15 Former Employees Are Sharing Secrets About Their Jobs And Their Unruly Bosses — Now I Know Why NDAs Exist

"The heat from the pizza oven is the only reason you're not going to the hospital due to heat killing the bacteria."

Reddit user u/Affectionate_Jump126 recently asked, "What are some crazy secrets from your workplace now that you don't work there anymore?" And let's just say these former employees didn't waste any time getting these confessions off their chests!

1. McDonald's Ice Cream Machine

First and Monday

"The ice cream machine isn't raggedy and always broken. At some point it has to go into cleaning mode each day, I think. This takes four to five hours, so when they tell you it's down or broken, the machine is probably just sanitizing itself. I don't know that the stores can program them to do this at a certain time of day." —u/forthe_99and2000

2. TV and Movie Scripts

Masterclass

"For the most part, it’s not executives and agents that read scripts, but their assistants. By this standard, it is the assistants of the entertainment industry that are primarily responsible for what actually gets made. Still blows my mind." —u/SelenaCatherineMeyer

3. Local Bakery

PBS Kids

"The French bread and Italian bread are the EXACT same thing with different scoring designs on top, but one is $2.50 more." —u/NationalPiccolo5259

4. Pizza Delivery

NBC

"I worked pizza delivery for a major corporate pizza brand. The quality of the ingredients used, even over 15 years ago, is of such poor quality that the heat from the pizza oven is the only reason you're not going to the hospital due to heat killing the bacteria. When I went to a popular local shop, you could eat off the floor it was so clean. THAT place was amazing!" —u/Jazzlike-Ad-208

5. Car Dealership

MUBI

"You know how the dealership will discount your trade by like $500-$1,000 if it’s been smoked in? We had a $200 machine that gets the smoke smell completely out of the car. Takes about an hour, but only five minutes or so of labor (then leaving it run in the car for the hour). Other than a small amount of electricity, and the initial $200 cost for the machine, it costs the dealer nothing to make it a non-smoking car." —u/heatdish1292

6. Large Hotel Chain

NBC

"When I worked at a large hotel chain, our entire reservation database got hacked — the whole database for the company was being held for a ransom. This went on for almost a whole week. We had to revert back to paper logs. They had access to credit card info, guest info, everything. They initially ended up deleting a huge portion of guests info and reservations. That week was hell. The funny part was, the password that was used to secure the database was P@ssword!. Wild." —u/BLAZEDBADDIE7

7. Victoria's Secret

CBS

"We used to have to cut up products that didn’t sell after a certain amount of time and soak them in bleach before throwing them out. And no, employees weren’t allowed to just have them." —u/ManicBarbi3

8. Seafood Restaurant

Nickelodeon

"Worked at a seafood restaurant that was infamous for their house clam chowder. Dude literally bought cans of chowder from the store, poured it into this huge 5-gallon container, and then it sat in there getting pulled from, heated, and dumped back in to. It never got cleaned or fully replaced. It was super, super, super gross. Anything we didn’t use that day would get dumped back in with a couple new cans added." —u/LandOfLostSouls

9. Bookstore

IFC

"We tear covers off magazines and paperback books in order to get money for them and then chuck the books in the recycling bin, coverless.

Books that don't sell in 90 days are returned and the store will likely never sell it again unless it is special ordered. The system is designed to churn out best-sellers and classics, and nothing more.

Speaking of bestsellers, authors can just buy themselves onto the bestseller list and get their book on a front shelf with prime real estate. This usually costs about $250,000, although you can pay more if you want it to be number one. It is why books that are just printed will have a sticker or designed with a cover that says '#1 best-seller.' They knew it would be a '#1 bestseller' because they paid for it. Publishers can also pay to have their books put on the various tables in the store." —u/FiendishCurry

10. Hotel Bar

Comedy Central

"I worked at a 7-star hotel. The bar manager who looks over all bar staff was making their own whiskey in the pool disinfection room." —u/CptPureBlood

11. Life Insurance

Fox

"Life insurance agent was forging signatures and attempted to reinstate policies on dead people three times. Those were awkward calls. Couldn't fire him though because he'd racked up so much debt to the company that firing him would tank the entire agency he worked with." —u/justasimplemushroom

Wildin' in the Workplace

12. School Scandal

ABC

"Former principal had an affair with a teacher (they were both married). The principal left to work at a new school. A year later, the principal’s wife comes to the school and starts working alongside the teacher her husband had an affair with, without even knowing." —u/bigspookybats

13. Medical Malpractice

SNL / Movement Memes

"The attorney I used to work for would plot with the area chiropractors in order to inflate their medical bills and thereby inflating their asking amounts for their injury cases. Of course, his take home was 40% of the total award amount." —u/OctoChill

14. Garbage Gourmet

NBC

"I did an internship at a restaurant kitchen and my boss asked me to slice some mushrooms, but he forgot to tell me to save the stems, so I threw them away. Then I saw my boss bending over the trash can and he picked out the stems and threw them from the trash can into a pot of soup." —u/TheTeaYouWant 

15. Lastly, Messy Manager

E!

"The office manager who was married to a male doctor at the same practice was also hooking up with the female patient care supervisor." —u/Justgowithitbabe

Do you have some tea to spill about your past job? Tell us about it in the comments below!