Dumbest Moments in Business 2009

The year may be only half over, but Fortune magazine has already come up with its list of Dumbest Moments in Business 2009. (No doubt 2009 is an especially dumb year, but still.) Tropicana’s botched redesign is up there, as is Yankee’s $200k seats and KFC’s free chicken disaster. There was also the credit card reform act (a good thing) that, oddly enough, made it legal for people to bring loaded guns into national parks and wildlife refuges. But the story I’m still having trouble wrapping my mind around is the iPhone “shake the baby” app, which challenged users to see how long they could “withstand the cries of a baby before they shake it to death.” Seriously. What were they thinking?

Dumbest Moments in Business 2009 – Midyear Edition [Fortune]

Carrie McLaren & Jason Torchinsky are coeditors of Ad Nauseam: A Survivor’s Guide to American Consumer Culture. In previous lives, they worked together on the hopelessly obscure and now defunct Stay Free! magazine .

Want more consumer news? Visit our parent organization, Consumer Reports, for the latest on scams, recalls, and other consumer issues.