This was in 2016, I was a college student looking to make my way in the world. I struck up a conversation and landed what I was a dream role out of poverty -a paid internship with benefits at a Health Insurance company.
They had me doing menial roles, I saw that it was very much a Good ol' boys club and I was still in the Proving Grounds, so they gave me a lot of meaningles, redundant tasks to do (such as printing out excel files and highlighting any mistake I found to be edited later.). At the same time I was to attend every meeting and get to know all the higher-ups as much as possible to see if I fit in with company culture.
One day at my Built-in Redundant role, I was highlighting a stack of papers after a meeting wrapped up. My co-worker next to me started chatting about her life. She said she did more than fall on hard times: she actively made bad decisions that almost cost her everything-I asked simple, polite follow-up questions- she said (in no specific order) about the betrayal, the petty crime, and the heavy drug use she partook in. Particularly Meth and Heroin. She said it got so bad and she was so broke, she was at the end of her rope and contemplated just ending it. (I was in shock and awe at this retelling, I only gave one word responses though) Fortunately, she was able to find this job and made enough money to keep her house and win custody of her kids. So I politely said “oh really, and how much is that?” Immediately she gasped and said “you're not supposed to ask that!” I quickly retracted, said sorry, and we didn't speak for the rest of the day. The next day HR and my boss rolled me out and grilled me for discussing Salary. Said it wasn't appropriate or good company culture. That some things were meant to be private. I said “isn't it federal law that says I can talk about Salary?” They said “You can talk about your salary all you want, but you can't ask others.” That week they had me clear out. Yes, the department knew about my coworkers' past drug use. No, they didn't care. I had never felt so betrayed; I still haven't. I thought the conversation was taken into confidence, and my coworker had me thrown out. I could only speculate why: 1) She would have the whole office to herself 2) I didn't smoke, but the department did. I often surmised that those smoke breaks were where the real meetings happened. As George Carlin alluded too, there was a big club going on and I wasn't in it. At least they didn't say that “we're family” line.