less money - not to make it good for you.

We know how long you spend on a page, what you look at, what will make you buy, and how to keep you engaged for as long as possible. We know you are using an iPhone - the newest, largest model - and are likely a wealthier prospect, so will tailor our messaging and pricing to squeeze every cent out of you that we can.

These experiments are conducted on you without your knowledge in order to make you part with your money.

Image credits: bugbugladybug

#12

The US public school system is on the brink of collapse.

Image credits: imveryclever

#13

A boutique hotel I worked at didn’t wash comforters unless they had to. And even then you really had to push. I was pulled to help with housekeeping fairly regularly in the busy season, found a quilt with blood on it - sent it to laundry. It was sent back 5 mins for being “clean enough” ??

My housekeepers told me it was normal. I was horrified. I cringe staying at hotels and take a blanket when I can.

Image credits: allthecrazything

#14

I worked at a mental health facility. They were all about image and money. Very few clients were ever discharged. They were far more interested in the money than actually helping people.

Image credits: jlverno

#15

Funeral Director/Embalmer here. I don’t know that this is a particularly “dark” secret, but despite the rising popularity, the lack of understand around what cremation really is always shocks me. You do not get “ashes” back. You get back bone fragments. In school we had it drilled into us to never use them term “ashes” because it is so inaccurate and only perpetuates this misunderstanding. Your body is not reduced to a fine, powdery ash that will float off in the wind/water when scattered. It is reduced to large chunks of bone which are then processed to try to attain a fairly uniform consistency. Much more like a heavy sand.

Image credits: rosemarylake

#16

I work in laboratory support for a life sciences department at a mid-size university, and the amount of plastic waste we generate is astounding. .

Image credits: ggc5009

#17

No so much a dark secret, but authors make pennies on the dollar. Even mid-to-high level authors have to work a day job.

Image credits: MicahCastle

#18

Economist here. The dirty secret is that economists do actually know what they're doing, politicians and pundits just ignore us and do whatever they want to make more money for the rich. Oh and all conservative economic theory is a made up scam. Trickle down is a scam.

Image credits: POEness

#19

50% of our entire financial and banking system runs on legacy cobol code written prior to 1980.

Image credits: bmaeser

#20

During an autopsy, we will not take care with your organs and stuff them back in any old how so they fit back in your chest cavity.

Image credits: PathosMai

#21

IT guy, I Google or reddit half my problems. Your computers I buy from a place you could buy them from also I just mark them up 35% or more. I could care less if you look at p**n at work until I'm told to care. We talk about end users like they have the intelligence of a rock and we judge you on your technical skills. More techs than you want to know about will search your personal device for nudes given then chance.

Image credits: 1d0m1n4t3

#22

Journalists for the most part barely make minimum wage. They aren’t playing 3D chess with political messaging. They’re trying to file stories and photos from their phones after a 10-hour weeknight shift covering high school sports and city council meetings.

Image credits: someoldbroad

#23

Dental Hygienist here: Not sure if ppl are aware that a RDH only requires an associates degree in science (2 1/2 yr program), medium salary is approx. 70k, 4 day work week most offices, good hours (no nights), free dental care and usually discounted for family. It’s a pretty good career and if you work at a private practice it’s pretty easy because you’re seeing patients who return every 6 months and have good home care. I have friends graduating from a 4 year college and deep in debt getting 25k job offers. It’s not a bad gig.

Image credits: 2thSprkler

#24

Food service, 20 years in the industry. Even surrounded by all of that food you barely have an opportunity to eat or drink anything. A lot of food service work is part time unless you're a manager, and if you're a salaried manager forget ever having a life outside of work, you are on call 24/7/365, even on your days off. You're on your feet from the moment you start your shift until you clock out. You barely have a chance to sit down unless you're using the bathroom. If you're waiting tables, you earn $2.13 per hour, and all of it is taken in taxes, so you're living on customer's tips. You have to balance a heavy tray of food and drinks on one hand while dodging coworkers and customers and trying not to spill anything. Then you have the customers with entitled attitudes who want their food fast, fresh and hot but don't want to wait for it and refuse to pay their server by tipping them for doing their job. There's a lot of prep work that goes on before the restaurant opens in order to get your meal out in a timely manner. If your restaurant serves breakfast you are awake when your customers are asleep, yep, you're clocking in at 3 am. And we wake up every day to do it for you. So treat restaurant workers well!

Image credits: JessicaLynne77

#25

Some farm stands and farmers market booths have fruits and vegetables from Costco repackaged into cardboard pints to make it look "home grown".

Image credits: Agnaolds

#26

I'm a game developer who used to work on mobile games before moving to PC development. Mobile game developers know exactly how much you've spent on the game and when so they can target you with a pop-up at just the right time to get your money. This is a fairly automatic process though not someone sitting in a room watching you. A lot of people know this so I'll throw in a bonus secret - with regional pricing people in second and third world countries are paying a tiny fraction of what you pay for the same MTX. In first world countries it's all about finding the whale who will spend BIG on a game but in second/third countries they just try to maximise volumes of sale. Remember, an MTX usually cost about a day or less than that's work to implement but from then on costs the company exactly £0. You are buying thin air or worse yet just the opportunity to keep playing the game.

Super bonus third secret that I'm sure isn't much of a secret - mobile gaming ads are downright lies honestly. It's never the primary gameplay loop. It'll be in the game somewhere but limited access and never as good as it looks in the ad.

I just straight up don't recommend mobile gaming to people any more. There may be some good games out there but the majority are quite exploitative. Gambling but without the part where the company ever pays you any money. You just get a shiny hat or some bs.

Image credits: NoMarsupial159

#27

Professor. We are totally invested in helping you to make amazing work, we stick up for students all the time. We take the responsibility of helping you win very seriously. The only dark thing is that many people see it the other way around.

Image credits: treetopalarmist_1

#28

If you have a cardiac arrest, chances are more than likely that you will stay dead. Unless you have that cardiac arrest in a medical facility and they can correct which of the 8 (ISH) things that are reversible causes.

If you die you'll most likely stay dead, at worst you'll be rescued and become a vegetable for your family to make a tough decision over.

Image credits: amboandy

#29

For anyone that didn't serve in the military, it's an absolute s**t show. Just another corporation with fancy names for managers and employees.

I don't know how the govt functions after having served lol.

Image credits: demesm

#30

Vets in the US have a high s**cide rate. High debt, relatively low income relative to that debt and their level of schooling, a lot of client abuse and depressing cases, and access to euthanasia d***s.. and like we're taught the gold standard medicine but a lot of clients can't afford the gold standard, so you've got this frustration where you want to help but can't, and then you're accused of being heartless or just in it for the money. I left clinical medicine after two years for a series of non-clinical roles.

And the turnover rate on vet techs (the nurses in the vet hospital) is fairly high, estimated at about 30-35% with an average time in the industry of just 5-10 years.. and that's for your licensed techs that went to school for it. The school I used to teach at had similar findings in our own post-grad surveys, where a lot of our graduates would either leave the field entirely or leave clinical medicine for things like reference lab work, pet insurance, or pharmaceutical rep work after just a couple years.

Image credits: daabilge

#31

I work in medical delivery strictly to hospice patients. As you can imagine they die frequently. We pick the equipment up to be returned to the warehouse and sanitized it for redelivery to other patients. It’s a shoe string industry with tiny profit margins. Every single company out there is picking up mattress, slapping a disposable cover on them and putting them back out at the next stop. Logistically there is no possible way everyone in the industry isn’t doing it. I personally refuse to do it. I’ve had a regional vp b***h at me about it and say we were in business to make money not to deliver clean equipment to someone that was going to die the next day. Even if you don’t account for urine and fecal matter there’s still roaches and bed bugs getting moved around all the time.

Image credits: jjon670

#32

Physician here.

If you go to a large academic medical center, most of your orders will be put in by overworked doctors that sometimes haven't slept for 24 hours and sometimes get paid less than minimum wage. But you can be guaranteed that there will be a doctor on 24/7 able to come to bedside if needed. Why is the system like this? Hospitals love cheap labor. Hiring more physicians would be expensive.

The alternative, of course, is to go to a smaller medical center, where there won't even be a doctor on site at night sometimes.

So to alleviate this shortage, many states are passing bills which would allow foreign physicians who haven't even done a residency in the US to come and work. That includes the physician who may have no idea about how the US healthcare system works, and yes, it's as bad as it sounds.

Why not train more physicians in the US you ask? Simple, the bottleneck is residency, for which meeting ACGME requirements to run a residency is...actually really hard (since there are many requirements to ensure that the graduating resident won't go out and k*ll people). Your local small hospital likely won't be able to set one up, so residency training spots are pretty much already saturated. Fixes to this problem will be much more difficult.

Image credits: naideck

#33

When we go to check the back, we’re only doing it to get you off our back, we aren’t really looking for the product you need.

#34

Accounting has a very high addiction/alcoholism rate. There is a very high chance your accountant was drunk or high while prepping your return.

Image credits: That_Weird_Girl_107

#35

There is so much extra b******t that it can be hard to do your actual job like you want to. You’re too busy clicking all the useless boxes so management stays off your a*s. This leads to burnout, stress, missing important things, and constant worry that you aren’t good enough. 

I probably googled or youtubed something right before doing it if it’s been a while. It’s fine. 

I have seen some questionable, dangerous, and borderline negligent stuff happen, and there are usually no consequences. Everything doesn’t need to be punitive, but there are definitely times when big things are swept away, especially depending on who did it.  

I’m about 99.9% dead inside, but I can fake it for eight hours a day. It is rare that anyone is seeing the real me at work. My performance could win an award. It is draining.  

 This list probably applies to so many jobs. .

#36

In pharma, your medicines are very safe. There are lots of checks and balances. The actual ingredients, including the active, are often pretty cheap, although the newer biologics are not. The finished pharma, the thing you actually take, has an enormous mark up but not to feed greedy rich men. The mark up pays for the next blockbuster, for advertising and for liability.

Image credits: aphilsphan

#37

Psychiatry: Newer antidepressant presented no more advancements in terms of efficacy than cheap-a*s 1980s Fluoxetine (Prozac). As a result, most of the current guidelines just tells you to prescribe whatever you like.

Image credits: soloward

#38

I'm a lawyer: 1/3 of us are active alcoholics, 1/3 of us are in recovery, and the last third have a drinking problem. There is something about being on call 24/7, being expected to close a deal in days, efficiently, without making a single mistake in documentation. I'm getting sh*t from a client for a messed up schedule. Yes, we made a mistake, but bro, you gave us a term sheet 8 days before you needed to close. The whole team was billing 16-20 hours daily on that deal. There are going to be mistakes

Image credits: Minnow_Minnow_Pea

#39

I was a perfume sniper for a very high end store that may no longer be in business. Well, that was part of the job.


We had a quota of bottles to use up each shift.  Our manager would check behind the counter to make sure we weren't spraying into the trash can.


If we wanted to push a particular brand (more profit/commission) we'd dilute the competition's testers.


Our mantra:  we spray so you'll pay today.

Image credits: Free-Bird-199-

#40

I'm a lawyer and I think people would be surprised at the generally poor level of lawyer work and how most actual work is done by stressed out, overworked and underpaid 20-somethings. I don't know, maybe I'm a crotchety old guy or maybe I'm experienced enough to stop worrying about myself as much and pay more attention to everyone else's fuckups. I know Belichick said most football games were lost rather than won.

#41

Software development. I barely know what I'm doing, and my projects are built on a house of cards of legacy code. The guy i learned from sometimes knows less than me. Someone asked if my API is REST, and i was like "no. Wait..." looked it up. "Oh. Yes, yes it is. "

An app i made on a whim to help manage some things internally is about to be sold to the UN to monitor equipment for a considerable sum. I'm just winging it here!

#42

Not a dark secret but I've been trained on how to escort kindergarteners through hallways in the event of an active shooter. The one thing that haunted me was when they told us to instruct our students to run in a zig zag pattern if there was nothing to hide behind. That was a dark and depressing in-service.

#43

Pharmacy (US-specific)

From the mid 90s or so, pharmacists were in high demand and salaries began to increase as a result of normal market forces in such a situation. The demand was compounded (hah!) in the mid-oughts when Medicare D went live, which also roughly coincided with the requirement that all future pharmacists must have a PharmD to get licensed.

Brief sidebar: PharmD is a 4-year doctorate similar to an MD in terms of structure (NOT particularly similar in challenge or rigor, especially these days, which I'll get to shortly) and cost. The degree had existed before, but was more of an advanced designation for pharmacists looking to get into clinical practice or teaching. The BPharm, a 5 year bachelor's degree had been the standard to practice in a community/retail setting prior to 2005 or so.

So anyway, huge demand continued to push salaries, and now the requirement for a fancier degree meant that a lot of new schools were opening up to help meet the demand, and also make money hand over fist by charging grad school rates for what used to be an advanced undergraduate profession.

Because pharmacy has no organization to monitor or control the number of schools opening, they rather overshot the target in terms of actual output of new RPhs needed, and we started to have a situation where there were too many pharmacists for not enough jobs. This resulted in retail chains pushing worse and worse working conditions, scheduling fewer hours to save money, and pharmacists would just take it because they were needing to borrow increasingly insane sums of money just to get the degree to get into the profession. Meanwhile the retail chains were also in a race to the bottom with each other for insurance reimbursements, doing anything to compete and meanwhile pushing reimbursement standards so low as to bankrupt many/most independent pharmacies.

While all this was going on, schools continued to open and attempt to fill all the seats in their classes, but the increasing costs, falling or stagnant pay, and progressively worse working conditions were driving prospective students away from the profession entirely. To remain profitable, schools started taking lower and lower quality students, and even do away with the requirement for the PCAT (an entrance exam sort of like a pharmacy version of the MCAT, but again much much easier; I have taken both and can say this with great confidence). The NAPLEX, the clinical licensing exam, is supposed to be a minimum competency text, meaning that if you finished a PharmD program you should be able to just walk in and pass it. Nevertheless, a growing number of schools are seeing first-time pass rates for their graduates below 90%, 70%, and even 60%.

So where this is all headed is there are way too many pharmacists, they are coming from an increasingly less selective pool of applicants, and working conditions are so poor that most of us know people who have just walked out of their job and the entire profession on a whim because the possibility of homelessness was preferable to another day working for CVS or Walgreens.

I struggle to believe that this situation hasn't resulted in direct patient harm thousands of times in the past year alone, and will continue to do so until something improves.

#44

Pilot. I don't actually give a s**t if it's turbulent or you're uncomfortable back there. .

Image credits: Ciabatta_Pussy

#45

I work for a roofing supply company. Both in the warehouse and on the truck making deliveries. The amount of damaged materials we send out to peoples houses, simply just to get it out of our inventory, is astronomical.

This causes a few issues for everyone that isn’t us. To list a few, it could cause leaks in your roof, shingles to simply fly off in the wind, vents to clog. Or the most common issue, which is the customer has to buy “Better material”. Which isn’t taken off the original ticket order and comes out of pocket. Meaning sometimes people pay 150% to 175% more for a roof than what it would normally cost. So a 20k roof turns into a 33k roof. If not way more.

All of that simply so our material looks better to the eye when you come in to order stuff. And most of that goes into the salesman’s pocket via commission, so they won’t do much about throwing away anything or sending out better material. Unless a bigger company lines his pockets prior.

My advice, don’t get a roof redone unless insurance covers every bit of it.

Image credits: tatty1357

#46

Just how much time and effort it takes for a store to be clean and well organized. Time we don't always have if the store is busy. .

#47

Surgeon here. More of a positive secret. Sometimes I add in an extra organ for my favorite patients during surgeries. Tell me you like to drink and seem like a nice person? I just might graft in an extra kidney and maybe a spare liver lobe for you if I have one handy. You’re welcome! Our secret.

Image credits: Neither_Cod_992

#48

Carpenter here. I don't know how secret it is, but the waste we generate is unbelievable. 10-15% of what we buy gets thrown away as an industry standard, but I've had times where I have to get rid of 30-40% of my materials from a job (if, for example, I need a bunch of plywood pieces cut at 5' x 4', that means I have an equal number of 3' x 4' cutoffs from the 8' x 4' sheet) because I just don't have anywhere to store it all.

#49

HVAC.
Most companies are being bought up by private Equity firms. They have no idea how to run an HVAC company, what it entails, or anything about equipment quality, life expectancy or maintenance requirements. They continually push to replace good equipment that may only be seven or eight years old. Regularly use high pressure sales tactics, but never call it that.

#50

There really is no sex in the champagne room. I should know.... Part of my job is to watch an entire bank of cameras aimed at both the lap dance room and the champagne rooms. It's also my job to call a 'code p***s' which is when I see a guy in the champagne room trying to unzip his pants. Security goes to the room and there are no second chances, you're out!


Yet we still get people asking. LOL.

#51

Retired person here. I swore I would never clog up stores or offices by coming in after-hours or on weekends, because people who are still working deserve priority. But sometimes I forget. Sorry.

#52

Everyone is more than likely living with harmful mold in their walls and ceilings .

#53

Railway. We get k*lled all the time. 3x a year in Canada alone, and that doesn't include life changing injuries.

#54

That I spend most of my days at work during summer, either reading or surfing the webb, without getting any scoldings only a "Nothing to to I guess, sorry but I don't have anything to tell you to do right now" from my coworkers.

I work in a warehouse. Nothing happens during summer when everyone in every country in Europe goes on a two to three months vacation season.

#55

I'm a hand hygiene reviewer for the healthcare facility I work in, not my only responsibility but it's one of them. In the province I'm in there are 4 moments to perform hand hygiene in a healthcare setting: before contacting the patient or the patient's environment, before an aseptic procedure or accessing clean supplies (includes gloves, clean linens, medical instruments, food, food utensils), after a risk of contacting or contacting bodily fluids, and after contacting the patient or the patient's environment. I'm one of many reviewers that records how often hand hygiene is being performed for these 4 moments. If they don't perform hand hygiene for one of these moments it's recorded as a miss and is deducted from the overall score of the facility. Not sure if this is standard everywhere in Canada or other countries.

I have access to all hand hygiene reviews from every healthcare facility in the city that has had one done, including EMS, for the last decade.

The scores are percentages, to pass you need at least 90%. The scores for some of these places are great, above 95%, but in other places the scores are abysmal.

One hospital in my city had a score in the low 60s.

I went to a doctor recently to look at a rash on my face, the score I would've given was 25%. He missed everything except using hand sanitizer when he came in. Put on gloves, touched the rash which had pus coming out, didn't even take the gloves off when typing on the computer, opened the door for me with gloves still on, took the gloves off incorrectly by touching the outside of the gloves, then I noticed him follow me out of the room without santizing his hands, and go to do paperwork or something, and he misdiagnosed me anyway to top it all off.

Ended up being shingles, he could've given chickenpox to the patient after me.

Not all places get reviews done on a regular basis either. The one hospital that had a score in the 60s last had a review done in 2015. Many places aren't even on the list, meaning they haven't had a hand hygiene review in at least 10 years, or there is such little data that they don't even have a score.

The kicker is that I need to announce that I'm doing a review, as with all other reviewers. So of course the people I'm reviewing are going to do their best to be perfect when they know someone is watching. But once I'm gone they'll likely go back to their old habits.

What that means is that the scores I see are likely 15%-20% worse than they actually are.

EMS had a perfect score, another hospital had 98% which is the best score for all the hospitals in the city, and my facility has one of the best scores in the city, last month we got 96%. Most places have at least 80%. So it's not all bad.

Edit: some words added.