There's a reason why they say a person makes an honest living.
Many of us tend to forget there are shady operations by which wage-earners make their money, and if they have a conscience, it's not telling them what they are doing to survive is most definitely an honest way to survive.
With people willing to do anything for money, there are plenty of jobs that can potentially make one lose sleep at night.
Curious to explore this notion, Redditor MoronByTrade asked:
"What is the most unethical profession?"
"Professions" exploiting the elderly and other vulnerable people continue to be rampant.
Scammers
"Any profession where the source of your income is scamming the old and/or the gullible."
– EvidentlyEmpirical
Financial Help At A Cost
"Pay day loans. Want a loan with 600% interest?"
– starving_to_death
"My job just partnered with a company to advance your check if needed. The company has all of our info such as hourly rate and time clock punches. If you make $10 an hour and have 80 hours of punches, they will give you an $800 advance. No interest, but they don't take out taxes. Girl I work with had been taking an advance every 2 weeks because 'you make more money this way.' I told her she's getting f'ked in April but she doesn't believe me."
– minnick27
The Struggling Friend
"I have a friend who works her ass off, has had a difficult life and had been struggling a bit, and needed $250 to make rent. I had just set up her computer and had stopped by to drop something off and she was filling in the financial info part of a payday loan form, and had already clicked 'next' after she entered her contact information. I stopped her and helped her out with the money in exchange for one of her amazing dinners if I bought the groceries."
"About a week later she called me crying, saying there was an officer coming to her house to arrest her for non-payment of the payday loan that she didn't get. These ruthless f'ks took her info and tried to scare her into giving them twice the amount she was going to take out. I calmed her down, assured her, then reassured her later that night when she called me again, that it was a scam and she wasn't getting arrested."
"This woman is one of the nicest people I've ever met in my life. She's older, doesn't have much of an education, but has raised some amazing children and would give you the shirt off of her back if you needed it. F'k those douchebag scammers."
Edit: If I didn't make it clear, the police were not actually being sent to arrest her, they can't do that, and when she called me, I explained this to her. Saying that someone will be served or arrested is a common, shady way for debt collectors to scare people into paying a debt (in this case a debt she didn't owe). The whole thing was a scam to scare her into paying them using the info she entered to attempt to get a payday loan.
– Clusterf**kySh*tshow
Teaching By Example
"I teach highschool economics, and occasionally when I get a scam call during class, I'll plug my phone into my projector speakers and answer it in front of my students."
"I play along and ask the scammer questions to make it seem like I'm a good Mark. My students have prior instructions on types of scams, and their job is to figure out which scam this is and how it works as I go through the call. Afterwards we'll discuss what happened."
"When I decide to end the call, we usually either just hang up or we mess with them a bit. One time a student jumped in and asked the scammer if his mother was proud of him, and the guy cussed us out and hung up. That story is legend among my students."
– StrategicWindSock
It's confounding how people in these positions get away with everything, under the guise of work.
Shady Media Outlets
"Media outlets that take money from interest groups (or owned by specific people) and espouses their talking points instead of reporting the factual truth."
– nowhereisaguy
Bad Reputation
"Politician shouldn't be, but the system makes it really easy for people to forget they are public servants and not out for themselves."
– theliability10
The Palm Message
"One of my coworkers used to be a repo man. One time he was telling me about his tattoo. Often while hooking up the car to tow it, the person would come up to him and say 'isn't there some way I can get you to not take it'" On his left palm in all caps was tattooed PAY HERE."
"He'd drop the car for $100 and tell his boss he didn't find it. I opined that that sounded kind of f'ked up. He said it was actually way cheaper for them to pay him and maybe have time to fix the situation than it would be to try and get the car un-repoed from the yard with the bank involved. He's not wrong, sadly."
– Lampwick
Based on the input from these Redditors, there is corruption in faith.
Con Artist
"Televangelists. Easy, they're confidence men, and true pieces of sh*t. Looking at you Joel 'I'm a garbage f'king person' Osteen."
– Silkysenko91
Bad Conduits
"Mediums and psychics who capitalize on the pain and grief their clients feel from losing someone they love. 'I will help you communicate with your dead loved one for $200 an hour' the Gabby Petito (sp?) Case was so f'ked up with all the Tik Tok psychos, oh I'm sorry, psychics posting videos saying she was speaking to them from beyond the grave."
– Alohamora95
Prosperity Preachers
"The tech support scammers are usually poor and desperate and sometimes dumb enough that they think they are doing a legitimate job (some of the frontline ones are just there to make initial calls and get a mark on the line--they pass it off to the next level of scammer once they find someone who 'needs technical support')."
"But the prosperity preachers are pure scum. They could be normal preachers. They could take other jobs. They could quit now and still be fabulously wealthy...but they don't do any of those things because they are terrible people."
– RegulatoryCapture
Like many Redditors here mentioned, scammers are the lowest of the low.
The lengths at which they go to prey on people by coming up with elaborate schemes and backup plans to ensure their ploy will work is baffling.
It's become our job to watch our backs. Remember the following points to prevent you from being a sucker when you respond to suspicious calls.
Never send money in order to receive a prize.
Never send personal or financial information when prompted.
And remember it's a big red flag if someone puts pressure on your to act quickly or there would be consequences involving the FBI or law enforcement.
Want to "know" more?
Sign up for the Knowable newsletter here.
Never miss another big, odd, funny or heartbreaking moment again.
