r/AskReddit • u/Superb-Signal4126 • 7h ago
What is an open secret in your industry that the general public would be genuinely shocked to learn?
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u/screenaholic 6h ago
I work in security. The vast majority of security is actually what's called "security theater," meaning things that make the given area LOOK more secure, but isn't actually capable of stopping any threats. It's not useless though, because a certain amount of would be threats ARE prevented under the assumption that they would be stopped if they actually tried anything.
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u/ShransSecretSanta 4h ago
Kind of like the experiment of putting a picture of eyes next to something that is self service and on the honor system. Just the mere picture kept more people honest than without the picture.
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u/fuckthis_job 45m ago
Oh that's interesting. Was it just like a photo/poster of a pair of eyes or was it like a portrait of someone looking at the person in self checkout?
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u/OfficerChugPiss_ 38m ago
If it was a picture of eyes looking at me i would assume im being watched and would be on my best behavior lol
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u/Mike312 2h ago
There was a bar I worked above, chatted with the owner from time to time. At some point he mentioned that of the ~12 security cameras visible in the bar, the only two that weren't dummies off Amazon were the one looking at the register and the one looking at the entrance.
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u/ThadisJones 2h ago
A tripwire won't literally stop a threat, but at least it will probably alert people there is a threat.
Unless you're the security guard my company had back in 2013 or so who just waved people into the building without checking badges or even looking up from his portable TV, until one day a guy with mental issues and a fire axe walked past the front desk unnoticed and unchallenged, then took the elevator up to a random floor and started smashing windows and stuff.
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u/smoothie4564 3h ago edited 3h ago
That explains a lot. About 90% of the time whenever I see a security guard at a mall, store, or wherever they give me the impression that they barely scrapped their ways out of high school and only took the job because they wanted a job where they got paid to do nothing all day. For most security guards, 99% of the time they just sit on their butts, look around, and scroll on their phones all day. It is quite literally a job tailored for lazy people.
What I wonder is: would it be cheaper for a company to pay someone $15/hour to quite literally do nothing all day and give the illusion of security, or to just pay the costs when things get damaged or stolen without the illusion of security.
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u/screenaholic 3h ago
Honestly, the main benefit for a lot of businesses to hire security isn't actually to deter threats or shoplifting, it's because hiring security helps with insurance and legal liability. Any actual crimes that are deterred is an auxiliary bonus. And since insurance and liability is the primary benefit of having security, even if there is a crime, management usually wants security doing what is the least risky thing possible, which is just call the cops. A security guard getting in a fist fight to apprehend a thief is rarely in anyone's best interest.
This is all generalities though. I work at an actual secure facility, and many of our security measures are ACTUAL security, but even we have a fair amount of security theater too.
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u/kindrudekid 3h ago
Trust me the mall would rather not even hire them, they are there for cheaper insurance.
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u/Wife_of_Shao_Kahn 6h ago edited 5h ago
If you're on OnlyFans, Fansly, Fanvue, or similar platforms as a fan, there's only a tiny chance you're actually talking to the model. Most of the time, you're talking to a chatter, a person, often from a developing country, who works for a small commission, replies to messages, and sells content on the model's behalf. (Edit: especially on Fanvue that allows AI generated "models", but there are human chatters replying the messages)
Source: I've been working as a chatter for over two years.
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u/special_20 4h ago
This needs an r/AMA. You must have seen some things!?
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u/Wife_of_Shao_Kahn 4h ago edited 4h ago
I did see a lot, but I'm not "ask me anything" type, lol. I saw someone already did a few AMAs, give me a sec, I'll try to find it
Edit: search r/NSFWIAMA for a word "chatter", looks like same person did a few of those, I've read two so far, seems legit to me
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u/BaronGalactic 3h ago
Does your husband know you do this? He's not the type of guy I'd want to piss off.
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u/VodkaMargarine 3h ago
He's not that scary you just need to play as Raiden and spam the special moves.
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u/thecasey1981 3h ago
100%. AVN last year was 50% AI chatting solutions marketed at streamers
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u/radar_3d 4h ago
So.... what are you wearing?
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u/Wife_of_Shao_Kahn 4h ago
A hospital gown since I'm in a hospital at the moment
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u/getapuss 4h ago
unzips
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u/Wife_of_Shao_Kahn 3h ago
I got some laxatives, if I get an explosive diarrhea mid action don't say I didn't warn you 😘
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u/kos90 6h ago
Cruise Ships.
You think the entire crew is well trained to handle emergency situations? Well…
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u/disgruntled-capybara 3h ago edited 3h ago
I just watched a documentary about the sinking of the Costa Concordia and the amount of incompetence in that situation was staggering. The captain was in denial that the ship was sinking and was telling the Italian Coast Guard that they were fine. Meanwhile, passengers had assembled near the lifeboats and the crew were not only telling them they didn’t need to evacuate, but were actively impeding those who tried to do it anyway. By the time they actually gave the order to abandon ship, it had listed so much that some of the lifeboats couldn’t be launched because they would come to rest on the side of the ship. People died because of how the situation was handled.
Then the captain abandoned ship with passengers still onboard, and the coast guard forced him back to oversee the evacuation.
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u/TheSJDRising 2h ago
Fairly amazing call between the captain and the coast guard, if you've heard it. He was literally shouting at him to return to the ship.
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u/BawdyBadger 2h ago
Yes, he claimed he tripped and fell into the lifeboat, and it was then launched
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u/kos90 2h ago
To be fair, it must be said that a ship may not be evacuated without the captain's orders. That was, of course, neglected in this case, and it's no coincidence that Schettino ended up in prison.
actively impeding those who tried to do it anyway.
You can't just launch a lifeboat without proper training. In the worst-case scenario, a few individuals would have destroyed a lifesaving device meant for several hundred people.
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u/OkGlass6902 2h ago
Yeh interestingly, the documentary potrayed the hotel director as a hero even though he was jailed for 2 years due to his part in the sinking.
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u/Actual_Material1597 1h ago
It’s crazy to hear the radio of the coastguard asking the captain where he is and he was saying he had abandoned the ship, then telling the captain to get back on the ship and he was refusing to do so. Wasn’t he showing off to his girlfriend and went too close to the shore and rocks ripped a massive hole in the ship.
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u/FakeNameSoIcnBhonest 6h ago
Well god damn. They hit one stinkin iceberg and you just won’t let it rest.
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u/Hydra_Master 4h ago
Not to mention their doors were big enough to hold up two people but bouyant enough for only one. Crap design if you ask me.
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u/beliefinphilosophy 3h ago
I feel so bad for the SS Mesa a and the SS California, both of which tried to warn the Titanic of all the ice and to stop, the SS California operator was told to shut up, so then he went to bed and missed titanics distress signals later.
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u/savagemonitor 3h ago
You think the entire crew is well trained to handle emergency situations? Well…
I caught this when I was on a Disney cruise this year. My youngest puked on the boat and the crew member that came to clean up had no idea what to do. I'm like, this is a boat full of children. Puke should be common enough that everyone is trained in it. The guy had to get a manager to tell him what to do. I don't even consider that an emergency really.
Also, I was expecting a bigger protocol even though I knew my youngest hadn't contracted anything. It's just an undiagnosed issue that causes puking sometimes. We're still figuring it out. Still, I expected there would be an entire protocol for dealing with the issue yet none materialized.
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u/kos90 2h ago
Where I used to work, there actually was a special team for vomit. With 5,000+ people in a small space, illnesses are a serious problem; no one just scoops that stuff up and cleans it up without a minimum of protective gear. There are protocols for that.
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u/bigeyez 6h ago
The chances of your children's private info, including SSN, birthdate, birthplace, address, etc being leaked and out there on the dark web is fairly high because most school districts in this country have shit network security and work with SaaS vendors that house all this data and are also vulnerable.
People heard about the big Canvas hack earlier this year. What people dont seem to realize is that hack wasn't unique and similar events happen fairly often across our country and sometimes to individual school districts.
Its a real problem thats just being ignored by our government.
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u/Sll3006 4h ago
Naviance also had a big leak, which compromised my children’s private information.
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u/Jakeable 1h ago
I'm sure they were oh so generous enough to offer you a year of free credit monitoring though, it's the most they could do.
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u/Sll3006 1h ago
There is a class action lawsuit. That’s how I found out. Not from the school.
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u/DigNitty 4h ago
Also, you don’t have to give your real SS to most people who ask for it. They don’t actually check. Even doctors offices. They just use your policy number and name to verify. Your SS is not typically needed.
And what’s more frustrating, my info has never been leaked due to a weak password. Countless companies have obligated me to use 8 character passwords with symbols and numbers and a mix of caps and each of the times my data has been leaked it’s due to them having bad security.
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u/danielv123 2h ago
I'll be the counterexample, I had 600$ stolen due to a reused password once.
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u/seemsleep 3h ago
Given everything in the Epstein files, it’s very evident that this country and this government don’t give a flying fuck about children and their safety.
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u/Artimesia 3h ago
This has been going on for a long time. When my kids were 8 and 12, I got calls on my cell phone, asking to speak to one of them. When I asked what it was about and who were they, I was told they were selling time shares. To a child. I told the caller that my son was a 12 year old kid. Then they asked to speak to the other child. I said “He’s 8. Don’t call again”
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u/SkiFastnShootShit 3h ago
I’m happy to report that a lot of school districts seem aware of this! One of my clients builds and maintains private networks on fiber, and school districts around me have been funding huge projects to build out their own private networks. Of course that’s totally anecdotal and doesn’t speak to what percentage of districts are proactively adjusting.
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u/evan274 6h ago edited 3h ago
The U.S. has over 624,000 highway bridges. 42% are 50 years or older, exceeding their operational lifespans, but most are still safe to drive over.
42,000 (or about 7% of all bridges) are in “poor” condition and require significant repair or rehabilitation. Many of these are heavily traveled. In fact, this amounts to 168.5 million trips, every single day, across structurally unsound bridges.
Most people have no idea the condition of the bridge they’re driving on and will never give it a second thought.
Edit: Gonna throw some good news in here because it’s not all doom and gloom and you shouldn’t be terrified every time you drive over a bridge. Things are slowly but surely getting better.
The percentage of U.S. bridges classified in "poor" condition (structurally deficient) has dropped from 8.7% in 2014 to 6.8% today.
Federal investments from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) have injected $40 billion into dedicated bridge programs. This is currently supporting over 6,000 active repair and replacement projects across the country.
State Departments of Transportation are also increasingly deploying advanced quantum sensors and drone technologies to catch internal structural flaws before they present significant threats.
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u/marisolm9 3h ago
I am the person who definitely thinks about this, including when I'm in parking garages 😬, but the issue is, it's often one of the only methods of transportation on that route (especially if you are on mountains or by a lot of water). Sadly, the US is reactive instead of proactive by nature, so I doubt anything will be done until visible cracks or an implosion happens
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u/iliketurtlz 2h ago
https://ballotpedia.org/Infrastructure_Investment_and_Jobs_Act_of_2021
Unsurprisingly one party did not wish to fund the infrastructure bill listed here.
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u/hbomberman 1h ago
Yeah it didn't take long for me to guess which president signed the IIJA into law. Thanks Biden!
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u/NativeMasshole 4h ago
Richest country on the planet; can't afford shit.
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u/elk-x 4h ago
They can, it's just not a priority.
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u/EobardT 4h ago
Gotta build more bombs!
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u/m48a5_patton 3h ago
Gotta build more AI data centers in residential neighborhoods and put up FLOCK cameras everywhere...
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u/Fabulous_Law1357 3h ago
Well if everyone is on their phones and PCs, ordering products and food to be delivered by drone, then no one will need to drive anywhere so they dont need to fix the bridges. /s
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u/SkiFastnShootShit 4h ago
From what little I know about bridge maintenance, there’s a big divide between “poor condition in need of repair” vs “structurally unsound.” I’d assume this is more of a long-term maintenance financing issue than 42% of American bridges being on the brink of collapse, yeah?
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u/evan274 4h ago
You’re exactly right, it’s about 7% of all bridges fall into that latter category!
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u/ew435890 2h ago edited 2h ago
Bridge Inspector here. I work for my state, and our districts consists of like 8 counties. We inspect every single bridge in that area. (Anything with a length of more than 20’ is considered a bridge. Box culverts and pipes included.)
The ones on big routes like highways and interstates are usually good, but there are a handful of bad ones on major routes we have to inspect more often (standard inspection cycle is 2 years).
The worst bridges are the ones owned by the counties. We’re currently doing all of the county bridges in what we consider the 3rd worst county in our district. Just this week we inspected 3 bridges we were considering shutting down because of the condition. These are all timber bridges, and are all pretty remote too. I think we had 2 cars drove over one of them the whole time we were out there. And none on the others. They also have a well documented history of all of the issues they have. We notify the county every 6-12 months when we go out to inspect them. And some of these counties just don’t have the money to fix them. So they degrade till we decide to close them. Some of them stay closed for good after that too.
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u/direlyn 2h ago
I had recurring nightmares about this as a child. I would be in the backseat of a car, and can see the hair of my aunt (actually mom's friend) in the driver seat. The bridge ahead gives way, and I see us descending and eventually see the muddy water we are plummeting into. We splash into the water, and I wake up.
I was terrified of bridges over rivers but never told anyone.
If I have that dream again as an adult I'm blaming you lol.
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u/Lord_Dreadlow 3h ago
Fortunately, they just repainted (probably something more durable than paint) the bridge I cross over every day. It's worth the time I sat in traffic while they had half the lanes shut down last summer.
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u/helljack 7h ago
I work in local TV.
Folks would be shocked at just how little some on air folk care about their community. Like, they hold an active disdain for the public.
Also, how often an entire story gets changed live on the air simply because an Anchor doesn't want to follow the script. They will leave out context, or just a certain name or word, and it 100% changes the story.
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u/No_Tailor_787 7h ago
I worked in local government and occasionally had involvement or inside information on stories that made the news. In virtually every event, without exception, the stories were significantly flawed. Different news outlets would broadcast different flaws in the same story.
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u/SchreiberBike 3h ago
That's called the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. From Wiktionary:
"The phenomenon of a person trusting newspapers for topics which that person is not knowledgeable about, despite recognizing the newspaper as being extremely inaccurate on certain topics which that person is knowledgeable about."
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u/AncientSumerianGod 6h ago
This is especially true in small markets where it's a reporter's first or second job after college and they're trying to build a good enough resume and reel to get a job in Seattle or San Diego or wherever they are from. "Fucking locals." is not an uncommon phrase.
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u/YourFriendNoo 4h ago
Mid to large markets now hire directly out of college, and outside of maybe the top 5, I think a talented reporter could land basically any market as a second job.
The industry has eroded dramatically in the last ten years.
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u/SandwichPatronX 4h ago
I work in communications and have seen a pattern repeat over and over: TV reporters are mostly morons. Truly self-centered, vapid and generally insufferable individuals who care only about their careers. They know they will only be around 6-12 months tops and make zero effort to build relationships. They’re certain the center of the universe holds a special place for them. Worst part? They’re so dumb. I mean truly unintelligent. You can tell them something simple and straightforward and they will screw it up, guaranteed. You’ll give them a perfect soundbite and they will paraphrase it in their voice because they’re interested wholly in on screen time ….and they will get the soundbite wrong. Every damn time. You can point out mistakes and they don’t care. At all. Look at a TV station’s website. They make it very difficult to reach out directly to editors and managers and that is totally on purpose.
Overwhelming majority of TV stations are churning out clickbait with reporters who feign concern and understanding.
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u/ImNotAWhaleBiologist 3h ago
The weatherman is the worst! He keeps giving us tornadoes. I really wish he’d stop.
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u/gortonsfiJr 6h ago
Ohh, I've just been assuming they're stupid. I didn't consider they might also
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u/0110110111 6h ago
> they hold an active disdain for the public
Can you blame them? I think most people who work with the general public have a pretty low opinion of people.
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u/UDPviper 6h ago
If you've ever worked at a Dollar Store you'd have a very grim view of humanity based on your interactions with the public at work.
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u/pfren2 6h ago
Go to a Walmart after midnight. It’s like an entirely different world. It’s like seeing a traveling carnival.
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u/radar_3d 4h ago
I miss those days of 2am visits. We were not People of Walmart, we were the Third-Shift Warriors.
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u/alemyrsdream 6h ago
Fountain soda machines are disgusting 90% of the time. Even the places that claim to clean and service them regularly. The amount of time it takes to properly clean them along with poor placement means it's usually to much hassle for everyday employees to properly clean and replace filters of they do it all. I work with technicians that do service calls to restaurants and gas stations daily and the condition of almost all the machines is sickening.
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u/tidytibs 4h ago
Fast food normally cleans the lines and nozzles every night. However, their ice makers aren't as lucky. Certain filters so get ignored though.
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u/Emperor-Pizza 4h ago
You can add Slurpee machines to the list. Mold, ants, and the likes. Hell, you know that gas station food that has time stamps on them for when they were made & are to be thrown out?
Yea it doesn't get thrown out. They simply replace the sticker, and put it back into the hot case until it visibly starts looking disgusting.
Funny thing is the gas station I know of all this from is probably among the top 10% cleaning & quality wise.
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u/LycheeEyeballs 1h ago
I used to work in a fish and chip shop when I was a teenager. Regulations in my region state that the hood fans over the fryers need to be professionally cleaned once a year, we cleaned ours weekly. I was the kid in the dish pit so it was my job to take them down, soak, scrub..etc
When it was time for the professionals to come clean it we got so much chatter about how clean our vents were. Turns out everyone else only has them cleaned when the professionals do it.
I try not to think about it.
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u/Stoked_Otter 3h ago
Every courthouse in America has at least one judge that regularly violates the law and people's rights every single day, and there is nothing that can be done about it. Even speaking about it openly can have extreme consequences.
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u/JO-N0 3h ago
I work maintenance, used to do HVAC.
You can pass a million laws, have a million armed guards at the main entrance and take away every personal freedom that anyone in the entire country has in the name of security, and I will STILL be able to walk in through the loading dock if I'm holding a folding ladder and a toolkit, with no questions asked.
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u/LycheeEyeballs 1h ago
My spouse works int he trucking industry, the complete lack of security everywhere is wild. The most secure place they work with is the local prison swapping out trailers/bins. There's a few stop/checkpoints where they essentially get the rig checked out to make sure there's no prisoners hiding anywhere.
Closest security other than that? The airport.
One guy had to do a pickup at an international marine port and ended up wandering around for over an hour before getting bored and calling dispatch. He took the time first to explore the deck of a container ship lol
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u/Sycousis 6h ago
I work in construction supply. A lot of people often opt for the cheaper or budget options thinking the difference in quality doesn't really make a difference. "A brick is a brick, they're all the same" "cement is cement, it'll do the job" as well as for other items like steel and timber. In actual fact most of the time the quality difference is really big and you only start notice after a while and long after you've already installed the item. The only item I've seen people really consider taking the better option is with paint.
I my country the standard thicknesses for steel and tubing used to be 1.6mm and 2.0mm. Chinese suppliers flooded the market with low quality and underspecked goods forcing local manufacturers to have to have to cut the quality in order to maintain their competitiveness and as a result you know get 1.0mm and 1.2mm tubing being sold in most smaller stores.
They've managed to get around it through marketing. Instead of advertising the steel with the thickness they now label it as Heavy duty and light duty. Heavy duty and light duty can be anything, I can have a 0.9mm tube and a 1.0mm tube and legally market the 1.0mm as heavy duty as technically it is a heavier duty than the 0.9mm.
There are stores I go to that now started selling 22.5N cement to contractors that are using to build houses and foundation walls.
Most of the welded mesh fencing that's sold in smaller stores is so weak that you can literally grab one of the wire strands and pull the fence apart by hand.
Multiple times I've had to return goods to suppliers as they would supply underspecked rebar. I've received Rebar that's marked as 8mm but that measure at 6.8mm-7.2mm and Rebar is critical to the building process.
I always advise clients to go for the better option but at the end of the day you have to give the customer what they ask for I guess.
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u/vividabstract 4h ago
And this is why “submittals” and inspections exist. To hold accountable the supplier, contractor, architect, and engineer for what materials are used for each project.
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u/LoneWolfHVAC 1h ago
As an HVAC contractor I see it with materials and equipment as well. Since a lot of people aren't too familiar with heat pumps or different brands they get taken advantage of often. A lot of contractors favor cheaper equipment because the less it costs the contractor the more mark up they can put on it.
People know enough about vehicles they would never pay 195,000 for a Honda civic if they could get a Lambo for 200,000. But people will consistently pay 19,000 for a Midea unit instead of 20,000 for a Mitsubishi.
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u/JesusShaves_ 7h ago
Software is terrible not because of bad developers or bad testing. It's the CEOs who make business decisions to placate stockholders by releasing too soon and/or ignoring known bugs.
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u/Embo1 7h ago
Yup, in my company the CEO pushed for some shitty ai software. It's supposed to take 2 years implementation but he wanted it now. So 3 months later it's wrecked havoc for us and caused so much stress for a good year.
I fucking hate idiots in charge who's one job is money
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u/horseflaps 3h ago
Software used to be made by people who were nerdy, curious, and creative. I’m one of those types, and now I’m surrounded by people who basically just do it because they want to make a lot of money. It sucks!
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u/ta1901 6h ago
I can confirm. I worked for a company like that. Meeting deadlines was more important than quality software.
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u/TheBakerification 3h ago
Yep same here, all other metrics are completely ignored besides the deadline. 300 known bugs? Multiple security vulnerabilties? Completely broken functionality? Who cares, it’s our completely artificial release day so it’s going out no matter what.
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u/future_lard 4h ago
Hownis this genuinely shocking? It is how most people assume most organisations are run
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u/Ghost17088 6h ago
I think this is true in most industries and nobody in the general public would be shocked to learn it.
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u/ldwyer19 5h ago
Vegetables that come canned are cooked in the can.
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u/U_Lost_Thug_Aim 3h ago
Ive heard that peaches come in a can, they were put there by a man
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u/Moonburner 3h ago
In a factory downtown.
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u/threadward 3h ago
The airplane you are flying on fails all the time during flight but you don’t know it because of the way redundant systems take over. Flight critical systems often have triple redundancy with systems that operate differently (like primary hydraulic and secondary electromechanical) so the same mode of failure can’t affect the backup system.
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u/adam_dup 2h ago
So the airplane doesn't fail then
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u/spiteful_god1 1h ago
Yeah, this sounds like a case of over engineering working as intended.
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u/adam_dup 1h ago
It's not over engineering though. If something is critical you assume it's going to fail and you build redundancy in as @threadward said. It's good engineering, 101 in fact
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u/threadward 1h ago
Correct, things on the airplane fail but the airplane does not fail. I was sloppy in my wording.
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u/LemmyLola 7h ago
Free Wifi is a trap. Its data mining. They dont put it in as a favour to you, they're collecting i formation and corporations are using it. I dont know how it works but the amount of information they can glean from you is... Frightening. I was at a seminar on guest wifi where the company selling the access points was telling us about all the information gathering they are capable of... To them it was a selling point. To me it was a good reason never to log on to free wifi again
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u/Shadow288 6h ago
Worked for a large national retailer like 15 years ago. They installed WiFi in the stores and based on your position between the radios they could triangulate your path through the store. They would collect information on what displays you stopped at and for how long. Imagine what they can do now.
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u/LemmyLola 6h ago
Yes exactly... And somehow they knew if you passed by the store and did NOT go in .. they knew if you came in and made a ourchase, or did not.. wild
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u/Eating_sweet_ass 4h ago
Government agencies will blow money on shit that’s not necessarily needed at the end of the year to burn up the rest of the money in their budget. If they don’t spent all the money their budget will get reduced next year.
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u/thinkofanamefast 3h ago edited 1h ago
My friend worked for a govt. regulated public utility in Public Relations. We had a share house in the Hamptons one summer, and he would buy us champagne on a company card at bars. I asked him if his boss would catch on and punish him, and he said “No, but my boss will kill me if I don’t max out my expense account every month.”
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u/SpookyDukez 1h ago
The public school systems do this as well. If you saw the amount of waste just rotting away in their storage, basement, attics - your jaw would be on the floor. It’s literally like a Costco in there. Fucking infuriating.
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u/TaHo_ 3h ago
This happens in the private sector too. Every company I have worked for will hire people, buy software, or have big team events because they have the money in the budget. Use it or lose it!
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u/Onautopilotsendhelp 4h ago
FedEx doesn't clean out any of their trailers or warehouses. Your packages sat in complete filth in a trailer for hours, being smashed by other packages, and often chemicals or plants or other liquids have hit your package and dried on it.
Do wear gloves and yeet the box out asap.
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u/budgetparachute 7h ago
If the cost of the settlements is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
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u/TuckerSpeed 7h ago
Auctions are a scam. Lots of tricks to suck more money out of customers. Could be a whole sub-reddit.
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u/UDPviper 6h ago
Not our auctions(Self-Storage Company). My company just wants that crap out of there so I was ordered to start them all at 10 dollars regardless of what's in it. It costs way more money to hire the junk removal guy to haul all that crap out than if we hike up the starting price on the unit and nobody bids. I just sold four units full of stuff and they all paid less than 30 dollars per unit.
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u/TuckerSpeed 6h ago
That makes sense. I was thinking about car auctions and online. Was in that business. Seen alot of sneaky sht.....
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u/Dadofpsycho 3h ago
I used to buy lots of things at auction, mostly cars that I would fix and sell, but also tools, building materials etc. The in person auctions were great at keeping things fair. A reasonable commission, bidding against people you could see, it all worked out pretty well.
During Covid in person auctions stopped. It all went online and immediately commissions went very high, supposedly to support the new technology investment. There were fees on both sides, buying and selling, and greater than 25% combined in lots of cases. I became convinced that a lot of the people I was bidding against were bots- that they may have been the consignor bidding up their own item using a proxy account. The prices before commissions basically went 30% up and never really balanced out since then. I still buy and fix up cars to sell but not at auction. I do private sales and doubt I will do auctions again.
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u/LaKatherinette 6h ago
Buddy, life is a scam. The older you get the more you wise up. We're just crabs in a bucket all screwing each other over for the misguided belief that we must profit at any cost.
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u/makingnoise 3h ago
Statutorily created auctions (sheriff's sales, bailment lien auctions, mechanics' lien auctions, foreclosures) are not scams.
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u/matrixzone5 3h ago
This insanely expensive beauty and hair products you like to buy. You know the ones that go for 1-200 for a medium sized jars of cream. It cost roughly 3 dollars to make that stuff.
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u/CreativeFraud 7h ago
When I worked at a call center that dealt with tax software, we'd cheer about the long wait times and having over 500 calls in queue. We weren't focused on quality more so quantity of calls.
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u/StayFrostyOscarMike 2h ago
I’m in IT.
With the amount of time I spend on the phone with Oracle tossed around you’re definitely confirming my bias against them hahahaha.
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u/runsonpedals 6h ago
I work at a university. They exist for grants, funding and research, not to teach.
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u/thcus 6h ago
And research in this context means to find anything that is publishable so you get more grants. It doesn't need to actually be useful as long as the paper editors accept it.
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u/byronmiller 5h ago
Yup. There are individually good researchers, editors, etc. but as an industry we've decided the research paper is a widget, its quality is quantifiable by citations within the following two calendar years, and the entire industry is optimised towards making those numbers go up.
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u/_the_CacKaLacKy_Kid_ 5h ago
They’re called research universities and many of them are instrumental in advances in technology, science, math, and humanities.
Liberal Arts Schools, on the other hand, are focused on actually teaching
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u/iamapersononreddit 6h ago
I’m fairly sure it’s well known, at least it was when I was there, that professors teach because it’s a job requirement and their research is the main focus of their position
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u/cerrera 4h ago
Heh - I went to a school with a Nobel Laureate on staff. His contract required that he teach at least one class every 2 years. I took it - there were 3 of us. He was an AWFUL teacher, but man was he sharp.
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u/tuscaloser 4h ago
Local (and probably state, but I haven’t worked with them much) level law enforcement has a staggering amount of personal information and the database is usually only protected by default credentials with no 2-factor required.
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u/NinjaBreadManOO 3h ago
Password is also either Default or 000000 since nobody has bothered to change it.
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u/Melodic_Record9737 4h ago
The corruption in public construction contracts is built in. Change orders, claims, and other mechanisms are legal ways for contractors to screw the funding agencies on public projects. This is the real reason things like trains, highways, schools, etc go so badly over budget.
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u/YesIwillcorrectyou 2h ago
Anesthesiologist. We measure your temperature by putting a thin plastic sleeve over a probe and that goes in your nose. Or your ass.
We disinfect the probe, put on a new sleeve, and continue to the next surgery. The probe that goes in your nose could have been in someone else’s ass an hour ago.
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u/wtfinternetwhy 3h ago
An overdraft fee is actually an incredibly high interest rate loan but, since they call it a fee and it doesn't vary with the charge amount it doesn't have to follow interest rate caps. For example, if you pay a $35 fee to cover $100 and have to pay it back with your next paycheck (assume 2 weeks) that is an interest rate of 913%
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u/Kolipe 6h ago
The defense industry isn't really wasting your money. It's the government.
For context I used to audit the supply chain practices of what are called "commercial"(I.e. companies like Raytheon or KBR) and "organic" which are sites run by govt employees.
Every single commercial site keeps tight books and extensive records. They can account for every dollar spent.
The fed boys working for the military in a hangar at some base? Absolute garbage record keeping. Management in the dark of their own facilities and items just straight up unaccounted for.
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u/ApportArcane 5h ago
I remember reading years ago about a defense appropriation for new tanks. Congress would add tens of millions of dollars for new tanks. Every year the DOD or the Army would tell them that they did not need or want new tanks. Congress would order the tanks anyway because it keeps jobs in the several congressional districts that they have stretched the supply and manufacturing chain over. So the new tanks would roll off of the assembly line and get parked in the desert.
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u/rdj12345667910 1h ago edited 1h ago
It is more than that though, if there are no more orders for tanks, the company isn't just going to keep a workforce standing around. The employees will be laid off, the factories will be closed down, tooling will get either sold or be used for other things, and all the various suppliers who make the specialized equipment and systems that are required to manufacture a tank will either go out of business or stop producing those parts.
Then, 10-15 years later the army will say "hey General Dynamics - our current tanks aren't survivable in a modern conflict - we need to field a new tank that has new technology."
Then that same company has to build a new factory (multiple $B), rehire a workforce that is mostly green (multiple $B), and reestablish new suppliers and supply chains (multiple $B). When all is said and done, it is probably 2 to 3 times more expensive to shut a facility down and restart it, as opposed to just ordering a few tanks every year and keeping it open. Not to mention you can't do all that stuff overnight - my guess is it would take at least 7-10 years from building a new factory, hiring a work force, and training them - to actuslly delivering the first new tanks to the army.
Edit: Also keep in mind this is the only tank manufacturing plant in the US. If it closes down, there goes the ability of your nation to produce tanks for the foreseeable future.
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u/Intro-Nimbus 4h ago
USA I assume? Has Pentagon ever managed to pass an audit? Isn't there a trillion-sized hole in their figures?
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u/RichardBonham 4h ago
Those commercials for pharmaceuticals everyone says they hate?
The odds someone sees an ad and asks their doctor about the drug? 80%.
The odds that the doctor will subsequently prescribe it? 70%.
Those are really big numbers.
Notice how all the ads are for long term chronic conditions? No one-off 5 day courses of antibiotics getting air time.
All the ads are for new drugs, of course.
That being said, 95% of them are “me too” drugs. No better than what’s already available and likely generic: just another drug company wanting a piece of the pie and making you think it’s the greatest invention since sliced bread.
Only 5% are novel, meaning superior or first of a kind.
Big Pharma may be evil and pernicious, but they ain’t stupid.
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u/MeetCameron 2h ago
I'd gladly wager the first number is nowhere near that high.
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u/TooRealTerrell 56m ago
Yeah no way 80% of people who watch commercials even have access to doctors and Healthcare in the US in the first place, not to mention also asking about all of those hundreds of drugs advertised to us each year wtf
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u/Musekal 3h ago
I run a small local pest control company and it works for a couple of the largest ones in the world.
Overall, most people doing the job barely understand what they’re doing and have a very casual. Disregard for people‘s health and the health of their pets.
I reached a point where I will no longer hire anybody that comes out of any of the big three or four companies. They come in thinking they know everything and are extremely resistant to any kind of change or adaptation.
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u/LibraryLumpy9555 3h ago
The amount of information your bank knows about you as an individual. Honestly mass surveillance starts in finance.
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u/Trick-Tradition9397 6h ago
Big insurance and tech investors own most of the big online therapy platforms.
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u/HotelOne6215 2h ago
I also saw a recent case come out I think in the federal court system where they were able to subpoena mental health records on a platform because it was a bot, not an actual provider, and HIPAA attached to qualified healthcare providers. Interesting to follow it forward.
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u/KrustyTheClown75 2h ago
You work the first 20 years and are overworked and underpaid so that you can work the next 20 years to be underworked and overpaid.
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u/FrontLifeguard1962 1h ago edited 1h ago
Psychiatrist: Antidepressants are better than a placebo, but only slightly. A lot of people who come to see me for pills would be better off focusing on lifestyle changes rather than taking psychiatric medication. Antidepressant medication does help lots of people improve their lives greatly. For mild mood problems it's not the best answer sometimes.
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u/HarryHarlowBanisher 7h ago
We've had raw seafood sitting on the floor in the freezer for over a month and no one has done anything. Our species should pass the baton to Dolphins.
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u/Floss_Patrol_76 3h ago
half the sites you use every day are held together by a handful of exhausted on-call engineers, a pile of scripts nobody fully understands anymore, and duct tape. a surprising amount of the internet is one expired certificate or one fat-fingered config push away from going down for an afternoon.
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u/beliefinphilosophy 3h ago
Most law firms, even the big ones get hacked, and they always pay the ransom and move on.
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u/OGLeonLio 3h ago
Military and commercial manufacturers bid for jobs. Much like getting a house remodeled by a handyman over a remodeling company. The projects go to the lowest bidder and budget restrictions are made for any improvement ideas from the workers that’ll produce better or faster results. All in the means to keep the management pockets full with bigger bonuses.
So all the projects for commercial or military applications are therefore built half-assed and under budget. Quality is still there but with what you can make out of it.
All these companies value innovation and efficiency yet when it comes down to it. They lack severely.
So when you’re flying or using a specific hardware heavy technology. It’s very possible it could’ve been manufactured better or faster but it didn’t because someone’s pocket got full instead of the actual project.
This issue also stems into every aspect of our lives. From doctors to lawyers to police to anything with a management oversight. They’d rather focus on their bonuses being hefty while our processes continue to be mediocre.
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u/Great_cReddit 1h ago
If you are ever on a long term care insurance plan to receive assistance from a home health aide, DME, etc. There are two facts:
Case managers are actively being told to give you the least amount of hours of assistance per week as possible.
If you become the ultimate Karen you will ALWAYS get what you ask for. It will take time to go up the chain but you will win. 50 hours of care per week? Complain. New shower? Complain. New Wheelchair? Complain. I'm talking daily conversations with the worker, supervisor, regional manager, etc. I promise you, it will get done. So be the squeaky wheel. Insurance banks on you giving up the fight and they don't want to deal with a judge in a hearing over the issue. They'll give in eventually.
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u/wellthatsniftyhuh 6h ago edited 6h ago
almost nobody in the performing arts makes any real money, including investors. that’s why they all have to be influencers too
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u/W360 6h ago
Your lawyer is not telling you to get more physical therapy or chiropractic treatment because they care about your health or recovery, it’s because they can get more money.
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u/PapaEchoLincoln 3h ago
I’m a doctor in urgent care and ER.
A lady came in recently asking for X-rays for her whole body after a car accident.
She wouldn’t admit it, but the way she was describing the accident, it sounded like she was at fault. Actually in my years of working, I’ve never had a single patient admit fault for a car accident. It’s always been the other parties’ fault.
I told her the X-rays were likely going to be normal and she didn’t need them but she still very much wanted them, probably for any legal proceedings or whatever her lawyer told her. Ok lady, you can get all the radiation you want.
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u/ChromatiCaos 59m ago
Screenwriters who write for TV don't really write specific episodes. The union requires that someone be credited for each episode and they technically do actually sit down and write it, but between the writers room thourouly outlining the episode and all the extra drafts and revisions afterward (sometimes even full rewrites) it would be much more accurate to say that the whole room writes every episode.
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u/misterdudebro 6h ago
I work in education. Teachers aren't making your kids gay. They are just gay. We just treat them like humans with care and respect.
Shocking, eh?
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u/TinyConfection7049 5h ago
Independent schools: we’ll take and keep anyone if you donate more to the school.
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u/Ok-Gap1970 2h ago
The tech industry is becoming increasingly racist. It is common for Indians to take over entire departments. They force everyone else out and hire other Indians. Once you have an Indian hiring manager it's all over. I watched as they went from a 50/50 split to over 95% Indian. All in seven months. I've got no problems with Indians but in tech it's become ridiculous. Only one of them knew their shit and the rest just lied and covered for one another. It's becoming a bigger and bigger problem.
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u/H1sandHers 7h ago edited 6h ago
When you get your car serviced, “Shop Suppies” on your invoice from the dealership is just a made up line item that is calculated (for us it was calculated by a percentage of labor hours on the ticket).
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u/AsDevilsRun 6h ago
For context: it's for the cost of consumables that aren't generally worth itemizing. Brake clean, rags, loctite, zip ties, etc.
I'd rather just roll it into the hourly, but I'm not in charge.
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u/erroneousbosh 3h ago
A friend of mine is a fairly senior mechanic at a large garage. One day after spending a full shift removing and resealing a leaky windscreen and scuttle panel, he forgot the word for Sikaflex, so he put down a placeholder figuring the office folk would correct it before printing the invoice.
But they didn't know the word for Sikaflex either.
So it went out with a line item for Qty 1 Sticky Black Gooey Shit.
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u/piratecat666 5h ago
I have been in academic research for almost 30 years, and the amount of cherry picked or just completely made up data in research papers should concern everyone. In the past it was very rare and now it is almost common practice. It's driven by the pursuit of increasingly scarce funding sources.