How to Tell If Your Company's CEO is Ripping You Off

You can tell your company is going broke if it moves office, and this is your new corporate HQ.

Your Waning Signs

• You open your pay cheque. Its says 'I O U'.
  Joy [6 Jan 2003]
• You notice the CEO's mother coming in each day with a packed lunch and thermas for him.
  Andrew Brisbane [6 Jan 2003]
• Your boss comes in eagerly selling so called school fundraiser chocolates and he/she doesn't even have any children.
  Andrew Brisbane [6 Jan 2003]
• The CEO starts an all of company job swap program at strangely the same time that the federal police are entering the building.
  Andrew Brisbane [6 Jan 2003]
• Your CEO starts reading Dilbert cartoons and actually seems to be understanding the joke its having on management.
  Andrew Brisbane [6 Jan 2003]
• You turn up to work to find a tollway placed on the elevator.
  Andrew Brisbane [6 Jan 2003]
• Your company CEO turns up at your house in a beat up Datsun 180 to deliver the pizza you ordered.
  Andrew Brisbane [6 Jan 2003]
• The picture of the endangered dolphin your office adopted is replaced with the company logo.
  Sexy Clown [6 Jan 2003]
• You have to return your company pants....on the spot.
  Sexy Clown [6 Jan 2003]
• The repo-man just visited the boss's mistress and repoed her mink, jewlery, furniture and evicted her. Very early signs. Or when she decides he can keep his old wife and takes off with all the jewlery.
  Hilary M. Turner [6 Jan 2003]
• It's late at night, and you and the missus are ready to sleep in your luxurious four-poster bed bought with all your hard-earned wages, when there's a knock at the door. You go down the two flights of stairs only to find your CEO on your marble-and-limestone verandah, with a bashed-up old campervan, asking if he can park it on your lawn for the rest of the financial year and sleep in it. It's a sure sign, people!
  delusionsofgrandeur [6 Jan 2003]
• When your laptop is exchanged for a steam powered abacus.
  S. Meg [6 Jan 2003]
• They take away your magnetic name badge, and replace it with a hairy Post-It note.
  Joy [6 Jan 2003]
• You notice pictures of your desk, chair, computer and such listed under the Office Furniture section of eBay.
  Andrew Brisbane [6 Jan 2003]
• The charity box in reception has the CEO's home address on it.
  Rach [6 Jan 2003]
• 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.
  Rach [6 Jan 2003]
• When asked to update the website, you find the CEO's resume'in a directory.
  Lyle Blount [6 Jan 2003]
• Your CEO invites you to the staff meeting... on the ledge of the highrise.
  George Zeitgeist [6 Jan 2003]
• Your office is relocated...to the local park.
  Rebekah Webb [6 Jan 2003]
• Shortly following your companies quarterly earnings statement, your CEO never returns from his "three day weekend" to Tahiti.
  k. sefkowq [6 Jan 2003]
• Your Computer gets replace with a pack of paper and one of those huge kindergarten pencils.
  Includes Free Trial [6 Jan 2003]
• Your boss asks you to give him a helping hand on the weekend moving into his old room at his parents house.
  Andrew Brisbane [6 Jan 2003]
• 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.
  Sean Rawles [6 Jan 2003]
• Your Companys new adress is the cartboard box #4 in the left.
  Moon Bone [6 Jan 2003]
• 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
  D Barrett [6 Jan 2003]
• Your boss turns up to work and offers to shine your shoes for a small fee.
  Bill johnson [6 Jan 2003]
• The company's been sold to another company... for small change.
  CozB [6 Jan 2003]
• 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..."
  Tanya H [29 Jan 2003]
• 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.
  Tanya H [29 Jan 2003]
• George W Bush come to visit your CEO and publicly announces what a great job he's doing!
  Tristram Morgan [20 Feb 2003]
• Homing pigeons replace email, phone and fax machines.
  Pegasus All man part horse [3 Mar 2003]
• The office central heating is replaced with 44 gallon drums, cut in half with fuel supplied by burning office furniture from his office.
  Pegasus All man part horse [3 Mar 2003]
• Your company break-up party is held at the Salvation Army eat out for the homeless.
  Pegasus All man part horse [3 Mar 2003]
• The CEO is doing the "old" janitors job
  Pegasus All man part horse [3 Mar 2003]
• The company break up party stripper is the CEO's wife.
  Pegasus All man part horse [3 Mar 2003]
• The company's employee newsletter is hand written on used fish and chip wrapping paper.
  Pegasus All man part horse [3 Mar 2003]
• The company limo is replaced with a billy cart.
  Pegasus All man part horse [3 Mar 2003]
• No coffee where the canteen used to be.
  Pegasus All man part horse [3 Mar 2003]
• 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.
  Platon Brasil [3 Mar 2003]
• A copy of the latest Majorca property guide is found on the CEO's desk.
  Mike B [14 Mar 2003]
• Your CEO starts talking of mergers and takeovers, but stops paying for tea and coffee
  nick oliver [23 Apr 2003]
• 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!
  scott quick [14 Aug 2003]
• The Friday Cocktail Night becomes the Monday Milk Morning
  Chicko Roll [7 Dec 2003]
• You find out the reason that none of your bosses came to the company picnic was "We didn't have enough gas money."
  scott quick [29 Dec 2003]
• You have to start bringing your own stationary
  Tim Mortimer [16 Sep 2004]
• When your CEO starts selling popcorn himself at the cafeteria.
  Karthic Singh [18 Jul 2006]

What Are Your Warning Signs?

How do you tell if your company's about to go down the toilet?