I had a great job for the first nearly 3 years. Worked just over a year in Japan. Probably the best department coworker group I have had.

The company was acquired and then merged with a close competitor that was also acquired at about the same time. Not long after the merger of the 2 acquired companies was announced. This was a bad decision, because the companies were bitter rivals. The merger killed off much of the business for both.

A second bad decision was announced. The company I worked for was in Utah. The other acquired company was in Florida. This was over 20 years ago, so remote work, video conferences, etc. were not a thing. They announced that they were basically drawing a line down the middle of both companies. They laid off half of one company and the opposite half of the other company. I was in the half of my company that was laid off with 10 months notice. We were paid basically double time to stay on for those 10 months. There was a tenure factor to how much you were paid, so some were paid more than double time.

The odd thing was that my boss was a seasoned CFO. The other company didn't have a CFO, so they had to hire a CFO and several other positions. Then, the 3rd bizarre decision was they hired 2 temps in our office. After a few months we all realized that the temps were generally doing the same work we were asked to to (not working together, but duplicating the work). Then, we realized that there was also someone in the Florida office that was doing the same work. So, they were paying us double time to do work that was being done in triplicate. Basically paying 4 times to get the work done. As we all realized that our work wasn't needed we did less and less work and did prep and then actual job search. We did enough to keep the job, because we wanted the 10 month severance pay at the end. A painful 10 months, made worse by the newly hired CFO was someone that literally enjoyed causing pain and discomfort in others.

Funny / sad that the new sadistic CFO didn't last too long after we finished our 10 months. Then a year or 2 later they actually closed the Florida office and moved all the work back to the Utah office. They had to hire a complete accounting department again in Utah. Companies make odd decisions.