A few years ago I worked for a catering company. I worked in a team of event coordinators.
We had a feeling something was up when an event manager who had been with the company for years just up and left. But didn't know what.
I could tell my boss was stressed out and that their boss was too.
One day they pulled us into a meeting and told us we wouldn't be paid that week due to this and that but that it would be paid the following week. Honestly I should have just left then and there but I was young and ignorant to business and work rights.
Surprise surprise we did not get paid next week, or the week after that. Now at this point I was actively applying elsewhere. I was receiving texts from wait staff and staff in the cafes the company owned, as they all knew me, asking what the hell was up. Whilst I didn't know what was about to go down I knew it wasn't good.
The CEO then walks in one day with liquidators. Pulls everyone in the office into a meeting and proceeds to tell us the company was going into liquidation. They had known this was coming for a while, they had known we were not going to get paid but kept lying and asking us to show our loyalty to the company. But where was their loyalty to US? There were single parents with kids and mortgages to pay, international students with student fees who would drown due to this. Others event coordinators were rightly furious due to this destroying their reputations in the event community and they had taken wedding deposits in those two weeks from clients, deposits and payments these people would never get back, which the higher ups knew.
My lesson learned from this was to run for the hills if my company ever missed a single week of pay. Look for the signs of companies about to crash and burn and just run.