When a new boss or bosses takes over, a lot of changes can happen in the way a company is run.

In today’s story, there are new managers and a new CEO, so the employees have to learn how to adapt in order to keep their jobs.

At least one of them has a great story to tell about it.

Let’s see how the story plays out…

Loyalty goes both ways

I am a worker bee in a company that got bought out by a much bigger company earlier this year.

Even though we were a small company, the teams were flexible, and everyone helped each other, and the company was profitable.

Not to the new ownership though.

Apparently our company was crap and needed to be immediately fixed with “structure, hierarchy, and order”.

All the managers were fired.

The managers I’ve worked so well with over the years are gone.

The new owners promised no change, nothing to worry about, everything will be the same.

Except that within a month, all the experienced managers who made the workplace so great to work for are let go.

What is worse, they’ve been replaced by emotionless walking husks resembling ghosts, with hammers as their only tool, and we’re all nails.

The work environment is horrible.

Nevermind the incessant preaching of company spirit and loyalty and respect and company values.

We all moan at these pep talks.

We all yawn at the town halls.

Then the less subtle threats: Oh, you’re not a team player if you don’t do X, Y, and Z..

You need to work OT, or else that’s not fair to everyone else. You’re leaving on time, again?

The culture certainly has changed.

For one, I didn’t even dare to take off early to pick up my kids from school anymore.

She shares another example of the work environment…

Finally, the toxic culture of fear and backstabbing.

Every words said against the direction, even off the cuff in a chit chat, and every little facial or non-verbal gesture against the flow are immediately and harshly met with reprimands.

For example, another worker bee was recently let go for restructuring, despite stellar work performance.

He just couldn’t keep his thoughts to himself I guess.

I hope I painted a good picture of what life under the iron fist is like.

There’s a new CEO.

Many of us are contemplating leaving, but the job market is quite depressing in our area.

The cost of living is high, and we are afraid of being the neck that sticks out.

So everyone suffers in silence.

The company recently appointed a new CEO who, in his opening introduction to everyone, demanded undivided loyalty (to him).

It means we must follow his every direction.

It means we must smile in his presence and be super upbeat.

I think the expectation here is we must cry like North Korean women in the presence of the supreme leader KimJongUn.

You want us absolute loyalty?

I believe loyalty goes both ways.

But we can show you loyalty.

The employees have lots of meetings.

We all got the message.

You want us to play Oscar winning actors and actresses instead of actually getting work done and speaking our minds to make the company better?

You got it!

For those of us who read and trust each other (but we still need to be careful), we would have hours-long meetings with each other, on topics that sound important, but don’t actually matter.

We make sure our days are jammed pack full of discussions on how to move initiatives forward, but never actually discuss anything of substance and never have aggressive action items to follow-up on.

We absolutely never forget to praise the leadership in the meeting minutes.

Off the books, though, there’s lots of small talks – for the sake of team building.

The employees have learned to look busy.

Whenever we’re questioned by these husks of a ghost, we’d pull out the corporate roadmap and point to the initiatives we’ve spent so many hours working on.

We’d defend our time with the budget that recently got rolled out, look we’re on-side.

We’ve gone so far as requesting additional resources in next year’s budget to ensure our very busy initiatives continue to make headway.

We’re basically creating a public perception of busy, without actually doing too much.

The company is losing money.

We were a lean small company.

Now we’re a fat, busybody where everything is bloated and compartmentalized.

We shut our faces and we nodded.

We clapped the hardest after every presidential speeches.

And we lost money in the last several months.

That’s the price we pay to give one-sided loyalty.

We’re still looking for other jobs.

It’s sad when a company changes for the worse due to a leadership change.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story…

This reader is confused by how big companies operate.

Another reader explains why big companies buy small companies.

This reader makes a good point…

This reader made a mistake speaking up at work…

Another reader can relate to the situation.

Yes, things always change when one company buys another company.

No matter what they try to tell you.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.