A non-disclosure agreement, or NDA, is a legal document that keeps the lid on any sensitive information. Think of it as a way to keep things like secret recipes, proprietary formulas, and manufacturing processes under wraps. NDAs can be used to protect innovative ideas, maintain a competitive advantage, but also to cover more shady aspects of a business.
So when someone asked “people who have signed NDAs that have now expired or for whatever reason are no longer valid, ‘What couldn’t you tell us but now can?’” on r/AskReddit, the thread blew up with 54k upvotes.
Employees of all industries are now spilling things that were not supposed to come out in broad daylight. Let’s see some of the most interesting corporate secrets right below.
#1
I worked for a popular national pet store chain. We told our customers that we got our puppies from ‘reputable breeders and not puppy mills’. We got them from puppy mills, and I can’t express how many came in on the back of a large, pitch dark freight truck, malnourished, scared and sick.
We also adopted the cute kittens from the local sheltered and charged customers outrageous amounts of money. Most of whom just felt bad for the kittens.
Don’t support national chain pet stores that sale puppies that do not come from local shelters folks.
Image credits: 1ilypad
#2
I was a translator (contractor) for the US military. I also translated Marvel comic books. Marvel had tighter security.
Image credits: NPC_forsale
#3
Signed an NDA when I worked as a fit model for Katy Perry’s shoe line. Basically a fit model is used for their good proportions to test out the fit of garments. I’m a solid size 7.5 so hooray for being average. I was hired on two occasions and got to hang out and give her my opinion on the fit, feeling, and comfort of different shoes.
Didn’t think she’d actually be there but both times she was present and totally running the show. Super nice woman in person and remembered me when we met again.
Image credits: okbyeokbyeokbye
#4
“House Hunters” guest checking in, I never made the show because I didn’t close on the house.
1: I had to have a house under contract before going on the show.
2: They would select the other houses we were “interested” in.
3: I was assigned another SO who was more “interesting” than my actual SO.
Image credits: delicious_tomato
#5
I worked at Dairy Queen, the collection box supporting children with cancer hanging out the drive-thru window was a discontinued charity, my manager pocketed all the donations. Disgusting in a different sense.
Image credits: ChiefQueefer
#6
Most American Idol contestants have agents that got them on the show, and 90-95% of it is pre-cast before the “audition tour”.
Image credits: brenton07
#7
I was actually an actor in that commercial that said I wasn’t.
Image credits: VivaSpiderJerusalem
#8
A huge part of The Bachelorette was scripted. The company I worked for at the time was a major tourism service provider and featured prominently in one of the seasons. We were all pulled into meetings with the higher up managers, given a speel about what was in our best interest… and spilling any secrets was punishable by a $5mil lawsuit, “Please sign here”.
The “Bachelorette” herself was clearly there to further her public profile or “acting” career. The scenes were always “set up” before filming. Behind the camera nothing was happening. The cast were told where to go, what to do and how to do it.
If half those guys weren’t on their phones texting their real girlfriends most of the time, I would be surprised.
So fake… so 100% fake.
Image credits: FlyAdesk
#9
The fajitas sizzle because we pour oil and water on a hot plate not because we grilled anything.
Image credits: THE_CHOPPA
#10
Worked for a self-storage place in Rocklin, CA. They made every customer sign a “lease agreement” that said that you wouldn’t hold them responsible if your unit was broken into and things were stolen. I found out that we had 7-8 burglaries a year. The owners would get sued but they would always get off because they’d produce the “lease agreement” in court and the judge would dismiss the case. One day I came in from vacation to pick up my paycheck, and I found the owner and the manager loading up a truck with the contents from a unit that wasn’t theirs. I went around the corner to an area where the fence allowed me to look in, and saw that they went to another storage space, cut off the lock, and proceeded to load up the truck with a telescope, big screen tv and some power tools. I came back the next day and asked one of my co-workers. He told me that the owners of the storage space would sell the stuff they stole from renters, and that the manager and owner did the same thing with another property that they owned in Granite Bay. I quit to go back to Sac State. I called the Rocklin cops to tell them what the owners were doing, and they said that there was nothing they could do unless they were caught in the act.
Image credits: guido_pilot
#11
My boss refuses to hire anybody but white women, and he uses rubbing alcohol to wipe the expiration date off of product if it expires. He just puts it back on the shelf. Including dairy product. I hate him.
Image credits: lessadessa
#12
A small-business owner for whom I worked several years ago kept deducting the employees’ health insurance premiums but never sent the payments in to the carrier. After 2-3 months of this, our insurance was cancelled, right before one lady’s teenage son was in a fairly serious car accident. She finds out at the emergency room, during what is of course an extremely stressful time, that she has no insurance whatsoever when she and her dependents had been fully covered.
The next day she went into his office, very upset, to find out what happened. He gave his usual song-and-dance and made excuses for not having been able to send it in, and this normally mild-mannered lady picked up a stapler and threw it at him! (He wasn’t even injured.) While doing that was of course unacceptable, I totally understood her frustration with this weasel. He spent thousands of dollars a month of company money (coding it to company expenses) at Sam’s Club on groceries and big-ticket items for his house. On top of his already generous salary.
Then to top it all off, he actually TOOK HER TO COURT for the stapler-throwing incident. After hearing the story, the judge dismissed the weasel’s case and made a comment to the effect that if he were in the same position as her, he probably would’ve done the same thing.
Image credits: crazykitty123
#13
I worked for a gelato shop that made us dig through the so-called “RECYCLING” bins to fish out used plastic cups and spoons to wash and give to new customers. Even if the spoons had bite marks from other customers and were coated in chewing gum, we were told to wash them up and only throw them out if they were really unpresentable, because “these things are expensive!” Furthermore, all the other stuff in the “recycling” bin that people so good-heartedly placed there.. yeah, ALL of it got thrown in the dumpster. Customers ATE IT UP and told us regularly how GLAD they were that we are a “Green” business who “cares about the environment enough to recycle”. It didn’t take long before I just couldn’t keep doing this with a clean conscience, and I turned them in to the health inspectors, who were absolutely horrified this was happening. About two months later, I got laid off and the business closed it’s filthy doors forever. 🙂
Image credits: queenbeecharmer
#14
I work in designer clothing retail. The clothes are quite expensive and the assistants are required to only wear full priced garments. So we (the whole team) just pick clothes off the rack, wear them all day (including lunch and bathroom breaks) and at the end of the shift, replace the tags and put the clothes back on the shelf for the customers to buy at full price.
I know I was grossed out my first day there.
Image credits: Liquid_Sky
#15
A friend of mine got a job at a prominent local distillery that makes an extremely popular flavored whisky. They literally buy whisky from a 3rd party distillery and dump torani flavoring syrup into it.
Image credits: bobethy
#16
A government, in 1972, identified a terrorist by his wife’s breasts.
From satellite images.
Image credits: points_of_perception
#17
Common knowledge now, but in early 2000’s Hewlett Packard would have their inkjet printer cartridges turn off even though they weren’t empty.
Each cartridge was put in a machine and a memory chip glued to it. The machine would make all the nozzles ‘spit’ on a piece of paper, a camera would look at it and then correction parameters would be programmed into it (some nozzles don’t work, spit too little or too much, spit off to the side, etc.) The correction parameters were read off the chip and the printer would adjust the voltage and timing for the highest quality print. It was also trivially easy to write ‘disable’ to the chip after 4,000 pages and it wouldn’t work in any HP printer. To ensure high print quality yadda yadda yeah right. And of course, only ‘genuine’ HP cartridges will work in the printer.
Got taken to court and lost which is why you can now buy much cheaper cartridges on eBay. But if you buy a used printer from the right years it still won’t work with cheap ones.
Image credits: ConspTheorList
#18
That we can see you,
I look after instant photobooths remotely, I see all your stupid faces, all of them, everyday.
Image credits: MrWigglemunch
#19
Previous pharmacy chain I worked for. Always at risk of robbery for opiates, and we are always taught to give the robber what they want with no questions asked. Have heard of times that pharmacists instead gave bottles of oxy with Tylenol in it instead and other things that were reckless and dangerous due to possible retaliation when and if they figure out they have been duped.
New policy and nda comes out where specific opiates were placed in safe with GPS tracker and charger so when it is removed from radius of origin, it issues remote notification to third party that tracks location and works with local LEO to find the wanted party.
Image credits: DumperdRx
#20
Worked store security – there are peep holes above the ladies changing rooms at several major retailers. Supposed to be for female security agents to monitor the dressing rooms, but we had no female security agents. Lots of creepy voyeurism/ fapping going on.
Image credits: Angrymanspokane
#21
Mini Cooper/BMW replaced our car because the high pressure fuel pump failed 6 times within 6 months. However, the recorded reason for the replacement of the car was because of “stained interior from dirty mechanic hands”, so it wasn’t replaced via the lemon law.
Image credits: anticipatory
#22
Early spy drones (large petrol powered remote control helicopters, back then), deliberately covered in a wire mesh with lights to make them look like UFOs, when up in the air. Tested in populated areas at night.
Well known base, in the north of Scotland.
Image credits: AnnaVeepeen
#23
Amazon made me sign one when I worked with a company that painted their airplanes before the public knew they had them. (I did the FAA paperwork.)
I was literally only one of like 7 people to see their airplane fully purple with their logo on it.
I was actually taken off of the project for a day because they thought I lied about not having a facebook.
They meant business
Image credits: Delanorix
#24
In 2009 my professor was doing some consulting work for Blackberry and told us ‘This doesn’t leave this room, but Blackberry actually actively slows down the release of new products, because they are developing them so fast that they want the customer market to keep pace with the rate of change.’
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Image credits: toxicbrew
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