" If you ’re not shit as much as someone else , question it . "
Recently, Reddit userNo-Nerve6154posted to the popularAsk Redditpage to ask people, “What’s something employers would never want employees to know because they would lose millions?”
Obviously, I had to read the answers, and they ranged from genuinely helpful to weirdly fascinating. While employers might not be losingmillionsfrom some of these things, they certainly don’t want you to know about them, either; so, naturally, I had to share. Here are some of people’s best answers:
1.“Any time your employer requires you to do something, you should be clocked in.”
2.“You’re allowed to talk to your coworkers about pay. The amount of people I’ve run into who thinking discussing wages is honestly a crime absolutely blows my mind.”
3.“Just because something is written company policy doesn’t make it law or legal.”
4.“You can claim unemployment in the US even if you are still working. If they cut your hours enough to the point you’re no longer making the same kind of money you were, you can file for unemployment.”
— u / EfficientDismal
5.“They actually can afford to give you a higher salary but choose not to.”
6.“Most jobs don’t actually need 40 hours a week to get things done. If you cut out pointless meetings and unnecessary tasks, people could finish their work in way less time. If everyone realized that, companies would probably have to pay for actual work done, not just hours spent.”
7.“The value of labor.”
— u / MwaslametryFEM
8.“If you work for a large enough company, they literally have a department that pays people just to make sure unions don’t get formed. It’s usually called something like labor relations and the main crux of their job is to assess unionization risk of every move the company makes.”
9.“They don’t want you to know how much value you actually bring to a company, especially if you work in administrative, low-paid positions. These jobs enable companies to make a hell of a lot of money.”
10.“They don’t want you to know what ‘wage theft’ is and that it’s a crime. Even an inattentive employer can do it by accident. Shitty employers systematize it and steal millions from people.”
11.“Discussing pay is absolutely not allowed to be ‘against company policy.’ It’s against federal law for them to tell you that you can’t discuss wages.”
12.“They don’t want you to know that unions are a thingthey find worth killing over.”
13.“HR is not there for the benefit of employees.”
14.“You cannot be fired for jury duty. Most jury duty summons will explicitly state this outright on the summons itself. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to your face.”
15.“A lot of ‘urgent deadlines’ are completely made up. They’re just pressure tactics to squeeze more output without paying more.”
— u / Rich - Television-9846
16.“Printer ink cartridges cost like nothing to be produced. Nobody seems to care though.”
17.“Employees COLLECTIVELY hold all the power. It’s why strikes and unions exist in theory. When the hourly people at a company organize against unfair or unequal treatment, boy howdy does that scare the shit out of a company.”
18.“How much profit they make off of your labor versus what you’re paid. It’s wild how the numbers stack up when you really break it down.”
— u / ElegantzPrincess
19.“Most non-competes are illegal under ‘restraint of trade’ laws. It’s really just an attempt at employers getting folks thinking they are trapped there or would have to move or not work in their field in their area. It’s not legal.”
20.And finally: “The dead peasants clause. Basically, the company that you work for gets to take out a life insurance policy on you, the employee.”
Or, if you prefer, you can write in anonymously. Who knows — your answer could be included in a future BuzzFeed article!
Note: Some comments have been edited for length and/or clarity.
