35 Employee Confessions That Center On Companies' Hidden Secrets And Other Things That Will Surely Shock Us Ordinary People

Some companies really do have secrets that sound too strange to be true, until former employees start talking. In this AskReddit thread, people who used to work in all kinds of industries shared the things they saw behind the scenes, from retail and food service to health care and tech.

The confessions range from messy shortcuts to flat-out shocking practices, and a lot of them explain why certain products, services, and workplace habits feel a little off once you know what is going on.

Here are the employee confessions that got people talking, and a few of them are hard to forget.

1. Whole Foods instructs employees to heat cookies at the store. They don't bake these snacks, according to an ex-employee.

sauerpatchkid, Karsten Winegeart

2. Nothing's real in reality TV. A couple on HGTV's house hunters are pretending to look for a house.

In fact, it's already their property. The other houses on the show are either owned by their friends or already sold but the residents have yet to move in.

edinc90, Binyamin Mellish

3. Apple already knows the issues of their devices before they reveal them to people.

Those problems won't be discussed during the staff meetings in the morning. However, they will be the central discussion during the afternoon tech staff meetings.

Apply will blame the issue to the users, and will consider it user misuse or error. But they already know what's causing the damage.

MrFrankReynolds, Laurenz Heymann

That kind of secrecy can make a workplace feel a lot smaller than it looks from the outside.

When people stop trusting the company, they usually stop keeping quiet about it too.

4. A smartphone company employee reveals the truth about the development of these devices.

Normally, developers test everything to ensure that these devices will run smoothly. But there's a thing called waivers.

Bugs, big or small, will be granted waivers so that they'll be fixed at a later time. In other words, the devices we purchase potentially have tons of unresolved errors.

This employee has a tip for consumers. Never purchase within three months of the release of a device.

Wait for devices produced in the second batch. They work 10 times better.

Project2r, camilo jimenez

5. Viagogo is a scam, according to a former employee.

They will go as far as taking your money even if they don't have the ticket you want to purchase. In fact, there's only about a 50% chance that you'll get an actual ticket to events.

reddit, Nirmal Rajendharkumar

6. A special education teacher reveals that the job can be dangerous.

Ihadacow, cottonbro

That frustration shows up fast when people feel like they got the short end of the stick.

Sometimes the internet becomes the easiest place to say it out loud.

7. Public libraries welcome all kinds of people, including indigent ones.

Such people drug themselves in the restrooms. According to the library staff revealing this, they would administer Narcan to opiate users.

But some aren't lucky. They die in the library.

NastyLittleBagginses, Ricardo Esquivel

8. Fred Meyer is a wasteful company according to a former employee. They trash loads of edible products.

Their oldest students are 21 years old. Since these educators also need to handle adults with special needs, they get injured or worse, get sexually harassed.

We get concussions, bites, broken wrists and arms, scalped, as well as sexualy assaulted by students who will grab you by your breast, pull out their d**k and start masturbating.Beezlegorp, Anthony Shkraba

9. An unused gift card will lose its value if you didn't use it for roughly an entire year.

Credit card companies actually use that value to pay for the service charges monthly. Therefore, a $50 gift card can potentially be gone and is used for something else.

Memetic1, Tiago Scharfy

And once one person starts talking, the rest of the thread usually follows right along.

That is exactly what happened here.

10. A skincare specialist reveals that all products that retail for $20 to $150 only cost less than 2 bucks to manufacture.

DWeb338, Mathilde Langevin

11. Health professionals will pretend to do something about an old patient who no longer has a pulse to avoid legal consequences.

pantograph23, Mat Napo

12. In a certain private school, grades can be bought. Teachers aren't allowed to give grades lower than B.

dwarvenmonk, Taylor Wilcox

Some of these confessions are less about one bad day and more about a whole system running on bad habits.

That is what makes them so hard to shrug off.

13. Always wash your fruits and vegetables because staff pick them up from a dirty warehouse floor and place them on the grocery shelves.

x740xWastedx

14. Ice cube machines are not really clean, revealed by an ex-employee. So don't order drinks with ice.

Enrique Zafra

15. A pilot reveals that the blankets given during the flight are never washed.

_JackStraw_, Aleksei Zaitcev

Once the stories start piling up, the pattern gets pretty obvious.

People remember the weird stuff long after they leave the job.

Also, this reminds us of the tech startup office clash when one employee confronted a coworker over alleged lunch theft.

16. The staff at Geek Squad outsource their tech knowledge from India or some other countries.

They're merely salespeople. They don't know anything about the technicalities of the products they sell.

Moots_point, Paul Swansen

17. Applebees tip from an ex-staff:

On the tabletop computers, go to "Extras" and tap and hold the little white space on the top left of the screen. When it gives a password prompt, it's 4321. Lets you change the table numbers or play games for free.Atrrophy, Mike Mozart

18. There was no company mentioned, but the secret ingredient is just a Thousand Island dressing.

PrettySureISharted, Airam Dato-on

That is the kind of detail people do not forget once they hear it.

It changes the whole way they look at the brand.

19. Cookies on your browser are used against you when you're purchasing something online.

This is especially true for plane tickets. The more you check, the more the price rises.

You'd think that the price is going up because the products are selling out fast. In truth, the cookies are the reason you see increased prices, creating the urgency to buy.

Valendr0s

20. An ex-UPS employee reveals that the fragile sign is always ignored.

Kevoguy, Kevin Woblick

21. Memory Foam Clusters are made from old, recycled memory foam (meaning, the nasty stuff is in there). Never purchase these pillows!

The_Ginger_Wizard, Pavel Danilyuk

By this point, the thread has gone from surprising to downright grim.

Still, people kept sharing anyway.

22. Not all Starbucks stores follow protocols.

Unfortunately, an employee who was cleaning espresso machines with mold in them. You also have to be nice when placing your order.

Otherwise, you'll get decaf coffee. Even assistant store managers do this to customers who treat staff badly.

crimewavedd, Ricko Pan

23. Throwing everything away and the work speed required.

A White Castle employee, who worked from 2000 to 2003 revealed everything in the restaurant was clean. But, they trashed tons of food that were no longer good for serving customers.

For example, burger buns that got hard due to cooling get thrown away. If the sides or fries were placed under the heat lamp for 15 minutes, the employees will get rid of them.

That's not all. The food they threw away had to be tracked for inventory purposes.

The employees also had to work really fast. As they prepare hamburgers from start to finish, they also get timed.

wpmason, Deborah Lee Soltesz

24. Commercial beekeepers in the '70s and '80s poisoned roughly the entire hives to death in the fall.

This is because the total cost of wintering the hives is greater than receiving the packager from America. While it's not a dark secret, it's something that only a few are aware of.

Bokin0, Pixabay

Some companies really do seem to run on shortcuts nobody outside the building would guess.

That is what makes these confessions hit so hard.

25. Companies selling animal premix include their competitor's products in their own ones.

DrMadlove, David Gabrielyan

26. Someone who was from a no-kill animal shelter admitted that they still had to put some animals down.

You can't rehome a Pitbull with a history of biting. Also, some dogs have the worse behavioral problems, leaving these employees no choice but to put them down.

Reddit, Mikhail Nilov

27. An ex-employee exposes that they didn't meet their contractual obligations to completely destroy the laptops that Google sent for decommissioning.

The HDDs are shredded. Then the laptops are sold for them to earn money.

septic_tongue, freestocks

At this point, the thread is basically a tour through every kind of workplace disappointment.

And there are still more confessions to go.

28. Satellite TV customers are given a rating of 1 to 5 stars to determine their value.

The company will do anything to keep its high-scoring clients. But for 1 or 2-star clients? They won't bother helping you.

mermaidsthrowaway, Eric Lumsden

29. Even Ralph Lauren sells made-for-outlet clothes.

waasaabii, David Bartus

30. A certain high-end spa would only use vegetable oil and Epsom salts, but charge customers 65-dollar salt scrubs.

captnfirepants, SUN STUDIO CREATIVE

Some of these secrets are petty, and some are a lot worse.

31. The $1200 car care system (which can go down to $900 with discounts), only involves 15 spray bottle squirts.

Customers won't get suspicious of the fast turnaround. That's because the dealer speaks with the detailing staff to make it seem like something major was done to the car.

DirtynDurham, SCREEN POST

32. Chickens and rabbits you see in zoos are actually food for larger animals.

Alexas Fotos

33. Trader Joe's employees are really nice, according to a former manager.

Artem Beliaikin

34. A Burger King employee admits that they don't clean the ice cream machine

Somben Chea

35. A former oil company employee reveals that animal cleanup resulting from an oil spill is a "feel good" propaganda.

People are tricked into thinking that the company is concerned about the creatures. The truth is, ninety percent of those animals will die soon.

Skalite4, Peter Ma

Did a lot of things shock you?

Thanks to these revelations, we can now be smarter consumers. So the next time you pick up food from a certain store, you might need to think twice.

These people who revealed the darkest secrets about their company did not have a voice when they worked there. So it's no wonder why they're spilling the beans now that they're no longer associated with the organization.

The revelations within the employee confessions highlight a crucial element often overlooked in corporate environments: the impact of transparency and psychological safety. The article illustrates that when companies prioritize secrecy and cut corners for immediate gains, they risk not only their employees' well-being but also their own reputations. The confessions reveal a culture where bad practices thrive, breeding an atmosphere of mistrust. By contrast, organizations that cultivate open communication and ethical standards create a workplace where employees feel valued and are less inclined to resort to secrecy or retaliatory behavior. This suggests that fostering a culture of trust is not merely a moral obligation but a strategic necessity for long-term success and sustainability.

Before you judge Whole Foods cookie secrets, read about whether a coworker should be exposed for a secret job opposing company values.