If you ever wanted to know a little bit more about the "insider secrets" of specific industries, look no further than Reddit.
Social media has always been a great source of information about other people's professions. We get to see how popular fast food restaurants prep their meals on TikTok, peek behind the curtain of Hollywood with film Twitter (which will simply never be called "film X"), and learn about salary negotiation techniques on LinkedIn.
But redditors have recently gotten a little bit more direct after u/Capable-big-Piece posted to r/AskReddit, hoping people would share their "insider's secret" from their profession, "that everyone should probably know."
Some of the answers are just cool bits of info, some are depressing, but a lot of them were actually quite helpful. We've rounded up some of our faves, although the whole post is worth checking out.
1. Banking
"In banking, don’t be afraid to explicitly ask for a fee refund. As a bank employee, my employer does not want me proactively offering fee refunds. But if you ask for it, I have to at least try to refund it. If you do ask for it but are denied, know that that decision was likely made by a machine and request a manager to refund it. This works the first, maybe second time but will eventually stop working if you make it a habit." —u/GibMcSpook
2. Teaching
"As a teacher for 8 years with a minor degree in Childhood & Adolescent Developmental Psychology... your child is most likely a completely different person when at school as compared to how they are at home. When they're with you, they are "the son/daughter/little brother/ little sister, etc." At school, they fit into a different social hierarchy and can be either more or less assertive/involved when they are among children their same age and given a little more autonomy." —u/xeno0153
3. Insurance
"File a grievance! For the love of all things, when your insurance denies something take the time and file a grievance." —u/ItemOk8415
"You have to play their game. You file an appeal that payment was inadequate. They deny your appeal. So you file a second level appeal. This is where they strengthen their argument or cave. Almost always the denial is maintained. But now your next appeal is outside the organization, and you finally get to a number that insurance companies at least used to be afraid of, called upheld complaints per thousand (submitted). It’s only at this level that you’ll receive the review of your situation where someone didn’t have an incentive to deny your claim." —u/Leather-Map-8138
4. Coast Guard
"If you get swept out to sea or fall off your boat in the middle of the ocean, you had BETTER be wearing neon bright orange/yellow. Believe it or not, we are in the helicopters and planes looking for you with our literal eyeballs. You are a tiny speck surrounded by the navy blue water - so you had better be a bright orange speck and not a navy blue speck." —u/Streetquats
5. Assisted Living
"Assisted living and other care facilities are owned by property investment companies. If they do not specify nursing or medical rehabilitation, they do not consider themselves medical facilities and will not have medically trained staff on site 24/7. If they aren’t specifically a medical facility, they are not as well regulated and can staff at their discretion because there is no set minimum staffing requirements for investment properties in most states (in the USA). There may be a nurse or two present during day shift and on call for other shifts, but they will be severely underpaid so they are more likely to be nurses who can’t get hired elsewhere for good reason." —u/FlyingPaganSis
6. Surgeon
"Schedule your surgery first thing in the A.M." —u/mjwsterile
7. Call Center
"Being kind to the call centre employee could result in you being refunded 90% of your fees & interest. When you’re being a dick on the phone you can be guaranteed everyone in the office knows your full name & has looked at your account notes in prep for the day they finally have to deal with you." —u/Afterglow1311
8. Libraries
"Librarians love giving you free stuff, and you can often borrow way more kinds of things than you think. If you're polite and the desk isn't slammed, you can ask us damn near anything. Even if we can't find an answer, we'll at the very least point you toward someone more likely to get you one. What we can do directly depends on the library (public or not, how well funded, specialized, etc), but we can get...creative." —u/itstheballroomblitz
9. Medics
"So I’m a medic. I don’t personally care if you took drugs to have a good time. As long as you are safe while doing so then that’s fantastic. I just want to know the amount and what kind. This is so if something goes sideways then I can try to fix it."
10. Costco
"Costco upholds quality in the industry. The audit process for the quality/cleanliness that is most relevant/present isn't governmental, but global quality schemes like SQF. Companies pay to be audited so they can show the results to customers that will make them buy. This means that if it wasn't for Costco having so much power and demanding so much from these auditing schemes, then the companies would get away with a lot more than they already do."
11. Healthcare
"Every hospital, whether they openly advertise it or not, has a finance dept that offers things like fee scaling, bill reduction, and bill itemization. Before you open a care credit account and put your medical debt on a high interest credit card, before you put your balance on a payment plan with billing, before you do any of those wild things that will bury you even deeper into a pit, call your hospital, ask to speak to the finance dept, and ask for fee scaling or bill reduction."
12. Hotels
"Book your hotel room directly through the hotel, not a third party website." —u/Its_Pelican_Time
"This right here. Same thing with flights. I've seen people show up to hotels and flights and be ass out of luck because their 3rd party booking was bumped. And since it was 3rd party, neither the airline nor the hotel were required to offer anything else." —u/originalsanitizer
13. Law
"Criminal defense attorney. Asking for a lawyer and invoking the right to remain silent is close to magic witchcraft in marginally competent jurisdictions. You won’t talk your way out of cuffs." —u/PNBest
14. Clothing
"New, clean clothing is handled by people who come to work sick (because they need the money) and sometimes don't wash their hands after they use the restroom. We don't wash it before it ships. **Wash new clothing before you wear it **" —u/Windamyre
15. AI
"Everything you say to an Ai chat, especially Copilot is recorded and analyzed. This goes for everywhere else at work too. If you’re on company email, chats, etc..; it’s very easy now to see and identify what users in your organization are saying and doing." —u/oriondracowolf
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