Ask Lemmy

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 last company I worked for has both NDA's and arbitration agreements, which would keep me from spilling company secrets and would screw me over if I did. But here is a secret - they use online PDF forms and don't check what text is entered into the signature.

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.

I worked for a company that was also a small ISP. If the internet service for our clients went down we were not allowed to tell them the truth. We either had to blame the upstream provider, or act like we had just heard about it and were looking into it.

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.

When I worked at Bob Evans I watched a manager peel the expiration dates off of expired food and replace them with dates in the future to avoid waste.

i dont think it was a secret for anything

but i once went to a job interview at a phone support line for an ISP in my country

it turned out to be ... a sales department. basically that's what they called it. all support calls had to eventually lead into selling something.

that just seems so idiotic i couldn't deal with it

Worked at a newspaper for a few years.

With very few exceptions, they do not give a fuck about you or the news. The advertisers are their customers and your attention is their product.

About 25 years ago I worked in a small town KFC franchise. Owner was, well, what you'd expect in a small town franchise owner - there was lots of pressure to cut costs and the manager had their job threatened at least once a month due to cost overruns (which cut into the owner's profits).

Manager quote, "I don't care if it's green, cook it anyway, nobody will tell once it's breaded and fried."

Worked Customer Service for a well-known car company that also had it's own financial services dept with its own branded credit card. During training we were told that the card itself sucked and that smart/discerning customers would likely reject getting the card if they actually knew the details. Why should people get the card? Just based on the "prestige" of the brand, because they would see it as a status symbol. And they had a quota for us to sign people up for every month, which I consistently failed because literally the only time I could get anybody to sign up for the card was when they didn't care enough to know the details and just absent-mindedly said, "Yea sure, I'll do that."

I worked as a pastor and professor for a global, evangelical television ministry/college. They knowingly conceal scholarship on the Bible and punish their pastors for asking any questions that undermine their most closely held traditions (including anti-evolution, mental illness is supernatural, etc.). They tell their US viewers that they can't call themselves Christians if they don't vote Republican, while still enjoying tax-exempt status. They use pseudohistorians to inspire Christian Nationalism over their network, and are one of the largest propaganda networks for the Religious Right. A U.S. Capitol police commander told me his men were fighting people who were wearing the network's brand.

That I made their DropBox account, and they can't access it anymore..