A Ford employee says he lost his job after being accused of stealing a $1.95 cookie, only for the company to later realize he’d actually paid for it.
60-year-old Kurt Kromm had worked at Ford’s Kentucky Truck Plant for 11 years, but told Shifting Gears he was fired after the company believed security footage showed him taking a cookie from the break room without paying.
They say the fish rots from the head down, and the same applies to organisations. Rot sets in when leadership becomes obsessed with short term gains, prioritises optics over substance, and treats excellence as a performance rather than a standard to live up to.
When you follow the money to the top, especially in publicly listed companies, it gets pretty grim. You see the same small circle of people rotating across boards, often lacking deep, tangible understanding of what they’re overseeing, appointed more for status and connections than competence.
Meanwhile, the people who actually built and sustain the company, the ones whose livelihoods depend on it, barely factor into the equation. They’re seen as nothing more than furniture that gets passed along with a company acquisition. Culture flows from that reality. When leadership rewards self serving behaviour, people adapt accordingly.
That’s how you end up with environments that feel psychopathic, not necessarily because individuals start that way, but because the system consistently selects for and reinforces it.
My 2c anyway.