Here’s an interesting story I saw today. Gibson Guitars tops the list:
The other companies on the list are:
Does anyone here have experience working for any of these companies? Are there any places you’ve worked for that you think should be on the list, and why?
My ex worked for United. I edited her resignation letter for her to a more professional standard, removing words like “morons” “incompetent” “useless idiots” etc.
She did not have a good time there. They paid shit, treated their staff badly, and at one point had to sing a company song.
I saw Lexis-Nexis made #11 on the list of worst 25. tygre worked as a temp for them for only a few weeks but that was long enough for her to realize that the management structure was very messed up: they mistakenly thought she had French translation skills and asked her to translate a large raft of legal documents from Quebec.
I noticed that their CEO’s approval rating is 7%. Ouch.
I worked for a language school, but it’s really too small an outfit to fit on that list. When I was there, there were maybe eight regular employees and a dozen or so contractors.
Paychecks were irregular at best. When I left, I was six weeks behind, and I was up to date more than most employees. Paychecks would often bounce. The CEO regularly had his employees run his personal errands, such as getting his lunch and picking up his dry cleaning. On a few occasions he had employees take his dirty laundry home and wash it for him. He would often have people he was meeting with wait the entire day to see him. He once kept everyone after work for hours to look for his “creatively filled out” tax return while he played video games.
During the holiday season, he refused to let anyone take time off, because things like Christmas and Hannukah were politically incorrect. But he himself took two weeks off for Winter Solstice. (We took our vacations anyway, because, you know, screw him.)
He pretty much viewed all of his employees as his personal servants. And he would not only get people to do his bidding, but he’d find the most humiliating way for them to do it.
And to think, when I left there, I ended up at a place that was even worse.
That alone is enough to rank in the top 10 of worst companies! 
This made me bust out laughing. How awful!!
I think one of the worst companies I worked for was Casey’s General Store. If someone pulled away without paying for the gas, they wrote you up. Keep in mind, the only cameras they had were pointed at the employees (to prevent us from stealing) rather than the outside of the building. To top it off, though, there were a number of times I had to show my manager how to do her job because she couldn’t figure it out. And I’m getting written up for what, not leaving my post behind the register and chasing a customer down (on foot) for stealing gas?
I see the CEO of Level 3 is named Jim Crowe. That can’t be helping things.
I worked for a company Columbia Sussex, they own hotels.
This was really ironic, 'cause while it was the worst company to work for, it was the best job I had.
Why? Simply because everyone and I mean everyone from the GM down HATED corporate so much that we all had a common enemy and got along.
I’ve never worked at a place, where everyone got along and work went so smooth. Why? Because everyone was so focused on the cheapness and the arbitrary stupid rules of Columbia Sussex corporate office, that they had no time to bicker among themselves.
Yeah, you’d think with a moniker like that he’d use James or least a middle name or initials on the corporate letterhead.
I went in for an interview with Lexis-Nexis in NYC and the whole company had an air of retardation about it. Especially since the manager spaced on the interview and wasn’t in the office so no one had any idea why I was supposed to be there. I told the recruiter that not only did I not want to go back, I didn’t want him to ever call me again.
In the 90s, I worked for a few of those dot-come consulting firms. If you are old enough, you might remember firms like Razorfish, Scient, Viant, Sapient, Cambridge Technology Partners, MarchFirst and their clones with names like “e” this or “i” that who were constantly getting written up in Wired and Fast Company and Business 2.0 and whatnot. Well I tell you those companies should be on someone’s Top Worst Companies list. Aside from their dubius business models and inflated sense of self, these companies are very cult-like. I mean Good to Great cultlike in the worst way. We would do bizzarre things like have each project team create a team cheer and then do that cheer at every meeting. All kinds of crazy shit.
I’ve had some doozy jobs. However, where I am currently tops the list of the Worst. It is a restaurant.
Best Buy, though it may just have been my store/region.
Actually, this is kind of ingenious. Crude and deceitful, but ingenious.
This is environmentally friendly.
This is assinine.
This is fucking outrageous.
So, does this mean that the vegetarian dishes contain meat or meat byproducts?
Can anyone provide the link to the %^#$@#!@%@ original glassdoor 2009 article on the worst places to work? that HuffPost page excerpts a tiny bit of it, the link goes nowhere, Google gives me Glassdoor worst of 2008, glassdoor itself doesn’t have a freaking search engine except for individual reviews and whatnot, yeesh!
Here’s the link:
My sister worked for number ten – Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
It’s funny, just the other day we were talking about jobs, and I asked her what her worst job ever was. Was it working concessions at the Kansas Speedway, walking up and down the aisles in 110-degree heat selling Gatorade to shirtless NASCAR fans? Was it transferring boxes of x-rays from one warehouse to another, one box at a time, thousands of times? Was it hostessing at Applebees? Was it washing sweaty costumes for the ballet?
Nope. She said without any hesitation that her worst job, bar none, was her first “real” job out of college: production assistant at HMH (though it was just Houghton Mifflin back then).
This is getting a TON of play on the guitar boards. Folks typically have a hard on for Gibson anyway because they charge a lot for their guitars for the “Harley Davidson” factor so that regular gigging players can’t really afford them, and Gibson has been know to have quality issues from time to time.
msmith, yeah, my wife worked for one of those out of NYC as well (I’d play Do You Know with you but you don’t seem to respond very well to emails or PMs in my experience) - her experience echoes yours. If you haven’t already, I strongly recommend you check out Matthew Stewart’s The Management Myth, which just shreds the typical management consulting approach. Stewart was part of a smaller dot-com consulting firm that was built into marchFIRST…
I intereviewd for a company that has a terrible reputation for how it treats it’s people - Nygard. They were sued (successfully) a few years ago for their draconian overtime policies.
I knew I was never going to be able to work there when one of the ladies explained that sometimes its necessary to stay late -
“No problem,” says I. "I would just call my husband and ask him to pick up Lil Poysyn and it’s not a problem. "
“No,” they explained. “you may not have time to call your husband. We work 8-4 and sometimes Peter (Nygard) calls at 4:00 from his island in the Bahamas and needs to speak to someone at length about how he doesn’t like the way the “N” in his name appears in an advertisement.”
“Is this before or after it’s gone to print?” I ask.
“Oh, after.”
“So, let’s clarify,” I said. “Your boss, relaxing in the Bahamas, waits until the very end of your work day to call you to discuss “at length” something that you can’t do anything about anyway?”
“Yes…”
“I see.”
“?”