Nearly every profession is hiding some spooky skeletons in its closet. That’s what CircleBox2 proved to us when they asked their fellow redditors to share the dark secrets and questionable practices that regular people would be shocked to learn.
Well, it worked—we’re shocked. A bit angry. A tad grossed out. And in need of a long, hot shower. We won’t look at any of these professions the same way again. We’ll _never ever_ drink straight from cans or bottles. And we won’t trust certain businesses (not to mention pizza places) the same way we did before ever again.
Scroll down, upvote the secrets that you were most surprised by, and spill the beans about the secrets at your own profession in the comments below. Bored Panda also spoke to redditor CircleBox2 about their viral thread, so have a read through what they said below. Just keep in mind, some of these hidden things are eye-opening in a Lovecraftian sort of way. Sometimes… sometimes it’s best not to know about what’s hiding in the dark corners of the Earth.
#1
This may come as a surprise, but your vet tech is not “only in it for the money” primarily because we are paid very little please stop yelling at me
Image source: mollymollyyy
#2
Church worker here. This may be specific to the church I work for, but I think it’s pretty common for bigger (1,000+ members) churches. They’re two-faced. They’ll tell the janitorial crew “janitorial service is truly a ministry, and it’s so good and so important.” But guess what. When the church needs to make cutbacks, we’re some of the first ones screwed over. We’re the ones expected to clean until 2-3am on a Sunday morning after people have used the building until midnight.
As a woman, I’ve straight up been harassed by the guy pretty high up in the church hierarchy, and nobody really has my back.
There are so many fake, judgemental, hateful people who hide behind the guise of Christianity. People who will lock people out of the building and laugh at them. They tell the people who aren’t dressed presentable enough to sit in the back, if that person isn’t run off by their frozen, hateful stares.
This is so anti what a church and Christianity should be.
Image source: AngelsInMyLivingRoom
#3
Sometimes librarians read the new books before registering them in the catalogue for the public.
evil laughter *
Image source: ashesthenphoenix
#4
I have worked in vetmed since 2013. I have this habit, especially when owners don’t want to be present for their pet’s euthanasia, in which I give their pets chocolate, pieces of my meal (meat, bread, cheese, even onions/garlic), or the best wet food from our pantry prior to them being given the drugs that help them pass.
They don’t suffer from the damaging effects of those foods if they’re being euthanized minutes after. I like to give them a taste of something they would never get to try otherwise. Of course, I would never do this unless the pet was already en route to the room where the procedure would take place
Image source: RodentRescue
#5
I don’t know if this is a total secret, but a lot of the talking points about how expensive lawyers are, or how plaintiffs lawyers get unreasonably high payouts for doing little work, is driven by corporations trying to discourage people from suing them.
For example, most plaintiffs lawyers are working entirely on a contingency basis (meaning that they advance all costs with the risk of no reimbursement and don’t see a dime unless they win), and almost all will give you a free consultation. But by spreading the false narrative of “it’s gonna cost you to even talk to a lawyer about that,” big companies discourage you from even consulting one and finding out the truth.
Similarly, the narrative of plaintiffs lawyers getting unreasonably high fees for cases is also designed to misrepresent the truth. For example, you hear a big company say “this class action got $2.50 for each person, but the attorneys got $250k” or something. But, the only reason the attorneys got all that money is because the company went balls to the wall litigating over $2.50, racking up attorneys fees on both sides, when they could have shortcircuited the whole thing from the outset by saying “you got us, here’s your money” and paid next to nothing in attorneys fees. Plus, $2.50 times a million people is a lot of money, meaning that the fees were justified by the total amount recovered, and that the case was not so insignificant to begin with. But, by controlling the narrative, companies make it seem like it’s unreasonable to be mad that they stole millions from consumers, and that’s it’s even more unreasonable for someone whose job it is to take on all the risk, and then get paid based on a percentage of what their results are.
Sure, there are windfall cases, but usually those cases are needed just to offset the 10 other cases where you took a haircut on fees. It’s like putting $100 in a slot machine, losing 10 times, and then hitting one jackpot on your last turn to make it back to $100, and then having the casino say “he got $100 for a single game of slots, this is ridiculous” until you’re forced to give back $90 of what you won. How likely are you going to be to play again?
There’s a lot more to this but the TLDR is that companies are projecting when they paint lawyers as greedy, and do so in order to minimize the chance that they get called on their bullshit
Image source: dpderay
#6
Have you ever started filling out a form for a quote on something (insurance website, or literally anything) and then changed your mind and said “nah, I don’t want to give them my personal information”, and then abandoned the form before pressing “submit”?
If you think that stopped them from getting your personal information, it didn’t. Most companies looking to capture leads will capture your info in real time as you enter it into a form. The submit button is just there to move you to the next step, not to actually send your information to the company.
Image source: phpdevster
#7
Retail (and former warehouse) worker.
Never drink straight from the can/bottle. Workers climb on the stacks, rats run over them in the warehouse, they sit in stagnant water under leaaking roofs, etc, etc.
Image source: hazps
#8
Sometimes we lick artifacts to quickly determine if they are bone or pottery (bone sticks pottery doesn’t). And then tap them on our teeth to determine if they are pottery or a rock (rock will hurt pottery won’t). Archaeology
Image source: tor93
#9
I ended up quitting a career because people (all genders and ages) kept trying to solicite me for prostitution.
Young male massage therapist.
Image source: NinjaWen
#10
The amount of good food that is thrown away. It’s pretty sickening.
Image source: CatsAreTheBest2
#11
Not currently my profession but ghost writers in fiction. John Grisham, Danielle Steele, James Patterson, Janet Evanovich etc., all those big names with an NYT bestseller every year use ghostwriters who are are never credited or mentioned. It’s barely even a secret.
Image source: provocatrixless
#12
Sometime we learn something the day before we teach it to you.
Image source: pamacdon
#13
When your city asks you to conserve water because there’s a drought, what they don’t tell you is that the maximum amount consumers could reduce their use by is dwarfed by the amount of water leaking out of old and poorly maintained infrastructure
Image source: fluffychonkycat
#14
There is a problem in substance abuse treatment in the United States called body brokering. Substance abuse treatment can be very expensive and insurance companies pay A LOT of money for a patient to be there. Treatment centers will hire “body brokers” to find addicts with the best, highest paying insurance and entice them to check in to the specific center, the treatment center then gives the broker a commission from the insurance money.
This can go as far as body brokers literally putting more drugs in to the hands of some addicts before they come in, bc the higher level of drugs in your system upon admit, the more and longer the insurance company will pay to the treatment center.
Brokers will also hire other addicts in a pyramid scheme type way to check in to the treatment center, make friends with the other patients, and upon discharge encourage relapse so they come back to treatment.
Image source: VaguelyLatina
#15
Lot of unethical shipping companies EVEN TODAY dump a lot of garbage, oily sludge, waste contaminated water and oil out when sailing in international waters far away from the shore. There are only a few handful players today who are actually executing business trades while still keeping the carbon footprint and enviornment as one of their core policies. I am glad to be working with one one them
Image source: trendz19
#16
Jockeys (not all obviously but in general) are encouraged to be bulimic. It’s normalised to the point where there are often extra bathrooms set up just for puking in. With toilets that are specially designed for the amount of vomit they take in. And no one gives a single sh*t because of the competition and the lengths you have to go to succeed. Trainers will literally explain to you how to do it, and how to do it ‘properly’. They call it ‘wasting’ not purging but it’s basically forced bulimia. It’s incredibly fu**ed up
Image source: sackfullofwolves
#17
You know the people who write instruction manuals or user guides in things you buy?
Half the time, they’ve never even seen or touched the product. Some dude just sends us pictures, a rough description of how it’s supposed to work, and that’s it.
Image source: katakago
#18
Anesthesiologist here. The inhaled anesthetics or “gas” we use to keep you unconscious during surgery are a mystery to us. We don’t know how they work. There are theories, but we just know that it keeps you asleep…😬
Image source: DocHerb87
#19
As a kitchen hand I’d often have to ‘refresh’ the squid and mussels in a fine dining restaurant. That basically meant go through all the old smelly seafood, clean it in salt water and keep on selling it. I don’t order seafood in restaurants.
Image source: Kiwi_Woz
#20
Young kids talk to their teachers/coaches/counselors/principals about their parents. A lot. And kids pick up on all the dirty little secrets.
Image source: MineralWaterMike
#21
The real reason programmers have so many screens is because one of them almost always has Google pulled up on it. No one knows what they are doing 100% off the time. Its typically always “hmmm this should work” or “well hope this works”
Image source: killerhacks86
#22
I work at a county jail in the midwest. The most disturbing thing about jail is the terrible loop some inmates get stuck in. Many inmates with mental issues get caught in this loop where they cant have any clothes or items because they will try to kill themselves and they are locked in their cell for 23 hours a day. This makes them more angry so when they are finally let out they lash out at staff and then are locked down again. Its a vicious cycle for a lot of inmates and makes a lot of mental illness a whole lot worse. Staff cant do anything though because if they allow the inmate with mental illness to socialize then they risk a lawsuit from those around them, because of the individuals history of violent outbursts. Majority of hospitals wont take them because they wont risk their staff. So they are just stuck in a room and their only hope is consistent medication stabilizing them.
Image source: CodingHawk
#23
There is no reason to be embarrassed about your body, specifically your sex organs in front of your doctor, nurse ect. We have seen so many genitals and naked bodies, yours does not even faze us.
Image source: jebzz12
#24
The acceptance of illegally harvested or over harvested exotic lumber in the musical instrument industry.
Image source: okworks
#25
Teachers are often made to cap grade failures at 20% or lower. The students that did not demonstrate enough knowledge for credit to pass are still moved along to the next grade. This results in having 9th graders in my English 1 class who read below grade level, sometimes as stunted as on a 2nd or 3rd grade level. These students are constantly frustrated and can become behavior issues. It’s also heartbreaking to identify and feel helpless in catching the student up due to current demands from administrators and school leaders.
Image source: Bebeaj12
#26
I am a fairly high-ranking executive at a very large Japanese firm and literally everything important is decided while wining, dining and some things worse than that on the company dime. Meetings are perfunctory and usually conclude with “we agree to research and consider this important issue more carefully moving forward.” The the actual deal happens at 2am in a hostess club.
Image source: Shrimp_my_Ride
#27
I work for the state government here.
Basically, I honestly don’t work except for maybe 30 mins a day.
Image source: babsl
#28
Pretty much ALL the high-end handmade in Australia jewellery in Australia is made at a secret factory in Bali. All the clients have to show an established business and sign confidentiality agreements.
Image source: Mercinary-G
#29
University Professor: we don’t actually read your entire answer. Most of us don’t.
Image source: Revolutionary_Buddha
#30
This isn’t dark or really secret, but really funny and nobody else would know this: For playing trombone, we sometimes have to pull our buttocks together, so we can reach a high note.
Image source: Paul_Johnssen
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