My old company got in some legal trouble and the JusticeDepartment smacked them down. This was in the news. As a result they lost about half of their business. This shouldn’t have hurt too much except they’d overextended themselves by building a huge new building (actually needed) and by donating millions to schools and museums (super cool). They were a great place to work and paid higher than other labs and gave bonuses.

At one point one of the higher ups had a meeting with us and said all executives would be taking a pay cut. One of the research doctors raised his hand and asked if it would help if the rest of the employees took pay cuts too. If looks could kill that man would be in the deepest pits of Hell. Every single head turned to look at him with a death glare. He was making big bucks. The lowest paid were making $15/hr. They were not going to take a pay cut.

Then the DirectTV was cut off. Then we started noticing we were getting really low on lab coats. It turns out that if you don’t pay the service they won’t bring clean coats or pick up dirty one. Then they rented out big sections of the building including our awesome break room.

It gets better.

They sold the company to another company that copied their model. That company only wanted half of the employees. I got laid off in that crew.

The new company has also gone out of business for apparently doing similar naughty things.

I miss those bonuses. They paid 100% of our health insurance too. It was the best I’ve ever had and I’ve worked for the government.