35 Surprising Companies That Are A Lot More Evil Than Meets The Eye

This is probably a personal bias, but United Healthcare.

Any health insurance company really....but this all stems from the United States health care system

HCA - Healthcare Corp of America

The largest, for-profit hospital system in the country (world probably).

Imagine if Walmart owned your hospital... that would be an improvement over HCA.

Blackstone. It's on more people's radars nowadays but still not enough. The biggest landlord of them all; you wonder why your once affordable suburb now has half-million starter homes that virtually nobody can afford on the average local salary? Blame these guys.

In fact, I'd say Air BnB, VRBO, RedFin, Zillow, every company that adds nothing of value to the economy except artificially pumping up numbers on houses that the supermajority of Americans have been taught to think of as a riskless get-rich scheme, instead of a basic human need.

Starbucks. It’s not as “liberal” a company as people think. They essentially gain a lot of their coffee through slave labor in other countries like Brazil, and they treat their Baristas like s**t. There’s a reason many stores are unionizing.

Uline. It’s a privately owned business run by the extreme right-wing, conservative Uihlein family. They pump millions into efforts to remove voting rights, especially in Wisconsin and are funders of the election denying lie of 2020. So many businesses get their supplies from this company without looking at their politics. It’s really common that I buy something from a business that has its own brand identity focused on environmental or social activism only to have their product show up in a Uline box. I feel like a pedantic Karen but I usually shoot these companies an email to bring their attention to the politics of Uline and suggest some alternatives like Global Industrial, Grainger, etc. In their response they always say they have no clue. At my own company I worked to get them removed from our internal operations which given the size of the business is not insignificant. Made me proud to see the corporate statement removing them from our supply chain.

Coca Cola produces 3 million tonnes of plastic packaging a year. That's an estimated 108 billion plastic bottles a year.

Blackrock, Koch industries, Sinclair Broadcasting, Sysco, McKesson

Wells Fargo's pretty shady. I've never worked for or banked with them, but they're pretty shady.

Walmart

Elsevier.

Established a near monopoly of academic journals. Charge scientists to publish in them (in the thousands) also charge the public to read them (subscription also in the thousands). Convince other scientists to review the scientific content for free (exploiting younger scientists who need to build their CV).

Basically putting a pay wall on the results of government tax dollar funded research.

Don’t get me started on how major Universities deal with STEM PhD students. Bringing people in as “students”, make them work 40+ hours a week in lab, purposefully misclassify them as students when really they’re workers, apply for large government grants using data generated by these students, make them do all the grading for the undergrad classes, and then complain when the students are begging for 40k/year. Instead tell them they’re lucky that as “students” they don’t have to pay tuition to be there. At the end of 5-7 years of this treatment they’ll give you a PhD. SCAM.

UPS. I have seen decisions made that have [unalived] employees and then the supervisor responsible get promoted. I have seen managers get fired for removing time worked from time cards only to be hired back a month later. I have saw intentional OSHA violations on a nightly basis for years. I see supervisors relentlessly harass employees. Horrible company in every way imaginable.

Value Village. They trick people into thinking they are a nonprofit, take donations that could be going to people who need them, and charge insane prices.

Pfizer Not trying to sound like an anti Vaxer but they’ve always been a pretty shady company

Pearson Vue - Did none of you go to college and shell out way too much money? Or take a standardized test?

Luxottica.Pretty much a monopoly on the vision care and product market.They own just about ALL fashion Eyewear and eye care outlets.Hence the ridiculous prices.