I used to work at a place that shall remain nameless and, if we’re being completely open and honest here, it was a total f*cking nightmare.
I only stayed there for a few months, but in that short time, I was so appalled by what I saw from the boss on a day-to-day basis that I finally just had to quit and get the hell out of there.
Yikes, I do not miss that place at all.
Folks on AskReddit talked about the worst business practices that they’ve ever seen.
Let’s see what they had to say.
1. Gross!
“My local Subway and their perpetual stew of meatballs.
Every day they “make” meat balls to be used on their meatball marinara sandwich. But every day they never use all of them so they put the left over ones into the refrigerator to be used the next day.
This is fine. You can get away with it since it’s held an appropriate temperatures during the day and kept refrigerated over night.
The problem comes after they make more. Instead of keeping the old and new batch of meat balls separate they cook off new meat balls and just add them to the old meat ball container.
So technically there could be one meatball floating around in there that is months old before it finally gets scooped up and placed on a sandwich.”
2. They’re not down with that.
“I briefly worked at a FedEx shipping center.
The first hour of orientation was basically ,“if you even think the word “union” we’ll end your f*cking bloodline.””
3. That’s not good.
“Burnell Productions in Renton, just outside Seattle.
Constantly lie, cheat and steal from their customers. When confronted, the CEO pleads poverty and needs money to pay bills.
The CEO was declared bankrupt in 2020 wiping the debt he had on 13 credit cards. Meanwhile he (the CEO) also has a condo that he hasn’t paid his mortgage on, for almost a year.
Then there’s over $40K spent on a mobile game, which he does not acknowledge, because he has an addiction problem.”
4. Great customer service!
“I went to an independent make-up store because I wanted to support small businesses and the shop girl told me I would need a lot of products because I was ugly.
I was SHOOK.
Like, I know I am no Halle Berry… but ugly???”
5. Shady.
“The Spectrum Stadium in Philadelphia has a deal with two towing companies where they intentionally make event parking difficult resulting in people getting towed. They split the fines.
This includes directing people to overfilled lots hoping you get frustrated and park on the side, directing people to lots not for the event like the restaurant parking, removing the handicap signs so you can only tell by the painting, etc…
My friend dated a security head there who said the spectrum gets almost $100,000 extra a year from their cut of the fines.”
6. Painful.
“My wisdom tooth operation was f*cked up (which they under anesthesatised me for) so I went back 2 days later, they admitted their fault and that they would fix it there and then, but it would cost me equivalent $500.
I said no way, this is your screwup. They eventually agreed. I took the woozy pill they gave me as it was gonna be big work in there, operation went as planned and while I was not even with it they charged me the money, then booted me out onto the street. I was almost hit by a bus as I had no awareness of anything.
Found it all out later on from a friend who happened to be passing and saw me playing with cars on a dual lane road and B. an acquaintance in the waiting room who had watched me pay (ironically, I was there due to their daughters recommendation).”
7. Sounds bad.
“Quotas.
From car sales to banking, they always Incentivize the worker to lie, cheat, discriminate and provide the poorest service possible to make the numbers look good so that upper management doesn’t fire them.
If you do your job perfectly but don’t try to cheat the numbers then you look like you’re under performing compared to the ones that do, creating a feedback loop insuring that everyone who wants to have a job cheats.”
8. So many things wrong…
“There’s this new fangled online grocery store- Move.
If you order something and it’s not in stock, they give you a store credit instead of a refund. So many things wrong.
How is their inventory management so bad that they don’t know what’s in stock?”
9. What?!?!
“Blockbuster.
My particular example was a severe ice storm in late 1990s. Our county was under road closure except for emergencies for 3 days. Blockbuster would not pause or hold late fees during that time.
That was the end of Blockbuster for me. The manager actually told me it wasn’t their fault the roads were closed.”
10. Not good management.
“If you own a restaurant/bar/grill, sitting at the bar getting blacked out and then screaming at employees for reasons you can’t remember the next day is not management.”
11. Consignment stores.
“Beware of consignment stores people!
Those store where you can buy used clothing for cheap and also can take yours in to be sold
There may be other kinds I don’t know of but the big red flag is if they do it like this:
They offer an agreement when you sell through them that they get a percentage of the sale price, BUT after a certain amount of time, if the item hasn’t sold, it becomes their property and they get full profit. But they allow you to come reclaim your item any time before that deadline
Ask them if they would assist you to find your item in the store should you decide to reclaim it
If they say “no” or offer an excuse like “we don’t itemize so you have to seek it out yourself” then DO NOT DO BUSINESS WITH THEM THEY ARE A SCAM
one example in my town is CJs Consignment. Not every item may be scammed like this but they may occasionally pick a high dollar item and decide they want the full profit. All they do is hide your sh*t from you. Maybe put it in the back or somewhere customers don’t have access to.
If you can’t find your item then you can’t reclaim it in time. They did this to me with a dress (kind of hard to miss a big *ss gown amongst shirts and pants) and then after my deadline, my dress magically reappears now property of CJs
Even former employees started sharing stories online of how they would hide people’s Shoes or bags or whatever so they couldn’t claim them before the deadline
Only trust a consignment store that will help you reclaim your item. Or better yet don’t do business with any that have deadlines like that (if such a thing exists).”
12. Interesting…
“Oracle software.
Oracle is a technology company which uses its one feature product (their database), and uses that product to drive sales and adoption of a slew of inferior garbage software through incredibly restrictive licensing terms.
Marc Benioff, Founder and CEO of Salesforce has a net worth of $8.8 billion dollars, and that is almost exclusively due to giving the market an alternative to Larry Ellison’s corporate extortion machine.”
What do you think are the worst business practices that you’ve ever seen?
Talk to us in the comments.
We’d love to hear your stories!
