Share Surprising Secrets about your Industry!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I can tell you all about motels. I don’t actually work at one, but I’m close friends with five desk clerks at various mid-level motels (Think along the lines of Super 8 or Best Western), and the things that they have to say are pretty surprising.

The managers of these places usually live in the hotel. Sometimes they have a couple of tricked-out rooms, but more often there is an apartment built into the lobby. If there is a door behind the front desk, there is a good chance that it leads directly to someone’s living room.

Managers are on duty 24 hours a day. One of them (assumeing a husband-wife team, which is common) has to remain at the hotel at all times unless they hire a desk clerk out of their own pocket. Some motels have a clerk on duty around the clock, but it is more common to have someone work part-time and only come in when the managers want to go out to dinner or something, If the managers leave for a few days, the clerk will usually live in their house and run the hotel while they are gone. Sometimes these clerks can’t leave the hotel for a week straight and have to live off delivered pizza and leftovers from the contenental breakfasts.

But the most surprising thing about hotels is how the rooms are priced. The manager will give the clerk a minimum amout that they can sell a room for, based on season and day of the week and stuff. But the desk clerk has discretion to sell the room for just about anything they want. People in indentical rooms can be paying a hundred bucks difference.

If a lobby is small and uncomfortable (no chairs etc.) it is because the manager doesn’t want you hanging around listening to what other people get their rooms for.

For example, if you arn’t the kind of person who they want in their motel (your a known hooker, or a teenager that looks like your going to throw a party in your room, or you just plain look like you are going to steal the TV) the desk clerk will quote an outrageous price on the room in hopes that you won’t be able to pay it and you’ll go away. If that doesn’t work, the clerk might ask for cash only. If you’re still game, the clerk will ask for a large deposit and inspect the room for damage before you leave.

There is a lot of snap judgements made and it is pretty discriminatory, but hotel managers have to personally pay for damaged rooms, have a lot to lose if their motel becomes a haven for drug dealers and prostitutes (having the police in your parking lot every night can lead to a lot of lost business) and deal with lots of travelling con artists passing bad checks and stealing TVs and the like.

If you don’t look like your going to trash the room, and it’s a slow night, the clerk will probably lower the price of your room if you ask. They have all kinds of somewhat bogus discounts that they can apply when they need to lower the price of room without outright bargaining. It pays to ask if the have a “discount” for teachers or repeat visitors or what have you.

So…what are the secrets of your industry?

2

I’ve worked many jobs and have friends in all sorts of professions.

Want to get a great deal the next time you enounter a salesperson? Act extremely hesitant. I used to sell knives for a while and I would often throw in extra stuff (at a disadvantage to myself) in order to close the deal. Hem and haw until they throw in everything they possibly can. (and a lot of times they can do more than you think). We just bought our engagement rings and got both for the price of one including free plane tickets to many locations around the world.

If you are eating at a resturant that places orders at the counter, don’t order extra stuff up there or I have to charge you when I place the order for it to get on the ticket. Wait until you are at the table and then go up and ask for it and you can almost always get it for free.

Bakeries normally have two -for-one deals at the end of the night, but some of them throw all the extra stuff away. Ask if you can maybe have three for the price of one and sometimes they will give it to you.

If you go to conventions, if you wait to last day, often the dealers will give you stuff at a loss to them just because they don’t want to carry it back.

If you call a company for a complaint of some sort, get the name of the person answering the phone.

Be really polite. The customer who comes up and biatches about their food being too cold or too tough gets worse service than the customer who is really polite about it. If you are polite, often they will throw in extra stuff in order to keep you as a customer.

That’s all I can think of for now.

3

I work for the government. We have no secrets - it’s all out on CNN.

:smiley:

4

Medical billing specialist here:

[ul]
[li]If you ask nicely, we will adjust small balances (less than five dollars, usually). It’s not worth our time or yours to collect it.[/li][li]Unless you don’t have insurance, or the office doesn’t accept it, don’t pay anything but the copay (if there is one). There is a good chance you won’t be responsible for the whole amount, or even any of it. If the office does accept your insurance, let them file the claim. That way, it’s their headache, not yours.[/li][li]No matter how nicely you ask, we can’t change diagnosis codes just so your insurance will pay it. If the insurance company denies the claim for invalid/nonpayable diagnosis codes, we will do the necessary research and possibly re-file, if we can. Let them tell us it’s bad. (See #2)[/li][li]Whether it’s law or not, we will take five-dollar monthly payments if you can’t afford to pay the whole balance. While we want your money, we also want you as a patient and have no desire to alienate you by being a jerk about your bill.[/li][li]By the same token, please be considerate and let us know that’s what you want to do. No communication from you on your bill means we assume you accept it, and we will expect payment from you. If you’re unemployed or just can’t afford it, we can take steps to make sure your account stays out of collections. Also, make sure we have your current contact and insurance information. Don’t call us to complain because you didn’t bother to let us know this information changed.[/li][/ul]

Of course, YMMV.

Robin

5

MsRobyn - YMMV?? You whooshed me on that one…

I worked in the telemarketing industry for over 10 years (I finally regained my soul and got out of the racket!!) and know a few inside scoops to help you get less telemarketing calls (or, more of them I guess, if you want):

Even though more and more states are doing “no call lists”, the truth is that telemarketers can still call you if you have a BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP with the company that is making the call. Example: You have a Citibank credit card, Citibank can call you to tell you about “money saving offers”. Exception to this would be if you inform Citibank that you don’t want to be called, and eventually they will add you to their list. I am generalizing here, of course, but the thing to remember is that you may join a no-call list, but if you haven’t informed business contacts like credit cards etc that you don’t want them to call you, you may still have that phone ringing. If you have given your phone number to a credit card, bank, catalog, mortgage company, internet, etc, you are on a list somewhere and will eventually get called by one or all of them.

Ever asked a telemarketer to take your name off their call list? 90% of the time the phone rep will do what you ask and flag your phone number in the computer to be deleted. BUT, your name might be on 100 different lists, so don’t expect the calls to stop immediately. The 10% of the time that the phone rep doesn’t do it, it’s because they are just not paying attention to what they are doing, or they log in the wrong code and your name is still on there.

Another amazing fact: People buy from telemarketers EVERY MINUTE of EVERY DAY!!! It’s mind-boggling the number of people that will buy stuff over the phone. Most stuff is sold on a “trial” basis, so it’s fairly easy to convince people to try out a travel service or credit card protection, etc.

6

Share Surprising Secrets about your Industry!

NO!

OK, maybe I will. Actually, I have a few times already in GQ.

If you don’t know what you’re doing, It’ll cost you more when I come to fix it. (Home remodel) So, get an estimate first. Really. Then decide if you want to tackle it yourself.

Most things that could be helpful, I would have to show you.

To make your deck look new(er), clean with oscalic acid (not pure, the cheap stuff) and water. Scub with a stiff bristle broom. Rinse well and let it dry. Then treat it again with some sort of deck sealant. Lots of good brands available. Ask your local paint store or lumber yard. Don’t let the pets or kids near it, just to be on the safe side, OK?

Clean out your gutters. Check your A/C evaporators. A lot of ceiling damage and roof decking rot would be avoided if water went in the right direction.

This all sounds very mundane, but their are so many variables.

Ads mean little, get a recomendation.

7

I used to be store manager of a well-known chain of video stores. Not that I have any particulary surprising secrets, but some not-so-well-known information that might be interesting.

Out of necessity, I learned how to repair and splice tapes and do simple repair and maintenance on video cassette players. It is actually quite simple, and most anybody can learn to do it. I don’t know that video store employees are required to learn this, but from my experience most do. Next time you’ve got a tape with bad tracking, or one that’s been caught in the vcr, or if your vcr seems to be eating tapes for no reason, take it by your video store and see if they are willing to check it out for you. I once had a couple come in whose vcr had eaten one of our tapes. They were going to go out and buy a new vcr, and just wanted to come in to pay for the tape as well. I was able to retreive the tape and fix their vcr in about 20 mins. Needless to say they became great regular customers.

Most video stores will do a pvt pull (previously viewed tapes, dvds, games, or what have you) right before they perform inventory in order to cut down the number of items to be scanned. For the most part, we would price these items at rock bottom prices to get them out of the store and save us the hassle of having to count every one by hand. My particular company required monthly inventory, so about a week before hand we would pull our tapes for sale. If you’re looking for a great bargain, try finding out when they do their inventory and check out the sales bins a couple days prior.

Despite popular belief, late fees do not account for a large portion of our revenues. Most of our profit is made from new releases, and accounts for only the first 3-4 weeks of rentals. It generally takes about 4 weeks for us to make back what we spent on a title, and around 15 weeks to double our return. After early new release revenue, library titles (non-new releases) make up the second largest profit area.

You wouldn’t believe the type of damage people try to pass off as accidental. I once had someone try to return a PS2 game with someone’s name scratched into the disc and claim it had “fallen on the ground and gotten scratched”. Uh-huh.

Yes, we really do get a fair amount of porn tapes returned inside rental cases, and yes, we do laugh at you after you’ve come to claim it.

Late fees are not arbitrarily applied, and there are generally multiple guards in place to protect against tapes not being checked in in a timely manner. Most stores have a list of late tapes that they check the store for each day, to insure that nothing missed being checked in. If the error is on our part, we will for the most part be able to tell, and will credit your account accordingly. If your tape is a few hours late, that’s one thing, but if it’s a week late and doesn’t show up at inventory, then chances are you’re going to be charged for it.

That’s all I can think of for now, video retail being such an interesting field and all (sarcasm should be duly noted). I currently work in Political Operations – I’m afraid there are far too many industry secrets to even begin posting on.

8

Being a lowly, part-time library worker, I don’t have too many ‘industry secrets,’ but here goes…

Just be nice. If you’re polite we’ll probably be so happy that you acted like a human being that we’ll delete fines, renew for longer than we’re supposed to, etc.

Also, sometimes books get misplaced. We run on nearly a skeleton staff, and once in awhile we’ll mess up and file something wrong, or another patron will move a book that they’ve been looking at, put a browser pack in the wrong place, or whatever. If you don’t do the righteously indignant “But the computer said it was IN!” thing, we will mostly likely be able to find it for you. If not, we’ll keep looking and call you when it’s found. If you’re annoying it’s “on the repair shelf” and probably will never be seen again.

9

If we want to start talking about video rental…well…I was hopeing to avoid that because it might start crossing into Pit territory…

Late Fees are almost always valid. When people rent videos, they walk out without really fully cognizing when it is due. Then, at some random point in the week, they decide that it is due on some other random day of the week. Then they turn it in and got all upset when it was actually due a few days ago.

I know this, because I got free rentals. I spent all day telling people when their movies were due. I had no excuse. And yet I still managed to rack up my own late fees.

There are lots and lots of safegaurds to make sure that unfair fees don’t show up. So you can save your “maybe you put it back on the shelf without checking it in” and “I put it in the box on time, your clerk didn’t empty the box!” arguments, because they’ve already thought of that and have ways to keep it from happening.

It’s easy to get out of paying fees, but not if you are full of lies. If you have a valid complaint, by all means argue it with a manager. There is a lot of leaway about what they can do. Often they will cut absurdly huge amounts by half, and will write off smaller fees completely. But if you are not telling the truth, or there is the possiblity that what you believe the truth is might be wrong, don’t bother.

The computers document all the transactions on your account pretty heavily- including what clerk it was and the exact second that the transaction happened. Video store people looks at these things all day, and they learn to recognize patterns. They know what it looks like when something is their fault, and they also know what the common lies and excuses that people tell look like. They know when you lie. They are not fooled. If a lie worked in the past it is soley because the clerk was too lazy to argue.

Speaking of computer documentation…clerks can also put comments on a person’s account. Usually they do this if they write off a late fee for a sketchy reason (like you saying “But I didn’t know it was due at noon”) and want to make sure you don’t try to use that excuse again. But comments range from “Mr. X doesn’t want his youngest son renting R rated movies” to “Miss A is hot”. If you are especially nice or especially difficult, it will likely be noted and that will affect the service you get (and how much slack they will cut you) in the future at that store.

Damaged disks/tapes are fairly common, but a lot of times it’s an issue with the person’s equiptment, not the tape. If there is a problem with a tape, the store will put a sticker on it and send it back into circulation. If a tape with a sticker on it gets another complaint, they pull it. So it might pay to avoid tapes with unusual stickers.

I could tell you all kinds of random stuff. Beverley Hills Ninja is one of the most popular non new realeases. When the stores buy tapes, they take them out of their boxes and put them into rental cases, and keep the boxes so they can repackage them and sell them (as used of course) when they pull the movies out of circulation. The kind of movies that are stocked is determined by a computer based on what people rent, so if your store has lame selection blame the uncultured slobs around you, not the store. I could go on and on and on and on…

But I won’t. Phew.

10

Here is one that is actually useful…

It is vitally important to keep your account information updated

If there is a problem that is your fault (like a tape returned to the wrong store) and it is easily fixable, the store will try to call you to resolve it. But if the information is wrong, then the fees will keep racking up until you happen to try to rent at that store again.

11

Large companies spend an obscene amount of money on travel expenses. I work at a top 20 Fortune 500 company in the expense accounts area. Last time I checked, we reimburse employees roughly a billion US dollars each year. About 6000 expense accounts forms per day. I don’t know if that’s a secret, but it surprised the hell out of me.

12

Well, um, I feel terrible saying this.

Sometimes public colleges and universities don’t do internal studies that they don’t want FOIAed. That is, they might be interested in salary equity on campus, or how students from certain backgrounds are doing… but depending on the environment they might forgo such studies in order to avoid the hassles/publicity/lawsuits that might arise when certain activists get their hands on it.

This works because the Freedom of Information Act states that a public entity has to hand over anything it’s published or worked on (if asked for), but they don’t have to compile new data to meet such a request. So as long as it hasn’t been done/studied/answered already, they don’t have to answer a question that Joe Schmoe (or Joe Axe-To-Grind) asks.

13

Newspaper Photography, or Photojournalism if you want to be uppity about it:

It’s not as glamourous as you’d think. 90% of it is boring stuff like retirement banquets, school board meetings, award-winning squirrel-hunting dogs, high school sports (although it’s nice to watch football from the sidelines, if you don’t mind being accidentally tackled once in a while), special church services, etc; the interesting 10% (fires, murders, car wrecks, and the occasional pretty artsy-type photo) require a lot of luck and being in the right place at the right time, and it helps to have a police scanner by the computer where you sit surfing the 'net between assignments to the boring stuff.

It’s also one of the few jobs where you can destroy $2,000 worth of equipment, and the boss is only mildy annoyed, mainly because he’ll have to loan you his camera on his days off while yours is in the shop. You do have to have a damned good reason for dropping it, though: clumsiness will get you yelled at more than having a dog jump on you while you’re changing lenses at the (yawn) dog show, or being hit by a stray baseball.

14

Umm…should I or shouldn’t I. Well maybe a few.

I am a commercial real estate agent.

Commercial appraisals that people pay between 3,500 to 7,500 for on large buildings are often highly inaccurate on larger industrial properties, especially when done by an appraisal firm that operates out of the area of the appraised property. There are a host of problems in these appraisals but most of the problems center around invalid or inappropriate sales comps and inflated valuation. My analyses of value on the other hand are free (if I list the property) and are usually dead accurate within 5-10% of the final sale price because I know the market.

People always think agents will take any listing they can get. The stupid ones sometimes do. Successful agents often turn down or turn away clients who are unwilling or unable to price their properties realistically.

People who don’t do an adequate job of cleaning out their properties and fixing them up so that they show well are losing more money in lost rentals and sales than they could possibly imagine.

Even small commercial leases can take a huge amount of time and work to put together. Agents do them because they are bread and butter money between sales although a large commercial lease can be quite renumerative.

People have absolutely no idea how chopped up an agents commission is by the time he receives his check. Co-ops, splits, referrals, in house fees etc. etc. can make a few thousand gross commission dollars a few hundred real commission dollars very quickly.

15

I’ve worked in two jobs other than school- a crafts/antiques store and a telephone survey company.

As far as the antiques store, I was a lowly, under-the-counter clerk (at 16 years old) and I was authorized to take up to 20% off the price of antiques if someone tried to bargain. So while you might think that a teenage worker in a store has no influence on the prices, think again.

In telephone surveying, we had a “two call” policy. Meaning that, if we called someone and they refused to take the survey, we still had to call them up and ask AGAIN a couple weeks later. However, if someone asked the first time to be taken off the list, we had to take them off. So, instead of hanging up or refusing, you should probably make it a policy to ask to be taken off the list. Oh yeah, and if you’re rude, I’ll be more likely to keep your name on the list out of annoyance.

16

I help maintain a pornographic website.

There’s a lot less sex than you would guess.

Indeed, in my case, there’s none at all.

17

I second Cruktar’s notes on library stuff – I ranted in the Pit awhile back about library patrons being mean to me and how it helps you not one bit. Deleting fines is out of my league, but if you’re friendly and nice to me, I will do whatever I can to give you the best Circ Desk service possible. If you are rude to me, yell at me, bitch at me, etc., you will get the bare minimum of courtesy and nothing more.

The library is my job at school. At home I work in a semi-fast-food restaurant/ice cream place (regional, not a big chain or anything, so if you don’t live in Muncy, Berwick, or Ashland, PA, you’ve likely never heard of us). Here’s a couple of our secrets:

We deep-fry our hot dogs. Yup, they go right in the fryer with the french fries. Gross, ain’t it?

The oil in the fryers gets changed I believe every five days. The other days it gets strained through paper filters. After a couple days it gets pretty damn skanky.

In the summer, don’t eat the chocolate soft ice-cream from about Wednesday through Friday. The machine gets cleaned and taken apart on Friday nights, and with the heat and everything, by about Wednesday the chocolate goes a little… funny. Can’t speak for other soft ice cream machines, though, YMMV.

If something fried falls on the floor, if we snatch it up right away, we will usually just pop it back in the fryer for a little bit. Burn all the dirt and germs off, that’s right…

Tartar sauce. Eww. We make our own tartar sauce, in large batches. How we make it is we take a five-gallon bucket (an empty, thoroughly cleaned out marshmallow fluff bucket, actually) and put in 3 and a half gallons of mayonnaise. Now that’s a hell of a lost of mayo, you see. Then we put in large amounts of several kinds of relish, and some dried onions, and then… you roll up your sleeves, stuff your arms in the bucket and mix it with your hands. You have not lived until you have been elbow-deep in a bucket of tartar sauce! I’ve only had the misfortune to have to make the tartar sauce twice, but I swear my arm smelled like mayonnaise for a week afterwards.

We also make our own cocktail sauce, which is basically a bunch of horseradish and a whole bunch of ketchup. The horseradish comes in one-pound plastic jars, the brand name of which is… Mr. Horseradish. This isn’t really an Industry Secret, but it’s just very amusing. There is a picture on each jar of a little dancing root man that I assume is a horseradish. He’s got a cane and a little green bowtie.

Um… yeah, that’s about all the industry secrets I can come up with… nothing earth-shattering, I know. I need a new job. :slight_smile:

18

Never-ever order a icee at a movie theatre. Especially ones that aren’t doing too well financially. just trust me.

19

Creamy Garlic Sauce at Round Table Pizza is Ranch Dressing… the exact same ranch dressing as in the Salad Bar. The Difference? We rub garlic on the sauced up dough.

If you are really really adamant about rules regarding Pork, don’t order anything with pineapple. Sausage is incredibly sticky, but for some odd reason the juice of the pineapple is really good at stripping the sticky/greasy off of our hands. So after making the pizza, we often dunk our fingers in the pineapple. Or at least we used to… I haven’t worked there in several years.

I’ll see if I can think of more.

20

wow I think I am going to top most of you. I work for a local Grease Recycleing company. and well what we finds we keeps. and when we screen it the screening, such as fries and pieces of hamburgers get thrown into a large drum and then sold as feed suplement for cattle and pigs. the grease is then boiled and sold to goodyear, revlon, and just about any rubber company and makeup companies. I dont know about other companies like the one I work for but here there are laxed laws and if you use the water drained off it is full of vitamins and it is WAY better than any marical grow. My friends say I have the worst job but hey thats what you get when your dad owns it! lol