Ask Lemmy

I worked for a company that had an expensive San Jose lease during the .com bubble. When they decided they needed to get out of that lease, they folded the company - “fired” everyone, then re-hired everyone under an independent second company that was owned by the parent company. Sketchy, but not really surprising…

When they re-hired me, they didn’t have me sign any NDAs. All the old NDAs were with the company that folded, not the parent company. Some days I wish I had been unethical enough to sell off their source code to a competitor.

The majority of tech startups are super chaotic and barely keeping things running. More than you would ever imagine.

Big german TV production company with succesful primetime action series used rented cars for their stunts. Different people from the team rented them with full insurance, returned them crashed. They did this until every car rent in the city stopped offering insurance without retention.

I don't have any interesting secrets or facts from my current ex-jobs, so I'll share an interesting fact from a buddy's. It's one of those companies that offers automated phone systems (and chats, nowadays) that listen to your options rather than taking number inputs.

This may no longer be the case, but these systems were not actually automated. There are entire call centers dedicated to these phone systems, whereby an operator listens to your call snippet and manually selects the next option in the phone tree, or transcribes your input.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if advances in AI have made this whole song and dance less in need of human intervention, but once upon a time, your call wasn't truly automated - it was federated.

I was high the whole time, beginning to end.

I used to work for a popular wrestling company, billionaire owner, very profitable, would write off any OSHA penalties as the 'cost of doing business' just as they did in 1998, when The Undertaker threw Mankind off Hell In A Cell, and plummeted 16 ft through an announcer's table

One company I worked at had more full-time collections people than sales people. Our products were a lot cheaper than our competitors, and it attracted a lot of customers with no money.

Another company I worked at ignored all "first notice" bills they ran up. CFO told me that if a company wanted paid, they needed to send a second notice.

The first steel mill I worked for, the test requirements were more of a suggestion than a rigid specification. I, a trained and skilled engineer with the capacity to make informed decisions, had to run all rejections by my boss who would tell me "it's close enough" even if it wasn't. Sometimes it bit us in the ass with warranty failures, but the warranties were probably cheaper than internal rejections (and what is brand perception worth?).

My second steel mill job, I was the one making the rejection decisions. I did the hard thing and rejected our failures but I also troubleshot them to prevent recurrence, making our product and capability better over time.

It very much matters who you buy your steel from; two mills can have vastly different performance for the same products based on how they handle these situations.

There have been plenty of movies and shows based on this so I guess I'm more confirming a poorly kept secret than I am revealing it, but;

If you go out to eat in a college town (esp if it's a state school,) there's a good chance that almost every employee (managers, bartenders, servers, you name it) is drinking or smoking pot out back, if not in the middle of an active bender. We'd fill our water bottles with alcohol, make food for our stoner friends in exchange for drugs, take shots in the walk-in fridge, roll on Molly while cooking, run out back to puke, and rally for the rest of our shift. After closing we'd meet up with other industry friends, usually at a bar where one of them was still working, close that place down, then pair off and hook up in questionable places.

I've had sex on restaurant rooftops and patios, in supply closets, behind the stacked pallets in dry storage, and in the manager's office. I witnessed others get it on in booths, on top of the video poker machines, and even on the bar itself. Thankfully never where food was prepared, but that was pretty much the only thing that was off limits, and only within my social circle. I can't speak about others.

I'm a boring elder millennial now, but every once in a while I reminisce about working in the service industry. I don't think I appreciated how much freedom I had, I was too busy worrying about money, school, and relationships. I definitely wouldn't do it again, but I'm glad I got to sow my oats, or whatever.

Health insurance company I worked for would automatically reject claims over a certain amount without reviewing them. Just to be dicks and make people have to resubmit. This was over 25 years ago, but it's my understanding many health insurers still pull this shit. They don't care if it's legal or not. Enforcement is lazy and fines are cheaper than medical claims.

Obviously this is in the USA.

At Disneyland, Mickey Mouse is always played by a woman, due to the small costume. So if you put your arm around him for a photo, try not to accidentally touch Mickey’s boobs.