"If You Worked Here, You'd Be Heartless By Now"

May 18, 2006 8:17 AM

The 10 Worst Corporatioins of 2005Listed alphabetically, here are the 10 Worst Corporations of 2005 and brief lowlights of the activities that earned them a place on the list
posted by usedwigs (36 comments total)

Glad to see we're talking real evil and noit just "M$ suxx0rs" or "$tarbucks makes teh latte burny tasting!".

I feel a bit mean pointing thsi out, but that page seems to have a lot of spelling and HTML formating issues.
posted by Artw at 8:34 AM on May 18, 2006

DuPont hid for decades that it was polluting people's blood with a hyper-persistent chemical associated with the grease-resistant coatings on paper food packaging.

Processed food makes you cyborg.
posted by airguitar at 8:37 AM on May 18, 2006

... that page seems to have a lot of spelling and HTML formating issues.

Pot calling the kettle black? Oh no, teflon!
posted by knave at 8:49 AM on May 18, 2006

I love it when a comment points out spelling errors in a post, yet contains the words "noit", "teh", "thsi", and "formating".

HA
posted by tadellin at 8:54 AM on May 18, 2006

I feel a bit mean pointing thsi out, but that page seems to have a lot of spelling and HTML formating issues.

thsi spelling and formating, it vibraets?
posted by m@ at 9:10 AM on May 18, 2006

And here I was going to yell at you for spelling the main link wrong. Ha!
posted by etoile at 9:28 AM on May 18, 2006

Jokes?
posted by I Foody at 9:30 AM on May 18, 2006

noit... thsi... formating...
Awesome.
posted by ghastlyfop at 9:50 AM on May 18, 2006

There's a bit more wrong with it than formatting.

For now, avian flu is not communicative among humans

heh.
posted by rxrfrx at 9:55 AM on May 18, 2006

Anyone have more information regarding the DuPont stuff? I'm looking for more peer reviewed stuff and not all the OMGGGG CHEMICALSS SOYLENT GREEN stuff.
posted by cavalier at 10:00 AM on May 18, 2006

Work filters classify the site as "pornography." Anybody care to repost the list here?
posted by ereshkigal45 at 10:01 AM on May 18, 2006

google cache will that work?
posted by cavalier at 10:09 AM on May 18, 2006

Yes, thanks.
posted by ereshkigal45 at 10:14 AM on May 18, 2006

cavalier, just search for "DuPont C8" on Google, and you'll turn up everything from the EPA reporting on the issue to their own internal documents (as posted on The Memory Hole.)
posted by FormlessOne at 10:18 AM on May 18, 2006

There we go, C8 works. Thanks formless!!
posted by cavalier at 10:22 AM on May 18, 2006

Cavalier, this is a wild-assed guess but you might try Googling "octyl phthalate" or just "phthalate". It's a plasticizer that's basically ubiquitous and often shows up when blood samples are analyzed by sensitive instruments (HPLC, GC-MS, etc). As far as I know it has never been shown to have any effect on humans or animals, but I haven't followed the literature. Nevertheless, it's notorious among mass spectroscopists for being the mystery compound that shows up in blood samples (MDs rush into mass spec lab asking for analysis of weird clinical sample, mass spec jockeys sigh and tune the instrument for phthalate ion ...)
posted by Quietgal at 10:38 AM on May 18, 2006

Listed alphabetically? Bleh. I want to know which is the worst!
posted by beno at 10:40 AM on May 18, 2006

No worries, cavalier. The interesting twist to this is that, for some time, C8 was thought to be a common but benign pollutant.

Now, C8 is suspected as a carcinogen. DuPont had information to this effect years before others did, and fought to keep it quiet. The challenge is trying to figure out just what detrimental effects it has on humans, because it's nearly impossible now to find a control group.
posted by FormlessOne at 10:47 AM on May 18, 2006

I wonder how a mutual fund made up of these companies would do?
posted by Grimgrin at 11:09 AM on May 18, 2006

Corporations get all the legal protections of being a person, but we can't sent them to a hospital for the criminally insane!!
posted by Megafly at 11:24 AM on May 18, 2006

I wonder how a mutual fund made up of these companies would do?

There's always the Vice Fund.

There's a bit more wrong with it than formatting.

For now, avian flu is not communicative among humans

heh.

I was under the impression that while communicable to humans, it has yet to spread among humans. Untrue?
posted by ChasFile at 11:41 AM on May 18, 2006

This article should be titled, "10 of the Best Companies of 2005 and how they have increased the standard of living of everyone reading this article". Where would we be without these beautiful corporations?....oh yeah, third world.
posted by markulus at 11:58 AM on May 18, 2006

I feel like Monsanto is missing from this list.
posted by dobie at 12:02 PM on May 18, 2006

markulus, are you retarded, or just really really subtle?
posted by stenseng at 12:27 PM on May 18, 2006

ChasFile- I was just pointing out that they said "communicative" when they meant "communicable."
posted by rxrfrx at 12:31 PM on May 18, 2006

Great companies - or the greatest companies?
posted by Kirth Gerson at 1:37 PM on May 18, 2006

Nope. Looks like markulus luuuuvs those poor, downtrodden corporations.
posted by The Card Cheat at 2:12 PM on May 18, 2006

Picking out Ford for what they did 3+ decades ago (for activities that were par for the course at the time) seems a bit weak for an annual story. Or is there some current activity on the paint dumping issue that makes this a 2005 concern?
posted by Mitheral at 2:17 PM on May 18, 2006

Note who is not on th e list:

Altria, formerly known as Philip Morris.

So uh, how does that work?

BP has 3,000 workplace injuries and Altria's killed how many people via lung cancer and emphysema?

C'mon Multinational Monitor, ye ain't even trying.

Ford dumps some waste into a lake. That's bad. But compare it to the daily dumping of millions of gallons of waste by the cruise ship companies.

Gee, do some research already.
posted by storybored at 2:45 PM on May 18, 2006

No Verizon?
posted by quadog at 3:12 PM on May 18, 2006

Whatever happened to Bechtel?
posted by theora55 at 6:44 PM on May 18, 2006

http://www.phthalates.org/

Wow. Just, wow.
posted by Dean Keaton at 12:40 AM on May 19, 2006

From the Halliburton blurb:
In February, the U.S. Army agreed to pay Halliburton's KBR subsidiary nearly $2 billion for work that nobody can prove ever took place.

All the rest of those companies on the list are slackers.
posted by Enron Hubbard at 6:16 AM on May 19, 2006

"Slackers". Right. The guys who create the wonderful things that you can't get through your day without, such as plastics. Most of the things you touch have been born from the sweet research these guys have blessed us with. Thank goodness they forge ahead, providing magical things that we would never have dreamed of years ago. I would like to see your list of "best corporations" and compare the impact on your lives. I'm sure the majority of them use many raw materials from these "worst corporations".
posted by markulus at 11:24 AM on May 19, 2006

There you go, then - greatest companies.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 12:12 PM on May 19, 2006

Killing us with kindness, they are.
posted by five fresh fish at 4:50 PM on May 19, 2006