[jmonty900]

Years ago I had a cubicle right next to the supervisor's office. I noticed that he was having more closed-door meetings than usual, and mentioned it to my good friend who was also my boss. My boss did a good job not reacting, because she already knew a layoff was eminent but couldn't share that with me (I was not one of those let go.) Events like this can be surprisingly accurate indicators of something significant going on.

[antonymoose]

I had a manager years ago tell me to pay attention to the free soda / coffee. It costs them basically nothing. If they can’t pay that how are they going to pay your salary.

Wise words, years later I worked at a fancy place. All kinds of snacks and drinks and weekly lunches. One day we got moved off into a smaller, worse office. Our old Herman Miller chairs were missing and our nice fancy desks were replaced with bottom barrel IKEA furniture. The weekly lunch was cut. The snacks were scarce.

I got a new job within the month. By the following month the entire company went bankrupt.

[ichorio]

I was at a company that tried its best to keep those free things going all the way until the end.

(The company only went under because of an investor tiff, apparently two of them met for lunch, and the one who was left out pulled funding)

[embedding-shape]

> apparently two of them met for lunch, and the one who was left out pulled funding

Yeah, I could kind of understand that, somewhat. Big sign that they're planning on pushing you out anyways if they meet in secret without you to talk about the business, so better GTFO quick rather than try to force-staying.

[kawfey]

Sometimes the opposite is true.

My century-old fortune 50 workplace does not have free. Autodrip coffeemakers are provided, but the coffee isn’t free. Employees bring it in with a jar to collect “coffee club membership fees.”

[weinzierl]

A friend of mine used to say, "Companies that are about to go bankrupt start behaving strangely." I always just nodded in agreement without really knowing what she meant.

A couple of years later, one morning, I noticed that the daycare my daughter attended had swapped the large iMac in their office for an old Dell monitor. I didn’t think much of it at the time.

Somewhat later, the soft wipes in the diaper-changing room were gone. There only were the cheap, sandpaper-like ones to be found.

Not long after that, they announced their bankruptcy, shortly after the piano had mysteriously disappeared, without any explanation.

Now I know what "strange behavior" looks like.