In the first known instance of bloodshed in Bogota, 80 American corporate workers living in the Colombian capital are locked in their building and forced to meet a new deadline…of death. Toeing the company line has never been bloodier than in The Belko Experiment, inspiring this week’s gallery of 24 more of the worst companies to work for from film and television history.
Weyland-Yutani from Alien
How many times is Wey-Yu going to trick its employees to enter hypersleep only for them to wake up unequipped on a fatal xenomorph mission? Wouldn’t it help their bottom line to reduce the body bag budget?
OCP from Robocop
According to the movie, absolutely 100% of OCP meetings conclude with an executive tossed through a window or reduced to a bullet-riddled torso.
inGen from Jurassic Park
inGen, you had one job: Keep ungodly genetically-engineered dinosaurs under control in artificial biomes for public profit and entertainment via massive island-getaway future theme parks. Is this really so complicated?
Initech from Office Space
Set sometime during the primitive human years of the late ’90s (records dating back then are hazy) when corporate drones turned to money laundering, or at least looking it up in a dictionary (a type of “book”), as revenge against annoying co-workers, worse bosses, office nattering, and overall having a job in exchange for legal tender.
The IMF from Mission: Impossible
We guess climbing buildings and tricking people with masks isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, because the bad guy in these movies is always some extra-disgruntled ex-IMF agent. Also, somehow they drove the original Jim Phelps insane. Did somebody forget to give him a watch for his 10-year anniversary?
Springfield Nuclear Power Plant from The Simpsons
C. Montgomery Burns, power plant head and ageless like Cthulhu,, has committed multiple abuses over the decades. The list includes stuffing barrels of toxic waste in trees, blocking out the sun, rendering male employees sterile, dental plan eradication…
Planet Express from Futurama
See the galaxy! Drop off boxes! Sign complicated insurance forms in the event that your body is consumed and secreted by space bees!
Burger World from UHF
Burnt the fries? You’ll literally get thrown out the doors, where you’ll then be reduced to schedule programming for a local TV station your uncle won in a poker game whose fortunes you revive with a children’s variety show before putting on a telethon to fend off a rival network’s hostile advances which you MUST OVERCOME as a cause for the people because where else will they learn about teaching poodles how to fly by throwing them out apartment windows?
ChickWich from Compliance
Ever think your boss doesn’t have your back? Never apply to ChickWich, where a manager forced one of her burger flippers to strip to the nude (and more) because a mysterious disembodied voice on the phone demanded so.
Scrooge & Marley from A Christmas Carol
Come work for London’s leading money lender, where you’ll work long hours into holidays and won’t be able to afford gas to survive the harsh Victorian winter nor the crutches for your young son whose legs you broke in a coke-fueled rampage due to the tightening fiduciary vice that is working for Ebenezer Scrooge.
Westworld, ho!
The only place you could rub a ladykilling Yul Brynner in a cowboy suit during the 1970s, outside of a motel somewhere in Santa Monica.
Hawkins National Laboratory from Stranger Things
While Spielberg was throwing ’80s suburban dreams up on screen, this clandestine place was turning real suburbia into a nightmare, whose test subjects snap necks and kidnap neighborhood dorks into alternate dimensions.
ACME from Looney Tunes
There’s planned obsolescence, and then there’s product that flat-out doesn’t work out of the box. Can you imagine the low morale at the ACME assembly line, not to mention how understaffed QA must be, if they think it’s OK their stuff regularly maims customers? How hard is it to put together a pair of functional rocket-powered roller skates?
Palisade Defence from Severance
Employees take a mandatory retreat into the woods where they’re slowly picked off one by one. Quoth Austin Powers: “He’ll never be the head of a major corporation.”
CTU from 24
So many seasons, so many moles… Maybe company loyalty would stay up if the bosses actually turned the lights on during office hours, or stopped leasing space in what looks like a former medieval lair.
Umbrella Corporation from Resident Evil
Perhaps the pay is nice. Maybe the 401k matching plan is unparalleled. And so what if Umbrella has a wellness room with hammocks? That’s no excuse to work at a pharma corp that will bring on the end of the world. There’s not much use for hammocks in the post-apocalypse, is there?
Vandelay Industries from Seinfeld
From latex sales to imports/exports, Vandelay Industries has its soft, milky white hand in everything. The only problem: Nobody works in the building, payroll is empty, and the only way to get there is to endure the unbearable, stocky, slow-witted baldness that is being George Costanza.
Dunder-Mifflin from The Office
A novel, interesting show that slowly meta-transformed into a soul-sucking slog, much like an office job in real life.
The Organization from The Cabin In The Woods
Okay, so the safety of the world depends on your job. The same thing applies for Rotten Tomatoes obviously, so we understand how stressful this kind of job can get. But putting the RELEASE ALL THE MONSTERS button within easy reach? Why even introduce that occupational hazard into the workplace?
Camp Crystal Lake from Friday the 13th
How many dead teenagers and stolen things from the ‘harpoon gun & hockey mask’ drawer must we endure before this business gets shut down for good? Look, if you’re gonna pilfer from camp supplies to fuel your Saturday morning massacre, at least use the sign-in sheet!
Silver Shamrock from Halloween III: Season of the Witch
A creature shop whose masks melts people’s faces. Probably where Tom Savini got his start.
Lunar Industries from Moon
Don’t you hate it when you have a co-worker who takes credit for everything that you do?
Duke & Duke from Trading Places
The daily drudge of corporate employment making you feel like your identity has been co-opted? Then come on over to Duke & Duke, where we’ll give you a real identity crisis, by giving everything you worked for and its lifestyle accouterments to a random pauper on the street.
U-North from Michael Clayton
U-North has a pesky reputation of murdering former employees, though apparently the pay’s good enough while you’re alive to feed your harrowing baguette habit.
