People Whose NDAs Have Since Expired Are Finally Sharing Their Confidential Secrets, And They're Juicy, Juicy, JUUUUUICY
Have you ever wondered what secrets people have signed away in order to keep their jobs?
Rosanna Pansino / Via giphy.com
Well, recently, we asked those in the BuzzFeed Community who've signed now-expired nondisclosure agreements to tell us the secrets and stories they were forced to keep under wraps. Here are the most SHOCKING things they revealed:
We've also included some answers from this Reddit thread because they were too good not to include.
In addition, please note that we cannot confirm the validity of each claim made in these submissions.
1."I went to school with a girl who was a working model, and she told me that she once had a job shooting an ad for some kind of 'miracle' weight loss product. They shot the 'before' and 'after' images on the same day and just put her in an ill-fitting bikini and some unflattering poses for the 'before' shots."
2."My brother-in-law was approached to be on The Bachelorette. When he told them he was already married, they said it didn’t matter — he wouldn’t be picked, they just needed people to fill out the cast."
3."I worked for a digital agency that developed the Westminster Abbey website, and we had a secret project for the changes on their website in preparation for when the Queen died. I literally waited 10 years to see my work go live!"
—Anonymous
4."I had babysat a famous local 'celebrity' kid whom I knew to be quite the brat, but the check was nice. Well, when I saw the NDA for the babysitter job, it was odd: It had the location of where the child’s tracking chip was if they were kidnapped for ransom. And I was supposed to sacrifice myself in a gun situation. Thankfully, the teen just played on his Xbox the whole time. Never again."
5."A House Hunters guest checking in. I never made the show because I didn’t close on the house, but here are my secrets: 1) I had to have a house under contract before going on the show, 2) producers would select the other houses we were 'interested' in, and 3) I was assigned another significant other who was more 'interesting' than my actual significant other."
6."In 1990, I signed an NDA at Chili's when they showed me how to make their new Awesome Blossom. No other restaurant in town had anything like it, and it was hugely popular at the time."
7."I was a model for a few big-name/well-known makeup companies. I did several print ads for magazines and a few television commercials. The makeup artists do use the product advertised, but MINIMALLY. That mascara they're touting? It's over REALLY GOOD fake eyelashes, and they also use another brand of mascara along with the one they're trying to sell you. Plus, the clothes in the ads you see are pinned to high heaven on the model. They fit nothing like how they look. It's not you; it's not your body. It's fake advertising. Most of us models look just like you wearing that crap without all the pins and tucks and double-sided tape."
8."I'm a journalist, and I had to sign an NDA to meet Michael Jordan for a collab launch. I thought it was strange because as a journalist, I usually do interviews, but the tables were reversed and he asked me lots of questions. I had just had a baby and he was telling me how to sleep-train and saying that I would thank him later. The NDA has now expired, and I have Michael to thank for helping me survive those early months/years. I wish he would actually go public with his advice — imagine all the new sports-obsessed parents who would listen to him!"
—Anonymous
9."I worked at a hotel where a political party has its annual conference. Five months previously, the party had gone through a very public, huge budget scandal. Anyway, they went on to spend £3 million on a three-day bender, I was offered a free trip to London by a member of Parliament, my colleague was touched inappropriately by another, and I saw one of them who was married kissing a member of the staff in a sneaky corner. These people run our country for a fucking hobby. It's a joke."
10."I’ve had to sign many NDAs in my line of hobby. For fun, I go to free movie screenings. Sometimes I get to see movies three to six months before they end up hitting the theaters, then get surveyed afterward about the different parts of the movie. So far, some of the screenings I’ve seen are Crazy Rich Asians, The Gentleman, It Chapter Two, and my favorite: Don’t Worry Darling. So, all of the plot twists? I have to keep secrets for months until the movies come out!"
—Anonymous
11."I taught a yoga class to the cast of The Real World. They were all super polite and chill. The show portrayed the cast that season as absolutely unhinged and entitled, but at least in the yoga class, they were sweet and awkward and just wanted to make sure they were 'doing it right.' I have family members who’ve worked in reality TV for years, but I didn’t realize until that day just how intentionally people’s onscreen personas are edited in order to tell a good story. Like, I get it: You hired these people because they were hot, not interesting, so you had to make them seem interesting.”
—Anonymous
12."I worked at a very popular college bar, and given that I also worked for a newspaper, they made me sign an NDA when I started bartending. The bar had some of the worst health violations I’d ever seen. The kitchen was infested with rats, and the fruit was often old and moldy and was sometimes covered in ants. We also 'cleaned' the floors with water and leftover lemon juice that was old and moldy. I ended up quitting the job after I got so sick that I had to go to the ER with strep throat, pneumonia, and pink eye in both of my eyes, and the only thing I was doing was working. After I called my boss telling him I was super sick, he said I was still expected to be at work that day, so I just never showed up."
—Anonymous
13."I worked as an English teacher in Japan for a year at one of the private business 'schools,' a for-profit business that hires teachers from all over the world to teach languages. Those places are almost entirely scams. I was repeatedly told to push students into new programs that they weren't ready for, just so we could charge them more money for more advanced classes. Alternatively, when I said that a student wasn't ready to move up, I was told to push them into private lessons (for an additional charge). We also had regularly scheduled review sessions with students where I was instructed to push our latest products on them regardless of their actual need."
—Anonymous
14."Several years ago, my family visited the Pawn Stars shop while in Las Vegas. I was quietly approached by an employee who asked if I wanted to be on the show. When I told him I hadn’t brought anything to pawn or sell, I was told that they would provide an item and I just needed to make up a fake story about how I came across it. I was required to sign an NDA that threatened a very large fine if I disclosed the truth about the show. After I signed the NDA, they immediately closed the store and asked almost all of the customers to leave. The transaction was filmed with Rick Harrison and me. While some of the show's episodes are most likely real, others are totally fake."
—Anonymous
15."A friend of mine got a job at a prominent local distillery that makes an extremely popular flavored whiskey. They literally buy whiskey from a third-party distillery and dump Torani flavoring syrup into it."
16."I worked at a matchmaking company. It’s all fake. It’s just throwing darts at a wall until something sticks. There’s no science or magic to it at all."
17."I had a friend who auditioned for The Bachelorette. He was a really good-looking dude with a 'Southern boy' personality, so he made it all the way to final-round auditions in LA. He confirmed that it's super staged, and said the restrictions they place on the contestants are so strict that he would have said no if he made the final cut."
18."One of my friends' brothers was on the MTV show Room Raiders. Everything on the show is staged. All of the items that they would find were planted. At the end of the show, the prize was not a date with the girl that he 'picked' — he just got her phone number."
—Anonymous
19."I worked at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, and we were required to sign a 10-year NDA after classified weapon system plans were distributed via 'reply all' in an email. The entire post was locked down for three days while a team of 'technicians' went through every office and wiped every computer clean. This was before the prevalence of cellphones, and of course everyone who received the email read through it. Turns out, it was a nose-mounted laser weapon system for aircraft. Always wondered why it looked like a Pink Floyd light show in the early hours coming over the San Augustin Pass..."
—Anonymous
20."I worked for a casino. The golf courses lost a ton of money for us, as did the advertising for the courses. We generally broke even on food because of all the comps. If a crime was committed by a dealer, they would watch the dealer for three months to see if there were accomplices. They used facial recognition and would match you, so if the same person sat with the same dealer over and over, they would know. This way, they could look for accomplices. Then, when they busted you, they would sit you down and make you watch a video of yourself breaking the law. They did this because they wanted you to plead guilty as opposed to having an expensive trial."
21."Not me, but a guy I know was on Cash Cab. Allegedly, a lot of it was faked. He was told he would be on a travel food show and would get picked up by a fake taxi at a certain location at a certain time. There were camera crews outside the taxi, and there's no way on Earth you could mistake it for a real cab."
22."I had to sign one for the most boring secret ever: how to process sand through a processing plant. Yup, that really required an NDA."
—Anonymous
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.
