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.

Read More: “Overworked And Underpaid”: 45 Stories From People At Companies On Their Last Legs

#1

Morale at one of the most profitable companies is at an all time low. Doesn’t matter if a company is going under or not, its the greed/ blindness of leadership that changes morale.

Image credits: deadR0

#2

I worked in newspapers, on the printing side. It was staffed entirely by older people who were basically unhirable trying to pad out their 401k before they hit 70 and younger uneducated people who are glad to be doing anything other than food service or retail. 

Generally speaking, we were overworked and underpaid but for someone like me it was godsend opportunity. I went from washing dishes 7 days a week and barely making ends meet, to having weekends off and two weeks of paid vacation every year. .

Image credits: lookyloolookingatyou

#3

A friend of mine retired from the local paper where he’d worked for 25 years. By the time he left, the paper’s staff consisted of:
– The editor/publisher/reporter
– The adman (himself) who doubled as photographer
– one constantly-turning-over-reporter position, which didn’t require a journalism degree
– one stringer photographer who also did some reporting

When he started in 1999 they had a staff of 20+, including a stable of reporters and dedicated photographers, and numerous ad-peeps.

He said he was glad he got into it when he did, but he effectively worked through the post-peak years of local journalism.

Image credits: peaveyftw

#4

Didn’t take the job but I interviewed for Claire’s a few months ago and the interviewer explicitly mentioned they’re really struggling and asked me my strategy to target customers from the demographics of competition stores. I’d never actually shopped at a Claire’s before but walked out of the interview thinking ‘oh they’re going under soon’. .

Image credits: shroom_in_bloom

#5

I worked at a telephony service out of university, they were selling VOIP technology to big customers like CISCO and Nortel. At one point they were massive, almost 500 people working at the main headquarters’ call centre. By the time I joined there were 10 of us, operating out of a tiny section of this once massive, mothballed office.

Our chief IT guy had an entire floor to himself and worked on the complete other side of the building… At night he would construct massive castles out of old desks and divider walls.

Working there was alright, mostly we were there to maintain support on the remaining existing contracts but it was pretty clear the company was just waiting to be put out of its misery by the new bigger companies in the market.

It was a kind of boring job and ultimately after being a mediocre employee for five years, I was fired for watching Invader Zim episodes I’d downloaded off Napster on the company computers.

Image credits: pbradley179

#6

I worked for corporate a dying company once and like… most days, it just doesn’t come up. There’s projects, you do your work, you have some laughs with coworkers, you get paid.

Everyone knows it’s likely the job will eventually end. There are people who are very, very paranoid about layoffs and will talk about them a lot. Those people are annoying, honestly, it’s not worth being paranoid all the time. Make a plan/decision about what you’ll do and do that thing. The decision could be finding another job and leaving soon, or waiting it out to see what happens.

Image credits: sexrockandroll

#7

Like many of you, I got out of my chosen career radio, because of corporate America. When good/great ratings and decently paid announcers were looked at as solely a cost and no benefit, I bailed.

There is VERY little original content being produced in your local markets. One reason why they lean so heavily on sports. Other than that, a few major broadcast companies own most of the radio stations and they force announcers to record daily radio shows in markets that they have never even set foot into. Basically, “that was ____, here is _____.”

Local radio, with a few exceptions, is dead.

Image credits: VoiceGuyNextDoor

#8

I’ve worked for some failing startups. Upper management is very stressed because they think they can possibly turn things around if we just… bagged another investor, sold a few more units, etc.

Rest of us know the end is near. Lunch talks are all about interviews and who’s hiring. We are happy when someone leaves.

I’m just collecting the paycheck and padding my 401k. The call from HR is coming before the end of the year. It’s inevitable. But I show up, do my job, document everything, and go home at 5pm. Every day.

Image credits: bondsman333

#9

In our 100 year old company, they hired a CEO from outside the company. Previously, the CEO always came up through the ranks and was promoted into the position. The first thing the new CEO did was start cutting senior people because people were too “comfortable”. In a few months 900 people were “separated”. Morale tanked, productivity dropped, and a bunch of clients went to competitors. Those of us who were left started a low key “Say Hello” campaign. If anyone, especially a manager said, “Good Morning.” our reply would be , “Hello.” Someone eventually asked why, and got the explanation that there hasn’t been a good morning here since the new CEO took over.

The company tried to show how wonderful and responsive it was by doing an “employee satisfaction survey”. The results were dismal. Rather than address the employees’ concerns, The CEO decided to solve the problem by not doing any more satisfaction surveys.

The CEO eventually “left the company to pursue other opportunities”, which was code for he was fired. The damage was already done. Fewer clients meant a declining workload, and I was eventually “separated”, but I was already mid-60’s and just took retirement.

The company still exists, but it is a mere shadow of its former status.

Image credits: fredzout

#10

I worked at a tiny failing airline once and tbh the morale was no worse than any other company I’ve worked at.

Me and pretty much everyone I knew had no real vested interest in that company other than a paycheck, so none of us really GAF about the company at all.

It was annoying having to deal with vendors refusing service on occasion because the company wasn’t paying its bills and there were jokes with each other about hoping our paychecks didn’t bounce, but beyond that it was like any other job.

Somehow it managed to limp along for another 15 years or so after I left.

Image credits: non_clever_username

#11

Many years ago my brother Byron worked for an American oil company that was once a regional powerhouse and had a big skyscraper. They got bought by a European company who didn’t want to immediately fire all the Americans for PR reasons, but everyone there knew that their days were numbered. Morale was terrible. It seemed like each week about 1/2 of a floor would be fired. Byron was particularly worried since he worked in an area easy to outsource. So the day his boss came into his office Byron was sure he was going to be let go. Much to his surprise, his boss let him know that he was the one who had been fired and told Byron, that as far as he knew, Byron still had a job. So Byron kept coming to work but had no one to report to. His direct deposit kept coming thru every two weeks and he came into the office and worked on getting a new job. Finally one of the European managers who showed up periodically told him he might as well “work from home” and that he would call him if they needed him to come in.

Byron was pretty depressed since no one else was hiring. So he stopped looking for a job. He stayed home and started drywalling his unfinished basement. And the direct deposits kept coming. Months later, in-laws came to visit and they got on his nerves after a few days so he got dressed up and went into his office to get away from them. As it turns out, the European manager was in town also and came into his office and said “Byron – that’s an English name, right?” Byron agrees that it is, and the manager invited him to a meeting that afternoon. When he showed up, the manager greeted him by his name and told everyone “this is Byron and he is going to take notes.” So Byron takes notes, gets several assignments, and is back working full time. No one asks what he has been doing for six months. He figured that having a non-American sounding name was all it took.

Image credits: WillingPublic

#12

I worked at Justice RIGHT before they filed bankruptcy and it was miserable. None of us knew just how bad the company was doing until we got an email. Everyone put in their 2 week notice and all but 6 people quit on the same day.

Image credits: Clementinecutie13

#13

I was a staffer at one of the top dailies (newspapers) in my state for eight years. In 2000, the newsroom had about 200 employees. Today, the number is four.

The region we covered had about 200k people; today, there’s 400,000.

Image credits: notsosubtlethr0waway

#14

I worked at a David’s Bridal. The staff regularly got cut and we always wondered how corporate still kept its doors open. It was just bleeding money.

Image credits: Soakmyspongewithinfo

#15

I worked closely with both AOL and Yahoo for about 6 years up until about a year ago. AOL isn’t dying, it’s dead and gone. It was absorbed by Yahoo while they were both owed by Verizon and is fully assimilated at this point. I knew them when they were going through the process. Morale was fine. Everyone I worked with there was awesome. Yahoo is definitely not dying. Their business model has changed and they’re definitely not as big as they once were, but they’re doing well and morale is fine. I wouldn’t say they’re a high energy company, but I never felt that this was due to poor morale. They just tend to be a no nonsense, straight to business kind of group. They were very professional and I enjoyed working with them.

Image credits: neurotictinker

#16

It’s like working on the Titanic, but the band’s been on coffee break since 2019.

Image credits: raquel_deepsearch

#17

Not necessarily a company, but I’ve worked on broadway shows that have closed and the morale can be pretty bad. Looking at grosses and being like we are gonna have a company meeting any week now, and not knowing if you were gonna close immediately or have a couple more weeks can be pretty stressful. It’s hard to predict what’s gonna be successful and there’s nothing worse than thinking you are on a sure fire hit and seeing the house is only at 60 percent capacity most days lol.

Image credits: Cold_Entertainer9564

#18

In any dying company, new upper management comes in , changes the culture, firing anyone who knows what is going on, brings in toadies and guts any resources left before they go into bankruptcy. Walk away with a fat payout.

Image credits: robertvp

#19

I worked in magazines and it as utterly devastating. In the same building being run on a skeleton staff was my faaaavourite magazine as a teen and to see its fall from grace devastated me.

But as a whole seeing the quality go such as firing sub-editors etc just so so sad.

Image credits: lolly_box

#20

I interned at a newspaper in 2010. One day my mentor was there, the next she wasn’t. I asked what happened and they said she was on vacation. Yeah, right, she cleared out her entire office to go on vacation. Then the entire department I was interning with shut down and I was awkwardly shuttled to a different one and they didn’t know what to do with me.

It was just weird.

Image credits: Neon_and_Dinosaurs

#21

I didn’t work for a big dying company but I did work in mortgage during the 2007 mortgage crisis. I would go to work every day for months, worried and wondering is today the day I get laid off. All my work experience was in mortgage and knowing that if I lost my job I most likely would not find another one was stressful and terrifying. I did end up getting layed off and could not find work in my industry and once my unemployment was close to running out I had to pivot to a new sector (payroll) and start from scratch.

Image credits: hideNseekKatt

#22

My first serious job outta high school (class of ‘99) was a company riding high, only to crumble due to lack of foresight and planning. Started at Blockbuster video in 2000, worked my way from cashier all the way to store manager, actually had the pleasure of opening the store and closing the store. Fun times, great workers and always make sure u rewind.

Even now i can remember the head winds Netflix, RedBox, streaming, investing heavily in Blu Ray. Underestimating the threat RedBox, laughing at the thought of buying Netflix (allegedly), turning there nose up at streaming. Then there is the “no more late fees” campaign that was completely mis managed. But honestly morale didn’t suffer, naturally there were mumbles about not meeting goals, cut hours, days with more employees then customers in the store, but none of us (employees) thought things were that bad.

Then one day an urgent e-mail came thru everything in my store had to go so if u in Long Beach Ca, I was the first and only store manger at the Blockbuster on Long Beach Blvd and Pine.

Image credits: SwimmingFeisty7245

#23

I worked for a retail company and left about a year before they fully went under. Morale at my store was fine, largely because the head office tried really hard to hide their struggles. We knew the writing was on the wall eventually because the products the stores sold were becoming obsolete, but we didn’t think it would happen so fast.

I worked at a location that was doing well, so we didn’t notice much except when we suddenly stopped getting product from some big suppliers. The head office would say things were just delayed while they “negotiated contracts.”

I found out they were going under in a news article one morning and sent it to my friends who still worked there. The head office hadn’t told their staff yet… but it was circulating in the news, so I was the one who broke the news to them that they were all losing their jobs. I felt so bad for them.

It came out then that the company had been really struggling for years, and those “contract negotiations” were suppliers pulling product because the company owed them millions of dollars.

Image credits: fresh-n-spicy

#24

I work at a Kohl’s e-commerce center that is closing next month. Everyone was surprised, but not shocked when we closed, and understand why it happened. The company can handle so much volume through it’s two most modern efc’s, our location-and the one in California also, became redundant.
That said, the overall company is a total mess, as brick and mortar sales are tanking, and efficiencies had to be found wherever possible. Kohls is on the same path as Sears, imo., I give it 10-15 more years.

Image credits: Klutzy-Spend-6947

#25

I worked at a “green energy” firm whose stock has dropped 90% over the last 18 months. Everyone is there just to collect a paycheck. Bare minimum is done on a daily basis. Thankfully EHS is a priority, sometimes it’s an excuse not to do work.

Image credits: PorgCT

#26

I worked at Tower Records when it was in decline. Maybe they even declared bankruptcy while I was there? I forget exactly, but I do remember our old, rich customers smugly asking me what I thought about the store going down. I felt lucky I got to work there.

Image credits: May_of_Teck

#27

I used to work at a Sears photography studio in the late 2000’s. Still one of my favorite jobs I ever had but I was seasonal and not hired for full time. The people with whom I worked with were truly trying to make ends meet on this job. It was hard to watch as I was a college student at the time and didn’t worry about the same things they did. Morale was ok but there was rarely people in the store section. Photo sessions would pick up because of the holidays but the store itself would be empty. I’d walk around on my break and barely see people in there. This was about 2 years removed from the recession but still you could see the decline even then. That Sears closed about 7years later.

Image credits: Tiny-Philosopher7909

#28

I interviewed for a corporate position at GameStop not too long ago and it was crazy. I withdrew from the interview process very fast.

They said the turnover is really bad, but also said they’ve done a ton of layoffs that “have been the best thing they’ve ever done”. They went from I think they said like 1200 people down to 300 people in their corporate side.

Flat out they said the morale is down, people are leaving nonstop, and it’s hard to get people to want to join.

It was for a position within their HR team so I think they wanted to really give a look behind the curtain. They said their main goal was to make it last for another 5-10 years and try to find people willing to stick around for that.

Image credits: Resident-Toe4953

#29

The company I am at is in an accounting death spiral. No one else seems aware. Everyone thinks one big win will change things but our wins now cost more than they bring in. My division is starting to get impacted despite being the only thing driving innovation.

The most senior people haven’t realized we’re at rock bottom and need to make a huge strategic shift. Cultural differences stop them. It’ll be too late be end of year. .

Image credits: judgeholden72

#30

I used to work for a dying company, we did industrial real estate during the Great Recession.

It was frustrating, we were all working really hard and we were having salaries and hours cut. The company did everything they could to keep us employed and keep us happy, I have no issues with how they handled things. We all did everything we could to make it a good environment.

Image credits: Luna_Soma

#31

I work at u.s.p.s. I would say everyday people just chill and wait for the end. Nothing to crazy or anything just kinda keeping the wheels rolling until whatever comes next comes.

Image credits: huskyghost

#32

I worked at Sears corporate for the last 10 years of its existence. For the last 2 years there were quarterly layoffs.

On layoff days there would be bankers boxes lining the hallways for people to pack up their stuff.

People were openly interviewing at other companies and would ask how your job search was going.

I liked my job and said I was staying until they kicked me out. I finally got laid off, and 2 months later they declared bankruptcy and stopped my severance payments.

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