'[He] kicked the fire marshall out...they never did open the building': 25+ People who made terrible business decisions

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    Sorry WE'RE CLOSED
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    What is the Worst Business Decision You've Ever Seen?
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    pete1729 A developer my dad worked with sold off a beautiful piece of land next to a river in a very desirable area, he sold it to another developer. The new developer cut down every tree on the 6 acre site, as he said, "he wanted to see what he had". The land then started to slide into the river, rendering it worthless and ugly.
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    El_Voador A radio station i used to listen to recently changed their format from 80% music, 20% talk show to 100% talk show. Then they were like "oh you can still listen to the music but it's only going to be on our app."
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    kor_hookmaster Property management company I used to work for had a number of student properties and high-rises that were always a struggle to fill in the summer months when students went out of town. Head office came up with an offer that anyone who signed for two years got the four summer months at 50%
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    off. Sounds like a good deal, 50% rent is much better than zero. We signed tons of students. However the lease templates that head office sent over showed the reduced rent rate on the lease rather than just adding the discount as a separate addendum. I noticed this discrepancy and reported it - and was subsequently ignored.
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    Which meant the students were signing a legal document that guaranteed them 50% rent for two years. The company lost hundreds. of thousands in revenue.
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    ambrosiadeux Cafe I work for decided it wanted to fire everyone except for the leads and the manager. Then told the manager they weren't paying her salary anymore AND she needed to take on more work. Assumed people would do it because they "love their jobs"
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    Strokedoutbear In my hometown there was an independent fast food and homemade ice cream place, long established and run by close friends. It was a goldmine. They decided to sell and retire. New owners immediately changed everything. Painted it a wild color, removed some attractions on the grounds, changed the 60 year old
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    menu and switched to commercially made ice cream. They lasted 8 months.
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    Squi... I worked for a design/printing place for years, and the owner went from amazing idea to stupid. idea on a regular basis. don't get me wrong - guy is a brilliant designer, totally took advantage of new tech every chance he could and made it work. But he was cheap and - greedy, so, ruined what
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    would have been lucrative long term business relationships. So we did this huge order - of promo supplies for a fairly big on-line casino. huge, for him. about a 20k order, with good margins, and the chance at long term work with this company. While it was being picked up, on the spur of the moment, he decides to pad
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    the bill by about 200 bucks. the guy picking it up was the son of the casino owner, and literally watched the boss do this while I stood at teh till. The customer looks at me, smiles, and pays the bill. With a huge of cash. And says "I know it's not your fault, but - my family is very wealthy. We didn't get that way letting people rip us off. Tell the boss over in the corner he just
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    himself out of a lot of money, because we loved the work." in a voice meant to carry. Edit to clarify who was paying. And padding means. he increased the bill over what he had quoted the job to cost.
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    ClownfishSoup This one involves my Dad. Back in the '80s he decided he wanted to teach people how to use Lotus 123, Excel, MS Word, etc. So he bought a bunch of computers for a classroom, and he wrote interactive learning programs, and printed out manuals and such. Even without advertising, he had people asking to join his class BUT ... he was never
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    quite ready. This Lotus 123 program could use more work. He wasn't ready for a class, this MS Word tutorial isn't quite done. The perfectionist in him wouldn't let him expose the less than perfect programs/class to people... just yet. He turned down paying customers for fear that it wasn't just perfect. He had taken a loan out from a friend to finance this, but never made a dime.
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    He paid the loan back by selling our cottage, something he regrets to this day. And why? Because he was afraid to be flawed. That taught me a lesson though, as the old saying goes "Perfect is the enemy of done". He could easily have made money and taught his classes, refining the programs to student feedback. He could have covered deficiencies by
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    teaching in person. He was afraid it wasn't perfect, so it was never done. We don't talk about it, or the cottage that we built together (we had the foundation and structure built by pros, then the whole family pitched in to build the interior when we were teens). It saddens me more because it was what he wanted to do, and he went for it but not quite.
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    RaceToYourDeath Knew this guy who wanted to start his own BBQ and hot sauce line, here was his process: 1. Get high with buddy and make the decision go into business together. 2. Argue about who should be financing the business
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    3. Get a loan from Grandma 4. Order a bunch of bottles 5. Use a sharpie and some blank labels to put on the bottles 6. Fill the bottles with bulk BBQ sauce. 7. Try and sell these to Walmart 8. Get upset that Walmart won't shelve your sketch sauces
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    9. Have several hundred bottles of unsealed product that wasn't prepared hygienically. 10. Try and sell some to your extended family. 11. Get angry with extended family that they don't believe in your dreams of the last two weeks. 12. Beg family for money to pay back grandma.
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    HaElfParagon I used to work for a company that was bleeding money. In order to try and save money, they decided to stop honoring returns/refunds, but still advertised that they did. Whenever someone would ask for a refund, you were supposed to tell the person that it would be processed in the next 6-8 weeks, then
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    get them off the phone. 6-8 weeks later, when they ask where their money is, you were supposed to apologize and say their paperwork got put in the wrong stack, and that it would be put in the correct stack and would then be processed in the next 6-8 weeks.
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    If they complained about the length of time, you were supposed to tell them you can ask your supervisor to expedite it, and they should see it in 4-6 weeks instead. If they threatened legal action after months and months, you were supposed to tell them to contact the company legal department ( we didn't have a company legal department) and then hang up on them. Then,
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    make a note in their account. No one should field calls from that account further. More than half the call center quit in a single week in protest of this decision. Company collapsed in on itself within a few months.
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    TheBoomExpress My late great uncle started a fish and chips restaurant. He had his own unique recipe for the fish and it was very popular. Businessmen had offered him thousands in cash for it over the years, but he always declined. After about 40 or so years, he decided to retire and hand the business over to an ambitious recent college grad. He offered to give her
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    the recipe and even volunteer his services for a bit while she got comfortable in her new role as owner. She declined both and within a year, she was forced to sell the restaurant after coming close to declaring bankruptcy. My great uncle died and took the recipe with him to his grave
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    amalgamas Take a help desk that has been consistently rated extremely well by its customers for their first- call-resolve, attitude, and helpfulness; outsource it to a company that's been rated towards the bottom of the list for over a decade because it costs less than the salaries/benefits of your former in house help desk.
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    Then complain when your first-call-resolve drops through the floor and your customer satisfaction is at an all time low.
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    Sarahlpatt There was a shopping plaza near me with a fairly large gift store. Not a gift shop in the museum sense, basically like a Hallmark store but independent. It wasn't exactly bustling, but they apparently did solid business and a lot of people in the community really appreciated having it there. as a place to buy gifts and wrapping paper and such.
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    The owners of the shopping. plaza raise rents to the point that the shop goes out of business. The reason this was stupid is that the store front sat vacant for like 15 entire years. Seriously, this place closed when I was a child and I'm now 27 and the vacancy was only taken over very recently. If their goal in
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    raising the rent was to have a more profitable store move in to that space, they certainly failed and missed out on decades of rent as a result.
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    HandyD Around last year this time of year, I know someone in their early 50's that sold all of their investments (at a significant dip from the highs) and decided to start producing and selling hand sanitizer in little bottles out of their garage. Seeing it as a big opportunity with the virus.
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    They spent everything on the bottles, labels, plastic drums full of sanitizer (at a huge markup), hiring locals. people to fill the bottles and put the labels on, and then a website. By the time they had inventory, they realized that they couldn't compete on price with places like Walmart or other big box stores that had finally
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    caught up to the shortages by mid-summer. They also didn't realize that selling on Amazon was gated for that category so you had no chance of selling through. there as a new seller. So now they basically have a garage full of old hand sanitizer, and no savings.
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    [deleted] Circuit City was pretty stupid. When the recession hit, they decided to stop selling appliances and instead focus on DVDs and televisions and such. (Appliances are known as being a recession proof item. People always need refrigerators and microwaves. They don't need DVDs.) They also wanted to cut down on labor
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    costs, so they fired a lot of managers and assistant managers, and just left a lot of entry level employees because they were cheaper to pay. Well, entry level employees don't really know how to fully run a store, so pretty much every Circuit City became
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    Wyoming Vet We had someone putting in a restaurant then kicked the fire marshal out because they didn't like what he said they had to do. They never did open up after building a brand new building.
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    W8sB4D8s My old company was internationally known in our industry as being one of the ideal places to be. We could hire basically anybody in the world in our space to move and work in our office. It was such a place to work. awesome
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    The CEO decided to cash out when a larger company barely related to our industry decided to buy us. The new company basically gutted everything that made it great, then rushed to go public. The employee stock options were pennies and they drastically cut benefits. Every time there was a complaint the answer was "maybe you don't understand our vision" or
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    "well we are a public company now." They also got rid of our office which was located in one of the hottest LA neighborhoods that everybody loved. More than half of the OG senior members have left and a large number of others are rumored to leave. I was forced to start assisting in hiring and it was grueling. People would apply believing it was our old
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    company, then find out what's up and go elsewhere. Oh, and the stock is plummeting. I hate the fact that what once was is over. Those ruined something great.
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    Wall... Panera Cares opening less than a mile from my college campus. For those who don't know, Panera Cares basically just let you order food and would list a "suggested donation" based on what you ordered, but ultimately it was honor system. The cashiers would just make change for you so you could put cash in the
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    donation box. If you can't afford a meal it's fine to not pay but you are supposed to volunteer to work for two hours to cover it, but this isn't actually required. I think generally these things are supposed to be for really affluent neighborhoods where people probably donate even more than is "suggested." But students. from the college basically turned it into a real life
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    Tragedy of the Commons. experiment. There was almost never bread available because everyone would just take it. The lines were insane and people would donate like $1 if anything. It closed within a year lol.
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    Paddington3773 An apartment maintenance employee had a hobby of bass fishing. He was pretty good at it, and then came up with the idea that if he drained his children's college fund he could buy a new bass boat, and pay for their college education with the money he would win in bass fishing tournaments. It didn't work out like he hoped it would..
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    RedDragons8 In the early days of the personal computer, a fairly prominent developer Osborne went up because they showed off their new model far in advance of when it was actually going to be available. So predictably dealers immediately cancelled all orders for their current computer model in preparation for the new
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    improved version. Inventory stacked up and they were bankrupt before the new model ever came out..... Its known as the Osborne Effect.
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    jdlyga Digg version 4. It killed the site. Digg was one of the most popular sites on the internet, and in a few short years it was gone.
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    Pool... My friend started a business with his ex wife while his girlfriend (who became his second wife) was also working in that company (15 employees) I won't get into the he went through but to give you a TL;DR He is single again
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    ThadisJones Financially supporting my ex going to law school
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    mechanicalsam When my boss for a small brewery bought a bottling. line without doing any research from the first sale men that contacted him. Was a company that did bottled water before, not carbonated beer. Was a huge disaster that almost sunk the business.
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    Or maybe it was the "hype vehicle" he bought that spent it's whole life in the shop because he knew nothing about buying used cars. Never got health insurance there either. . .
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    W s69696969 I never understand ads that start off insulting me. There's one I see on YouTube all the time that starts with "your skin care routine and goes on to try bullying me into buying their product.... like that's the best way to get me to avoid your business at all costs even if it might be a good product
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    Con... A chicken wing place where I lived had a year and a half long promotion where they would send out "free 6 piece boneless wing meal" coupons with no additional purchase necessary .. they included them in every local mailer pack. I would receive 4 or 5 a month, every month, for over a year. AND they had $0.99 pints of craft beer, but if you filled out a
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    survey on the receipt you got another beer for free - and they would let you fill out a survey for every beer you purchased. I would get lunch and 2 pints for $1.07 after tax.
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    I did this every week for over a year. When they ended the promotion I never went back for food because I was so burnt out on free chicken and fries. We still stop there every once in a while for a cheap pint when riding bikes past the place. But in the 50+ meals I've had there, I've probably only spent about $75 on beer, and probably had over 100 pints.
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