Have you ever worked for a dying company? It can be like walking into a morgue every day. The collective anxiety, tension and misery is so thick that you can feel it in the air.
Each day, the ship sinks a little deeper, and you just know it’s only a matter of time before it hits the ocean floor with a thud. You can choose to jump before that happens. Or wait it out, hoping you’ll be handed a life jacket and raft. Or you could pray to the corporate gods that somehow, some way, a miracle will happen.
Someone recently asked people to share what it’s like working at a dying company, and a flurry of answers followed. Bored Panda has put together a list of the best ones for you to scroll through as you nervously await your next big company announcement. We also unpack the top signs that a company might be heading six feet under soon. You’ll find that info between the images.
#41
I have worked for a company that was dying before I started and it was horrible by the time I left. No morale and the drama got personal. Thank God I got out before the layoffs happened.
Report
5points
#42
I don’t work there but I did some consulting for JCPenny like 10 years ago. Flew out to Plano Texas from the Bay and I still think about what a weird trip that was. Plano was exactly as the name implies, plain, just gated housing communities and strip malls.
I’ll put an emphasis on strip because when I tried to find somewhere to eat everywhere in the strip mall was either fast food or some knock off hooters. Like 4 different restaurants, that I later found out were called BREASTruants.
I went into JCP the next day and the campus is so f*****g funny. It’s themed like a mall, but like a mall from the 80s when it was built. All the stores were the entrances to the different departments cube farms. I met with the tech team and they were the biggest “I’ll just take a paycheck” folks I’ve ever worked with. At lunch they took me to bbq at a place called Bone Daddies, well, that was infact another breastraunt!
Had to do dinner with them and their manager and the manager spent the whole day telling me about how much California sucks and how much better texas was. Finally he told me that everyone in this restaurant think how great it would be if California had an earthquake and fell into the sea and he asked me what we think of Texas.
I had finally had enough and simply told that I guess we don’t spend as much time thinking of them as they do us. He shut up after that and didn’t stay for the drinks we were supposed to have after.
So JCP was uhhhh not great.
I’ll put an emphasis on strip because when I tried to find somewhere to eat everywhere in the strip mall was either fast food or some knock off hooters. Like 4 different restaurants, that I later found out were called BREASTruants.
I went into JCP the next day and the campus is so f*****g funny. It’s themed like a mall, but like a mall from the 80s when it was built. All the stores were the entrances to the different departments cube farms. I met with the tech team and they were the biggest “I’ll just take a paycheck” folks I’ve ever worked with. At lunch they took me to bbq at a place called Bone Daddies, well, that was infact another breastraunt!
Had to do dinner with them and their manager and the manager spent the whole day telling me about how much California sucks and how much better texas was. Finally he told me that everyone in this restaurant think how great it would be if California had an earthquake and fell into the sea and he asked me what we think of Texas.
I had finally had enough and simply told that I guess we don’t spend as much time thinking of them as they do us. He shut up after that and didn’t stay for the drinks we were supposed to have after.
So JCP was uhhhh not great.
4points
#43
Yahoo and AOL were both bought by Verizon, a few years apart. Then stuffed together and the parent named as “Oath” which quickly was changed to Verizon Media. Then, a few years later the company (Oath) was sold off to Apollo - a private investment firm and was taken private. The company, since it was no longer under Verizon was once again named Yahoo Inc. which is now the parent company of AOL.
Funny enough, aol still has some dial up customers. And yahoo is leading in a few verticals - finance, news, sports, mail and their dsp are in the top 5 on the web.
How do I know? Bleeding purple since 2007.
Funny enough, aol still has some dial up customers. And yahoo is leading in a few verticals - finance, news, sports, mail and their dsp are in the top 5 on the web.
How do I know? Bleeding purple since 2007.
Report
4points
#44
H&R Block, sometimes you have clients in the office and an ad comes on the radio saying you can file with H&R Block Online for free. Well yeah, but if you don't know what you're doing, it can cost you much more than $0. It's so bizarre that they undercut their own service. The morale is still good though because it's everybody's second job or retirement job, and they don't pay enough that you would work there if you don't like it.
Report
4points
#45
I worked for a newspaper for most of my life that was owned by Warren Buffett. It was the best job ever. Then he sold it, and then the layoffs started. It was horrible seeing coworkers who were like family leave. We were all just waiting our turn. When I was finally laid off I cried for days. I never want to experience that again.
Report
4points