101 Dumbest Moments in Business

The year's biggest boors, buffoons, and blunderers

We hear Lonelygirl15 is a huge fan of Sam's Club...
54. Wal-Mart, Part 4
We hear Lonelygirl15 is a huge fan of Sam's Club...
In September a folksy new blog called Wal-Marting Across America pops up on the Internet.

The blog documents the purportedly spontaneous discoveries of RV-traveling megastore megafans Jim and Laura as they pull over to chat with happy Wal-Mart employees, like the guy whose company health insurance saved his son's life, or the woman who worked her way up from cashier to corporate manager.

Unfortunately, it neglects to mention that Wal-Mart arranged Jim and Laura's itinerary, paid for the RV, and compensated them for the blog entries. Exposed by BusinessWeek.com, the stunt is especially bad news for Edelman, since it violates ethical guidelines it helped to write for the nascent Word of Mouth Marketing Association.

1. Wal-Mart

2. Northwest Airlines

3. McDonald's

4. General Motors

5. Kazakhstan

6. Steve Wynn

7. NY Times

8. Spirit Air

9. Porter County

10. Comcast

11. Starbucks

12. Sony

13. Safety Commission

14. Vonage

15. Wal-Mart, part 2

16. 'Anger' bar

17. Alarm One

18. Church-run nursery school

19. PBS Kids Sprout network

20. Fiji Water

21. FCC

22. BusinessWeek

23. Microsoft

24. B2/Raytheon CEO

25. BBC

26. Greyhound

27. Radio Shack

28. National Semi

29. Hyundai-Kia

30. Lone Star

31. Goldman Sachs

32. Trading-Markets

33. Heart Attack Grill

34. Museum of Contemp. Art

35. Wal-Mart, Part 3

36. Catawba County

37. Thomsonfly

38. Imelda Marcos

39. Greece

40. Natural Selection Foods

41. Home Depot CEO Nardelli

42. MBA candidates

43. Paris Hilton

44. Mayor of New Lenox, Ill.

45. Cryonics pioneers

46. UnitedHealth Group

47. Comverse Technology

48. Cablevision Systems

49. EnBW - German utility

50. British food processor

51. Honda

52. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison

53. Disney

54. Wal-Mart, part 4

55. Richard Hatch

56. AOL

57. AOL, part 2

58. YouTube

59. Golden State Warriors

60. Egokast.com

61. Microsoft

62. DDS Media

63. TextTrust

64. Powys County Council in Wales

65. CIA

66. Jessica Simpson

67. Sony

68. Hewlett-Packard

69. Royal Mail

70. KRON 4

71. Bausch & Lomb

72. Amazon.com

73. Wal-Mart, Part 5

74. Pearson Educational Measurement

75. Time Warner's Wayne Pace

76. AirTran

77. Bank of America

78. McCain Foods

79. Mercedes-Benz

80. News Corp.

81. McDonald's

82. Online-video fans

83. Taco Bell

84. Shai

85. U.S. Mint

86. Wal-Mart, Part 6

87. AussieBum

88. Mars

89. Hoboken, N.J.

90. Bristol-Myers Squibb

91. Crackheadz Gone Wild: New York

92. Michael Eisner

93. Stefan Eriksson

94. Greenville Drive

95. NTT

96. UCLA

97. Home Depot

98. Imagination 69

99. Tesco

100. Spin Master

101. Hasbro
The complete 101 See the video, test your Dumbest knowledge, and check out our 'Sex, drugs, and celebrities' gallery. (more)
Where Wal-Mart went wrong The world's largest retailer set out to clean up its image in '06 - and promptly landed six spots on this year's list. (more)
Business...It's 'Dumbtastic!' Business 2.0, with the help of a few comedians, highlights the doozies in customer service and HR screw-ups. (more) video

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Most stock quote data provided by BATS. Market indices are shown in real time, except for the DJIA, which is delayed by two minutes. All times are ET. Disclaimer. Morningstar: © 2018 Morningstar, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Factset: FactSet Research Systems Inc. 2018. All rights reserved. Chicago Mercantile Association: Certain market data is the property of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. and its licensors. All rights reserved. Dow Jones: The Dow Jones branded indices are proprietary to and are calculated, distributed and marketed by DJI Opco, a subsidiary of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC and have been licensed for use to S&P Opco, LLC and CNN. Standard & Poor's and S&P are registered trademarks of Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC and Dow Jones is a registered trademark of Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC. All content of the Dow Jones branded indices © S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC 2018 and/or its affiliates.