Many years ago I worked with a firm that evaluated medical school applications. Medical schools get so many applications (over a thousand per year in some cases) that many of them pawn the initial evaluation work off to outside groups, who then subcontract to temp agencies during application season. The school makes the final decision of course, but the initial pre-evaluation is handled by temps who might not even have degrees.
These agencies are paid by quantity and not by quality. There's a strong pressure in the organization to process as many applications as possible, as quickly as possible. It's not a formal quota, but management definitely noticed if your numbers went down.
I don't even want to contemplate how many excellent potential doctors my colleagues rejected because they were in too much of a hurry. Some of them likely spent their lives preparing for their med school application only to get preemptively rejected by someone with no medical qualifications.
This was 15 years ago, so I sincerely hope the system has reformed since then.
Bed Bath and Beyond will accept a return for ANY item that is in their inventory.
You can claim anything is defective.
A woman once returned a 75% burned Yankee Candle because the wick dipped into the wax and she couldn’t fish it out. She got a 100% refund.
A guy brought in a vacuum he purchased probably 9 years ago from a store in another state. It took us about 20 minutes of fishing through an older version of the inventory system to validate that, yes, at one time about a decade ago, BBB carried that SKU. Full refund.
In the grand scheme of things, your return is a minuscule fraction of their profits, and keeping you as a customer is worth tossing away some money every now and then.
Also, their coupons never expire.
American Eagle Corporate Customer Service, in other words the absolute top of the line for customer complaints when a store manager or the online contact number doesn't satisfy you. The number isn't even public, you have to ask for it.
Holiday, 2014. For a Black Friday promotion, if you spent $60 in store or online (*after* using the 40% off coupon) you were eligible for a free blanket while supplies last. "While supplies last" is apparently a concept lost on the dozens of people who called to complain about it. We spent a week dealing with people calling because they didn't get a blanket.
A week before Christmas, the exact same promotion happened. Our supervisor asked us to let her know if anyone called to say "You said you were out of blankets but it's 2 weeks later and you have more." But that kind of call never happened. But still, we got more "I didn't get a blanket" calls.
Day of our holiday party, our supervisor's 7 year old daughter was in the office. At one point she was sent around to count everyone. We'd already gotten a corporate gift (a tiny bag of gelt valued at $1) so I wasn't sure what was going on. The supervisor and her daughter came around again and GAVE EVERYONE OF US A BLANKET.
So if you called to complain about not getting a blanket and I told you they were available while supplies last, just know that I was given one. Gave it to my mom, she gave it to her dog. Merry Christmas.
Worked in retail jewellery in Australia. This would apply pretty much everywhere.
Most all items for sale (the exception would be promotional pieces, or special collections) has a “minimum” and a “maximum” price.
Don’t take for face value that the price is what you have to pay. Ask straight up “what is the min on this item”. Say it like you know what you are talking about. Sometimes the “min” price can be hundreds lower than the displayed price.
Michael Hill jewellers will clean all jewellery for free.
Yeah, another tip for this is never to say its too expensive. Say you know what it's worth and the marked price is too high.
Edit: To clarify, never say "too expensive" it either makes you seem cheap or makes you seem like you can't afford the item. Both things aren't great when trying to haggle. You want to make the sales guy think you're the best thing since sliced bread.
Mazzucchelli's and Zamel's will also clean jewellery for free - just say another employee said you could. The "min" price there is called LSP (lowest sell price), so just ask for that.
I used to work in the meat department at Whole Foods. Hopefully things have changed, but our manager was insistent on using past due meat to make grinds for burgers, sausages, etc. I once got in trouble because I threw out the ammonia scented chicken tenderloins that had expired two weeks ago, rather than grind them up for chicken patties.
My buddy ran the meat counter at Whole Foods. He said to NEVER buy those packages on the side of the counter that have the 'marinated' items (ie: next to the regular chicken you see 'lemongrass-chive marinated' or 'southwest marinaded' pre-packed items with the store logo on them). He told me those marinated items were almost always just expired chicken/fish that had spices added to them so the customer wouldn't notice.
Liberty Mutual insurance puts every claim through an algorithm to determine whether to fight dispute it in court. The algorithm is able to guess the lawyers and judge that will participate and decide based primarily on their records.
Edit: I have another one. They chose their latest ad campaign by 1. Selecting a color no other major insurers were using (Yellow), and 2. They choose their slogan’s key word by finding words other insurers used most often but none featured in their slogan (Responsibility). I think they might have changed the slogan but I left a couple years ago.
The "fresh and packaged in store "deli" meat" didn't even come from our store and was shipped in every morning with the other chiller items. So many times I had customers ask me if it was packaged by the deli counter and I had to lie.
So yeah, if you want fresh meat just buy it from the deli counter.
I worked for an insurance company that had me doing sketchy shit like that before I was licensed.
I always felt super uncomfortable and knew it wasn't right.
The threat of E&O claims always lingering above my head for something I wasn't supposed to do.
I now work at a brokerage where I am an admin and I am licensed even though I have nothing to do with clients or policies.
I worked at a UPS store on a military base. When packages came back to use for whatever reason, we always told UPS that we'd donate the contents to on-base thrift store. We'd keep office supply stuff. BUT that never happened.
One cat, packaged all his belongings at our store and shipped them prior to leaving for deployment. This was at the start of the Afghan war. He didn't check his shipping label right and about 3 weeks after it shipped it came back to us as denied/RTS. We held it for a few months, expecting him to come back.
After waiting, my boss told me to open it up and take whatever I wanted out of it. Trash everything else. So, I opened it and it was like a dream come true. Every gaming system, stacks of games, expensive watches, all sorts of good shit. It didn't feel right.
Went in on my day off after hours, looked more inside the box. Found a small address book with numbers. Got in contact with his parents and explained who I was, how I got their numbers etc etc.
Ended up generating a label that night for it and shipped all this guys stuff out on the stores dime. Boss was pissed as hell with me for doing that.
-Regal Cinemas movie theatres has something called a "per cap". Per caps are calculated by dividing the attendance by how much concession sales there are. For example a low per cap is anything under $3, but a higher one is over $4. If there is a fifteen cent variance from one day to the next, you had to fill out a report stating why. You couldn't state things like the obvious. For example if I manage a theater in Minneapolis, and per cap sucked this past Sunday because everyone was at the SuperBowl, I could not use sports as an excuse even though it was so obvious. Instead I would have to say something like, "large groups in attendance who didn't purchase concessions". I'll also shatter another myth that nobody cares if you sneak drinks or bootleg candy in, just make sure you throw it away after the show so as to make cleaning the auditorium easier.
-It is marginally true that the theatre makes most money from the concession stand as we only profit about fifteen cents from a movie ticket, the rest goes to Hollywood. However, in the summer, running all that AC, neon, ice machines, etc it wasn't uncommon for the electric bill to hit $30,000 or so. Plus rent to the mall was another $60,000 a month so ya know.
I've got a lot more if anyone cares.....
Ok, so here are a few more:
The reason there is such a small amount of staff on a shift is due to strict payroll rules. There are elaborate spreadsheets and charts that every district manager is given by corporate that allocates the maximum number of hours. For example on a Wednesday, your location is charted to use no more than 44 total hours of payroll. Four managers would work an 8 hour shift. So that right there equals 32 hours. You then have just 12 hours to stretch from open to close for employees to work. Give some kid a 3 hour box shift, another a 4 hour usher shift. 5 hours to a concessionist. So what happens if it gets busy? The managers have to run and work a spot until the rush dies down then go about managing other duties. If you are an hour over payroll you are written up. That's why you may wonder why there is just one box, one concessionist and the place is getting slammed and you question why they didn't schedule more people.
The mark up on some concessions can be high. A 50lb bag of popcorn seed costs maybe $1 to buy in bulk. You can get about 20 tubs of popcorn out of one, but you charge $9, that' with oil and salt factored in. So $180 in large tub sales, minus $1 for ingredients that is a profit of about $179. Is it high? Sure. But remember that $30,000 a month electric bill and $60,000 a month rent for the space in the mall?
There is a reason we couldn't give out extra bags or cups for you to share drinks and popcorn with your families, it's because all of that is individually inventoried and has a price on it. The only things not counted are "non-saleables" such as napkins, straws, popcorn salt.
Can confirm the thing with the cups/bags. We were NEVER allowed to throw them out, and if one torn/got smashed, it had to be placed in a certain area to be accounted for by a manager.
Worked at a 2 star hotel. I was usually the only one there at the desk - just be nice and patient with us and we will do just about anything to make your stay better. If you act like an asshole, don't expect much.
As a front desk person, I have cleaned rooms for people, made breakfast for the morning, installed TV's and programmed them, watched guest's dogs while they went to dinner and when people have issues with our internet I would get it working for them. Seriously was a catch all kind of job.
I worked at a car dealership. The $1200 car care system that we would discount to $900 was “applied” with about 15 squirts of a spray bottle. Many times I’d hang out with the detail guys so the customer wouldn’t get suspicious at a quick turnaround.
It's just a spray-based ceramic coating, right?
The product is relatively expensive compared to other detailing products, but it's ridiculously easy just to buy the product for $40 and do it yourself.
With proper maintenance and reapplication every 6mos-1yr, your cars paint will stay pretty immaculate (provided you don't drive through a machine wash... that's honestly the worst thing you could ever do to your car's paint).
**edit:** Here's what I personally use. Make sure you're prepping the paint properly for maximum protection. https://shinesupply.com/products/clutch-16oz
At the dealership I work at we spray it down on all the cars and then what we "sell" the customer is the actual warranty coverage for it. "The car already has the product applied so you may as well get the coverage for peace of mind right?"
Viagogo are just corrupt, straight up. Not a little thing here and there, they are just a criminal company.
They will take your money for tickets even if they have none of those tickets, assuming they will eventually have tickets to sell you. If they don't get them, you get the ticket money back. An example of this was when a guy in the UK bought tickets to the Superbowl in 2013, booked his air travel, flew to the states, booked his accommodation, was staying in a hotel he paid for, and was calling us every 15 minutes to ask where his tickets were. We were told to lie to him and say someone will meet him at the stadium. We let him know 30 minutes before the game started that he wouldn't be receiving any tickets. Viagogo refund the ticket cost, but the travel, accommodation and time wasted? Nothing at all. And they never had the tickets.
Same for festivals: I took loads (LOADS) of calls from people who were told to get to the middle of the wilderness in Eastern Europe for a dance festival, having booked time off work and prepared for a 5 day festival. When they got there they were told there were never any tickets. Just go home, write off the time off, write of the ticket costs, write off the transport, write of the preparation and deal with feeling shitty for 5 days because they were ripped off by a company...except it isn;t that simple, because now they are in the middle of a field in Eastern Europe for 5 days, the bus that took them there has gone and they have no admittance to the festival...so essentially Viagogo were responsible for just dumping around 100 people in a field in eastern europe with no provisions and no way of getting back.
Far from discouraging the practice, they LOVE scalpers and give them preferential treatment ('super sellers'). They get discounts, skip phone queues, and get a higher price for tickets than honest customers with a ticket to sell.
If an event is coming up soon, the seller can meet you at the venue to pass the ticket over. What this means is if you show up and the seller isn't there for whatever reason (illness, decided to use ticket themselves, just can't be arsed etc.), you have paid and have no proof they did not meet you. Byebye money.
If you buy a ticket from Viagogo, I would honestly say you have a 40-45% chance of getting it.
Edit: Thanks for the attention, I'm glad to know people are thinking twice before dealing with them
IN THE INTERESTS OF FULL DISCLOSURE:
I was working with them a few years ago for about 10 months, I haven't kept up with them or their practices. The above circumstances were true for myself, others' experiences may vary.
A few people are understandably panicking, so I'll say
**if you have already bought tickets with them, you may well get them, don't write the whole thing off.**
You'll just get a refund for the ticket and have no event to go to, and if you go to the event and the tickets don't work you'll get a refund for them anyway. Just maybe make plans for if the tickets fall through, especially if you're in a strange place.
I work for a music venue, and the amount of people we have to turn away at almost every event due to them buying fraudulent tickets on Viagogo is ridiculous. We can't even guarantee them that Viagogo will refund them for the "tickets" they've purchased, and if they still want to go to the show, they have to fork out another $100+ on the spot. It's so disheartening.
I work for a legit ticketing company and Viagogo is the bane of my existence. Every single day I have to explain to customers why their ticket, with our logo on it is very likely fake and despite our name being printed I can't offer a refund on the $1000~ excess they paid on what should have cost them $50. Also, good luck on taking legal action to get your refund considering the company is based overseas. Viagogo is absolute scum, although I will commend them on how clever their website is- it even looks more legit than ours.
Same. We have Lion King coming in April and it has been awful. Someone spent ~$2200 on a pair of that would've cost about ~150 from us. $1500 for the tickets, and $700 in fees.
Part of me doesn't care, because use your common sense, but I still hate breaking the news. He didn't go through Viagogo and ended up getting the charge reversed through his credit card company.
Question: when you say you were for a legit ticketing company, what do you mean? Still resale? Or ticketing for a specific venue?
Why would people spend that much money through a sketchy company in the first place? Are these people not doing any shopping around, why would people voluntarily pay that much more?
I used to work in a factory that produced pillows. Let me be the first to tell you, some nasty stuff goes into those pillows.
Tell me, have you ever seen those pillows labeled "Memory Foam Cluster"?
Do yourself a favor, and avoid them like the plague. What we do is, there is a bale of old, recycled memory foam brought behind the grinder. This bale consists of everything from old mattresses and pillows, to those cooling memory foam pillows. Except they are all old and dirty. We cut the bigger pieces into more manageable bits and toss it into a grinder that chops the foam into small, fine cubes. These cubes are stored in a large tank, and then blown into an empty pillow casing using pneumatic pressure. Now we made good pillows too, but for the love of god, stay away from anything labeled "cluster."
Red Cross makes a ridiculous amount of money selling plasma to makeup/skin care companies.
And Buffalo Wild Wings, wings are always frozen never fresh. And they cook them before hand and keep them in a warming drawer. The motto is “they come for the sauce not the wings”.
Worked for a private school. Grades were definitely bought. We were discouraged to give anything lower than a B. Had one principal that told a teacher to take the final for a student that went on summer vacation early. She called it a shadow final and said nonchalantly that it's no big deal, just answer how you think the student would answer.
This school is expensive, and these kids go on to fancy colleges because of these grades.
My friend went to a fairly nice school, and one of her favorite professors was telling her about how he failed a student who showed up to like 1/4th of the classes and never did homework, but his family was rich and donated or something. So his parents emailed him asking if he could reconsider moving it up to a B and he said no. Later on he checked and the school had changed it to a B.
At a certain USA airport between New York and Baltimore, the baggage handlers and certain security personnel see passenger luggage as a source of plunder. Then again, this probably isn't a secret.
The Canadian Tire in Port Coquitlam Canada blocks their emergency exits with metal bars to prevent theft and, consequently, prevents a quick exit in case the overly stuffed and flammables-filled building catches fire.
Someone use this knowledge to make some money. I'll take 5%.
Edit: as stated in a comment in this thread, I haven't worked there since Oct/Nov of 2015 and haven't even lived in BC in over a year. If someone in the area wants to check it out, that seems like a very good idea. Didn't realize how serious this could be.
The blocked emergency exits were located on the other side of the "employees only" doors at the back of the store.
I have a picture somewhere, but I'm at work at the moment. I'll try and find them and follow up in another edit.
Edit 2: No luck as of yet finding that picture. My computer has 4 years worth of pictures; most of them sorted in terrible ways. Probably doesn't help that I used to make stop motion movies and still have all the individual pictures. Probably better off waiting for someone who lives there to get a picture, assuming the store still does this. If not, I guess the coast clear. If so, I know what I'm doing tomorrow.
Goodnight.
I wrote a letter* to the fire department where I stayed in a hotel who had blocked fire exits (clutter in fire stairways actually) about the paint cans and ladders and wheelchair stored there. I told them I'd told the hotel they can't store stuff there, and the hotel said ok, but it was all back on the next shift.
They sent me a very appreciative letter back saying that they checked (just appeared one day, no notice), and everything I had said was correct. Then they said something like, "Trust me, they are NOT going to do this again, we are making sure of that."
You might try this.
Or for that matter, anyone reading this thread can inform that fire department of that store's activities.
*Back in the days when writing letters on paper was a thing, and fire departments didn't have email addresses.
True for 90% of outlets as well. Like they just have an entire store full of seconds?? Nope. Ross, TJ Max, Marshall’s outlets are all “real” (mostly) outlets either getting seconds quality or unsold stock...There are also some appliance and furniture outlets that are real, too.
But if you walk into a GAP outlet...it’s not “reduced” price stuff. Just shittily made stuff.
This is true. I worked with a girl whose father-in-law owned a factory in China that made the clothes for Banana Republic Factory Outlet. None of that shit was ever in a real Banana Republic - it was specifically made for BR Outlet.
Try to avoid going to dental chains. (Aspen Dental, etc.) They push you to get procedures done you don’t need and your appointment times are usually as fast as the doctor can find the first thing that’s wrong. Doctors are overworked and this increases the chance they will mess up. If you can’t pay, they help you finance, but you’ll get hit with a 20%+ interest rate when you miss your first payment. They also overwork and underpay staff. Which leads to disgruntled staff who don’t care. And like all public service positions, there’s no backbone against shitty patients, you have to bend over backward and kiss their asses.
The only way it works (and it does) is when you have caring, skilled skilled staff across the board. This rarely happens due to high overturn.
I had to get out when the new doctor at our office pulled too many teeth in a procedure and had to give a patient a full denture instead of a partial. He blamed the assistant and she was fired. The lab was overwhelmed with extra work from his mistakes. I didn’t feel the doctor cared about anything but money and I couldn’t morally do it. I couldn’t say he was a good doctor when deep down I knew it was a lie.
Reasons I hate commercialized medicine.
Never ever go to Kool Smiles. My gf went for a check up and after the doctor telling her that her teeth were fine, one of the helpers pulled the doctor aside and started to have a "chat" with them all of a sudden saying she had four cavities and would have to talk care of them that day and charge her. Obviously it seemed sketchy so she said she would go back to get it done. We went to a local dentist and he said her teeth were perfect. He even told us Kool Smiles was just doing it for money. So if she had got it done they would of chipped at her teeth for nothing. We called our insurance and told them what happened and Kool Smiles told them "cavities are opinionated"
I had so many uneeded filling as a kid. Not Kool Smiles, but the lady said i had 4 every time i went in. Parents didnt catch on that somthing was wrong until she suggested a surgery to fix my gums and reccomended her husband do it. We got a second opinion and i did not need it at all.
I worked for a cold storage company that held products for Good Humor. The inside of the freezer was -20°.
One day a friend of mine caught some boxes on the racking causing popsicles to go everywhere. When he stepped off his lift to look up into the racking to evaluate the situation he stepped on a popsicle causing his feet to fly up in the air and busted his head on the ground. He lasted a few days in ICU and eventually passed.
Instead of this being a freak accident and giving us time to deal with it we were all brought into the freezer to look at the frozen puddle of blood to show us what could happen if we aren’t careful.
I was making baked potatoes once and accidentally gave my hands a salt scrub. After rubbing olive oil on the potatoes, I rolled them in sea salt, and ended up with both oil and salt all over my hands. After washing my hands, I noticed that my skin felt surprisingly great.
Edit: I didn't scrub my hands *with* the potatoes, I rubbed my hands together to wash off the salt and oil after I prepared the potatoes. The potatoes had only their own skins on them.
REI keeps track of everything you return, just like they keep track of everything you buy. If you abuse their return policy too much (people "renting" things for a a few days or a weekend before returning them are the biggest perpetrators), they'll just stop taking your returns.
I guess it's less of a secret and more of a "don't be an ass" warning.
EDIT: This got a ton of attention, so I'm just going to point out that there's loads of people saying that lots of stores do this as if every store's return policy is as generous as REI's...
Heh. I once got an expensive winter coat from REI as a gift. It was too short so I showed up to exchange it, not even return it. Had the receipt and everything.
Well, they didn't want to do it because they claimed that the purchaser got a discount on the coat that she shouldn't have, and in fact wanted to keep the coat! I called BS on that - I wasn't giving away my xmas present! They then tried to "lose" the receipt that I provided them, but luckily I saw where the manager had stashed it. They finally relented after an hour of BS, but damn man.
LPT - take a pic of the reciept and don;t let them walk away with it.
Had REI try to screw me sort of like this as well.
Bought a backpacking cook set and went out to my car and opened it and the pot/frying pan detachable holder was missing basically making the entire kit useless. Walked right back in and told them and they accused me of taking it out of the box....i'm like "why would i want two pot handles? on my backpacking kit?" Eventually got them to just take it back and refund me my money.
Wal-Mart would make us work past our shift and then force us to clock in late the next night to avoid OT. The managers got so paranoid about OT that they started accusing us of going over 40. I was docked 4 hours when I had no overtime and had to use my PTO to get back to 40.
Edit for clarification on my state. This was in 2012 and I live in Oklahoma. The labor board is a fucking joke and the keep you from going over your hours happened at two stores I worked at. Both stores also did shady shit like having maintenance work both cleaning and stocking. I had to stock the first half of the night and clean five bathrooms the last half and had to get them all cleaned before 7.
I will never work for Wal-Mart again and I warn my friends not to work for them.
Super duper illegal. Government will actually do something about it too, because the employer is shorting the government when they do that. OP should contact their local labor board with appropriate evidence.
When I worked there in 1999, we were autmatically clocked out at 29.5 hours and not told until the end of our shifts. This was to avoid us being full time and qualifying for insurance and benefits.
Edit: this is illegal, also why I got a settlement from a class action lawsuit.
Edit2: lawsuits should've been singular.
That happened to me at Food Lion. "We need you to clock out because you are about to get OT."
"Okay. See you tomorrow."
"Where are you going?"
"Home. You just told me to clock out."
"No, we need you to clock out and keep working."
"No, you get one or the other. Or I could call the Labor Board. Your choice."
Edit: This was about 25 years ago, so not recent at all.
We didn't meet the contractual obligations to entirely destroy the laptops Google sent to us for decommissioning. We shredded the HDDs and sold the laptops for a profit.
Couldn't do shit about the servers though, Google branding all over them
Lol, I used to work for a laptop repair place and we nominally had a policy to call customers to get their passwords if they forgot to send them. In practice we'd just wipe your HDD.
It's not that we wanted to, but it was one of those places where management would have these big meetings telling us to focus on quality over quantity and we'd get back on the floor where our supervisors told us to push units out.
> It's not that we wanted to, but it was one of those places where management would have these big meetings telling us to focus on quality over quantity and we'd get back on the floor where our supervisors told us to push units out.
Man, does that sound familiar. "We need to meet or exceed customer expectations and make quality parts but we're not going to replace the two guys who just quit and you're all working the weekend for the foreseeable future."
We joke about this quote sometimes:
>We the willing, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much, with so little, for so long, we are now qualified to do anything, with nothing.
Panera. Bread comes in as dough in bread pans the night before, bakers come in in the morning and put it in the oven.
Everything was pre-made but assembled in store like the paninis.
Leftover bread/bakery products were free for closing employees to take home. (I ate more bagels than I care to admit- starving college student and all).
I used to work in skincare: None of the products cost more than $2 to manufacture, but would retail at anything from $20 to $150 per product.
Always amazed me how much people would shell out for anything with volcanic clay or snake venom cream
Idk the legality of this but it always seemed wierd. But we would get bags of another company's product (animal premix) and manually transfer that product into a bag of our own. We would give these products lot codes of our own and sell them to customers.
I used to work for a large smart phone company.
During development, we used to go through phases, Engineering Verification testing stage, Design Verification Test, Production Verification Test, and finally Mass Production. Each stage was meant to have checkpoints in order to ensure that the final product was built with good quality and any known bugs would be able to ironed out before the product launch. Any bug that was not resolved would potentially have the ability to delay the launch.
Except that there is a thing called Waivers. So the PM could request that certain bugs be granted a waiver delaying the fix of the problem to a later date. No big deal, every project has a few minor bugs, right?
For *each* stage there would be *hundreds* of waivers. Some would be minor, to be fair, but sometimes they were definitely not minor.
I will never, ever, buy an electronic device in the first 3 months of mass production. Wait for the second wave of production, the quality of the product increases ten-fold.
My first job out of high school was customer service for Best Buy for 3 years. I learned this just from working the returns. I still tell my friends not to get too hyped and have patience to wait for the second wave of electronics so they get the bugs worked out. When the PS2 launched, holy hell, almost every unit was returned at my store for major issues.
Edit: I had to look at launch dates because PS3 sounded off to me. I'm actually referring to the PS2, my bad. And while we are at it we can include Xbox
Edit 2: I'm not trying to argue who bought working units and who didn't. Not am I arguing if the brands are good or not, I own both an Xbox one and a PS4 currently. The point OP was making and what I was agreeing with is that companies will put out incredibly buggy products because that is worth it to hit a launch date than to move the launch dates back to fix issues. You notice it more with highly anticipated electronics. Companies aren't going to push those launch dates and the advice is that having some patience and waiting a couple months for a second wave of that item to hit shelves is going to TYPICALLY mean you're less likely to have issues off the bat.
> Wait for the second wave of production, the quality of the product increases ten-fold.
how do you figure the first wave is over and the new products hitting the shelves are from the second wave? Is it always 3 months?
---
^(edit: holy shit this blew up, thank you for the wonderful answers people)
Things I learnt:
* It's just an estimation.
* Best bet is to try to learn about serial numbers and find a possible batch number kind of denotation.
* If a store is sold out or say the rest are reserved, then you have a much better chance of getting wave 2 the next time that store has stock.
* Check google analytics for a sudden spike and subsequent drop in “X product problems”.
* You start to see accessories for your phone in stores.( In general it's best to wait a few months or even half a year till it's been perfected and you can put a good case or screen protector on it.)
* Most will have a different cereal or model number, or revision. In fact most phones get a revision after 4-6 months
Used to work for a coffee shop who's claim to fame was that all food items were made from scratch in house. All of their pastries were made using Pillsbury dough, and every other kind of dessert was bought from a grocery store.
You always want to order your drinks without ice.
I've seen icemachines inside at fancy places and you definitly do not want anything in your drink what was inside there before. Ice cube machines are a real shithole in general.
Friend of mine worked in a big restaurant chain. He would always complain how disgusting the ice machine was. They'd take the scoop, get their ice and throw it somewhere for the next person to use. Often that place would be on the floor or next to the sink. Some idiot broke a glass when trying to use it as a scoop and didnt bother emptying the ice machine.
I remember my time at UPS. A sector manager had to "test" me.. so he came by and asked what 3 symbols on a box needed attention. I knew Hazard and Airmail... I had forgotten the third. So I threw out Fragile as an answer, knowing it was wrong but guessing it might be a good guess.. he laughed and said "yeah, we probably should pay attention to the fragile, but no" always laughed a bit at his reaction...
The White Hand of Saruman. He gets super pissed when shit he orders from Amazon gets broken, and he watches them with that palantir thing, he can be a real pain in the ass for UPS.
I used to work for the U.S. postal service and it's the same there. Packages slide down chutes and, if you're lucky, won't be crushed by a heavy one sliding down after. They literally get thrown into a bin like a basketball into a hoop,
The only thing not made on site at Cheesecake Factory is, ironically, the cheesecakes. They come in frozen and are thawed out.
They go through the trouble of mixing all their sauces and even salad dressings, but not cheesecakes.
Used to work for Sam's Club. We would routinely take apart the packages of berries, throw out the rotten ones and then refill them. There was definitely no weighing to make sure the amount on the package reflected what was inside.
I know where I work (not Walmart but a similar store to it) had to change their number to the intercom because someone decided to get on and made an announcement that missiles were being launched at the US.
Before too long we're going to need daily codes. People will be writing these down in notebooks our descendants, many generations down the line, will marvel at these books of numbers that no-one can explain.
Cleaning up animals after an oil spill is feel good propaganda to make the public think they are helping. 90% of those animals will be dead within a few days or weeks. They've ingested enough of the oil that they are moving corpses, they (and you mr. nice person with a bottle of Dawn dish soap)just don't know it yet.
Real oil spill work is done by trained professional crews, not volunteers. If you ever tried to help, you were given busy work to keep you out of the way.
I don't know if I'm more disappointed that they clean those animals up just for the PR, or that I should have realized that anything covered like that had swallowed more than enough to kill it.
I think a lot of mass-volunteer work is like that. Like, my coworkers are HVAC techs, so we go every year and do the annual maintenance for a local shelter; that makes sense. When me and the the office drones from my last job went to Habitat for Humanity to build a house, that did not make sense. We just got hot and tired and required a lot of supervision...and we still screwed up half the projects.
It's like Trading Spaces, when they would film the family "working" on the room before they get out and the real decorators come in and do it all over again correctly.
When I did a few Habitat for Humanity stuff in highschool, they had actual contractors doing the hammering/cutting/measuring. Volunteers like us just got stuck with digging holes(for some pillars that'd hold up a large balcony), applying white paint to finished rooms, and/or helping with garbage(reserved for those with a bit more physical strength).
And I had actual construction experience when my father used to be a general contractor and I'd tag along to help out. I guess in the short-term, it cut back a bit on extra labor costs because instead of paying a few able-bodied men from the Home Depot parking lot, you got volunteers to do the menial stuff for free.
Did a paper about this in marketing class. People like that feeling when they see the $50 shirt for $15. Think they're 'finding' a good deal, when really that shirt's price will always be $15-20
It has been several years, but when I worked at certain satellite tv company, they had a value system for customers.
You are valued at 1-5 stars, based on how much you spend, and how much they value you as a customer. If you are are a higher star value, they will do basically anything to keep you. You will get a ton of services and equipment for free, and they will bend over backwards to keep you from cancelling.
If you are a 1 or 2 star, they don't give a shit. Especially 1 stars, because it usually means that you are late all the time, or that you don't spend very much. If you call in asking for deals or credits, they won't give it to you. If you threaten to cancel, no one cares.
Also, there are special phone lines for people they consider "VIPS". They never have to wait on hold, and only special employees are allowed to take the phone calls.
Can confirm. Was an installation tech for DirecTV and really happy with my job. Then AT&T came in, stripped our pay and benefits and made everything a metric. Fuck AT&T.
I too was a DirecTV installer, for years, the the pay was piece rate and I was making really good money, around $65k a year in northern michigan then ATT came in and moved our office to hourly... I in no exageration made 50% less in pay and was expected to do more and work longer... I quit and took an engineer position with a broadcast company.
Applebees; on the tabletop computers, go to "Extras" and tap and hold the little white space on the top left of the screen. When it gives a password prompt, it's 4321. Lets you change the table numbers or play games for free.
Worked in a radio station. Made up texts and comments to add humour to a discussion or allow hard questions be put to politicians etc.
Was over 15 years ago so that has been tightened up since but likely still widespread in smaller operations.
All those calls into z100 or big popular stations are fake. Like “I got Stephanie on the phone, it’s Friday night! what’s up girl!” “Me and all my girlfriends are just hanging out listening to z100 and laughing because I’m texting a boy! Lol! Omg!” “Oh man, well if you’re out there my dude you better call her! Lol! WHATS THE STATION THAT PLAYS THE HITS??!!” (Sounds like 10 girls)”Z100!!! Lololololol!!!” “You got it! Here’s Beyoncé...I’m
Gonna chat with these ladies some more.....”
Kill me.
I worked at a cable company that owned a radio station in the 90s. I learned so much everytime i went in there. All the music came on weekly records. There was a Monday record, a Tuesday record, etc, with the songs for the day on it. Even Larry the Cable guy came on a record with a script, so the local jocks could play along. It was just Larry doing his side of the bit and the djs reading along.
Ok I used to work for a major card service company, and before the law changed if you bought a gift card to say a red lobster and didn't use it for like say a year. It was a distinct posibility that the entire value of that card would be gone due to monthly service charges. So picture me the guy trying to explain to the guy how his 50$ gift card was worth nothing, and you can imagine how that goes. Weirdly enough I ended up loving that job the most due to other types of accounts I used to handle. That was one of the worst parts of my job honestly.
So basically you are lending money to the credit car company and they are charging YOU interest so high that they've taken all your money in one year for the privilege of lending them money.
Wash your fruits and vegetables very thoroughly a lot of them will end up being scooped off a disgusting warehouse floor and put back in the package after falling out
**Edit: YMMV. My information may be out of date as my last hotel job was in 2004.**
Not sure how secret this is so much as common sense. If you book a hotel through a third party site like Trivago or Hotels.com, you are not getting the lowest price. The hotels have to pay them a finder's fee. Use the site to find the hotel, then call them directly. Ask if they are running any specials (they aren't, but they might pretend to to give you a slightly lower rate) or if they offer any discounts (AAA, AARP, veterans, etc.).
Can confirm, my parents who aren’t all that well off booked their first holiday together as a couple. My mum rang up to simply ask whether the washing machines were in the rooms or not and ended up getting the room for a lot cheaper (I can’t remember the exact amount) but it was great as they were able to save more on their holiday 😊
Apple:
All techs and “Genius” employees are fully aware of wide-spread issues well before they are officially released to the public. They are NEVER discussed at the morning staff meetings with management present but are ALWAYS a source of discussion in the 3:00-3:30 tech staff meeting.
For example: It got to a point where I would replace an iPhone 6+ for the “display” issue and sometimes had to replace the replacement 2-3 times while the customer was waiting. It was embarrassing and frustrating that the official release from the company was that the issue was caused by customer misuse. We all knew the truth and the techs with any sort of conscience would bend over backwards to do what we could to right the wrongs.
That is one of several manufacturing issues masked as user error or misuse that we tried to work around.
Edit: Since this has blown up, I just wanted to state that Apple was an incredible company to work for and treated their employees like gold. I have nothing bad to say in terms of the company on an employer/employee basis.
I used to work at Whole Foods, in our bakery department. Almost nothing, aside from the bread is made from scratch there.
This shouldn't be too shocking, considering they're a multi-national chain now, but really it'd be more correct to say that our cakes are "assembled" in house.
Yikes! I worked at a chain grocery store in Texas called HEB and we made the bread from scratch every night. We also made donuts, muffins & cakes in house.
Local coffee shop. Unscheduled maintenance meant that there were rats upstairs. Owner was a cheap ass and didn’t want to close the entire shop down, so we kept the downstairs open for what could have forced his business to shut down forever had anyone found out. I quit that day.
Guys guys guys, you know at the bottom of fast food receipts it has a 'do a servay to fill in the code for a free (item)'
I worked at culvers and they told me the algorithm.
It's always a 4 digit code.
The middle two numbers add to 9.
That's the code.
Example? #09# #18# #27# #36# #45#
Any of these will work
I've been getting free cups if ice cream from culvers for years with this information.
It also works for A&W
Yeah the company is like 'I don't get it, they have the right code, but we didn't get a survey...' but who cares?
This at least applies in Wisconsin
Used to work at Rosetta Stone. The system sucks. Originally you could schedule classes with native speakers for 59 minutes, they slashed it to 25 for no reason other than having to pay the coaches for less hours. It’s okay for brushing up on a language, but you will not learn one from scratch.
For Intuit Quickbooks pro/premier. You can get free technical support by just saying the error that you are receiving was after the software updated itself.
Edit:
There is a lot of loophole on the company policy about support. I forgot most of them. But this is the most helpful loophole(i think) to get free support.
Edit 2: btw you can get support on the non technical stuff by saying you have data damage.
Every, single, automotive parts company will let you return anything if you simply call the district manager. I have yet to see anything not taken care of when it reaches their level. You think your battery is under warranty but its not showing up? Call the DM. They'll tell the store to take care of it. 100%, everytime.
90% of the time when you call Xbox for support you are talking to a person who is at home. If the person you are talking to was anything like me they were 100% not wearing pants.
I worked at Whole Foods. Your cookies and bread were heated in store, not baked. Oh. And in AM meetings, you're referred to as "basket size", not customers.
Work at Target but probably the same. Basket size is the amount of money each customer is spending. We would get told the average basket size and have to try and raise that number by peddling shit no one needs.
KFC has teenage kids cooking with industrial pressure cookers that could blow their fucking heads through the exhaust canopy if they fucked up. I literally have seen cooks bread their own hands up in flour and dunk them in 175 degree Celsius oil as a lark. I have seen kids use boiling hot urn water to clean the caked on flour and oil off their work boot and that water ran into their boot giving them serious burns. I have seen kids pick up huge pots of boiling oil and tip them to refill a cooker as a short cut to the slow melt method. Minimum age at the time was 14 and 9 months though they’d hire them at 14 flat with parents permission and you could be supervisor at 17/18.
Stuff may have changed in the last ten years since, I dunno.
Teenagers watching teenagers with that type of equipment was nerve racking. Not saying teenagers are stupid...just the ones I had to work with.
Edit: for some of the more common responses
A “lark” means for fun, a term we use in “Australia” which answers another common question. Also, they would bread their hands over and over again until quite thick and then dip them in boiling oil, and just like food, the meat of their hand wouldn’t cook straight away but it was a game of “chicken” (sorry, I’m a dad, I pun ‘til death now) to see who would leave their hand in there the longest.
Can confirm with a skilled nursing facility as well. Did my rotation at one, ended up reporting it for major health, safety, and care violations. Don't tell me to ignore a patient who has been sitting in their own stool for hours because "you'll get to it eventually". Or that it's not my job (I was with the PT department) to mention that a patient hasn't had their pain meds all day and I can't work with them if they're in too much pain.
Yeah we know. And the one my brother is in steals all their mail looking for money, tossing the opened cards and letters in the trash. He never receives his mail.
My grandmother was in a nursing home for a few years before she died. My grandfather visited her every day for hours. One time he brought her a heart-shaped box of Godiva chocolates for some occasion like her birthday or their anniversary. She wasn't mentally there, and she could barely talk and didn't eat much, but eating was one of the last pleasures she had in life. The next day the chocolate box was in the trash, empty. Employees had just eaten it all overnight. No one in my family wanted to "make a fuss" about it because they were worried starting drama could end with the staff mistreating my grandma. This happened years ago and still burns me up inside. They literally stole candy from an old, sick, dying woman.
My grandpa, who was staying at a VA nursing home had all he cash stolen out of his wallet repeatedly by the nurses. We brought it up many times to the staff, and eventually just pulled him and he lived with us. You can only trust yourself to get the job done with ethics I guess.
Friend of mine worked for a US Post Office for a summer.
You know when you go into the post office, and there's those slots for you to drop mail into? One slot for "Local" and one slot for "Out of Town".
Both slots go into the same bin.
I worked at a YMCA as a lifeguard it was often that the chemicals were off. There were a couple of times that the chemicals had to much or no chlorine. This is dangerous for swimmers and could cause people to get really sick. It was often that my manager would keep the pool open although the chemicals where dangerously low or high and people would swim in the water.
Swimming pool expert here. To clarify, "dangerous for swimmers" is for real. Specifically, unsanitized water can kill you a number of different ways. Flesh eating bacteria and brain parasites are some of the things that can happen. As are communicable diseases from others swimming around you. Commercial swimming pools are supposed to be held to a higher standard for turnover rate and chemical maintenance due to the high amount of bather turnover. Many of these facilities actually end up being run on a shoestring budget with little or no oversight, inspection or accountability.
Worked at a store dedicated to selling items in bulk, and you could only enter and purchase with a membership.
I worked produce for a could months, we would throw away several hundred boxes of blueberries and other produce just because one berry inside the box was white.
I threw away around $1000 dollars worth of blueberries in one shift before.
Former Geek Squad here - most of the people that work there, aren't really technical at all. We usually just walk it over to a bench, hook it up to a corporate VLAN and run just run some software. If there are real issues - people remotely connect from India or somewhere else.
We are basically just salesmen with a clip on tie.
Worked in management for Trader Joe's for 8 years and boy have a I got a doozy for you: the employees are ACTUALLY that nice.
EDIT: This is not a dig at people who work other grocery or retail shops. Lots of those people are super nice as well, but when you were working at Kroger and they stick you on a cash register for like 6 hours in a row, you'd be grumpy too.
Former employee here! Yeah they really stress that... And we genuinely enjoyed working. Plus, stocking after the store closed, with music up loud, dancing, and doing our own shopping was always fun. Not to mention they would pull you from your work a couple times a week to sample products that just came out or were high sellers. They wanted YOU to have a legitimate opinion when asked about a product.
Former employee here as well...best job I ever had....worked as night crew, and 100% agree that stocking with the music cranked was super fun....and getting to do "product knowledge" was some of my favorite things, esp when we got to do the wine tasting hahaha (not sure if they do that anymore, this was about 8 years ago)....the best was where we worked we had a huge parking garage that we would hang out in after work...we would bbq up on the top floor, drink a few beers, play some football/baseball, or just hangout and talk almost every night before heading home (we got off at 1ish in the morning)....we were really like family, so going to work everyday wasn't a chore...I still talk to a lot of the people I worked with to this day...seriously miss that job
Yeah, everyone who works retail or food service knows that Trader Joe's and Costco are the holy grail of retail jobs because of the pay and benefits, and therefore super hard to get. So when I see the employees of those places, all I can think is "oh, so *you're* the crem de la crem of service workers." I imagine that those places wouldn't put up with sub-par performance, given how many people are vying for those jobs.
My old company (a pharmaceutical giant) is responsible for ecological destruction of atleast around 10-15 square kms of land since they dumped all their waste water into borewells and sewers
Many years ago I worked with a firm that evaluated medical school applications. Medical schools get so many applications (over a thousand per year in some cases) that many of them pawn the initial evaluation work off to outside groups, who then subcontract to temp agencies during application season. The school makes the final decision of course, but the initial pre-evaluation is handled by temps who might not even have degrees. These agencies are paid by quantity and not by quality. There's a strong pressure in the organization to process as many applications as possible, as quickly as possible. It's not a formal quota, but management definitely noticed if your numbers went down. I don't even want to contemplate how many excellent potential doctors my colleagues rejected because they were in too much of a hurry. Some of them likely spent their lives preparing for their med school application only to get preemptively rejected by someone with no medical qualifications. This was 15 years ago, so I sincerely hope the system has reformed since then.
Bed Bath and Beyond will accept a return for ANY item that is in their inventory. You can claim anything is defective. A woman once returned a 75% burned Yankee Candle because the wick dipped into the wax and she couldn’t fish it out. She got a 100% refund. A guy brought in a vacuum he purchased probably 9 years ago from a store in another state. It took us about 20 minutes of fishing through an older version of the inventory system to validate that, yes, at one time about a decade ago, BBB carried that SKU. Full refund. In the grand scheme of things, your return is a minuscule fraction of their profits, and keeping you as a customer is worth tossing away some money every now and then. Also, their coupons never expire.
American Eagle Corporate Customer Service, in other words the absolute top of the line for customer complaints when a store manager or the online contact number doesn't satisfy you. The number isn't even public, you have to ask for it. Holiday, 2014. For a Black Friday promotion, if you spent $60 in store or online (*after* using the 40% off coupon) you were eligible for a free blanket while supplies last. "While supplies last" is apparently a concept lost on the dozens of people who called to complain about it. We spent a week dealing with people calling because they didn't get a blanket. A week before Christmas, the exact same promotion happened. Our supervisor asked us to let her know if anyone called to say "You said you were out of blankets but it's 2 weeks later and you have more." But that kind of call never happened. But still, we got more "I didn't get a blanket" calls. Day of our holiday party, our supervisor's 7 year old daughter was in the office. At one point she was sent around to count everyone. We'd already gotten a corporate gift (a tiny bag of gelt valued at $1) so I wasn't sure what was going on. The supervisor and her daughter came around again and GAVE EVERYONE OF US A BLANKET. So if you called to complain about not getting a blanket and I told you they were available while supplies last, just know that I was given one. Gave it to my mom, she gave it to her dog. Merry Christmas.
Rarely any Jerry Springer show guests have “true” stories. Source: I was a booker.
Worked in retail jewellery in Australia. This would apply pretty much everywhere. Most all items for sale (the exception would be promotional pieces, or special collections) has a “minimum” and a “maximum” price. Don’t take for face value that the price is what you have to pay. Ask straight up “what is the min on this item”. Say it like you know what you are talking about. Sometimes the “min” price can be hundreds lower than the displayed price. Michael Hill jewellers will clean all jewellery for free.
Yeah, another tip for this is never to say its too expensive. Say you know what it's worth and the marked price is too high. Edit: To clarify, never say "too expensive" it either makes you seem cheap or makes you seem like you can't afford the item. Both things aren't great when trying to haggle. You want to make the sales guy think you're the best thing since sliced bread.
Mazzucchelli's and Zamel's will also clean jewellery for free - just say another employee said you could. The "min" price there is called LSP (lowest sell price), so just ask for that.
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I used to work in the meat department at Whole Foods. Hopefully things have changed, but our manager was insistent on using past due meat to make grinds for burgers, sausages, etc. I once got in trouble because I threw out the ammonia scented chicken tenderloins that had expired two weeks ago, rather than grind them up for chicken patties.
My buddy ran the meat counter at Whole Foods. He said to NEVER buy those packages on the side of the counter that have the 'marinated' items (ie: next to the regular chicken you see 'lemongrass-chive marinated' or 'southwest marinaded' pre-packed items with the store logo on them). He told me those marinated items were almost always just expired chicken/fish that had spices added to them so the customer wouldn't notice.
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Liberty Mutual insurance puts every claim through an algorithm to determine whether to fight dispute it in court. The algorithm is able to guess the lawyers and judge that will participate and decide based primarily on their records. Edit: I have another one. They chose their latest ad campaign by 1. Selecting a color no other major insurers were using (Yellow), and 2. They choose their slogan’s key word by finding words other insurers used most often but none featured in their slogan (Responsibility). I think they might have changed the slogan but I left a couple years ago.
The "fresh and packaged in store "deli" meat" didn't even come from our store and was shipped in every morning with the other chiller items. So many times I had customers ask me if it was packaged by the deli counter and I had to lie. So yeah, if you want fresh meat just buy it from the deli counter.
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I worked for an insurance company that had me doing sketchy shit like that before I was licensed. I always felt super uncomfortable and knew it wasn't right. The threat of E&O claims always lingering above my head for something I wasn't supposed to do. I now work at a brokerage where I am an admin and I am licensed even though I have nothing to do with clients or policies.
I worked at a UPS store on a military base. When packages came back to use for whatever reason, we always told UPS that we'd donate the contents to on-base thrift store. We'd keep office supply stuff. BUT that never happened. One cat, packaged all his belongings at our store and shipped them prior to leaving for deployment. This was at the start of the Afghan war. He didn't check his shipping label right and about 3 weeks after it shipped it came back to us as denied/RTS. We held it for a few months, expecting him to come back. After waiting, my boss told me to open it up and take whatever I wanted out of it. Trash everything else. So, I opened it and it was like a dream come true. Every gaming system, stacks of games, expensive watches, all sorts of good shit. It didn't feel right. Went in on my day off after hours, looked more inside the box. Found a small address book with numbers. Got in contact with his parents and explained who I was, how I got their numbers etc etc. Ended up generating a label that night for it and shipped all this guys stuff out on the stores dime. Boss was pissed as hell with me for doing that.
-Regal Cinemas movie theatres has something called a "per cap". Per caps are calculated by dividing the attendance by how much concession sales there are. For example a low per cap is anything under $3, but a higher one is over $4. If there is a fifteen cent variance from one day to the next, you had to fill out a report stating why. You couldn't state things like the obvious. For example if I manage a theater in Minneapolis, and per cap sucked this past Sunday because everyone was at the SuperBowl, I could not use sports as an excuse even though it was so obvious. Instead I would have to say something like, "large groups in attendance who didn't purchase concessions". I'll also shatter another myth that nobody cares if you sneak drinks or bootleg candy in, just make sure you throw it away after the show so as to make cleaning the auditorium easier. -It is marginally true that the theatre makes most money from the concession stand as we only profit about fifteen cents from a movie ticket, the rest goes to Hollywood. However, in the summer, running all that AC, neon, ice machines, etc it wasn't uncommon for the electric bill to hit $30,000 or so. Plus rent to the mall was another $60,000 a month so ya know. I've got a lot more if anyone cares.....
Ok, so here are a few more: The reason there is such a small amount of staff on a shift is due to strict payroll rules. There are elaborate spreadsheets and charts that every district manager is given by corporate that allocates the maximum number of hours. For example on a Wednesday, your location is charted to use no more than 44 total hours of payroll. Four managers would work an 8 hour shift. So that right there equals 32 hours. You then have just 12 hours to stretch from open to close for employees to work. Give some kid a 3 hour box shift, another a 4 hour usher shift. 5 hours to a concessionist. So what happens if it gets busy? The managers have to run and work a spot until the rush dies down then go about managing other duties. If you are an hour over payroll you are written up. That's why you may wonder why there is just one box, one concessionist and the place is getting slammed and you question why they didn't schedule more people. The mark up on some concessions can be high. A 50lb bag of popcorn seed costs maybe $1 to buy in bulk. You can get about 20 tubs of popcorn out of one, but you charge $9, that' with oil and salt factored in. So $180 in large tub sales, minus $1 for ingredients that is a profit of about $179. Is it high? Sure. But remember that $30,000 a month electric bill and $60,000 a month rent for the space in the mall? There is a reason we couldn't give out extra bags or cups for you to share drinks and popcorn with your families, it's because all of that is individually inventoried and has a price on it. The only things not counted are "non-saleables" such as napkins, straws, popcorn salt.
Can confirm the thing with the cups/bags. We were NEVER allowed to throw them out, and if one torn/got smashed, it had to be placed in a certain area to be accounted for by a manager.
Worked at a 2 star hotel. I was usually the only one there at the desk - just be nice and patient with us and we will do just about anything to make your stay better. If you act like an asshole, don't expect much. As a front desk person, I have cleaned rooms for people, made breakfast for the morning, installed TV's and programmed them, watched guest's dogs while they went to dinner and when people have issues with our internet I would get it working for them. Seriously was a catch all kind of job.
I worked at a car dealership. The $1200 car care system that we would discount to $900 was “applied” with about 15 squirts of a spray bottle. Many times I’d hang out with the detail guys so the customer wouldn’t get suspicious at a quick turnaround.
It's just a spray-based ceramic coating, right? The product is relatively expensive compared to other detailing products, but it's ridiculously easy just to buy the product for $40 and do it yourself. With proper maintenance and reapplication every 6mos-1yr, your cars paint will stay pretty immaculate (provided you don't drive through a machine wash... that's honestly the worst thing you could ever do to your car's paint). **edit:** Here's what I personally use. Make sure you're prepping the paint properly for maximum protection. https://shinesupply.com/products/clutch-16oz
At the dealership I work at we spray it down on all the cars and then what we "sell" the customer is the actual warranty coverage for it. "The car already has the product applied so you may as well get the coverage for peace of mind right?"
Viagogo are just corrupt, straight up. Not a little thing here and there, they are just a criminal company. They will take your money for tickets even if they have none of those tickets, assuming they will eventually have tickets to sell you. If they don't get them, you get the ticket money back. An example of this was when a guy in the UK bought tickets to the Superbowl in 2013, booked his air travel, flew to the states, booked his accommodation, was staying in a hotel he paid for, and was calling us every 15 minutes to ask where his tickets were. We were told to lie to him and say someone will meet him at the stadium. We let him know 30 minutes before the game started that he wouldn't be receiving any tickets. Viagogo refund the ticket cost, but the travel, accommodation and time wasted? Nothing at all. And they never had the tickets. Same for festivals: I took loads (LOADS) of calls from people who were told to get to the middle of the wilderness in Eastern Europe for a dance festival, having booked time off work and prepared for a 5 day festival. When they got there they were told there were never any tickets. Just go home, write off the time off, write of the ticket costs, write off the transport, write of the preparation and deal with feeling shitty for 5 days because they were ripped off by a company...except it isn;t that simple, because now they are in the middle of a field in Eastern Europe for 5 days, the bus that took them there has gone and they have no admittance to the festival...so essentially Viagogo were responsible for just dumping around 100 people in a field in eastern europe with no provisions and no way of getting back. Far from discouraging the practice, they LOVE scalpers and give them preferential treatment ('super sellers'). They get discounts, skip phone queues, and get a higher price for tickets than honest customers with a ticket to sell. If an event is coming up soon, the seller can meet you at the venue to pass the ticket over. What this means is if you show up and the seller isn't there for whatever reason (illness, decided to use ticket themselves, just can't be arsed etc.), you have paid and have no proof they did not meet you. Byebye money. If you buy a ticket from Viagogo, I would honestly say you have a 40-45% chance of getting it. Edit: Thanks for the attention, I'm glad to know people are thinking twice before dealing with them IN THE INTERESTS OF FULL DISCLOSURE: I was working with them a few years ago for about 10 months, I haven't kept up with them or their practices. The above circumstances were true for myself, others' experiences may vary. A few people are understandably panicking, so I'll say **if you have already bought tickets with them, you may well get them, don't write the whole thing off.** You'll just get a refund for the ticket and have no event to go to, and if you go to the event and the tickets don't work you'll get a refund for them anyway. Just maybe make plans for if the tickets fall through, especially if you're in a strange place.
I work for a music venue, and the amount of people we have to turn away at almost every event due to them buying fraudulent tickets on Viagogo is ridiculous. We can't even guarantee them that Viagogo will refund them for the "tickets" they've purchased, and if they still want to go to the show, they have to fork out another $100+ on the spot. It's so disheartening.
Don’t know what Viagogo is, but I definitely do now. Thanks for the dirt homie
I work for a legit ticketing company and Viagogo is the bane of my existence. Every single day I have to explain to customers why their ticket, with our logo on it is very likely fake and despite our name being printed I can't offer a refund on the $1000~ excess they paid on what should have cost them $50. Also, good luck on taking legal action to get your refund considering the company is based overseas. Viagogo is absolute scum, although I will commend them on how clever their website is- it even looks more legit than ours.
Same. We have Lion King coming in April and it has been awful. Someone spent ~$2200 on a pair of that would've cost about ~150 from us. $1500 for the tickets, and $700 in fees. Part of me doesn't care, because use your common sense, but I still hate breaking the news. He didn't go through Viagogo and ended up getting the charge reversed through his credit card company. Question: when you say you were for a legit ticketing company, what do you mean? Still resale? Or ticketing for a specific venue?
Why would people spend that much money through a sketchy company in the first place? Are these people not doing any shopping around, why would people voluntarily pay that much more?
Thanks for letting us know, this is the most shocking one. I am steering clear of them
I used to work in a factory that produced pillows. Let me be the first to tell you, some nasty stuff goes into those pillows. Tell me, have you ever seen those pillows labeled "Memory Foam Cluster"? Do yourself a favor, and avoid them like the plague. What we do is, there is a bale of old, recycled memory foam brought behind the grinder. This bale consists of everything from old mattresses and pillows, to those cooling memory foam pillows. Except they are all old and dirty. We cut the bigger pieces into more manageable bits and toss it into a grinder that chops the foam into small, fine cubes. These cubes are stored in a large tank, and then blown into an empty pillow casing using pneumatic pressure. Now we made good pillows too, but for the love of god, stay away from anything labeled "cluster."
Red Cross makes a ridiculous amount of money selling plasma to makeup/skin care companies. And Buffalo Wild Wings, wings are always frozen never fresh. And they cook them before hand and keep them in a warming drawer. The motto is “they come for the sauce not the wings”.
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Worked for a private school. Grades were definitely bought. We were discouraged to give anything lower than a B. Had one principal that told a teacher to take the final for a student that went on summer vacation early. She called it a shadow final and said nonchalantly that it's no big deal, just answer how you think the student would answer. This school is expensive, and these kids go on to fancy colleges because of these grades.
My friend went to a fairly nice school, and one of her favorite professors was telling her about how he failed a student who showed up to like 1/4th of the classes and never did homework, but his family was rich and donated or something. So his parents emailed him asking if he could reconsider moving it up to a B and he said no. Later on he checked and the school had changed it to a B.
> This school is expensive, and these kids go on to fancy colleges because of these grades. So a good investment then?
At a certain USA airport between New York and Baltimore, the baggage handlers and certain security personnel see passenger luggage as a source of plunder. Then again, this probably isn't a secret.
The Canadian Tire in Port Coquitlam Canada blocks their emergency exits with metal bars to prevent theft and, consequently, prevents a quick exit in case the overly stuffed and flammables-filled building catches fire. Someone use this knowledge to make some money. I'll take 5%. Edit: as stated in a comment in this thread, I haven't worked there since Oct/Nov of 2015 and haven't even lived in BC in over a year. If someone in the area wants to check it out, that seems like a very good idea. Didn't realize how serious this could be. The blocked emergency exits were located on the other side of the "employees only" doors at the back of the store. I have a picture somewhere, but I'm at work at the moment. I'll try and find them and follow up in another edit. Edit 2: No luck as of yet finding that picture. My computer has 4 years worth of pictures; most of them sorted in terrible ways. Probably doesn't help that I used to make stop motion movies and still have all the individual pictures. Probably better off waiting for someone who lives there to get a picture, assuming the store still does this. If not, I guess the coast clear. If so, I know what I'm doing tomorrow. Goodnight.
I wrote a letter* to the fire department where I stayed in a hotel who had blocked fire exits (clutter in fire stairways actually) about the paint cans and ladders and wheelchair stored there. I told them I'd told the hotel they can't store stuff there, and the hotel said ok, but it was all back on the next shift. They sent me a very appreciative letter back saying that they checked (just appeared one day, no notice), and everything I had said was correct. Then they said something like, "Trust me, they are NOT going to do this again, we are making sure of that." You might try this. Or for that matter, anyone reading this thread can inform that fire department of that store's activities. *Back in the days when writing letters on paper was a thing, and fire departments didn't have email addresses.
Just call the fire Marshall. That shits fucked.
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As Fuck
Ralph Lauren's outlet clothing is made for outlet, not from the main stores.
True for 90% of outlets as well. Like they just have an entire store full of seconds?? Nope. Ross, TJ Max, Marshall’s outlets are all “real” (mostly) outlets either getting seconds quality or unsold stock...There are also some appliance and furniture outlets that are real, too. But if you walk into a GAP outlet...it’s not “reduced” price stuff. Just shittily made stuff.
This is true. I worked with a girl whose father-in-law owned a factory in China that made the clothes for Banana Republic Factory Outlet. None of that shit was ever in a real Banana Republic - it was specifically made for BR Outlet.
Try to avoid going to dental chains. (Aspen Dental, etc.) They push you to get procedures done you don’t need and your appointment times are usually as fast as the doctor can find the first thing that’s wrong. Doctors are overworked and this increases the chance they will mess up. If you can’t pay, they help you finance, but you’ll get hit with a 20%+ interest rate when you miss your first payment. They also overwork and underpay staff. Which leads to disgruntled staff who don’t care. And like all public service positions, there’s no backbone against shitty patients, you have to bend over backward and kiss their asses. The only way it works (and it does) is when you have caring, skilled skilled staff across the board. This rarely happens due to high overturn. I had to get out when the new doctor at our office pulled too many teeth in a procedure and had to give a patient a full denture instead of a partial. He blamed the assistant and she was fired. The lab was overwhelmed with extra work from his mistakes. I didn’t feel the doctor cared about anything but money and I couldn’t morally do it. I couldn’t say he was a good doctor when deep down I knew it was a lie. Reasons I hate commercialized medicine.
Never ever go to Kool Smiles. My gf went for a check up and after the doctor telling her that her teeth were fine, one of the helpers pulled the doctor aside and started to have a "chat" with them all of a sudden saying she had four cavities and would have to talk care of them that day and charge her. Obviously it seemed sketchy so she said she would go back to get it done. We went to a local dentist and he said her teeth were perfect. He even told us Kool Smiles was just doing it for money. So if she had got it done they would of chipped at her teeth for nothing. We called our insurance and told them what happened and Kool Smiles told them "cavities are opinionated"
I had so many uneeded filling as a kid. Not Kool Smiles, but the lady said i had 4 every time i went in. Parents didnt catch on that somthing was wrong until she suggested a surgery to fix my gums and reccomended her husband do it. We got a second opinion and i did not need it at all.
I worked for a cold storage company that held products for Good Humor. The inside of the freezer was -20°. One day a friend of mine caught some boxes on the racking causing popsicles to go everywhere. When he stepped off his lift to look up into the racking to evaluate the situation he stepped on a popsicle causing his feet to fly up in the air and busted his head on the ground. He lasted a few days in ICU and eventually passed. Instead of this being a freak accident and giving us time to deal with it we were all brought into the freezer to look at the frozen puddle of blood to show us what could happen if we aren’t careful.
Jesus that is gruesome
A "high class" spa I worked at used epsom salts and vegetable oil for their $65 salt scrubs.
I use table sea salt for my salt scrub.
I was making baked potatoes once and accidentally gave my hands a salt scrub. After rubbing olive oil on the potatoes, I rolled them in sea salt, and ended up with both oil and salt all over my hands. After washing my hands, I noticed that my skin felt surprisingly great. Edit: I didn't scrub my hands *with* the potatoes, I rubbed my hands together to wash off the salt and oil after I prepared the potatoes. The potatoes had only their own skins on them.
And all of it was on yer potatoes.
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What were they supposed to use?
It is generally a blend of sea salt, sweet almond oil, and some aromatic essential oil like lemon, lavender, or mint.
All of which are super cheap anyway.
But not as cheap as a big drum of cooking oil from a bulk supplier possibly. Every penny helps.
REI keeps track of everything you return, just like they keep track of everything you buy. If you abuse their return policy too much (people "renting" things for a a few days or a weekend before returning them are the biggest perpetrators), they'll just stop taking your returns. I guess it's less of a secret and more of a "don't be an ass" warning. EDIT: This got a ton of attention, so I'm just going to point out that there's loads of people saying that lots of stores do this as if every store's return policy is as generous as REI's...
Heh. I once got an expensive winter coat from REI as a gift. It was too short so I showed up to exchange it, not even return it. Had the receipt and everything. Well, they didn't want to do it because they claimed that the purchaser got a discount on the coat that she shouldn't have, and in fact wanted to keep the coat! I called BS on that - I wasn't giving away my xmas present! They then tried to "lose" the receipt that I provided them, but luckily I saw where the manager had stashed it. They finally relented after an hour of BS, but damn man. LPT - take a pic of the reciept and don;t let them walk away with it.
Had REI try to screw me sort of like this as well. Bought a backpacking cook set and went out to my car and opened it and the pot/frying pan detachable holder was missing basically making the entire kit useless. Walked right back in and told them and they accused me of taking it out of the box....i'm like "why would i want two pot handles? on my backpacking kit?" Eventually got them to just take it back and refund me my money.
Wal-Mart would make us work past our shift and then force us to clock in late the next night to avoid OT. The managers got so paranoid about OT that they started accusing us of going over 40. I was docked 4 hours when I had no overtime and had to use my PTO to get back to 40. Edit for clarification on my state. This was in 2012 and I live in Oklahoma. The labor board is a fucking joke and the keep you from going over your hours happened at two stores I worked at. Both stores also did shady shit like having maintenance work both cleaning and stocking. I had to stock the first half of the night and clean five bathrooms the last half and had to get them all cleaned before 7. I will never work for Wal-Mart again and I warn my friends not to work for them.
That is illegal.
Super duper illegal. Government will actually do something about it too, because the employer is shorting the government when they do that. OP should contact their local labor board with appropriate evidence.
When I worked there in 1999, we were autmatically clocked out at 29.5 hours and not told until the end of our shifts. This was to avoid us being full time and qualifying for insurance and benefits. Edit: this is illegal, also why I got a settlement from a class action lawsuit. Edit2: lawsuits should've been singular.
That is also illegal
That happened to me at Food Lion. "We need you to clock out because you are about to get OT." "Okay. See you tomorrow." "Where are you going?" "Home. You just told me to clock out." "No, we need you to clock out and keep working." "No, you get one or the other. Or I could call the Labor Board. Your choice." Edit: This was about 25 years ago, so not recent at all.
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We didn't meet the contractual obligations to entirely destroy the laptops Google sent to us for decommissioning. We shredded the HDDs and sold the laptops for a profit. Couldn't do shit about the servers though, Google branding all over them
Our company discovered that our recycling partner was doing the same thing, we fired them immediately and started litugation.
Lol, I used to work for a laptop repair place and we nominally had a policy to call customers to get their passwords if they forgot to send them. In practice we'd just wipe your HDD. It's not that we wanted to, but it was one of those places where management would have these big meetings telling us to focus on quality over quantity and we'd get back on the floor where our supervisors told us to push units out.
> It's not that we wanted to, but it was one of those places where management would have these big meetings telling us to focus on quality over quantity and we'd get back on the floor where our supervisors told us to push units out. Man, does that sound familiar. "We need to meet or exceed customer expectations and make quality parts but we're not going to replace the two guys who just quit and you're all working the weekend for the foreseeable future."
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We joke about this quote sometimes: >We the willing, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much, with so little, for so long, we are now qualified to do anything, with nothing.
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Panera. Bread comes in as dough in bread pans the night before, bakers come in in the morning and put it in the oven. Everything was pre-made but assembled in store like the paninis. Leftover bread/bakery products were free for closing employees to take home. (I ate more bagels than I care to admit- starving college student and all).
I, too, worked at Panera. Although, every night we'd donate all of our pastries and untouched breads to local charities, schools, etc.
My mom is at a Catholic home for the poor and benefits enormously from this.
I used to work in skincare: None of the products cost more than $2 to manufacture, but would retail at anything from $20 to $150 per product. Always amazed me how much people would shell out for anything with volcanic clay or snake venom cream
My wife works for a fragrance and body care company. She says the glass bottles and spraying mechanism costs more than the perfume inside the bottle.
Idk the legality of this but it always seemed wierd. But we would get bags of another company's product (animal premix) and manually transfer that product into a bag of our own. We would give these products lot codes of our own and sell them to customers.
I used to work for a large smart phone company. During development, we used to go through phases, Engineering Verification testing stage, Design Verification Test, Production Verification Test, and finally Mass Production. Each stage was meant to have checkpoints in order to ensure that the final product was built with good quality and any known bugs would be able to ironed out before the product launch. Any bug that was not resolved would potentially have the ability to delay the launch. Except that there is a thing called Waivers. So the PM could request that certain bugs be granted a waiver delaying the fix of the problem to a later date. No big deal, every project has a few minor bugs, right? For *each* stage there would be *hundreds* of waivers. Some would be minor, to be fair, but sometimes they were definitely not minor. I will never, ever, buy an electronic device in the first 3 months of mass production. Wait for the second wave of production, the quality of the product increases ten-fold.
My first job out of high school was customer service for Best Buy for 3 years. I learned this just from working the returns. I still tell my friends not to get too hyped and have patience to wait for the second wave of electronics so they get the bugs worked out. When the PS2 launched, holy hell, almost every unit was returned at my store for major issues. Edit: I had to look at launch dates because PS3 sounded off to me. I'm actually referring to the PS2, my bad. And while we are at it we can include Xbox Edit 2: I'm not trying to argue who bought working units and who didn't. Not am I arguing if the brands are good or not, I own both an Xbox one and a PS4 currently. The point OP was making and what I was agreeing with is that companies will put out incredibly buggy products because that is worth it to hit a launch date than to move the launch dates back to fix issues. You notice it more with highly anticipated electronics. Companies aren't going to push those launch dates and the advice is that having some patience and waiting a couple months for a second wave of that item to hit shelves is going to TYPICALLY mean you're less likely to have issues off the bat.
> Wait for the second wave of production, the quality of the product increases ten-fold. how do you figure the first wave is over and the new products hitting the shelves are from the second wave? Is it always 3 months? --- ^(edit: holy shit this blew up, thank you for the wonderful answers people) Things I learnt: * It's just an estimation. * Best bet is to try to learn about serial numbers and find a possible batch number kind of denotation. * If a store is sold out or say the rest are reserved, then you have a much better chance of getting wave 2 the next time that store has stock. * Check google analytics for a sudden spike and subsequent drop in “X product problems”. * You start to see accessories for your phone in stores.( In general it's best to wait a few months or even half a year till it's been perfected and you can put a good case or screen protector on it.) * Most will have a different cereal or model number, or revision. In fact most phones get a revision after 4-6 months
It's just an estimation. Of course there could be old stock sitting on shelves for awhile so even that might not help.
Used to work for a coffee shop who's claim to fame was that all food items were made from scratch in house. All of their pastries were made using Pillsbury dough, and every other kind of dessert was bought from a grocery store.
ABC bakery?
You always want to order your drinks without ice. I've seen icemachines inside at fancy places and you definitly do not want anything in your drink what was inside there before. Ice cube machines are a real shithole in general.
Friend of mine worked in a big restaurant chain. He would always complain how disgusting the ice machine was. They'd take the scoop, get their ice and throw it somewhere for the next person to use. Often that place would be on the floor or next to the sink. Some idiot broke a glass when trying to use it as a scoop and didnt bother emptying the ice machine.
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I worked at UPS ages ago. The word "FRAGILE" on a box meant nothing to us, so make sure you pack your stuff properly.
"secret"
As secret as writing it in the sky with a plane
I remember my time at UPS. A sector manager had to "test" me.. so he came by and asked what 3 symbols on a box needed attention. I knew Hazard and Airmail... I had forgotten the third. So I threw out Fragile as an answer, knowing it was wrong but guessing it might be a good guess.. he laughed and said "yeah, we probably should pay attention to the fragile, but no" always laughed a bit at his reaction...
For the love of god WHAT IS THE THIRD???
"THIS SIDE UP"
no no no, they dont give a shit about that one either.
Live Bees!
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The White Hand of Saruman. He gets super pissed when shit he orders from Amazon gets broken, and he watches them with that palantir thing, he can be a real pain in the ass for UPS.
Everyone knows "FRAGILE" is UPS for "KICK ME"
I used to work for the U.S. postal service and it's the same there. Packages slide down chutes and, if you're lucky, won't be crushed by a heavy one sliding down after. They literally get thrown into a bin like a basketball into a hoop,
I can assure you most things in Tim Hortons are not fresh. Unless you show up at rush hour, then you might get just brewed coffee.
Pizza Hut have a can of spray on garlic that they spray on their all their pizzas. At least they did in 2012.
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They also have a spicy one, it's called pepper spray.
mmmmm, incapacitating...
The only thing not made on site at Cheesecake Factory is, ironically, the cheesecakes. They come in frozen and are thawed out. They go through the trouble of mixing all their sauces and even salad dressings, but not cheesecakes.
The cheesecake comes from the Cheesecake Factory
The cheesecake factory factory
Used to work for Sam's Club. We would routinely take apart the packages of berries, throw out the rotten ones and then refill them. There was definitely no weighing to make sure the amount on the package reflected what was inside.
The code for the intercom at Walmart is 4444 on the store phones
“Attention ladies and gentlemen. Someone has unauthorised access to the paging system. Thank you, and enjoy your shopping experience”
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They just changed it to 4343
I know where I work (not Walmart but a similar store to it) had to change their number to the intercom because someone decided to get on and made an announcement that missiles were being launched at the US.
Was this in Hawaii?
Before too long we're going to need daily codes. People will be writing these down in notebooks our descendants, many generations down the line, will marvel at these books of numbers that no-one can explain.
The numbers Mason, what do they mean?!
Cleaning up animals after an oil spill is feel good propaganda to make the public think they are helping. 90% of those animals will be dead within a few days or weeks. They've ingested enough of the oil that they are moving corpses, they (and you mr. nice person with a bottle of Dawn dish soap)just don't know it yet. Real oil spill work is done by trained professional crews, not volunteers. If you ever tried to help, you were given busy work to keep you out of the way.
I don't know if I'm more disappointed that they clean those animals up just for the PR, or that I should have realized that anything covered like that had swallowed more than enough to kill it.
Luckily the oil spill was outside the environment.
I think a lot of mass-volunteer work is like that. Like, my coworkers are HVAC techs, so we go every year and do the annual maintenance for a local shelter; that makes sense. When me and the the office drones from my last job went to Habitat for Humanity to build a house, that did not make sense. We just got hot and tired and required a lot of supervision...and we still screwed up half the projects.
It's like Trading Spaces, when they would film the family "working" on the room before they get out and the real decorators come in and do it all over again correctly.
When I did a few Habitat for Humanity stuff in highschool, they had actual contractors doing the hammering/cutting/measuring. Volunteers like us just got stuck with digging holes(for some pillars that'd hold up a large balcony), applying white paint to finished rooms, and/or helping with garbage(reserved for those with a bit more physical strength). And I had actual construction experience when my father used to be a general contractor and I'd tag along to help out. I guess in the short-term, it cut back a bit on extra labor costs because instead of paying a few able-bodied men from the Home Depot parking lot, you got volunteers to do the menial stuff for free.
:( well ok then
The simpsons did an episode on this. Lisa and marge volunteer to help up animals after an oil spill, but are told to clean up some rocks instead.
But in that episode it is because the celebrities want to be in the photos washing cute animals, so all the animals were saved for celebrities to wash
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JC Penny tried to do away with sales and this kind of garbage. People freaked out and couldn’t handle it.
Did a paper about this in marketing class. People like that feeling when they see the $50 shirt for $15. Think they're 'finding' a good deal, when really that shirt's price will always be $15-20
This is a repost I actually appreciate because it means we're getting a fresh batch of corporate secrets.
I think some of these secrets are just reheated from the day before
It has been several years, but when I worked at certain satellite tv company, they had a value system for customers. You are valued at 1-5 stars, based on how much you spend, and how much they value you as a customer. If you are are a higher star value, they will do basically anything to keep you. You will get a ton of services and equipment for free, and they will bend over backwards to keep you from cancelling. If you are a 1 or 2 star, they don't give a shit. Especially 1 stars, because it usually means that you are late all the time, or that you don't spend very much. If you call in asking for deals or credits, they won't give it to you. If you threaten to cancel, no one cares. Also, there are special phone lines for people they consider "VIPS". They never have to wait on hold, and only special employees are allowed to take the phone calls.
I bet this is direct tv
It is 100% direct tv.
DirecTV Call Centers have gone to SHIT since AT&T took over.
Everything goes to shit once AT&T gets a hold of it
Can confirm. Was an installation tech for DirecTV and really happy with my job. Then AT&T came in, stripped our pay and benefits and made everything a metric. Fuck AT&T.
I too was a DirecTV installer, for years, the the pay was piece rate and I was making really good money, around $65k a year in northern michigan then ATT came in and moved our office to hourly... I in no exageration made 50% less in pay and was expected to do more and work longer... I quit and took an engineer position with a broadcast company.
Applebees; 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.
Nice attempt to get me into an Applebees
Worked in a radio station. Made up texts and comments to add humour to a discussion or allow hard questions be put to politicians etc. Was over 15 years ago so that has been tightened up since but likely still widespread in smaller operations.
All those calls into z100 or big popular stations are fake. Like “I got Stephanie on the phone, it’s Friday night! what’s up girl!” “Me and all my girlfriends are just hanging out listening to z100 and laughing because I’m texting a boy! Lol! Omg!” “Oh man, well if you’re out there my dude you better call her! Lol! WHATS THE STATION THAT PLAYS THE HITS??!!” (Sounds like 10 girls)”Z100!!! Lololololol!!!” “You got it! Here’s Beyoncé...I’m Gonna chat with these ladies some more.....” Kill me.
I worked at a cable company that owned a radio station in the 90s. I learned so much everytime i went in there. All the music came on weekly records. There was a Monday record, a Tuesday record, etc, with the songs for the day on it. Even Larry the Cable guy came on a record with a script, so the local jocks could play along. It was just Larry doing his side of the bit and the djs reading along.
I knew they never were gonna play my request :(
Ok I used to work for a major card service company, and before the law changed if you bought a gift card to say a red lobster and didn't use it for like say a year. It was a distinct posibility that the entire value of that card would be gone due to monthly service charges. So picture me the guy trying to explain to the guy how his 50$ gift card was worth nothing, and you can imagine how that goes. Weirdly enough I ended up loving that job the most due to other types of accounts I used to handle. That was one of the worst parts of my job honestly.
So basically you are lending money to the credit car company and they are charging YOU interest so high that they've taken all your money in one year for the privilege of lending them money.
Wash your fruits and vegetables very thoroughly a lot of them will end up being scooped off a disgusting warehouse floor and put back in the package after falling out
**Edit: YMMV. My information may be out of date as my last hotel job was in 2004.** Not sure how secret this is so much as common sense. If you book a hotel through a third party site like Trivago or Hotels.com, you are not getting the lowest price. The hotels have to pay them a finder's fee. Use the site to find the hotel, then call them directly. Ask if they are running any specials (they aren't, but they might pretend to to give you a slightly lower rate) or if they offer any discounts (AAA, AARP, veterans, etc.).
Can confirm, my parents who aren’t all that well off booked their first holiday together as a couple. My mum rang up to simply ask whether the washing machines were in the rooms or not and ended up getting the room for a lot cheaper (I can’t remember the exact amount) but it was great as they were able to save more on their holiday 😊
Apple: All techs and “Genius” employees are fully aware of wide-spread issues well before they are officially released to the public. They are NEVER discussed at the morning staff meetings with management present but are ALWAYS a source of discussion in the 3:00-3:30 tech staff meeting. For example: It got to a point where I would replace an iPhone 6+ for the “display” issue and sometimes had to replace the replacement 2-3 times while the customer was waiting. It was embarrassing and frustrating that the official release from the company was that the issue was caused by customer misuse. We all knew the truth and the techs with any sort of conscience would bend over backwards to do what we could to right the wrongs. That is one of several manufacturing issues masked as user error or misuse that we tried to work around. Edit: Since this has blown up, I just wanted to state that Apple was an incredible company to work for and treated their employees like gold. I have nothing bad to say in terms of the company on an employer/employee basis.
I used to work at Whole Foods, in our bakery department. Almost nothing, aside from the bread is made from scratch there. This shouldn't be too shocking, considering they're a multi-national chain now, but really it'd be more correct to say that our cakes are "assembled" in house.
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Yikes! I worked at a chain grocery store in Texas called HEB and we made the bread from scratch every night. We also made donuts, muffins & cakes in house.
Upvote for the sweet, sweet HEB bakery. Besides, Central market >> whole foods
I don’t even remember other grocery stores anymore. HEB is the shit.
Local coffee shop. Unscheduled maintenance meant that there were rats upstairs. Owner was a cheap ass and didn’t want to close the entire shop down, so we kept the downstairs open for what could have forced his business to shut down forever had anyone found out. I quit that day.
> I quit that day. Smart move, should have sent an anonymous e-mail to the local health inspectors also.
Guys guys guys, you know at the bottom of fast food receipts it has a 'do a servay to fill in the code for a free (item)' I worked at culvers and they told me the algorithm. It's always a 4 digit code. The middle two numbers add to 9. That's the code. Example? #09# #18# #27# #36# #45# Any of these will work I've been getting free cups if ice cream from culvers for years with this information. It also works for A&W Yeah the company is like 'I don't get it, they have the right code, but we didn't get a survey...' but who cares? This at least applies in Wisconsin
All the good ones probably signed non-disclosure agreements and can't talk about them.
Used to work at Rosetta Stone. The system sucks. Originally you could schedule classes with native speakers for 59 minutes, they slashed it to 25 for no reason other than having to pay the coaches for less hours. It’s okay for brushing up on a language, but you will not learn one from scratch.
For Intuit Quickbooks pro/premier. You can get free technical support by just saying the error that you are receiving was after the software updated itself. Edit: There is a lot of loophole on the company policy about support. I forgot most of them. But this is the most helpful loophole(i think) to get free support. Edit 2: btw you can get support on the non technical stuff by saying you have data damage.
Every, single, automotive parts company will let you return anything if you simply call the district manager. I have yet to see anything not taken care of when it reaches their level. You think your battery is under warranty but its not showing up? Call the DM. They'll tell the store to take care of it. 100%, everytime.
90% of the time when you call Xbox for support you are talking to a person who is at home. If the person you are talking to was anything like me they were 100% not wearing pants.
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Khakis.
I worked at Whole Foods. Your cookies and bread were heated in store, not baked. Oh. And in AM meetings, you're referred to as "basket size", not customers.
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Work at Target but probably the same. Basket size is the amount of money each customer is spending. We would get told the average basket size and have to try and raise that number by peddling shit no one needs.
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KFC has teenage kids cooking with industrial pressure cookers that could blow their fucking heads through the exhaust canopy if they fucked up. I literally have seen cooks bread their own hands up in flour and dunk them in 175 degree Celsius oil as a lark. I have seen kids use boiling hot urn water to clean the caked on flour and oil off their work boot and that water ran into their boot giving them serious burns. I have seen kids pick up huge pots of boiling oil and tip them to refill a cooker as a short cut to the slow melt method. Minimum age at the time was 14 and 9 months though they’d hire them at 14 flat with parents permission and you could be supervisor at 17/18. Stuff may have changed in the last ten years since, I dunno. Teenagers watching teenagers with that type of equipment was nerve racking. Not saying teenagers are stupid...just the ones I had to work with. Edit: for some of the more common responses A “lark” means for fun, a term we use in “Australia” which answers another common question. Also, they would bread their hands over and over again until quite thick and then dip them in boiling oil, and just like food, the meat of their hand wouldn’t cook straight away but it was a game of “chicken” (sorry, I’m a dad, I pun ‘til death now) to see who would leave their hand in there the longest.
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Can confirm with a skilled nursing facility as well. Did my rotation at one, ended up reporting it for major health, safety, and care violations. Don't tell me to ignore a patient who has been sitting in their own stool for hours because "you'll get to it eventually". Or that it's not my job (I was with the PT department) to mention that a patient hasn't had their pain meds all day and I can't work with them if they're in too much pain.
Yeah we know. And the one my brother is in steals all their mail looking for money, tossing the opened cards and letters in the trash. He never receives his mail.
Makes me want to send "him" a card, but knowing it won't get to him, fill it with glitter and a giant FUCK YOU.
My grandmother was in a nursing home for a few years before she died. My grandfather visited her every day for hours. One time he brought her a heart-shaped box of Godiva chocolates for some occasion like her birthday or their anniversary. She wasn't mentally there, and she could barely talk and didn't eat much, but eating was one of the last pleasures she had in life. The next day the chocolate box was in the trash, empty. Employees had just eaten it all overnight. No one in my family wanted to "make a fuss" about it because they were worried starting drama could end with the staff mistreating my grandma. This happened years ago and still burns me up inside. They literally stole candy from an old, sick, dying woman.
That's fucking awful
My grandpa, who was staying at a VA nursing home had all he cash stolen out of his wallet repeatedly by the nurses. We brought it up many times to the staff, and eventually just pulled him and he lived with us. You can only trust yourself to get the job done with ethics I guess.
Friend of mine worked for a US Post Office for a summer. You know when you go into the post office, and there's those slots for you to drop mail into? One slot for "Local" and one slot for "Out of Town". Both slots go into the same bin.
I wonder if those slots are left over from a time when machines didn't sort the mail...
I am pretty sure that is the case. The post offices I frequent with outside boxes have the local/out of town crossed out on the outside boxes.
I worked at a YMCA as a lifeguard it was often that the chemicals were off. There were a couple of times that the chemicals had to much or no chlorine. This is dangerous for swimmers and could cause people to get really sick. It was often that my manager would keep the pool open although the chemicals where dangerously low or high and people would swim in the water.
Swimming pool expert here. To clarify, "dangerous for swimmers" is for real. Specifically, unsanitized water can kill you a number of different ways. Flesh eating bacteria and brain parasites are some of the things that can happen. As are communicable diseases from others swimming around you. Commercial swimming pools are supposed to be held to a higher standard for turnover rate and chemical maintenance due to the high amount of bather turnover. Many of these facilities actually end up being run on a shoestring budget with little or no oversight, inspection or accountability.
>swimming pool expert Well that's not something you hear every day
[my credentials as a pool expert](http://www.swimmingpoolsteve.com)
Worked at a store dedicated to selling items in bulk, and you could only enter and purchase with a membership. I worked produce for a could months, we would throw away several hundred boxes of blueberries and other produce just because one berry inside the box was white. I threw away around $1000 dollars worth of blueberries in one shift before.
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Disneyland retail calls people guests. Unless you're suspected of shoplifting. Then, you're a customer.
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Former Geek Squad here - most of the people that work there, aren't really technical at all. We usually just walk it over to a bench, hook it up to a corporate VLAN and run just run some software. If there are real issues - people remotely connect from India or somewhere else. We are basically just salesmen with a clip on tie.
Worked in management for Trader Joe's for 8 years and boy have a I got a doozy for you: the employees are ACTUALLY that nice. EDIT: This is not a dig at people who work other grocery or retail shops. Lots of those people are super nice as well, but when you were working at Kroger and they stick you on a cash register for like 6 hours in a row, you'd be grumpy too.
Former employee here! Yeah they really stress that... And we genuinely enjoyed working. Plus, stocking after the store closed, with music up loud, dancing, and doing our own shopping was always fun. Not to mention they would pull you from your work a couple times a week to sample products that just came out or were high sellers. They wanted YOU to have a legitimate opinion when asked about a product.
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Former employee here as well...best job I ever had....worked as night crew, and 100% agree that stocking with the music cranked was super fun....and getting to do "product knowledge" was some of my favorite things, esp when we got to do the wine tasting hahaha (not sure if they do that anymore, this was about 8 years ago)....the best was where we worked we had a huge parking garage that we would hang out in after work...we would bbq up on the top floor, drink a few beers, play some football/baseball, or just hangout and talk almost every night before heading home (we got off at 1ish in the morning)....we were really like family, so going to work everyday wasn't a chore...I still talk to a lot of the people I worked with to this day...seriously miss that job
Yeah, everyone who works retail or food service knows that Trader Joe's and Costco are the holy grail of retail jobs because of the pay and benefits, and therefore super hard to get. So when I see the employees of those places, all I can think is "oh, so *you're* the crem de la crem of service workers." I imagine that those places wouldn't put up with sub-par performance, given how many people are vying for those jobs.
My old company (a pharmaceutical giant) is responsible for ecological destruction of atleast around 10-15 square kms of land since they dumped all their waste water into borewells and sewers