For months, workplace ratings for Thomas Cook ($LON:TCG) had been on the decline at review site Indeed. The doomed travel company's cumulative overall average moved from a high of 3.914 in March 2019 to just 3.88 by September 15 as the company began to show internal signs of trouble.

Right around then, the company was known as "the most shorted company on the London Stock Exchange" as hopes of bridge funding would save the company from oblivion. But the deal fell through, funding slipped through its grasp, and on September 23, Thomas Cook aircraft were impounded upon arrival. The company's collapse has left 22,000 people without jobs.

It's likely that most of those 22,000 people are pretty upset about losing their livelihoods. But some of them are taking to Indeed to show their departing love for the company, dropping 5-out-of-5 ratings and, in a curious post-death sign of life for the company as a workplace, driving its scores up.

Even the company's senior management — the same people who handed thousands of people their walking papers — saw a last-minute spike in ratings.

The most severe jump, perhaps in a post-mortem sendoff of the paychecks reviewers will no longer receive, was for Compensation & Benefits, which was driven to a year-to-date high virtually overnight.

Irony wasn't lost on reviewers, however, as the company's "Career Opportunities" was the only metric to not see a last-minute spike. The reason for this is pretty self explanatory.

But the outpouring of love for Thomas Cook from its former employees is a curious example of "you don't know what you have until you've lost it" as quanitified in cumulative review scores. 

About the Data: 

Thinknum tracks companies using information they post online - jobs, social and web traffic, product sales and app ratings - and creates data sets that measure factors like hiring, revenue and foot traffic. Data sets may not be fully comprehensive (they only account for what is available on the web), but they can be used to gauge performance factors like staffing and sales. 

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