What Lies Beneath - 21 Industries With Hidden Dark Sides Not Many Know

We know that the vast majority of products in front of us are riddled with unethical backstories of price gouging and exploitation. But just how bad is it?

By Daniel Bonfiglio

Published 6 months ago in Wtf

In the modern day and age of massive multinational corporations, we know that the vast majority of products in front of us are riddled with unethical backstories of price gouging and exploitation. But just how bad is it?

These 21 people took to Ask Reddit, and shared their insider info about well known industries with serious hidden dark sides.

1
“Cruise Lines. Man overboard tech exists that would drastically reduce the number of lives lost at sea but it comes at a cost. The large cruise line I worked at wouldn't even consider it unless a competitor did it first. It will never be implemented.”

”I worked on cruise ships for years, in one of the actually decent paying positions, and witnessed abused, overworked, and criminally low paid foreign crew members slave away for years. I always felt bad. They worked 12 hours EVERYDAY for nine months. There are no days off, just several hours off for crew on ships. They use plausible deniability and fudged numbers and systems to reduce liability and immediately disembark anyone who resist their ways.”

2
I thought working at a local flower shop would be rosy and idyllic until I was told to upsell grieving widows on already overpriced casket sprays.

3
The charity sector. Funding fraud, mistreatment, underpayment of staff, and focusing more on PR than actually doing anything of substance are commonplace.
4
There are a lot of people that breed dogs without knowing what they’re doing, and are just doing it to make money. Dogs are born with illnesses and disabilities and get ditched and left behind, ending up in a dog shelter. Here it’s filled with dogs still “too healthy” to pass away but “too weak” to live. If we wouldn’t take care of them they wouldn’t survive for a day. If you ever want to get a dog, please get one from a GOOD shelter. Know what you’re getting, but please don’t go find a cheap breeder.

5
The towing / tow truck industry, at least here in Toronto, is very territorial and well connected. It's legitimately just organized crime at this point.
6
Chiquita Banana and any of the Banana Republic companies. These are companies that essentially bought entire countries in Central America. They bought, paid for, and own all of the local utility companies, and control the government. They're also behind a lot of assassinations to control these countries and keep them company owned.
7
Social media. They use the same strategies that casinos do to game human psychology.

8
Nursing homes. I didn’t think the worst part of ems would be learning how most nursing homes in my area treat their patients. But it is. By far.
9
I'm going to say Finance but not for the reason most people think. I work in trading, and my colleagues are some of the smartest people on the planet. Former chemists, physicists, virologists, aerospace engineers, statisticians, materials scientists, and etc. They all get burnt out, barely able to keep their research going, while begging for grant money. Then they get recruited into financial firms to do the same kind of work they enjoy, but while get paid 10x or even 100x. They don't have to deal with customers, and they see direct indicators of the quality of their work.

Finance takes people who could be changing the world for the better, and once they cross the event horizon there's no going back. The other half of the problem is how difficult it is to get funding for research to improve the world, but finance is the black hole from which there is no escape.
10
I dated a model a few years ago. Her agency put her up in an apartment in NYC. She had a pretty good run but after a year or so they "chewed her up and spit her out." Her look was getting old and they got their use out of her.

She ended up back home with nothing to show for it. That's when I met her. We were dating for about a month when she asked if I knew how she could get some pain killers. I was pretty shocked and didn't know why she would be asking me. Apparently while modeling, of course eating was highly frowned upon. She and many others replaced eating with some addiction, alcohol, drugs, etc.. She would get the occasional layout in a magazine but she said most of her time was spent fighting off advances from scumbags in the industry.

The next time I saw her was when I visited her in the hospital. She was having severe problems with opioid withdrawal. I hope she's doing well these days.

11
Real estate. I'm a copywriter for a US real estate corporation and cant wait to get the heck away from them. Disgusting industry. But right now I need to pay my bills.
12
Gambling. However sinister you think it is, it's more than that.
13
Higher Education. It's become all about the dollars. Colleges took a major financial hit over the COVID years. To make up deficits, they're doing some very shady stuff to get enrollment and retention back up, to fill seats and collect money. Recruiting standards have fallen through the floor.

14
The Tomato industry. I went to a lecture for extra credit in college on the history of the tomato. I was expecting to hear how people used it and where people started growing them and what not. What I got was essentially a full season of the sopranos. Extortion, murder, blackmail, vandalism, you name it...the tomato industry was rife with the worst of it.
15
Cartels are starting to get into the avocado industry because we need our guacamole on game day.
16
I'd say sales, such as call centers and cold calling. Nothing worse than being told to hit KPIs and targets just to sell people stuff they don't want, sometimes forcefully, under the threat of losing your job.

17
Healthcare, particularly big pharma. Look up the Merck scandal with Vioxx. Merck fabricated a journal to hide the side effects of Vioxx, which was actually responsible for causing tens of thousands of heart attacks. Big pharma ultimately cares about money, not health.
18
The beauty industry. You think it’s all glam and glowing skin? Nah, it’s basically a battlefield where innocent pores are tortured by overpriced serums, and your self-esteem is held hostage by Photoshop and airbrushing. They sell us a fantasy, and we’re out here spending half our paychecks chasing it.
19
Call centers. Training automatic communication on the clock messes you up. I Met people who were in the industry for some years and who had complete private conversations without remembering one word the person said. Not in the sense of forgetting but in the sense of just not listening.

20
The art world, by which I mean the high-end institutional gallery art world. I grew up in that world, and the amount of exploitation that exists at every level would astonish you. I could write a book. My advice to any young artist would be to make art for yourself first, and to not chase mainstream success. It’s not worth it.
21
I’ve been in the music industry for years as a musician. As an opening act we will play sold out shows of a thousand or more people. The headliner gets their asking price and each opening band will be paid 100-150 bucks, (for the whole band). The venue keeps the rest. On top of that, if it’s a Live Nation show they take 30% of your merch sales too. Musicians struggle and starve while industry people get rich.