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Comment by WalterBright | Hacker News Reader

I remember a business that had a branch office in another state. The CEO thought he'd be a good guy and told them that the office would be closed in 3 months after the Christmas vacation and they'd all be laid off then.

The employees stopped working and looted everything in the building. Reportedly, trucks backed up to the loading dock where everything was carried off.

They all got their paychecks, but they hadn't done any work in the 3 months and the building was picked clean.

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This makes me wonder if there are any books collecting management mistakes. A lot of leaders have to pick this up on the job by making their own blunders. I understand that some MBA programs may attempt to look at case studies, but the ones I’ve read have seemed about anodyne strategy things rather than human-level, savvy operator, street smarts & empathy stuff. Regardless, the winter holidays are clearly a time of year to be extra compassionate and considerate; it’s definitely no good to have layoffs right before xmas. I wonder if the biz had insurance coverage for getting looted this way. Or maybe that physical stuff didn’t have much remaining value anyway.

The idea that insurance pays so theft doesn't cost the business anything is false. The insurance rates will be raised so you'll wind up paying the bill anyway.

Insurance is a good idea to cover catastrophic loss, but if you can self-insure for other things, you'll be way better off.

Makes sense. My thought was just that the business probably had some sort of commercial property loss coverage that might have covered that case (even though -EV). I’d guess a far more common case of employee theft (retail shrinkage / fell-off-the-truck) is self-insured, as some kind of operating provision.

That's exactly what the Harvard case study approach is supposed to be about. They are mostly open-ended but guide towards being a success or distress story. I remember case studies that discussed the FANG that I worked at before business school. I'd contribute my views and comment on how it was like being on the inside. The cases were a bit anodyne but provided a framework where if you had engaged classmates, you could have good discussions about how to avoid others' mistakes.

They could've at least saved the looting for the last day of being open. Leave nothing for the repo men.

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