You can tell your company is going broke if it moves office, and this is your new corporate HQ.
There seems to be a lot of shenanigans in the corporate world at the moment. Worldcom. Enron. Xerox. the list of companies guilty of corporate greed and dishonesty is long.
It makes it very hard for investors and employees. One day, things are going well. The next day, your savings are worthless and your out of a job.
This month, we look at some of the tell tale signs of whether your company’s CEO is ripping you off, and if it will go broke spectacularly before the end of the week.
- Armed guards are suddenly posted at all the windows.
- The CEO starts laughing nervously when you mention golden handcuffs.
- Your corporate boardroom is used by the local scout group on Wednesday nights.
- There’s a new auditor, and his first name is Arthur.
- Your CEO trades in his Ferrari for a bus pass.
- Your new, computer linked, IP telephone system is replaced with tin cans and string.
- Your CEO changes his home address. . . to prison.
- The office takes delivery of 120 industrial shredders.
- Your receptionist is replaced with a cardboard cut out and a bell.
- The toilet paper in the bathroom is replaced with a sign that says “BYO”.
- Your company just posted a record sales revenue, but they sacked all the sales staff last year.
- The IT department is replaced with the CEO’s 14 year old son.
- Your work email account is transferred to Yahoo.com
- Last year’s Christmas party involved free champagne and caviar. This year, there’s free lemonade and a picture of a dinghy.
- You’re a software develppment company and your boss announces a plan to outsource IT.
- Your book keeper goes bald overnight. And she’s only 30.
- Your company’s new revenue strategy is to sit outside railyway stations with a tin.
- You work for an airline.
- The CEO looks longingly at your sandwich.
- Your CEO starts to spend a lot of time with three new ‘consultants’: “Fingers” Zabaglione, “Cruncher” Corleone, and “Don”.
- Staff are encouraged to play the new poker machines in the lunch room.
How To Tell If Your Company’s CEO Is Ripping You Off
You find a box of Japenese ceremonial swords and a letter to the board of directors with full instructions on the art of hari-kari.
When asked to update the website, you find the CEO’s resume’in a directory.
Your office is relocated…to the local park.
Your CEO invites you to the staff meeting… on the ledge of the highrise.
Shortly following your companies quarterly earnings statement, your CEO never returns from his "three day weekend" to Tahiti.
Your Computer gets replace with a pack of paper and one of those huge kindergarten pencils.
Your boss asks you to give him a helping hand on the weekend moving into his old room at his parents house.
You and other employees are told that they are cutting back salaries and hours, because things "didn’t turn out" they way they expected, and then they all go and buy $2M homes, $2M Planes and $100K Mercedes Benz.
The CEO promotes you to vice CEO. Suspicious… you know you’re an oaf. How can the company NOT crumble before your eyes when you’re in charge? So the company crumbles anyway, and everyone blames it on you
Your Companys new adress is the cartboard box #4 in the left.
The company’s been sold to another company… for small change.
Your boss turns up to work and offers to shine your shoes for a small fee.
Your CEO just bought a copy of Alan Bond’s biography and has started telling people that “Rodney Adler really isn’t such a bad bloke…”
Your CEO shows up at your apartment in the middle of the night wearing a black and white striped outfit and carrying a big sack with a dollar sign on it and demands that you hide him.
George W Bush come to visit your CEO and publicly announces what a great job he’s doing!
The office central heating is replaced with 44 gallon drums, cut in half with fuel supplied by burning office furniture from his office.
Homing pigeons replace email, phone and fax machines.
Your company break-up party is held at the Salvation Army eat out for the homeless.
The company break up party stripper is the CEO’s wife.
The CEO is doing the “old” janitors job
The company limo is replaced with a billy cart.
The company’s employee newsletter is hand written on used fish and chip wrapping paper.
No coffee where the canteen used to be.
Your CEO asks you a hundred thousand dollars to remodel the office decorations and a month later, when you drop by to see what’s new, you notice that he only moved the couch in the lobby to the another wall and cleaned the spiderwebs of the ceiling.
A copy of the latest Majorca property guide is found on the CEO’s desk.
Your CEO starts talking of mergers and takeovers, but stops paying for tea and coffee
You get a letter from your boss telling you “If hell freezes over ‘AND’ Celine Dion has a good song at the same time, we may call you back!
The Friday Cocktail Night becomes the Monday Milk Morning
You find out the reason that none of your bosses came to the company picnic was “We didn’t have enough gas money.”
You have to start bringing your own stationary