Workers have been sharing the ‘trade secrets’ that most people don’t understand – 19 eye-opening pieces of inside information

Dominic Carter. Updated May 16th, 2025

Every job has those behind-the-scenes secrets that they like to keep hidden from the public. Chances are you already know a few yourself.

But have you ever been curious about what other industries are keeping under wraps? If so, you’re in luck, as ggssmm1 has invited workers of the world to open up about the more obscure aspects of their jobs by putting this question to r/AskReddit:

‘What fact is common knowledge in your field, but almost unknown to the general public?’

Keep these top replies to yourself…

1.
‘It doesn’t matter how good the teacher is if the parents don’t care.’
-DonBenson

2.
‘We often release medical devices in the US first, as they don’t require any data to prove they work and are safe, to gather real-world clinical data to then use to release to the rest of the world.

‘The US is the world’s medical guinea pigs.’
-TheatrePlode

3.
‘Everyone, at every layer of management, is just making it up as they go along. No one has a plan.’
-After-Dentist-2480

4.
‘The amount of information we can get from someone who “accepts all the cookies”.’
-cocada_

5.
‘The vast majority of delays on the railways are caused by the public. Tresspassers, plastics getting caught in the overhead lines, anti-social behaviour, vulnerable people threatening to top themselves, dickheads misusing level crossing, idiots playing chicken with trains and people committing suicide and on and on and on.

‘Even many of the “signalling failures” are as a consequence of people attempting to steal the cables that run the signals because they think it’s still made of copper.

‘If the general public weren’t such cunts on the railway, most of the delay they complain about would vanish.’
-irishmickguard

6.
‘Not my field but my husband works in antibiotic drug discovery and development and COVID will seem like a bit of a cold in comparison to when (not if) current antibiotics stop being effective – and most people either don’t know or don’t seem to care.’
-schmoovebaby

7.
‘The ones that know the least, generally get to the top before the ones that know the most and if you’re good at your job, you’ll never get to the top as you make it easier for the ones above you’
-Davef40

‘The cloud is just someone else’s computer.’
-Sjuk86

9.
‘The content team behind gov.uk is recognised across the world as a standard for best practice and basically created the content design job role.

‘If you compare the old direct.gov to go. uk the difference is staggering. gov.uk is full of literally thousands of services running for each department. Some agencies have hundreds of services all with different requirements and goals.

‘I’ve chatted to a few from there and have been to a few of the presentations they give. they do try hard to streamline things. It’s not always successful or easy.

10.
‘In food production, a lot of the companies that make supermarket own brands use the same foodstuff for every supermarket, when they finish the order of one supermarket, they just change the packaging and go onto the order for the next supermarket.

‘Example from a company that produces dairy products.

‘A quantity of base ingredient is supplied to the packing machine, they are packing for Tesco, 30% of the supplied base ingredient covers that order, they stop the machine and put packaging in for Asda, another 25% of the base ingredient is used up to complete that order, packaging is switch to Sainsbury’s, 25% of the base ingredient covers that order, packaging is changed again and the last 20% of the base ingredient is used for M&S.

‘How does that affect the customer you may wonder.

‘The price difference across Tesco and Asda is negligible, Sainsbury’s charge a little more, M&S are over £1 more, for the same base ingredient.’
-Mr-Incy

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