The truth is always better than living surrounded by illusions. However, once you learn how the metaphorical sausage is made, you can’t unlearn it. There are always going to be ethical transgressions and shady things happening to some extent, no matter the job industry. But some are worse than others and need to be called out—loud and clear. Meanwhile, other things that are kept hushed up are surprisingly pleasant.
Prompted by user u/Typical_Affect8207, the r/AskReddit crowd opened up about the top industry secrets that they know. Their insights offer a shocking glimpse into how some businesses work. Scroll down to read what they had to say.
Marketing psychology speaker Matt Johnson, Ph.D., shared his thoughts wit us on the advantages of secrecy in business, as well as what consumers can do if they've been tricked by products or services. Johnson is the host of the branding and human nature blogs. Scroll down for Bored Panda's interview with the expert.
#41
I'm repair tech at Chuck E Cheese.
There are some games we can adjust the payout for and some we can't. We have a number called "Ticket per play" or "ticket per tap" that we have to try to maintain. EVERY game and ride is adjusted somehow so we can get to that average number. The length of the ride is so you will tap your card more or less times. Some games have fixed ticket payout we can't adjust so we adjust other games up or down to get the whole average to that magical number. If one game we can't change pays out 4 tickets on average and the number we want to reach is 6, for Instance, I would adjust another game that can be adjusted to 7 or 8 to compensate, because the boss only cares about the average payout on a whole, not on the individual games ( unless it's insanely high or low )
If a game is cheating you out of tickets, we probably did that on purpose to compensate for something else. This also goes for the claw machine. We can control how often it pays out. Tickets can be bought at one penny per ticket. If you drop a quarter into a token machine, if it doesn't pay you 25 tickets, you're better off just buying tickets.
No we don't reuse pizza. It's cheaper and easier to just make another one since we get the ingredients in bulk. It's just that we cut into smaller slices so it's harder to do right, plus the kitchen personnel usually doesn't care about making it look perfect. No the job isn't fun. My job is to make sure YOU have fun. My job is stressful.
There are some games we can adjust the payout for and some we can't. We have a number called "Ticket per play" or "ticket per tap" that we have to try to maintain. EVERY game and ride is adjusted somehow so we can get to that average number. The length of the ride is so you will tap your card more or less times. Some games have fixed ticket payout we can't adjust so we adjust other games up or down to get the whole average to that magical number. If one game we can't change pays out 4 tickets on average and the number we want to reach is 6, for Instance, I would adjust another game that can be adjusted to 7 or 8 to compensate, because the boss only cares about the average payout on a whole, not on the individual games ( unless it's insanely high or low )
If a game is cheating you out of tickets, we probably did that on purpose to compensate for something else. This also goes for the claw machine. We can control how often it pays out. Tickets can be bought at one penny per ticket. If you drop a quarter into a token machine, if it doesn't pay you 25 tickets, you're better off just buying tickets.
No we don't reuse pizza. It's cheaper and easier to just make another one since we get the ingredients in bulk. It's just that we cut into smaller slices so it's harder to do right, plus the kitchen personnel usually doesn't care about making it look perfect. No the job isn't fun. My job is to make sure YOU have fun. My job is stressful.
40points
#42
Right now, mass transit agencies in most cities ( in the United States) are dealing with MASSIVE shortages of drivers, mechanics, and many other administrative positions.
The drivers are working 70+ hours EVERY week just to keep the system going.
Drivers need a CDL B w/ P endorsement, therefore there is nothing illegal about working a driver 17 hours a day. Therefore, transit agencies are forcing drivers ( per union contract in most cases) using inverse seniority, to work constantly. It’s a huge safety risk but no one seems to care about that.
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39points
#43
Food expiration dates, especially on shelf stable foods, are essentially arbitrary.
Nutrition labels are often wildly inaccurate. It is technically not legal to use false information, but its very, very rare to be caught, unless you are making health related claims.
Those food certifications that you see on food labels are provided by for profit companies that bill you monthly, so they are highly incentivized to certify as many companies as they can and actively ignore violations.
A shocking number of ingredients that are illegal or heavily regulated in other devoloped countries are perfectly legal and mostly unregulated in the US.
The same companies that make store brands at higher end stores like Wegmans and Whole Foods make them for cheaper stores like Walmart and Aldi. I could go on.
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39points
#44
All the most famous living artists have workshops full of people who make the art for them.
They spend their time choosing concepts, talking to their gallery reps and schmoozing buyers. The only time they touch the work is to sign it.
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39points
#45
The curriculum at your child's school is provided by the company that did the best presentation or has some connection to district administration, not the one with the best track record.
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39points
#46
Never take the first settlement offer. Always counter.
When dealing with savvy parties, the initial settlement demand is often twice the amount of money that the party wants.
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37points
#47
In the visual effects industry, EVERYBODY learns on bootleg software of some sort. That is why those $2600 list prices don't surprise anyone. I even had a high level employee of one of the companies that make it yell at me once "We don't care about some lone kid using it, we want to nail the COMPANIES pirating it!" He was upset because I had heard through an industry grapevine that a big post house had been caught with bootleg software.
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24points
#48
Those “freshly baked” cookies at the mall? They’re usually pre-made and frozen, just reheated to give you that warm, gooey goodness
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18points
#49
Optometrists will not give you your Pupillary Distance (PD) after an eye exam even though they measure it, to make it difficult to order glasses online.
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17points
#50
If you'd just ***actually f*****g reboot your s**t*** you'd have to spend a ***fraction*** of the time dealing with "broken" tech.
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15points