"Dirty Little Secrets" That Companies Hide From The Public Get Revealed By These 35 Ex-Employees Online

From my time at the IT help desk: 90% of the time I'm not "a genius who magically knows how to solve problems". I just google whatever you told me and followed the steps from the top result to fix it.

Got an interesting one for you: The New York Times Bestseller List is Curated Advertising.

Yup. While it is based on sales, there are some nifty little loopholes left in the list to allow publishers to "choose" what gets on the list.

Here's how it works. What shows up on the list is the top sellers from set locations in a period of time, right? So a publisher comes out with a book, and they want it to go right to the list on day one. So they call the seller and place an order in advance to buy all the books that seller has that they haven't even shipped out yet. The seller takes the money, and all those books are now "sold." So they need more books to sell. So they contact the publisher, who agrees to sell them more stock, which happens to be the stock they just bought back.

The publisher then calls the seller and buys the stock again. The seller calls the publisher and orders more. Repeat until you've got the numbers you need (which you know, since the big publishers swap info freely so that everyone knows how many sales will take what spot on the list). You can "sell" 30,000 books this way while only having 2000 printed. The whole time the stock sits in a single place.

There's no rule against this. After all, the publisher does pay the seller each time. 50% of that money comes back to them, however, so it's basically low-cost advertising.

And that's how you get a book on the NYT Bestseller list. But only if you're with a big publisher. In the last few years, indie and self-pub books like The Martian started getting on the list, both through legit sales and the creators using the same system ... So the NYT restricted the list. You're only qualified for it if you're one of the big publishers now.

And now you know.

I worked for a political consulting firm and was completely floored when congressmen/women would come in for media training (learning to be "normal" on camera or in front of constituents). Nearly every politician who came in for training was clueless and literally had "their views" on the issues fed to them by my boss (the media strategist). Sounds obvious, but it's really horrifying to witness.

Car dealership. WE ARE SCAMMING YOU.

I work at a US lobbying firm, and I'm sure no Redditor would be shocked to hear that US legislators are ignorant. You might be surprised just HOW ill-informed a lot of them are, though. Like the Congressman who believed David Cameron was a member of the Socialist party. Or the one that asked me why we called it Russia now, not the USSR. Or the Senator who told me he'd grown up drinking sea water, and it was healthier for you. Or the governor who thought all Jews were k**led by Hitler. The list could go on.

If more citizens knew how often U.S. Military individuals said things along the lines of, "F**k civilians, they can suck my d**k." People might lose some of their unrelenting support for the troops.

Recently retired trucker here. A fully loaded semi-truck traveling at highway speeds takes approximately 100 yards to come to a complete stop. Which means that the fun game of slamming on the brakes at the last minute in front of a big truck is just one of several ways you get referred to by the phrase "dead man driving."

I work in visual effects for large hollywood movies. We do so much digital cleanup and enhancement of practical effects, yet get no credit for how it looks. We only get sh*t on when a director or studio forces us to make cartoony CG characters or un-photorealistic backgrounds. We're the only department that doesn't have a union, yet we're in charge of upwards of half the movie's budget. Life of Pi was shot mostly on green screen, yet the cinematographer got an Oscar, even though most of those shots were created later in VFX without his input.

When you pick your dog up from the kennel after a splendid beach vacation and he/she smells like dog shampoo (probably because you requested a grooming session), that's because we have a spray that smells like dog shampoo.

Your dog has been in his cage, frightened by the foreign environment and loud barking/growling dogs. He probably s**t himself or peed and then laid down in the puddle. This made him feel extremely guilty because he knows he's supposed to go *outside* for that. He's a mess, mentally and physically.

So when you come to pick him up and we realize "oops, Fido never got over to the groomers", we have a spray bottle of doggie febreeze. We wipe any s**t off as best we can, tie a festive bandana around their neck, and hope you don't notice the completely manic excitement they're exhibiting when you're finally reunited.

*I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, I love you, I love you, please let's leave, let's leave, let's leave, leave, leave, leave, I trust you, I'm sorry*

I don't know if it's a dirty secret as much as common sense when you think about it, but having worked in a warehouse that stores beer cans, I'd say that you should wash the top of any can you drink from, as it may have been sat on climbed on, touched by filthy hands and had mice run across it, and if nothing else was probably covered in layers of dust.

Most people who say this are ignored as kooks, but having worked in pharmaceutical research, I can confirm this:

We already have developed better, safer medicines than most of the c**p currently on the market. However due to the following reasons, most of it will never reach the market.

* FDA Approval costs a fair amount of money and time, and for a "new drug" to be approved takes bloody years. The slightest f**kup in testing and back to the beginning.

* Money. If a new drug discovery is not going to be as profitable as the stuff currently on the market, it will simply be patented and sat on.

* Research funding: Not enough of it anymore to properly explore all the possibilities.

I'm in radio. We don't get to pick what we play on air, the pd schedules it and we just talk in between songs. The closest we get is when we play a request, that's usually something we wanted to hear and no one actually requested it.

The guys down at the talk station ironically can play whatever they want but think the last good song came out in 1975.

Fiber Internet Service Provider here - bandwidth is not a scarce commodity like they want you to think it is. It is all about profit margins and over subscribing the network.

RMT here,

90% of your upper shoulder/neck problems can be solved by stretching properly daily. Same thing with headaches.

Stop slouching.

When you climb into a helicopter and the rotors are turning, you can't reach your arm up high enough to lose a hand....but we don't want anyone trying to test it or prove us wrong.