Martin Brown
On 21/03/2014 04:29, Tony Cooper wrote:

Tony Cooper
On Thu, 20 Mar 2014 21:30:18 -0400, Robert Coe <bob@1776.COM>wrote:

Robert Coe
On Fri, 21 Mar 2014 11:43:07 +1300, Eric Stevens <eric.stevens@sum.co.nz> wrote:

: If the employees had notice, word would have leaked out into the wider : community and the business would have ground to a halt in a confused : shambles. They would still have been broke but their affairs would : have been in just that more of a mess.

Martin Brown
It seems to me unlikely that the employees would not have seen the writing on the wall. Bricks and mortar photo stores are a dying breed. You only have to look around inside one to see why. Smartphones have annihilated the point and shoot market, digital zapped print processing.

People are in there playing with new expensive kit tying up experienced salespeople to help choose their kit and then blatantly looking on their iPhone to see which website has it for the cheapest price. The same thing that also killed Jessops and Jacobs in the UK. The former even offered to match online prices but it didn't save them(*).

(*) A handful of their shops in the premium locations have reopened under new management and the same Jessops name.

Robert Coe
Translation: There wouldn't have been time for the officers to find a way to take care of themselves before the s*** hit the fan. Understand that I don't know that that's what happened in this particular case, but it IS a time-honored capitalist strategem.

Martin Brown
A method widely adopted by bankers cut from the same cloth as the infamous Fred the Shred who totally destroyed RBS requiring a massive taxpayer bailout to prevent the global banking system collapsing and still walked away with all his severance pay and pension entitlements.