I think that the corporate world is a funny little universe within itself. With all the politics, the affairs, and promotion of a toxic environment, their world is probably closer to the apocalypse than our normal one. All jokes apart, such awful workplaces do a bad job with employee retention.
After all, nobody wants to work in a company that doesn’t even value their effort. Sadly, there are many such workplaces out there, and people called them out in this viral thread. The question was about valuable employees who left behind absolute chaos, and folks beautifully delivered!
More info: Reddit
#1
Maybe not crash and burned, but there was a guy who was close personal friends with the CEO. He owned so much company stock, that if he sold his shares, it had to be cleared with board of directors and filed with the SEC (SEC Rule 144) as a registered secondary offering. Well, the company got bought out, which included trading his shares. If he sold, it would have been really bad for the stock prices. So they gave him whatever job he wanted, and he worked with me. He was unfireable.
After a few years, some hotshot young manager fired him. The reasons were long and stupid, but it boiled down to, “I don’t like his attitude.” Instead of saying, “HAH, you can’t fire me!” He said, “okay,” and filed a registration statement to sell his shares. I don’t know how much he made, but it was more than $90 million. It was his right.
The board was forced to approve it, he paid taxes, and retired in his 40s. The company stock price fell about 15% that week. That manager was fired. Presumably out of a cannon.
Image credits: punkwalrus
#2
The guy who knew the clients. Had relationships with the clients. Who had the history of the clients & the company. They got rid of that guy and wadda know…. clients started bailing because they didn’t like how they were being treated and the guy who could smooth ruffled feathers wasn’t there.
Image credits: Big-Try-2735
#3
An absolute star in an engineering company who despite growing his side of the business, increasing efficiency, cutting costs and gaining additional relevant training and qualifications in his own time, hadn’t had a meaningful pay rise in five years.
Gave notice after accepting a new position with a 60% pay increase and the company immediately countered with an 80% pay rise offer. That they knew his worth the entire time and refused to pay until they had to enraged him so much that they turned an amicable separation into a hostile one.
He came after their clients with a vengeance and while I think the company still exists it’s a lot smaller than before.
Image credits: cruiserman_80
#4
Back in the 60s, my Dad drove a delivery route delivering eggs to restaurants and stores. One restaurant had a great cook. His cooking was widely known and the restaurant was always packed. He asked for a raise and was told that they couldn’t afford it. Another restaurant offered him a substantial raise and he accepted. He had a growing family and needed the money. His former employer lost a lot of business and eventually closed.
Image credits: GuairdeanBeatha
#5
So I was laid off a few months ago. I know everyone says the company will crash and burn without them, and while it is not crashing and burning, them laying me off is costing the company about 400,000 a month. About 6 months ago, the person in charge of logistics charges left the company, and then 2 weeks later, his boss left. I was fully trained to handle all of the logistics charges which involved SQL queries, working with other applications I will not name as it could out me, and cleaning all the data so it can be used to charge the vendors back the appropriate amount, and not a single other person was trained as it was implied i will be trained, and then train the rest of my team. Well I was laid off as “redundant” and only 1 member of my team was kept as she was the team member who has been there the longest. I am still in contact with her and she tells me all the time that there are company wide meetings about what I knew and how they can begin fixing the issue. While I feel bad for this person as she is catching a little bit of flak, I would never tell these people how it is done, and she has explicitly told me she doesn’t want to know.
Image credits: misfitxmike
#6
I make a product that requires a high quality bottle and cap. During covid, supplies were getting scarce. I secured some bottles, albeit lesser quality. But caps were a nightmare. I called my way up the supply chain.
Ended up talking to the owner of the biggest manufacturer of the caps I need in America. Turns out…. they’re completely shut down. There’s 1 guy in Slovakia that can fix and service their machine. He can’t travel because of covid.
I asked, with a mildly condescending tone, is there a manual? Or can you face time with this guy? Stonewalled. He’s the only guy and we’re waiting for him.
Luckily he didn’t die and came to America to fix the machine 8 weeks later.
Image credits: rtice001
#7
Lol, it was my dad. He was the lead software engineer for the biggest client. The company he worked at built automation equipment, and they did work for a certain large glass manufacturer. They absolutely loved him.
Corporate removed the GM of his branch, and he got a bad feeling from the new guy. So he left and they lost that main customer within 6 months. The branch closed down less than a year after that.
Image credits: Reasonable_Cod_487
#8
The person who knew the INDUSTRY left! The bozo board brought in 4 people in 3 years after he was gone to “take over” – all they did was trash the company, they didn’t know the market/customer base, competition, products, sales cycle – and on and on. Oh, so why did they let him go? To SAVE $$$! Brilliant!
Image credits: DoktorKnope
#9
The Coors company has long made ceramic lab filters. They custom made a large version of the mass produced lab filters and we had one at my company. We wanted another one so we placed an order. We were told that “X” retired and no one else could make them that large without cracking. X apparently could not impart whatever he did to others.
I have no idea if they gave up on making them as we switched to a different type after that. Maybe it was just a tall tale.
Image credits: aphilsphan
#10
There’s a notable difference in the quality of asphalt used in Oregon highways since my grandpa passed away.
He retired twice and stayed on as a consultant until the day he died. They called my grandma after he died and when she told them he had passed she said they seemed more broken up about it than she was after 40 years of marriage.
Image credits: BoxFullOfSuggestions
#11
Got rid of the CEO that actually took care of employees and grew the company exponentially. Explanation given was that they needed someone who could steward the company “at that level.” Really, the major investor company wanted to have their own guy in there. They threw around a bunch of pie in the sky promises about an IPO which was never gonna happen.
The people they successively brought in slashed and burned everything that made the place great. Got so bad we were forbidden from sending company wide goodbye emails which were par the course in the past. They try to reverse course on some stuff to stem the tide but damage was done. Also all the changes in leadership meant the product strategy was nonexistent and something that was the new flagship one year was deprecated the next. They are still plugging along but a shell of what they onfe were. Many, many people who made the place great saw the writing on the wall and got out of dodge.
Image credits: MrFunktasticc
#12
My supervisor/head of department. I worked as a front-end dev in a very small and crappy marketing agency.
My supervisor was not only our sole back-end dev, but also the responsible for managing client lists, our monthly phone messages to clients, and the entire server that housed all files.
As soon as he left I was just going to work without anything to do, and soon after the agency fell through.
Image credits: mtma_kebab
#13
I had a systems administrator die from COVID and he took several important passwords to his grave. This caused a huge compliance issue as backups were no longer accessible, since he never wrote down the passwords.
Image credits: matt95110
#14
…all the technical stuff, and worked a lot…
Aka me. I looked after all the payment machines, door timers, lighting, etc. They contracted the machines out to a company that worked Mon-Fri, 8am-5pm. Noone would look after the door timers, lighting, etc without upfront payment as they were known for not paying for several months. I was on call when there, and would help customers if they needed, no matter the hour, and did whatever was needed to keep the sites going. 6 months later, the company was in shambles, and later sold all their leases off to another company, and left the city.
Image credits: minimaddnz
#15
My former co-worker used to be a secretary at Lehman Brothers (yeah, that place). She had a high position at the company making 150k-250k a year in 2007. (Yup, she worked with someone very important.) Right before the company crashed, her boss asked her to shred some documents, and accidently noticed what those documents read (something like the company was going collapse soon and ordering all the higher ups to “cash out of their retirement funds ASAP” situation. She walked away with alot of money, and bought two houses during the great ressision, in cash, in NYC. She bought herself two homes; one-family home and a mutli-family home of 5-families (for rent).. She lives off the rents, she “retired at age 35” and sells vintage clothes as a side-hobby..
Image credits: sexylassy
#16
A great manager. He knew how to lead people. Soft skills are so important.
Image credits: everythingiseeishere
#17
My sales manager left and all of a sudden long term customers started leaving in droves. Turns out the Sales manager was spending a ton of money taking them all out and disguising the costs as if he was riding with salesman and paying for meals and events.
Image credits: trnaovn53n
#18
The (only) person who maintained and managed the data and databases.
Image credits: Classic_Garbage3291
#19
My friend fixed LEDs for the patriots. Right after he left, Tom Brady left too.
Image credits: schiz0yd
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