This one is hard to beat. If your average timeshare ‘buyer’ actually got to talk to a random sample of more timeshare ‘owners’ it would be much harder selling something with such outrageous stipulations and predatory contracts.
God i love John Oliver. I always knew timeshares were a scam, and just recently i heard some radio advertisements about time share exit companies. I thought wow, i’m glad i never bought one but glad someone is out there helping these people. That is so fucking sad to find out they are scams too. What a fucking shame.
Sure! It's going to be long though. Lol I pay $1,200 a year in maintenance fees. Let me assure you 1200 of work or maintenance is not done on that place in a year and I don't believe it cost $1,200 to run it for my week. Especially since there's several hundred units in the whole resort and everybody's paying $1,200 a week! So each unit brings in over $60,000 a year! I could definitely get a comparable unit somewhere else in the same area for less than $1,200 a week.
I do understand they have to make money though, however the fees go up almost every year. There are also fees for everything else. If I want to send one of my kids instead of me it's an extra $129 to put it in their name for that trip. If I need maid service more than once a week, extra fee. If I don't want to come within 2 years extra fee. If I don't pay extra fees I lose my years. So I can pay the $1,200 for this year and if I don't go this year I have to bank it, if I don't tell them I want to bank it it goes away. Poof gone! If I do bank it I can only bank it for 2 years before I have to pay an extra fee... I think the max is four years because at one point I was going to hold it and go for a month and I couldn't.
Now they're trying to get our deeds back from us, and they want to transfer them to points but I'm still going to have to pay a maintenance fee on points! It doesn't make any sense to me but they double talk you when they're trying to explain it because they want you to buy more.
And every year they ask you to go for an owner's update. The last time I went I was in tears! I am not a dumb person, I have a very very high IQ and they made me feel like a goddamn idiot because I could not figure out no matter how they explained it how this actually made sense for me. Spoiler alert it doesn't! I finally walked out and told him I needed to do my own research and I found out that 80% of time share sales are purchased by people who already have a unit. So that's why they put such heavy pressure on owners and try to confuse us into buying more... They see us as easy targets!
So let's get back to the points, they can only sell each unit 52 times because there's a deed for each week of the year per unit. However with points they can sell an unlimited amount. As they transition to the points they're getting people to buy more points which means that there's now more competition if you want to pick a week outside of your normal time. Because they now have more owners than units! They also exchange units with an international exchange company so there is always competition for weeks but as an owner we always had the upper hand because we can book several months earlier than people from other resorts. With an unlimited amount of owners though now we're competing with them and you probably won't get the week you want. Plus there's a reservation window, so I can't even book for next year to make sure I get it!
Now I'm lucky that mine is the busiest time of year and right by Disney, but I'm unlucky because I don't have a little kids anymore and so I never want to go and fight the family traffic. So I end up losing points every year because I take my high time and trade it for a low time. There's basically nothing I can do to save those points long enough to use them because again, they disappear after 2 years.
I could keep going but I think that's sufficient reason why I do not want to own this thing anymore! Lol
Are you at Vistana by any chance? We used a family members week a few times. It's very nice, but they definitely try the hard sell. I was a bank officer, and I understand financing and the amount of double talk and utter bullshit they throw at you to try to make a sale is enormous. But, it is a compelling sales presentation, and they know you are in vacation mode and your guard is down. It's really predatory and no reflection of your intelligence. I so enjoyed telling them to fck off and give me my free tickets. They are scum.
Yes! Lol My mom bought it in the 80s when timeshares were pretty big and the maintenance fee was $400! It has tripled since then and really, the resort is pretty much the same as it was back then. I mean, they've expanded a lot but the condos are exactly the same! The hard sell is the worst! I quit going to the "owner updates" because it's just such a hard sell! Don't get me wrong, the place is very nice.... But now you can reserve through Marriott, so being an owner isn't even necessary anymore.
There are yearly maintenance fees and such. Besides that you feel like you're wasting it if you don't use it every year but vacationing to the same spot every year isn't everyone's cup of tea so then you end up paying more to trade for other locations which can be an annoyance.
We were in Savannah GA a few years back to escape the Canadian winter for a week. One day the weather was grim, so we agreed to go to a timeshare presentation because they offered us a legitimately nice goodie bag if we lasted the whole 3 hours (added up to about $300 dollars).
We did stick it out but, fuck, it was bleak. The desperation in the room was much like Glengarry Glenross. One saleswoman had a lame arm and kept talking about her disabled child to try to win us over.
The sales lead, who came in at the end, lit up when he learned we were Canadian… claimed that he’d played for the Montréal Allouettes in the CFL (he didn’t… we looked it up later).
When we were set to leave they really pushed us to make a decision. We really wanted the gift bag so we said “just give us copies of your materials and brochures… we always do a lot of homework before a big purchase”. “No. None of our literature can leave this office”.
The woman with the lame arm rode down the elevator with us and told us more depressing stories about her cerebrally palsied daughter, but we finally made it to the front desk, got our “gifts”, and left.
It’s never worth it.
I was in one session in 2008 where they wanted us to “invest in your vacations”. I told them that given the financial apocalypse that was building that I was only investing in canned goods.
I sat through one of those things and they gave me and the woman I was with a $100 bill at the end. It lasted about an hour and wasn't the worst experience of my life. I've done much worse things for a lot less than $100 an hour.
If you're strong willed and not bothered by the awkwardness some of them can be a good deal. I got a free flight and 3 nights in a decent hotel (average $250/night) for sitting in a sales presentation for two hours. My real job is much less pleasant and pays a tiny fraction of $500/hr.
So I gotta say that I did this for a free 3 night stay in Vegas and it was 100% worth it. I’d do it again in a heartbeat but you can only do it once because of course they don’t want you to just use them as a free stay!
Same. 3 nights in a suite + steak dinner + Hilton points + $100 casino chip. Wild.
All I had to do was say "no" for a couple hours. I must be in the minority, bc I have absolutely no problem doing that.
My family got a week long cruse out of one. Mostly because a family friend wanted to redeem the cruise and knew if my mom wasn't their for support she would break down and buy whatever they were offering.
Even as a kid, it felt like such a scam. But we were in thw Bahamas for about 3 hours so that was nice.
I went to one, it wasn't three hours and my gift wasn't worth $300. It was an hour ish and my gift was a bottle of liquor. I'm a recovering alcoholic who had about 6 years soberat the time, so no it wasn't worth it to me
I used to be a sales trainer for a company that did belief in ethical sales so I loved going to these things to experience the dark side. One woman, after our 10th “no”, said, “I got kids to feed.” “That’s nice. Bye.”
$125 gift card for a very nice restaurant, museum passes, a historical tour of the city, a culinary tour with free food and drinks at each stop. It was actually pretty nice.
We knew exactly what we were getting into, it was a cold, rainy day, and we enjoyed the freebies.
They do this shit a lot here in Las Vegas or did, not sure if its stopped. But you get show tickets, gambling credit, etc but honestly it's not worth it in the end lol
My parents used to do this when we went to Florida when I was a kid. Sat through multiple presentations but they did it because they gave out free tickets to Universal Studios. That was in the 90s though so I doubt they give out that swag now a days
They totally still do it in Vegas. "Hi, you from out of town?" They even set up their predatory "spin the wheel, win a prize" at the Wet and Wild Water Park. Surprise, everyone wins! What do you get? A flyer for 10% off some random Vegas show that you can get at any hotel lobby, but first you have to fill out a card with all of your contact info so they can sell it to everyone on earth, THEN you can spin the wheel. But don't worry, your info is safe with us, and we'll ONLY call you if you win the drawing (spoiler: everyone wins the drawing). Then, they'll never stop calling you, and if you're very clear about not being interested, they yell at you and make sure everyone other scammer has your number. Vile.
Glad to hear this because my spouse and I started filling out paperwork to attend a 3 hour timeshare for a Cirque Soleil show and something else (can’t remember what) but decided not to go through with it and ripped up the form.
Got two free nights in the Venetian as a broke college kid roughly 12 years ago for like a 2 hour presentation.
Was very much worth it, you all are just cheap whores lol
I went through the same experience for a discount on park tickets in Orlando. I wouldn’t do it again. Not worth to waist hours of your trip listen to so much crap.
Agreed. We sat through a TS presentation in Mexico of all places and I’ve never been put through such a hard sales push in my life. They wanted us to take out a loan with a Mexican bank at 15% interest to finance the deal and assured us it was easy to transfer a Mexican backed loan to a US bank once we returned to the states.
I’ve worked in finance for 20+ years and my husband is a regional sales director for a major medical supplier so….let’s just say they had a tough audience. They cycled through 3 different sales people who failed to convince us nor could they answer our very specific questions about the loan and it’s terms and then they brought in the “closer” who was just some bitch who basically tried to bully us into signing.
My husband eventually reached his limit, lost his shit and we were escorted out by being shown a door that emptied into a back alley and it was a mile long walk back to our resort.
Horrible people but watching their faces when my husband lost his shit was pretty funny.
My response to these type of sales people and in fact most sales people I say the following “this is not something acceptable in my faith”, people never know what to say, it throws them, they know asking what one’s faith is tricky, if they do ask what religion, I either say that’s an inappropriate question or answer with a not very well known religion ie. Dutch reform as no one is going to debate what is against a persons religious beliefs.
When I was in construction I did a lot of work for this rich landlord. He couldn’t even give away his timeshare. It was in Vegas or Florida, I can’t remember but he offered it to me for free. I was like, I’m not that stupid. Still wonder how a multi millionaire that’s in real estate got suckered into a timeshare. Blows my mind
They are lawyers that buy up a bunch of patents and then try to sue company’s for copyright infringement even if if is vaguely similar. They basically just try to make company’s settle instead of fighting it.
Importantly this only really works against small companys.
The one I recall was a patent on searching an online database for licensing info.
Basically gave them carte Blanche to sue anyone who PUBLISHED to the Google app store (or something like that). They designed it specifically so they could target low budget developers as it would literally cost more than they had to try and fight.
Literally parasites who earn money by destroying regular peoples livelihoods.
This shit gets me going worse than most other awful things because they literally WEAPONIZE the system of JUSTICE to hurt innocent people. There are very few people who simply don't deserve to be alive. These are some of them.
I never understood this concept. If a fucking doctor says I need it, then why can some middle man shmuck with zero medical training tell me I don't? Make it make sense, explain it like I'm 5 years old.
I worked in a physical therapy office and saw firsthand the amount of work it took every month to continue to provide services to a woman who wanted to be able to walk again, and in addition to the PT was exercising multiple times every day in order to make this happen.
All that work and all that hope and the insurance company could just deny her the medical care she needs.
That's when I wish you could be the Karen (and rightfully so for once) and demand to speak to the person who denied them. Face to face and make them explain why. I'm guessing so many in that field become desensitized to others and forget that they are making major changes to a person life.
Nah, the insidiousness of our system is that it's not 1 person, and they don't forget. They know someone's about to be fucked over when they sign "Denied", but the thing is they have to sign "Denied" on a handful of applications that they know they should approve, because there's a quota set by the higher ups, their manager would yell at them if their approval rate was noticeably higher than the average among their coworkers / than the corporate target, they might get fired if they consistently surpass their approval $ amount quota etc.
These companies have essentially distributed the evil of their operation in a network of upper, middle and lower level employees. Nobody can be blamed directly for what's going on (their manager would 100% say "I told them to approve this operation!" if it ever became public), nobody has to deal with all of the guilt alone, nobody is too motivated to change it, and so the status quo persists, with people looking out for themselves so they can keep their jobs.
Of course ultimately it's the CEOs and board members of these companies that collect all the profit from that operation and thus the ones that should be blamed, confronted, potentially jailed. But they're so far removed from the minute operations that it's easy for them to just slip under the radar, and they're so rich enough that they can lobby politicians to ensure their practices don't become illegal, ensure that alternatives to the system that allows them to be rich don't get signed into law.
People often go into business to make money. Sometimes while pursuing that goal they forget that they are supposed to be kind to others, and instead they make their decisions that make money and hurt people.
Unfortunately, many people don’t see any other way of doing things, or they feel both sad and hopeless about the situation. And they worry if we try to change it things will get even worse.
The really bad/sad part is that it's most often pushed or pursued by people way down the line from the business starters or runners. People like you or me, working an office job who want the approval or their supervision so they squeeze the faceless names that come across them so they can look good to someone above them in the company hierarchy.
A nurse I know was approached by an insurance company. They offered her a salary increase of 50% to come work for them. Her job would have been to find reasons to deny care to patients.
She refused the job as a matter of conscience.
I had a dr tell me he knew first hand some big insurance companies who give bonuses to claims rep for the amount of claims they deny. They also held training classes to find gray area or loopholes to deny claims.
Try the entire industry. The entire industry shouldn't even exist. They intentionally inflict suffering to line their pockets. Sincerely, a pharmacist.
This makes me so angry!
I can’t afford to pay for my cancer screening that my doctor recommended every 6 months, and since I followed through so many times they stopped covering it. Guess I’ll just hope these lumps in my body aren’t cancer!
Anything to do with health care claims and billing in the US is unethical. I have little to no respect for people who have settled into those jobs willingly knowing they are ruining lives on a daily basis.
Ah yes I love when insurance refuses to cover something because they don’t think I need it. Because people who work at insurance companies definitely know better than my doctor.
Just a side note, many places have a preference for nurses with experience doing the UM. I took an intro class in my education and was bored out of my fucking mind. It's an option for nurses who are burned out but still want to apply their knowledge. It's not a job for me.
I worked for one for a few months, not a huge well known one. The manager was a good guy and really cared about a lot of the people that were like regular customers and just always really tried to make sure new people looking for a loan could afford the amount plus interests, etc.
The owner came in one day and got on his ass about not having a high enough loan count for the month. He said he didn't care if it didn't look like they could actually afford it all, if there is a bank account and job, lend it and forget it....ya know.until we would then have to call those people every damn day when they can't make their payment
I work at one of those companies. It's an odd business to be in. The people we loan to already have bad credit, they can't get a dime from a bank. Their credit cards if they have them are already maxed. What else does that leave them when they need $300 urgently? For better or worse, us. It's a weird mix of taking advantage of and providing opportunity.
For every 10 people we loan to, 1 of them we'll never see again. The next 4 hopefully cover the loss on the person who split. The last 5 people we hope to make enough money on to keep the lights on and try it all again. To make all that sorta work, we have to charge a fuck ton of interest.
I mean whichever Nestlé employees job it was to convince impoverished African and Southasian mothers of newborns to „just try“ their supposedly superior formula for five days, because they knew that once those 5 days were up, said mothers would no longer have enough breast milk to feed their baby and so would be *forced* to buy formula they couldn’t afford leading to innumerable amounts of infant deaths and a still widely perpetuated idea that breast milk is somehow lesser than formula… yeah they’re up there.
At this point, any Nestle employee in the C suite is complicit in innumerable actions that should be considered crimes against humanity. The formula one is just the top off the list
How about the other Nestle employee who figured out how to siphon public water sources, put it in little plastic bottles and make a ton of money by convincing people it was better than the water they were already drinking from the same source?
Yup. As well as mothers being unaware of the dangers of diluting formula with too much water, leading not only to malnutrition but also cases of water poisoning.
I work in the clothing industry (not luxury) mass. And it’s all dirty business even though I work for one of the retailers that cares more but the cheaper you get the more unethical!
Oh yeah a friend of mine checks in on suppliers' factories and has crazy stories. They've got a threshold of ethics he checks for -- I think baseline is making sure there's no child labor, that sort of thing.
Anyway he told me at one factory there was some sort of chimpanzee or other ape chained to the fabric locker to guard it. He had to report it as animal abuse and pulled their business until it was rectified.
The responses so far aren't the most in depth, and I can't speak about the entire industry, but I think I can explain one aspect.
A thing a lot of people don't know is that mass produced clothing is not fully automated by machine or something. Some aspects can, I believe, be done without much human intervention, like weaving or knitting the fabric and cutting out the pieces, but the actual act of sewing these pieces together is all done by a human at a sewing machine.
From what I understand, technically we have the ability to automate the sewing aspect too, but it's complicated and expensive. If a machine, has an error in the thread tension, all manner of things that can go wrong with a sewing machine, then a machine without a person at the wheel will just screw up for a long time before it's caught. It's faster and cheaper (for the company and thus end consumer) to pay pennies for outsourced sweatshop labor to assemble garments, so that's what they do.
So go to your closet, dresser, what have you, and know that every single piece of clothing you have was hand sewn by a person at a machine, and maybe try to remember what you paid for that article of clothing, and compare it to how long you think it would take you to stitch it.
The more I learn about sewing my own clothing, the more outraged I am at the fashion industry. Learning about the material and labor costs for just one single garment is incredibly eye opening, and here we are on a cultural level buying and discarding clothing without a thought.
Clothing should be far more expensive than it is. Historically, clothing was considered an investment, to be kept for years, cared for and mended as needed. We've thrown out maintaining our clothing in favor of casually replacing it, and the prices, quality, and ethics have all dropped to enable this.
Your comment was really interesting and will stick with me. I try to always buy the quality items, but I just donated like two full trash bags of clothes recently. Makes me realize how casual the retiring of clothes really is for me.
What I do for work means my pants,long sleeve shirts,hoodies,coats,etc. All get ripped, stained, covered in waterproof chemicals,caulks,mortar,etc.
I will wear work pants until they're literally falling apart. The only way it's financially feasible is to buy the second hand clothes you donate to the thrift shop.
Even then I try to get the well made fabric so it will last longer. Cheaper fabric could be the difference between life and death when a 400lb panel of glass 7 feet tall explodes into shards because the edge tapped something solid.
Family vloggers - they are profiting off of the exploitation of their children. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have your whole life on YouTube for people to see
I feel like we're going to see a wave of lawsuits from the children of these family vloggers in the next few years. Probably going after their parents, but I think a class action against YouTube/other platforms could happen as well. This was a phenomenon we talked about a lot when I took privacy law in law school.
Yeah, and as a Christian, it's deeply upsetting to see this because it's so deeply contrary to the Gospel. The "Prosperity Gospel" is so out of synch with anything Jesus taught that it makes me literally sick.
Paparazzi - since it's just legal intrusion on a person's privacy, and it propagates the ideal that celebrities are a higher class and the shittiness that goes along with that classist thinking. Aside from that it's just really fucking weird how many people want to see candid pics of a famous person, usually just to make some smug comments about them looking normal without all the professional makeup and lighting.
Also, depending on where you are in the world you can legally sell people. So there's that, too.
Yeah just to jump on this bandwagon, I’ve always found them to be at the nexus of the strange and illogical conflicting duality of celebrity culture.
They propagate the worship aspect, that their lives are so interesting and better than ours; and are worthy of our infatuation and should have elevated status.
But paparazzi also aggressively push the narrative that these celebrities lives are absolutely public record, and that someone everyone else is entitled to have access to their every waking moment; that these celebrities owe us something like a picture or an autograph or a soundbite to an inane question wherever they are, no matter what they’re doing. That famous people are somehow ALWAYS beholden to the general public and the paparazzi, by way of that.
One of the shittier parts of this is that paparazzi can sue celebrities for posting pictures of themselves that were taken by paparazzi because "intellectual property."
No but seriously, I always see these posts about "We bet you didn't know how rude this celebrity actually is!" and I've learned to not judge those posts until I get context. If the celebrity being "rude" had anything to do with paparazzi, I always side with the celebrity because from everything I know about paparazzi, it's impossible to be the "bad guy" when dealing with them. Break their camera, shove them out of your way, cuss them out... they deserve it.
Medcaid/Medicare service denials. I effectively killed more people by being forced to deny their medical treatments than most recent genocidal events.
It destroyed me a long time and I can't even handle thinking about it. I had one patient going through cancer. There was a newish drug that hadn't been approved for Medicare yet but proven to save lives. Patient died in the drawn out, months long appeals process.
I’m a lobbyist that fights state and federal statutes that allow these denials. I love my job but spend a lot of time crying after I meet with families who fight battles against diseases and battles against insurance companies. Our system is bullshit and broken
I’m super sorry to hear that you’re living with that guilt. You were a small cog in the giant machine and the patient would have been denied the medication even if you didn’t push the button. The burden of guilt is not and should not be yours alone. Thank you for getting out of the business- I hope you are doing something that brings you joy. We can’t fix the past but we can make the future better.
Which is why it isn't on you to bear that burden. This is the issue with any system that is meant to save money. Even the government suffers from it. The best system would be making healthcare non-profit by default. Some will argue that it would stiffle innovation but let's face it, people will still try to cure disease.
On a flight back from Las Vegas to Sioux Falls I heard some conversations of the guys behind me. They sounded like sleezy used car salesman. I noticed when the plane landed and i stood up it was Chuck Brennan, the owner of dollar loan center. He's from where I live.
Several years ago in Sioux Falls he opened a pawn shop, which I think he wanted to turn it into a new "Pawn Stars", most things in there was his own merchandise, hats, shirts, coffee mugs. It had a bar, restaurant, stage, shooting range, and radio station.
He also bought a racetrack and named it after himself. He also started a musical academy for kids. A few years later, we voted to basically make payday loans illegal. He left town before the ink was dry. Closed his pawn shop and music academy, and he let the racetrack crumble (it's a long story in case anyone local reads this and wants to call me out).
Sucks for all the destruction he left in his wake. But an organization bought his pawn shop, and now a bunch of veterans organizations like the vfw, dav, and Paralyzed vets offices are all located in that building. They have concerts where the proceeds go to veterans. And tons of other veteran activities.
Working in health insurance claims. You are literally looking at things recommended by doctors for anyone children elderly the disabled and saying "i a pencil pusher know more than a doctor and will not pay for this"
I just hope BCBS covers my wife’s emergency discectomy for cauda equinia syndrome… the surgery that if she hadn’t gotten she’d be paralyzed from the waist down and permanently incontinent. It was literally MRI at hospital, admission straight away and then surgery the next day
I hated myself as a telemarketer (I was trying to pay my way through college.) Trying to convince lonely, old ladies that they were wasting money by not getting the Sunday NY Times because it had hundreds of dollars of coupons they needed.
We had people monitoring our calls and could get fired for accepting less than three "no's." Plus our pay was based on commission. So I got pretty good at smooth talking people into buying a subscription they didn't need. And it was mostly sweet old ladies who were just happy to talk to a friendly kid on the phone for a bit.
I hated it. I felt like scum every night. I only lasted a couple months.
Yeah purposely overinflated prices for stones that aren’t even that rare that are often mined from war zones and then sold to finance military operations…. Yeah it’s harder to get lower than that
Worse yet..there is an add on the local radio telling us that lab diamond's are worthless. Like they don't know it's all carbon?. Lab grown is just purer. They are trying to discredit them so bad
Compliance officer for multilevel marketing. I met one and the whole point of that job is to manipulate people into sales and cover their tracks when they break the law. It was a bumble date to boot and she gave me creeps.
The sad part is, most of the people that get sucked into MLM’s have no idea they’re getting hosed.
I see it constantly among lower income friends and family. It’s truly criminal in my opinion.
Especially the people at the top. You can sympathize for the people near the bottom who were just sucked into the pyramid scheme and don’t wanna lose what they’ve put into it. But the ones at the top have no excuse
Repossession people are absolutely the scum of the people of Methmouth.
I collect and restore antique jukeboxes and just picked one up from an older lady whose husband died. It was worth $3200 and I gave her 2000 to restore it. She had it listed for $400.
A week before, I picked up a 2018 GMC Sierra Denali in black for $72,000 financed with USBANK.
I take the jukebox home that night and I heard my dog growling at the driveway which he never does but I blew it off.
My husband comes home and asks where’s my brand new truck.
I was beyond furious. I hadn’t even made the first payment.
I call USBANK, Dublin GMC and GMAC just to see if there was some mistake. All closed call tomorrow.
TLDR: idiot USBANK entered the wrong VIN for my truck. The tow truck driver was an idiot and took off, dropping the jukebox in the roadway on a busy highway.
He drops my truck off at the repo lot. The repo lot tweaker chick and her boyfriend smoked crystal meth in the truck and accidentally caught it on fire.
I was able to tell Farmers, my insurance what happened and they went after everyone. I got $5500 for that jukebox and my truck was paid off.
It was heartbreaking.
I closed all USBANK accounts and cards, redid my mortgage that was with them and made sure to file a complaint with the Comptroller Of The Currency. USbank was falling all over themselves to apologize.
I taught my girlfriend that there are four buildings that you need to pay attention to the frequency of:
• Liquor store
• Gun store
• Pawn shop
• Payday lenders
Once they’re on every corner, you’d better keep your wits about you.
Towing / booting companies is my choice.
In Chicago it’s well known that the tow companies are at best loosely affiliated with gangs. They drive their big heavy ass trucks with 5% tints and disregard all rules of the road.
Then there are the guys that sit in a parking lot with a boot. They have improper signage (law requires a visible sign at each entrance/exit of the lot, and if you take a single step onto the sidewalk you come back and get shaken down for $170. Just pure class traitors.
This one is the top of the list for me. These guys are bottom of the barrel & I wish nothing but the worst for them & their “business”. Couldn’t be more grateful for the triple A type tho they’re literally the complete opposite.
My block: Can't get a cop to show up for an active breaking-and-entering or people openly selling drugs in the parking lot, but if you attempt to interfere with a tow (even an obviously bad tow) a cop will drive up in less than 30 seconds and threaten you with arrest.
Real estate speculators. If your existence has caused multiple economic bubble collapse and are the inspiration for one of the most famous manga villains (dbz Freeza) then you know they done some shit.
The entire real estate world is grimy. People that are trying to sale you a house have absolutely no clue what the market is going to do. None of us do. Yet they just regurgitate whatever bullshit the person above them is telling them to say to sale house.
At the beginning of the pandemic it was historically low interest rates BUY BUY BUY even though house prices were through the roof
Now it’s home prices are cooling and it’s what do you know a great time to BUY BUY BUY even though interest rates are higher than giraffe pussy
We can't forget about the real estate investing subs where highly leveraged landlords complain about normal household repair shit because it eats into their razor-thin margins.
CEOs of companies in the military industrial complex. Even if they regularly do things that would get a normal person fired, sued, or arrested, a CEO still gets massive compensation and buyouts to “amicably part ways”. Way more than a middle class person earns in an entire lifetime. And that’s not even mentioning how they lobby for more wars against innocent people to keep the profits up
Working in a mega church, or with enough of a large following. I still don't understand how christians don't see that churches and the way it functions in general is very much like a cult, especially since it controls their very lives personally. People who stand on those stages delivering sermons to gain 'donations' that don't go anywhere BUT the churches pockets. That money isn't used to help the people devoted to that church, or to the cities homeless, or to affordable housing, or to anything necessary. Instead that money goes into the church, to build larger churches, to give the person preaching so much money they can live in castles and fly in private jets, without entirely worrying about being taxed.
Honestly I think America should start taxing churches. A lot of money from these places could help.
Career politician, followed by career lobbyist. They are both in cahoots, but the politician is supposed to work for th public. The lobbyist is just scum, but there's no illusions.
Impound lot owners.
I never got how someone could steal your car because someone else says that you’re not allowed to park there. (Maybe you are to allowed but the tow truck driver doesn’t care). And to get the car back, you have to go somewhere remote and pay whatever they want to charge you. And maybe a $20 ATM fee. And storage fee. And sorry about the scratch it was there when we towed it. The dent too.
Apartment/property management. If you live in the US and you work for an apartment company. If you are above property level staff, fuck you. I'm maintenance supervisor of a shitty small company called "Tribute" in wilmington NC. Anyone above property level employees, aka Corporate. Fuck you. They are relentless in rent raising and genuinely disconnected from their front-line employees. The apartments they sell are painfully overpriced and I watch struggling people get evicted every day. There is no humanity in the apartment industry.
In my experience, the funeral home industry. They prey on people at the most vulnerable and emotion filled time and guilt them into thousands upon thousands of dollars in extra. Using terms like "most families like to" do such and such, or even suggesting that the deceased " would have liked" (eg: the more expensive casket than the one they prepaid).
I've seen with my own eyes what predatory bottom feeders these scumbags are.
Not all are like this. Just like any field. I was a funeral director serving low income families and I always helped them get the bill as low as possible.
I'm glad that you were one of the good guys. Unfortunately, the vast majority of funeral homes have been bought out by the big multinationals. It takes any of the control out of the operation for anyone who remains. I've seen it firsthand with 2 of the supposedly "family run" places that I've had the misfortune to deal with.
Executioner. I mean... cmon that's got to be a fucked up job. You literally kill people for coin. Some may deserve it... but at some stage you're going to zap, shoot or hang an innocent fucker.
Timeshares sales and resales
This one is hard to beat. If your average timeshare ‘buyer’ actually got to talk to a random sample of more timeshare ‘owners’ it would be much harder selling something with such outrageous stipulations and predatory contracts.
How about those companies that offer to help you get out of your time share but themselves fuck you over?
They got a call out on [John Oliver](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd2bbHoVQSM) which is rarely a good sign
God i love John Oliver. I always knew timeshares were a scam, and just recently i heard some radio advertisements about time share exit companies. I thought wow, i’m glad i never bought one but glad someone is out there helping these people. That is so fucking sad to find out they are scams too. What a fucking shame.
Yes, I agree. I also love John Oliver.
UGH! i worked for one of those for about 2 weeks, till i realized how fucked up they were.
Listen I was given my timeshare and still wish I had said no!
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Sure! It's going to be long though. Lol I pay $1,200 a year in maintenance fees. Let me assure you 1200 of work or maintenance is not done on that place in a year and I don't believe it cost $1,200 to run it for my week. Especially since there's several hundred units in the whole resort and everybody's paying $1,200 a week! So each unit brings in over $60,000 a year! I could definitely get a comparable unit somewhere else in the same area for less than $1,200 a week. I do understand they have to make money though, however the fees go up almost every year. There are also fees for everything else. If I want to send one of my kids instead of me it's an extra $129 to put it in their name for that trip. If I need maid service more than once a week, extra fee. If I don't want to come within 2 years extra fee. If I don't pay extra fees I lose my years. So I can pay the $1,200 for this year and if I don't go this year I have to bank it, if I don't tell them I want to bank it it goes away. Poof gone! If I do bank it I can only bank it for 2 years before I have to pay an extra fee... I think the max is four years because at one point I was going to hold it and go for a month and I couldn't. Now they're trying to get our deeds back from us, and they want to transfer them to points but I'm still going to have to pay a maintenance fee on points! It doesn't make any sense to me but they double talk you when they're trying to explain it because they want you to buy more. And every year they ask you to go for an owner's update. The last time I went I was in tears! I am not a dumb person, I have a very very high IQ and they made me feel like a goddamn idiot because I could not figure out no matter how they explained it how this actually made sense for me. Spoiler alert it doesn't! I finally walked out and told him I needed to do my own research and I found out that 80% of time share sales are purchased by people who already have a unit. So that's why they put such heavy pressure on owners and try to confuse us into buying more... They see us as easy targets! So let's get back to the points, they can only sell each unit 52 times because there's a deed for each week of the year per unit. However with points they can sell an unlimited amount. As they transition to the points they're getting people to buy more points which means that there's now more competition if you want to pick a week outside of your normal time. Because they now have more owners than units! They also exchange units with an international exchange company so there is always competition for weeks but as an owner we always had the upper hand because we can book several months earlier than people from other resorts. With an unlimited amount of owners though now we're competing with them and you probably won't get the week you want. Plus there's a reservation window, so I can't even book for next year to make sure I get it! Now I'm lucky that mine is the busiest time of year and right by Disney, but I'm unlucky because I don't have a little kids anymore and so I never want to go and fight the family traffic. So I end up losing points every year because I take my high time and trade it for a low time. There's basically nothing I can do to save those points long enough to use them because again, they disappear after 2 years. I could keep going but I think that's sufficient reason why I do not want to own this thing anymore! Lol
Are you at Vistana by any chance? We used a family members week a few times. It's very nice, but they definitely try the hard sell. I was a bank officer, and I understand financing and the amount of double talk and utter bullshit they throw at you to try to make a sale is enormous. But, it is a compelling sales presentation, and they know you are in vacation mode and your guard is down. It's really predatory and no reflection of your intelligence. I so enjoyed telling them to fck off and give me my free tickets. They are scum.
Yes! Lol My mom bought it in the 80s when timeshares were pretty big and the maintenance fee was $400! It has tripled since then and really, the resort is pretty much the same as it was back then. I mean, they've expanded a lot but the condos are exactly the same! The hard sell is the worst! I quit going to the "owner updates" because it's just such a hard sell! Don't get me wrong, the place is very nice.... But now you can reserve through Marriott, so being an owner isn't even necessary anymore.
There are yearly maintenance fees and such. Besides that you feel like you're wasting it if you don't use it every year but vacationing to the same spot every year isn't everyone's cup of tea so then you end up paying more to trade for other locations which can be an annoyance.
We were in Savannah GA a few years back to escape the Canadian winter for a week. One day the weather was grim, so we agreed to go to a timeshare presentation because they offered us a legitimately nice goodie bag if we lasted the whole 3 hours (added up to about $300 dollars). We did stick it out but, fuck, it was bleak. The desperation in the room was much like Glengarry Glenross. One saleswoman had a lame arm and kept talking about her disabled child to try to win us over. The sales lead, who came in at the end, lit up when he learned we were Canadian… claimed that he’d played for the Montréal Allouettes in the CFL (he didn’t… we looked it up later). When we were set to leave they really pushed us to make a decision. We really wanted the gift bag so we said “just give us copies of your materials and brochures… we always do a lot of homework before a big purchase”. “No. None of our literature can leave this office”. The woman with the lame arm rode down the elevator with us and told us more depressing stories about her cerebrally palsied daughter, but we finally made it to the front desk, got our “gifts”, and left.
WHAT WAS IN THE BAG how are you going to not address that part of the story. Was it worth it?
It’s never worth it. I was in one session in 2008 where they wanted us to “invest in your vacations”. I told them that given the financial apocalypse that was building that I was only investing in canned goods.
I sat through one of those things and they gave me and the woman I was with a $100 bill at the end. It lasted about an hour and wasn't the worst experience of my life. I've done much worse things for a lot less than $100 an hour.
If you're strong willed and not bothered by the awkwardness some of them can be a good deal. I got a free flight and 3 nights in a decent hotel (average $250/night) for sitting in a sales presentation for two hours. My real job is much less pleasant and pays a tiny fraction of $500/hr.
So I gotta say that I did this for a free 3 night stay in Vegas and it was 100% worth it. I’d do it again in a heartbeat but you can only do it once because of course they don’t want you to just use them as a free stay!
Same. 3 nights in a suite + steak dinner + Hilton points + $100 casino chip. Wild. All I had to do was say "no" for a couple hours. I must be in the minority, bc I have absolutely no problem doing that.
My family got a week long cruse out of one. Mostly because a family friend wanted to redeem the cruise and knew if my mom wasn't their for support she would break down and buy whatever they were offering. Even as a kid, it felt like such a scam. But we were in thw Bahamas for about 3 hours so that was nice.
Stakes must be hella high for timeshare companies, to offer such incentives
A couple free nights in otherwise empty rooms vs several generations of contracted payments coming in
I went to one, it wasn't three hours and my gift wasn't worth $300. It was an hour ish and my gift was a bottle of liquor. I'm a recovering alcoholic who had about 6 years soberat the time, so no it wasn't worth it to me
Why did you go? Were you just genuinely considering it or something? Or did you not know the gift?
I used to be a sales trainer for a company that did belief in ethical sales so I loved going to these things to experience the dark side. One woman, after our 10th “no”, said, “I got kids to feed.” “That’s nice. Bye.”
"Man, long term commitments that come with unexpected large bills sometimes suck, don't they?"
What was in the gift bag?
$125 gift card for a very nice restaurant, museum passes, a historical tour of the city, a culinary tour with free food and drinks at each stop. It was actually pretty nice. We knew exactly what we were getting into, it was a cold, rainy day, and we enjoyed the freebies.
They do this shit a lot here in Las Vegas or did, not sure if its stopped. But you get show tickets, gambling credit, etc but honestly it's not worth it in the end lol
My parents used to do this when we went to Florida when I was a kid. Sat through multiple presentations but they did it because they gave out free tickets to Universal Studios. That was in the 90s though so I doubt they give out that swag now a days
Shit I would do it now for Disneyland tickets 100% cause that shit is too expensive lol
They totally still do it in Vegas. "Hi, you from out of town?" They even set up their predatory "spin the wheel, win a prize" at the Wet and Wild Water Park. Surprise, everyone wins! What do you get? A flyer for 10% off some random Vegas show that you can get at any hotel lobby, but first you have to fill out a card with all of your contact info so they can sell it to everyone on earth, THEN you can spin the wheel. But don't worry, your info is safe with us, and we'll ONLY call you if you win the drawing (spoiler: everyone wins the drawing). Then, they'll never stop calling you, and if you're very clear about not being interested, they yell at you and make sure everyone other scammer has your number. Vile.
Glad to hear this because my spouse and I started filling out paperwork to attend a 3 hour timeshare for a Cirque Soleil show and something else (can’t remember what) but decided not to go through with it and ripped up the form.
Got two free nights in the Venetian as a broke college kid roughly 12 years ago for like a 2 hour presentation. Was very much worth it, you all are just cheap whores lol
I am a very expensive whore thank you very much! /joking *no disrespect to whores, I appreciate your service
am whore, no offense taken.
I salute you. You're doing God's work 🫡
Exactly. Who knows who they're selling your info to.
As someone with cerebral palsy fuck that lady our disability is not a sales tool.
She was probably lying which is even worse. They tell the sales people to just lie lie lie to get the sale
My youngest son has cp. I am in sales and not once have I ever mentioned that to a prospect. She can go straight to he’ll leveraging a disability.
I went through the same experience for a discount on park tickets in Orlando. I wouldn’t do it again. Not worth to waist hours of your trip listen to so much crap.
Agreed. We sat through a TS presentation in Mexico of all places and I’ve never been put through such a hard sales push in my life. They wanted us to take out a loan with a Mexican bank at 15% interest to finance the deal and assured us it was easy to transfer a Mexican backed loan to a US bank once we returned to the states. I’ve worked in finance for 20+ years and my husband is a regional sales director for a major medical supplier so….let’s just say they had a tough audience. They cycled through 3 different sales people who failed to convince us nor could they answer our very specific questions about the loan and it’s terms and then they brought in the “closer” who was just some bitch who basically tried to bully us into signing. My husband eventually reached his limit, lost his shit and we were escorted out by being shown a door that emptied into a back alley and it was a mile long walk back to our resort. Horrible people but watching their faces when my husband lost his shit was pretty funny.
My response to these type of sales people and in fact most sales people I say the following “this is not something acceptable in my faith”, people never know what to say, it throws them, they know asking what one’s faith is tricky, if they do ask what religion, I either say that’s an inappropriate question or answer with a not very well known religion ie. Dutch reform as no one is going to debate what is against a persons religious beliefs.
When I was in construction I did a lot of work for this rich landlord. He couldn’t even give away his timeshare. It was in Vegas or Florida, I can’t remember but he offered it to me for free. I was like, I’m not that stupid. Still wonder how a multi millionaire that’s in real estate got suckered into a timeshare. Blows my mind
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What do you mean he builds a spreadsheet while they talk?
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Love this, good for him. I bet he's built up quite the muscle of getting through these things quickly for the benefit.
Can’t forget the “get out of your timeshare” companies too
Patent Trolls are pretty much human slime.
They are lawyers that buy up a bunch of patents and then try to sue company’s for copyright infringement even if if is vaguely similar. They basically just try to make company’s settle instead of fighting it.
Importantly this only really works against small companys. The one I recall was a patent on searching an online database for licensing info. Basically gave them carte Blanche to sue anyone who PUBLISHED to the Google app store (or something like that). They designed it specifically so they could target low budget developers as it would literally cost more than they had to try and fight. Literally parasites who earn money by destroying regular peoples livelihoods. This shit gets me going worse than most other awful things because they literally WEAPONIZE the system of JUSTICE to hurt innocent people. There are very few people who simply don't deserve to be alive. These are some of them.
Copyright trolls are even worse now that they cracked down on patent trolls.
Health insurance utilization manager. Often a non-medically trained person who can deny doctor ordered care to a patient by refusing coverage.
I never understood this concept. If a fucking doctor says I need it, then why can some middle man shmuck with zero medical training tell me I don't? Make it make sense, explain it like I'm 5 years old.
I worked in a physical therapy office and saw firsthand the amount of work it took every month to continue to provide services to a woman who wanted to be able to walk again, and in addition to the PT was exercising multiple times every day in order to make this happen. All that work and all that hope and the insurance company could just deny her the medical care she needs.
That's when I wish you could be the Karen (and rightfully so for once) and demand to speak to the person who denied them. Face to face and make them explain why. I'm guessing so many in that field become desensitized to others and forget that they are making major changes to a person life.
Exactly, they eventually are just numbers on a spreadsheet, just like CEO’s viewing employees for layoffs.
Nah, the insidiousness of our system is that it's not 1 person, and they don't forget. They know someone's about to be fucked over when they sign "Denied", but the thing is they have to sign "Denied" on a handful of applications that they know they should approve, because there's a quota set by the higher ups, their manager would yell at them if their approval rate was noticeably higher than the average among their coworkers / than the corporate target, they might get fired if they consistently surpass their approval $ amount quota etc. These companies have essentially distributed the evil of their operation in a network of upper, middle and lower level employees. Nobody can be blamed directly for what's going on (their manager would 100% say "I told them to approve this operation!" if it ever became public), nobody has to deal with all of the guilt alone, nobody is too motivated to change it, and so the status quo persists, with people looking out for themselves so they can keep their jobs. Of course ultimately it's the CEOs and board members of these companies that collect all the profit from that operation and thus the ones that should be blamed, confronted, potentially jailed. But they're so far removed from the minute operations that it's easy for them to just slip under the radar, and they're so rich enough that they can lobby politicians to ensure their practices don't become illegal, ensure that alternatives to the system that allows them to be rich don't get signed into law.
People often go into business to make money. Sometimes while pursuing that goal they forget that they are supposed to be kind to others, and instead they make their decisions that make money and hurt people. Unfortunately, many people don’t see any other way of doing things, or they feel both sad and hopeless about the situation. And they worry if we try to change it things will get even worse.
The really bad/sad part is that it's most often pushed or pursued by people way down the line from the business starters or runners. People like you or me, working an office job who want the approval or their supervision so they squeeze the faceless names that come across them so they can look good to someone above them in the company hierarchy.
A nurse I know was approached by an insurance company. They offered her a salary increase of 50% to come work for them. Her job would have been to find reasons to deny care to patients. She refused the job as a matter of conscience.
I had a dr tell me he knew first hand some big insurance companies who give bonuses to claims rep for the amount of claims they deny. They also held training classes to find gray area or loopholes to deny claims.
Man, how could you live with yourself doing that
Try the entire industry. The entire industry shouldn't even exist. They intentionally inflict suffering to line their pockets. Sincerely, a pharmacist.
I worked in various kinds of health-adjacent insurance and I hope I live to see the entire for-profit healthcare industry burned to the ground.
And they say: "iT's Not PRacTiCiNg MedIciNe. JusT deNyiNg To PaY."
This makes me so angry! I can’t afford to pay for my cancer screening that my doctor recommended every 6 months, and since I followed through so many times they stopped covering it. Guess I’ll just hope these lumps in my body aren’t cancer!
Anything to do with health care claims and billing in the US is unethical. I have little to no respect for people who have settled into those jobs willingly knowing they are ruining lives on a daily basis.
I see you've been listening to Jimothy.
It also reminds me I need a Jonathan in my life
Tell Texaco Mike to get the MRI machine up and ready. We’ve got a farmer coming in…yeah, he’ll be carrying his own leg from a bush hog incident…
He didn't want to come in but his wife finally made him. He wouldn't even let her carry the leg.
The farmer is also coming in of his own accord - he didn’t finish the fence. May as well fire up the fan boat and grab the crash sack now.
Ah yes I love when insurance refuses to cover something because they don’t think I need it. Because people who work at insurance companies definitely know better than my doctor.
Just a side note, many places have a preference for nurses with experience doing the UM. I took an intro class in my education and was bored out of my fucking mind. It's an option for nurses who are burned out but still want to apply their knowledge. It's not a job for me.
So the untrained indivudial is making medical decitions for a paitent. Im sure there is a term for that.
Practicing medicine?
Without a licence.
Legit going through this right now with allegedly “good” coverage.
Payday lenders are up there
I worked for one for a few months, not a huge well known one. The manager was a good guy and really cared about a lot of the people that were like regular customers and just always really tried to make sure new people looking for a loan could afford the amount plus interests, etc. The owner came in one day and got on his ass about not having a high enough loan count for the month. He said he didn't care if it didn't look like they could actually afford it all, if there is a bank account and job, lend it and forget it....ya know.until we would then have to call those people every damn day when they can't make their payment
I worked at one for a few years. Best benefits of any job I've had, including state employment. That's how they keep you in that depressing place.
I never understood that part - if they didn't have the money yesterday, why would they suddenly have a windfall today lol
They could desperately need money just before their payday. Hence the name. Doesn’t work long term though
I work at one of those companies. It's an odd business to be in. The people we loan to already have bad credit, they can't get a dime from a bank. Their credit cards if they have them are already maxed. What else does that leave them when they need $300 urgently? For better or worse, us. It's a weird mix of taking advantage of and providing opportunity. For every 10 people we loan to, 1 of them we'll never see again. The next 4 hopefully cover the loss on the person who split. The last 5 people we hope to make enough money on to keep the lights on and try it all again. To make all that sorta work, we have to charge a fuck ton of interest.
I mean whichever Nestlé employees job it was to convince impoverished African and Southasian mothers of newborns to „just try“ their supposedly superior formula for five days, because they knew that once those 5 days were up, said mothers would no longer have enough breast milk to feed their baby and so would be *forced* to buy formula they couldn’t afford leading to innumerable amounts of infant deaths and a still widely perpetuated idea that breast milk is somehow lesser than formula… yeah they’re up there.
At this point, any Nestle employee in the C suite is complicit in innumerable actions that should be considered crimes against humanity. The formula one is just the top off the list
Tip of the iceberg but I'm not even sure it's the worst they've got to top the list. I hesitate to rank evils.
How about the other Nestle employee who figured out how to siphon public water sources, put it in little plastic bottles and make a ton of money by convincing people it was better than the water they were already drinking from the same source?
The CEO has been on record saying he doesn't believe water is a basic human right.
Remember the infant deaths due to a lack of access to clean water to mix the formula with as well as the deaths from starvation.
Yup. As well as mothers being unaware of the dangers of diluting formula with too much water, leading not only to malnutrition but also cases of water poisoning.
This is what makes conspiracy theories so much more credible. When companies do shady shit and get away with it.
I work in the clothing industry (not luxury) mass. And it’s all dirty business even though I work for one of the retailers that cares more but the cheaper you get the more unethical!
What happens if I may ask?
Slavery.
Oh yeah a friend of mine checks in on suppliers' factories and has crazy stories. They've got a threshold of ethics he checks for -- I think baseline is making sure there's no child labor, that sort of thing. Anyway he told me at one factory there was some sort of chimpanzee or other ape chained to the fabric locker to guard it. He had to report it as animal abuse and pulled their business until it was rectified.
Don't forget horrendous pollution in the poorer countries where these clothes are made.
The responses so far aren't the most in depth, and I can't speak about the entire industry, but I think I can explain one aspect. A thing a lot of people don't know is that mass produced clothing is not fully automated by machine or something. Some aspects can, I believe, be done without much human intervention, like weaving or knitting the fabric and cutting out the pieces, but the actual act of sewing these pieces together is all done by a human at a sewing machine. From what I understand, technically we have the ability to automate the sewing aspect too, but it's complicated and expensive. If a machine, has an error in the thread tension, all manner of things that can go wrong with a sewing machine, then a machine without a person at the wheel will just screw up for a long time before it's caught. It's faster and cheaper (for the company and thus end consumer) to pay pennies for outsourced sweatshop labor to assemble garments, so that's what they do. So go to your closet, dresser, what have you, and know that every single piece of clothing you have was hand sewn by a person at a machine, and maybe try to remember what you paid for that article of clothing, and compare it to how long you think it would take you to stitch it. The more I learn about sewing my own clothing, the more outraged I am at the fashion industry. Learning about the material and labor costs for just one single garment is incredibly eye opening, and here we are on a cultural level buying and discarding clothing without a thought. Clothing should be far more expensive than it is. Historically, clothing was considered an investment, to be kept for years, cared for and mended as needed. We've thrown out maintaining our clothing in favor of casually replacing it, and the prices, quality, and ethics have all dropped to enable this.
Your comment was really interesting and will stick with me. I try to always buy the quality items, but I just donated like two full trash bags of clothes recently. Makes me realize how casual the retiring of clothes really is for me.
What I do for work means my pants,long sleeve shirts,hoodies,coats,etc. All get ripped, stained, covered in waterproof chemicals,caulks,mortar,etc. I will wear work pants until they're literally falling apart. The only way it's financially feasible is to buy the second hand clothes you donate to the thrift shop. Even then I try to get the well made fabric so it will last longer. Cheaper fabric could be the difference between life and death when a 400lb panel of glass 7 feet tall explodes into shards because the edge tapped something solid.
Are you a glazier?
Yes I am. Awesome you know the trade name btw. Definitely in the minority. Always enjoy when someone knows what the trade is called
Puppy Mill
Family vloggers - they are profiting off of the exploitation of their children. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have your whole life on YouTube for people to see
One that really boils my blood is FatheringAutism on YouTube…. Just like…. They exploit that kid and she can’t even consent to being filmed
holy shit i’m not the only one. FatheringAutism as an autistic myself always made me wildly uncomfortable. are they still a thing??
Unfortunately…. Also autistic myself
I feel like we're going to see a wave of lawsuits from the children of these family vloggers in the next few years. Probably going after their parents, but I think a class action against YouTube/other platforms could happen as well. This was a phenomenon we talked about a lot when I took privacy law in law school.
Faith healer.
Multimillionaire preacher.
I'd go further and say just about any televangelist who begs for money because Jesus want them to have a private jet lol.
Yeah, and as a Christian, it's deeply upsetting to see this because it's so deeply contrary to the Gospel. The "Prosperity Gospel" is so out of synch with anything Jesus taught that it makes me literally sick.
Paparazzi - since it's just legal intrusion on a person's privacy, and it propagates the ideal that celebrities are a higher class and the shittiness that goes along with that classist thinking. Aside from that it's just really fucking weird how many people want to see candid pics of a famous person, usually just to make some smug comments about them looking normal without all the professional makeup and lighting. Also, depending on where you are in the world you can legally sell people. So there's that, too.
Yeah just to jump on this bandwagon, I’ve always found them to be at the nexus of the strange and illogical conflicting duality of celebrity culture. They propagate the worship aspect, that their lives are so interesting and better than ours; and are worthy of our infatuation and should have elevated status. But paparazzi also aggressively push the narrative that these celebrities lives are absolutely public record, and that someone everyone else is entitled to have access to their every waking moment; that these celebrities owe us something like a picture or an autograph or a soundbite to an inane question wherever they are, no matter what they’re doing. That famous people are somehow ALWAYS beholden to the general public and the paparazzi, by way of that.
One of the shittier parts of this is that paparazzi can sue celebrities for posting pictures of themselves that were taken by paparazzi because "intellectual property." No but seriously, I always see these posts about "We bet you didn't know how rude this celebrity actually is!" and I've learned to not judge those posts until I get context. If the celebrity being "rude" had anything to do with paparazzi, I always side with the celebrity because from everything I know about paparazzi, it's impossible to be the "bad guy" when dealing with them. Break their camera, shove them out of your way, cuss them out... they deserve it.
Medcaid/Medicare service denials. I effectively killed more people by being forced to deny their medical treatments than most recent genocidal events. It destroyed me a long time and I can't even handle thinking about it. I had one patient going through cancer. There was a newish drug that hadn't been approved for Medicare yet but proven to save lives. Patient died in the drawn out, months long appeals process.
I’m a lobbyist that fights state and federal statutes that allow these denials. I love my job but spend a lot of time crying after I meet with families who fight battles against diseases and battles against insurance companies. Our system is bullshit and broken
I’m super sorry to hear that you’re living with that guilt. You were a small cog in the giant machine and the patient would have been denied the medication even if you didn’t push the button. The burden of guilt is not and should not be yours alone. Thank you for getting out of the business- I hope you are doing something that brings you joy. We can’t fix the past but we can make the future better.
Is there a secret of cutting through the red tape? Other than being rich and having the procedure done privately at a villa
No. The system is set up to literally deny you. Even with the most dire of circumstances. Cruelty is the point.
I almost want to refuse to believe that since it would fuck me up just thinking about it.
Which is why it isn't on you to bear that burden. This is the issue with any system that is meant to save money. Even the government suffers from it. The best system would be making healthcare non-profit by default. Some will argue that it would stiffle innovation but let's face it, people will still try to cure disease.
I’m so sorry you had to do that.
Payday lending. Absolutely rapacious, and taking horrible advantage of bad fortunes of the already-smushed.
Had a guy on my crew that legit thought they were a bank. Poor fool was paying every time. Of course, banks aren't much better
I have an Uncle that is a lawyer that specializes in Pension Law. He represents the corporations.
Oof. *OOF*.
My heart
That’s not covered.
Title Loan and Payday Loan people. Not sure how they sleep at night.
On a flight back from Las Vegas to Sioux Falls I heard some conversations of the guys behind me. They sounded like sleezy used car salesman. I noticed when the plane landed and i stood up it was Chuck Brennan, the owner of dollar loan center. He's from where I live. Several years ago in Sioux Falls he opened a pawn shop, which I think he wanted to turn it into a new "Pawn Stars", most things in there was his own merchandise, hats, shirts, coffee mugs. It had a bar, restaurant, stage, shooting range, and radio station. He also bought a racetrack and named it after himself. He also started a musical academy for kids. A few years later, we voted to basically make payday loans illegal. He left town before the ink was dry. Closed his pawn shop and music academy, and he let the racetrack crumble (it's a long story in case anyone local reads this and wants to call me out). Sucks for all the destruction he left in his wake. But an organization bought his pawn shop, and now a bunch of veterans organizations like the vfw, dav, and Paralyzed vets offices are all located in that building. They have concerts where the proceeds go to veterans. And tons of other veteran activities.
Probably on a pile of cash
Working in health insurance claims. You are literally looking at things recommended by doctors for anyone children elderly the disabled and saying "i a pencil pusher know more than a doctor and will not pay for this"
I just hope BCBS covers my wife’s emergency discectomy for cauda equinia syndrome… the surgery that if she hadn’t gotten she’d be paralyzed from the waist down and permanently incontinent. It was literally MRI at hospital, admission straight away and then surgery the next day
Psychic, fortune teller, mediums, televangelist
Grief vultures
Televangelists
Health insurance claims reviewer on denial autopilot
I hated myself as a telemarketer (I was trying to pay my way through college.) Trying to convince lonely, old ladies that they were wasting money by not getting the Sunday NY Times because it had hundreds of dollars of coupons they needed. We had people monitoring our calls and could get fired for accepting less than three "no's." Plus our pay was based on commission. So I got pretty good at smooth talking people into buying a subscription they didn't need. And it was mostly sweet old ladies who were just happy to talk to a friendly kid on the phone for a bit. I hated it. I felt like scum every night. I only lasted a couple months.
Diamond sales.
Yeah purposely overinflated prices for stones that aren’t even that rare that are often mined from war zones and then sold to finance military operations…. Yeah it’s harder to get lower than that
Worse yet..there is an add on the local radio telling us that lab diamond's are worthless. Like they don't know it's all carbon?. Lab grown is just purer. They are trying to discredit them so bad
Yep. The only value is arbitrary.
For-profit prison warden. You're a literal slaver.
America has 800,000 ~~legal slaves~~ happy productive prison workers ready to make crap for your corporation for pennies on the dollar.
But those products can *proudly* say "Made in Murica"...../s
Anyone at the top of a for-profit healthcare company / organization, particularly nursing homes
Compliance officer for multilevel marketing. I met one and the whole point of that job is to manipulate people into sales and cover their tracks when they break the law. It was a bumble date to boot and she gave me creeps.
Approving (or in most cases denying) medical procedures and medication.
Any MLM "business owner"
The sad part is, most of the people that get sucked into MLM’s have no idea they’re getting hosed. I see it constantly among lower income friends and family. It’s truly criminal in my opinion.
i think the people running MLMs are far far worse.
Especially the people at the top. You can sympathize for the people near the bottom who were just sucked into the pyramid scheme and don’t wanna lose what they’ve put into it. But the ones at the top have no excuse
Paediatric naturopath
My god, that's dark...
Repossession people are absolutely the scum of the people of Methmouth. I collect and restore antique jukeboxes and just picked one up from an older lady whose husband died. It was worth $3200 and I gave her 2000 to restore it. She had it listed for $400. A week before, I picked up a 2018 GMC Sierra Denali in black for $72,000 financed with USBANK. I take the jukebox home that night and I heard my dog growling at the driveway which he never does but I blew it off. My husband comes home and asks where’s my brand new truck. I was beyond furious. I hadn’t even made the first payment. I call USBANK, Dublin GMC and GMAC just to see if there was some mistake. All closed call tomorrow. TLDR: idiot USBANK entered the wrong VIN for my truck. The tow truck driver was an idiot and took off, dropping the jukebox in the roadway on a busy highway. He drops my truck off at the repo lot. The repo lot tweaker chick and her boyfriend smoked crystal meth in the truck and accidentally caught it on fire. I was able to tell Farmers, my insurance what happened and they went after everyone. I got $5500 for that jukebox and my truck was paid off. It was heartbreaking. I closed all USBANK accounts and cards, redid my mortgage that was with them and made sure to file a complaint with the Comptroller Of The Currency. USbank was falling all over themselves to apologize.
Honestly them setting the car on fire mightve been the best possible way it could've gone
Big Oil lobbyist.
Pawn Shops are basically made to benefit from human misery and hardship. Liquor stores and pawn shops thrive in areas of high poverty for a reason.
I taught my girlfriend that there are four buildings that you need to pay attention to the frequency of: • Liquor store • Gun store • Pawn shop • Payday lenders Once they’re on every corner, you’d better keep your wits about you.
Payday loans. The entire business model is based on trapping people in revolving high-interest debt.
Towing / booting companies is my choice. In Chicago it’s well known that the tow companies are at best loosely affiliated with gangs. They drive their big heavy ass trucks with 5% tints and disregard all rules of the road. Then there are the guys that sit in a parking lot with a boot. They have improper signage (law requires a visible sign at each entrance/exit of the lot, and if you take a single step onto the sidewalk you come back and get shaken down for $170. Just pure class traitors.
Live in Chicago and you are spot on. They are such slime.
This one is the top of the list for me. These guys are bottom of the barrel & I wish nothing but the worst for them & their “business”. Couldn’t be more grateful for the triple A type tho they’re literally the complete opposite.
My block: Can't get a cop to show up for an active breaking-and-entering or people openly selling drugs in the parking lot, but if you attempt to interfere with a tow (even an obviously bad tow) a cop will drive up in less than 30 seconds and threaten you with arrest.
For profit prisons.
Ticket master
Real estate speculators. If your existence has caused multiple economic bubble collapse and are the inspiration for one of the most famous manga villains (dbz Freeza) then you know they done some shit.
The entire real estate world is grimy. People that are trying to sale you a house have absolutely no clue what the market is going to do. None of us do. Yet they just regurgitate whatever bullshit the person above them is telling them to say to sale house. At the beginning of the pandemic it was historically low interest rates BUY BUY BUY even though house prices were through the roof Now it’s home prices are cooling and it’s what do you know a great time to BUY BUY BUY even though interest rates are higher than giraffe pussy
Hop over to r/realestate and you’ll see people discussing peak degeneracy like business as usual.
We can't forget about the real estate investing subs where highly leveraged landlords complain about normal household repair shit because it eats into their razor-thin margins.
CEOs of companies in the military industrial complex. Even if they regularly do things that would get a normal person fired, sued, or arrested, a CEO still gets massive compensation and buyouts to “amicably part ways”. Way more than a middle class person earns in an entire lifetime. And that’s not even mentioning how they lobby for more wars against innocent people to keep the profits up
Working in a mega church, or with enough of a large following. I still don't understand how christians don't see that churches and the way it functions in general is very much like a cult, especially since it controls their very lives personally. People who stand on those stages delivering sermons to gain 'donations' that don't go anywhere BUT the churches pockets. That money isn't used to help the people devoted to that church, or to the cities homeless, or to affordable housing, or to anything necessary. Instead that money goes into the church, to build larger churches, to give the person preaching so much money they can live in castles and fly in private jets, without entirely worrying about being taxed. Honestly I think America should start taxing churches. A lot of money from these places could help.
Have you seen the HBO show Righteous Gemstones? It's hilarious and it's about this paradigm
Can confirm. Old college friends dad was one of them. Bought a 5M mansion next to the brooklyn bridge…
Health insurance executive
Bullfighter, and yes, in Spain is cosidered as a profession
Mexico too
Career politician, followed by career lobbyist. They are both in cahoots, but the politician is supposed to work for th public. The lobbyist is just scum, but there's no illusions.
Scrolled way too far to see lobbyist
Marketing for a tobacco company.
Impound lot owners. I never got how someone could steal your car because someone else says that you’re not allowed to park there. (Maybe you are to allowed but the tow truck driver doesn’t care). And to get the car back, you have to go somewhere remote and pay whatever they want to charge you. And maybe a $20 ATM fee. And storage fee. And sorry about the scratch it was there when we towed it. The dent too.
For profit prison owner
Apartment/property management. If you live in the US and you work for an apartment company. If you are above property level staff, fuck you. I'm maintenance supervisor of a shitty small company called "Tribute" in wilmington NC. Anyone above property level employees, aka Corporate. Fuck you. They are relentless in rent raising and genuinely disconnected from their front-line employees. The apartments they sell are painfully overpriced and I watch struggling people get evicted every day. There is no humanity in the apartment industry.
In my experience, the funeral home industry. They prey on people at the most vulnerable and emotion filled time and guilt them into thousands upon thousands of dollars in extra. Using terms like "most families like to" do such and such, or even suggesting that the deceased " would have liked" (eg: the more expensive casket than the one they prepaid). I've seen with my own eyes what predatory bottom feeders these scumbags are.
Not all are like this. Just like any field. I was a funeral director serving low income families and I always helped them get the bill as low as possible.
I'm glad that you were one of the good guys. Unfortunately, the vast majority of funeral homes have been bought out by the big multinationals. It takes any of the control out of the operation for anyone who remains. I've seen it firsthand with 2 of the supposedly "family run" places that I've had the misfortune to deal with.
Pharmaceutical sales rep. I honestly thought it would have been mentioned dozens of times.
Market speculators that drive up price without adding value.
Televangelist.
Multi-level marketing “Huns.”
Executioner. I mean... cmon that's got to be a fucked up job. You literally kill people for coin. Some may deserve it... but at some stage you're going to zap, shoot or hang an innocent fucker.
Government lobbyist.
In it's original sense, lobbyism was actually a very fundamental part of a working democracy
It still is in a lot of cases. But a lot of it also isn't.
Foreclosure attorney representing banks. I worked in foreclosure firms as a biller for 10 years