30 Red Flags That Tell You a Company is Shady
1.
Careful (deceptive) wording. "Up to 100mbps internet speeds!" means you get 5-6mbps, and "up to" 100 for a moment here and there. "Made with 100% Chicken" simply means that real chicken was utilized as an ingredient at some point. It's like saying a bottle of wine is "made with" 100% organic cork. "Sugar free!" means "Less sugar per serving than the minimum we have to report" "The top rated____" usually followed by the specific study that ranked it best. Did you know you can pay a company to perform a study for you that's guaranteed to determine you're the best?
2.
It’s shady to give dedicated, long-term employees a measly 2-3% annual raise (if any at all), while hiring less experienced people for the same (or higher) salary, than the experienced employee. It essentially punishes loyal employees.
4.
Not including wage info in the job posting. At least post the range or minimum for the position.
5.
Paying invoices late, especially BIG companies that pay a few months late. It kills small business, and seems to be quite normal here in the UK.
6.
Consistently making salaried exempt employees work 10+ hours overtime a week in order to avoid hiring more staff.
7.
Signing people up for s@#t as addons to an existing bill and hoping they don't notice the extra charges.
8.
Giving a set amount of PTO, then refusing to let employees actually use it, or shaming them for doing so.
9.
Using a previous salary against you. "Oh, you make $40,000? Well, we'll offer you $50,000. That's a 25% increase in pay!" Your salary shouldn't be relative, it should be what the market value of the position is. If a job pays $75,000, don't pay me only $50,000 because I only currently make $40,000.
10.
Working when you are sick. I have heard stories of bosses forcing people to come in despite being extremely ill. Also I just wish that it would be mandatory schedule length of at least two weeks if the hours are not the same every day. Mine changes weekly, and it's hard to plan anything.
11.
No auto-cancel on recurring payments. Companies could very easily add the feature but won't hoping you forget and pay them more.
13.
I've seen so many to name just one. Here's the worse I've seen. So, PCB are highly toxic, highly carcinogenic stuff used mainly as coolant in power transformers. Heavy industries often have their own transformers, usually on the roof of their building. When these transformers get old, they need to be replaced, and the PCB need to be destroyed properly. However, doing this properly is very costly. So, a solution is to wait for a rainy day, then pour the PCB in the gutters on the roof of the heavy industry's building (where the power transformers typically are). This way they disperse on the ground and noone is the wiser. Well, since then, laws were changed to make sure that all power transformers are labelled and tracked by the government, to ensure their proper disposal. Still, sometimes a few older units get overlooked. And this is how I learned of this trick... the heavy industry's building is in the middle of a large city, with kids playing nearby and all. F these f-ers.
15.
Literally anything a corporation does that they can be fined for is taken into account as a business expense. If it's cheaper to pay an illegal dumping fine than it is to change the way they process waste nothing will be done to stop the illegal dumping.
17.
Refusing to pay overtime for overtime. I saw it happen all the time. I didn't complain. I got promoted a bunch.
19.
Hire young people who are prepared and motivated and enjoy the work. Give them 50 hours a week of work, no special overtime pay, tell them it'll be back to normal at then end of the month when the regular crunch is over. Repeat until near a deadline. Give them 80 hours a week, 7 days a week of crunch to meet the deadline. Continue past deadline a little while then return to "regular" hours of 50 hours. Repeat until your employees hate life. Refuse to give references when they quit "to protect yourself legally". Normalize across the industry so nobody can complain too much and sound credible.
20.
Using your employment as leverage to keep your mouth shut. For example. A temp agency i worked through tried to deduct the cost of ppe from my paycheck. I told them that legally, employers need to provide ppe to their employees. Not sell it to them. They threatened to fire me. I reported them to OSHA. They got fined and had to reimburse everyone their $15 deduction for ppe. Temp agencies are f!@#$%g scams. EDIT: PPE: "Personal Protective Equipment." Hard hat, safety glasses, gloves, steel tipped boots, etc.
21.
A company having a business model that relies on charging fees for breaking its own rules without justification for them. Looking at you CreditOne. - Has a late payment fee but refuses to add any kind of auto-payment. In 2017. - Takes 5 days to clear a normal payment. Pay 4 days before your bill is due? That's a late payment fee. Want your payment to clear earlier to avoid that fee? Pay an express payment fee! Its the same fee amount? Lordy! What a coincidence!
22.
In Australia, Subway claimed "Foot Long" was a trade marked name, and not a suggestion of sizing, after many people pointed out their subs were well under a foot long.
23.
Public school teacher here. My school has started to deduct vacation/sick hours if teachers forget to swipe in. We’re basically there all the time anyways and don’t get paid overtime so clocking in is pretty easy to forget. What ends up happening is teachers get their accumulated vacay/sick hours deducted WHILE actively teaching, all because of a forgotten swipe. The admin and district people didn’t seem to see how absolutely unethical this practice is and I never got back 4 days of vacay hours from missed swipes.
24.
Using unpaid intern as worker. They have the exact same tasks has everyone else, they work the same hours, even more because they think that if they work more they will be noticed and hired (they won't), and it's rare that their supervisor take the time to teach them anything. They have to figure out things by themselves. Of course most struggle, and it's use as an excuse to not hire them.
25.
Comcast's pricing strategy where they raise the price an absurd amount from one month to the next and just hope customers aren't paying attention or too passive to complain.
26.
Online stores advertise their products at attractively lower prices but you will never really be able to get the product for that price because they will add extra charges somehow.
27.
Fake promotions. There's a role you can apply for that doesn't have any extra pay or benefits, in which you do the same work as the role above that (which is higher paid) in the hopes that eventually you'll be the next in line to actually be given that next position. Except you won't.
28.
Government contracting. Building a thing to "specs" but not entirely up to full functionality. Knowing the issues that can/will arise, doing nothing about it, and then make the government cut a whole different (and very profitable) contract to fix said problems.
29.
Car salesman. Almost no other product has someone who makes money selling you a product you already want. That the price for the product is negotiable. Some people can haggle a few thousand off the price while little old ladies get taken for as much as possible. And that there are laws requiring you to buy them through dealers instead of direct from the manufacturer if you know what you want.
30.
Nominal weights and measures that don't match actual weights and measures. My company sells by the each but each item has a nominal weight. We intentionally produce our product approximately 10% light to save raw material costs.
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