Recently, Reddit user u/Boring-Plastic-4667 asked the people of r/AskReddit, "What industry “secret” do you know that most people don’t?" So, we thought we'd share some of the most-upvoted responses:
FYI, these are unverified accounts from Reddit users.
1. "The New York Times bestseller list has a lot of people on it who buy massive numbers of their own books."
"Apparently, there is a symbol that indicates that while it did make best seller status, there was a bulk buy.
A footnote, if you will, or similar to an asterisk."
Note: it's a dagger symbol that was first used on the list in 1995.
2. "Worked with a lot of banks and their IT systems.You wouldn’t believe how old and fragile they are. It’s a wonder it’s not all coming crashing down."
3. "That guy you pay to come out and fix your computer, most of the time, just Google searches your problem to find the solution."
"Can confirm. But you’re not paying us to look it up. You’re paying us to know what to look up."
4. "If you find an extra nugget in your order, it wasn't a mistake. You got a cool employee."
5. "I worked in online community management and social media for years. Admins CAN read all of your PMs. 'Private' only means private from the masses, not from administration. We had to be able to read them to check reports of abuse, grooming, illegal activity etc."
"I can't tell you how much cringeworthy shit I had to read through, especially from guys trying to hook up."
6. "I worked in politics. There are A LOT of people who write to a politician like they're a celebrity. They receive love letters and all kinds of weird stuff. There's also quite a sizeable part of their mail that is comprised of people asking for a photo with an autograph. Way more than you think!"
"Some because they're admirers, others because they collect them... and then some other cases you don't really want to know about (I've worked for a female politician, trust me, you don't wanna know).
The dirty little secret within the secret is that the politicians I knew didn't sign anything. They had a machine that did all the signing for them. So technically the autographs were not even real."