30 Business Decisions That Ended Up Hurting Companies, As Shared In This Online Group

I worked for a small airline for several years. We did fairly well doing regional flights across the US and Canada.

Our dip s*** CEO decides we should get into the private jet market and lure in a bunch of rich people with more money than they could spend.

This plan hilariously backfired and we went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy for two reasons:

anyone that can afford a private jet wants to BUY one for themselves and hire a pilot to fly for them. They're not interested in buying a ticket AND hiring a pilot.

idiot CEO invested in outdated prop planes. Because nothing appeals to rich people more than fancy planes that scream through the air like a lawn mower cranked to 11.

A radio station i used to listen to recently changed their format from 80% music, 20% talk show to 100% talk show. Then they were like “oh you can still listen to the music but it’s only going to be on our app.”

My old company was internationally known in our industry as being one of the ideal places to be. We could hire basically anybody in the world in our space to move and work in our office. It was such a f****** awesome place to work.

The CEO decided to cash out when a larger company barely related to our industry decided to buy us. The new company basically gutted everything that made it great, then rushed to go public. The employee stock options were pennies and they drastically cut benefits. Every time there was a complaint the answer was "maybe you don't understand our vision" or "well we are a public company now." They also got rid of our office which was located in one of the hottest LA neighborhoods that everybody loved.

More than half of the OG senior members have left and a large number of others are rumored to leave. I was forced to start assisting in hiring and it was grueling. People would apply believing it was our old company, then find out what's up and go elsewhere. Oh, and the stock is plummeting.

I hate the fact that what once was is over. Those f**** ruined something great.

I worked at Hollywood Video from 2006 to 2009. At that time Netflix was growing by leaps and bounds and our revenue was dwindling from year to year.

Instead of copying Netflix's model and using their more recognizable brand name to edge them out of business, Hollywood shrugged their shoulders and continued renting single DVDs for $4.99 for 3 days plus late fees.

Where they at now?

Not even sure if it was a conscious decision but Sears passing on being Amazon in the early 90's. Sears was poised and ready to be Amazon, they had most components in place already and the others they had in their arsenal.

First they had name recognition, this was important for the trust factor with the internet exploding like it was. They had the product line, for s**** sake you could buy a house from the Sears catalog. Delivery, it was there, they delivered the house that you bought!

Internet portal, they had it. They owned Prodigy, one of the more recognized internet providers of the time. This was a joint venture with IBM, you know, the most well known hardware provider for computers at the time.

So IBM sells a computer with Prodigy installed with free to stupid low cost internet access. When you sign on it drops you to a home page(that was the way it worked back then with software internet) with a link to the ONLINE SEARS CATALOG! Same great catalog, just on the WORLD WIDE WEB!

Panera Cares opening less than a mile from my college campus.

For those who don't know, Panera Cares basically just let you order food and would list a "suggested donation" based on what you ordered, but ultimately it was honor system. The cashiers would just make change for you so you could put cash in the donation box. If you can't afford a meal it's fine to not pay but you are supposed to volunteer to work for two hours to cover it, but this isn't actually required.

I think generally these things are supposed to be for really affluent neighborhoods where people probably donate even more than is "suggested." But students from the college basically turned it into a real life Tragedy of the Commons experiment. There was almost never bread available because everyone would just take it. The lines were insane and people would donate like $1 if anything. It closed within a year lol.

Company I worked for decided to stay open instead of closing at the start of covid. The state even said they would pay employees and give businesses money if they closed and didn’t lay people off.

Nope they stayed open and all of their customers closed down. Making no money for 5 months they had to lay off 80% of their employees.

Things started picking up last October. Well they were understaffed and couldn’t meet demands. Causing them to lose most of their big contracts. If it wasn’t supplemented by the mother company in Japan they would be done for now.

I worked there for 13yrs. Seeing how far we grew to have one bad decision cost them everything is eye opening.

In the early days of the personal computer, a fairly prominent developer Osborne went t*** up because they showed off their new model far in advance of when it was actually going to be available. So predictably dealers immediately cancelled all orders for their current computer model in preparation for the new improved version. Inventory stacked up and they were bankrupt before the new model ever came out.....
Its known as the Osborne Effect.

Around last year this time of year, I know someone in their early 50's that sold all of their investments (at a significant dip from the highs) and decided to start producing and selling hand sanitizer in little bottles out of their garage. Seeing it as a big opportunity with the virus.

They spent everything on the bottles, labels, plastic drums full of sanitizer (at a huge markup), hiring locals people to fill the bottles and put the labels on, and then a website. By the time they had inventory, they realized that they couldn't compete on price with places like Walmart or other big box stores that had finally caught up to the shortages by mid-summer. They also didn't realize that selling on Amazon was gated for that category so you had no chance of selling through there as a new seller. So now they basically have a garage full of old hand sanitizer, and no savings.

Holy heck my time to shine. Prepare for a number of them.

Used to work at the corporate office of a major water park in my state (if you ever lived in Utah you know which one). The year before I started, they adopted a new 'business' practice of offering a season pass to the waterpark (and numerous other facilities) for a measly $20 per year. Not a typo. Previously they had been $150+ per year. Unbelievable right? It gets worse.

The year I started, they ran a new promotion where you buy a season pass for $25, but then also get a $20 giftcard back in the mail to Walmart or some other store. You can see where this is going.

2 weeks after I started as a fulfillment specialist (dealing with pass issues) they fired the entire call center staff of 30+ people, heaping their phone calls and emails onto my fulfillment team of 8. So in addition to all of our work creating and shipping passes, we had to take all customer service calls and emails.

It gets worse.

For some reason, they thought that it was prudent to wait until we had some large round number (I think either 500 or 1000) passes ready to ship before they would even ORDER the gift cards to send with them (even though there were thousands of passes purchased and pending with this deal). So not only were there MASSIVE delays in people getting their passes, sometimes they just wouldn't even get the gift cards either because the season was starting and they demanded their passes now instead of waiting for the gift cards too.

So double whammy there, customers angry about how long it takes to get the season passes, and not getting the gift cards.

After all this, and firing the call center, they couldn't figure out why they were still losing money. I quit, and the rest of the team quit as well within 2 weeks of me leaving. Somehow they kept afloat for another year or so, but then eventually the waterpark closed for a year or two and changed hands a few times.

It was recently bought again, 'renovated', and this new company is offering season passes for.... $30.

The circle of life, I suppose.