Could things possibly get any worse for WeWork? Answer: Yes!

Things haven’t been working out so well lately for WeWork, the shared-office-space rental company.

After filing its IPO paperwork, the company started getting a teensy bit more scrutiny from the market. Folks were starting to ask impertinent questions like ‘how is this company ever going to make a profit?’

The pre-market valuation took a nosedive, from a heady $47B to a mere $10B.

Now $10B is still plenty of scratch, but when you’re thinking a paper value of $47B, and the paper value all of a sudden is $10B (less, by the way, than the amount of investment that has been sunk into the company; oopsie!), suddenly you’re feeling poor.

The IPO was at first postponed for a month. Then the CEO was moved aside. And now the IPO is on permanent hold.

Those visions of fat payouts that employees had been hallucinating? Goners! I’m can only imagine that morale is none too high in the open offices at WeWork. Not to mention the morale of Adam Neumann, the CEO who was pushed out. He wanted to be the world’s first trillionaire. He’s now worth about half of what he was a year ago. He’s still a billionaire, but a lower-end one. It’s only money paper…

But no matter how awful things are, we all live in the very real world that tells us that, in almost every case, things can get worse.

Last week, WeWork:

…disclosed a new problem on Monday: possible formaldehyde contamination of hundreds of phone booths at some of the buildings it leases. (Source: NY Times)

The problem stems, according to WeWork, from the manufacturer’s choice of materials. Still, it’s WeWork’s tenants who were making phone calls from them. WeWorks immediately identified 1,600 bad booths in the US and Canada, and is taking out another 700 “’out of an abundance of caution.’”

Phone booths sound so quaint and old-fashioned, but in the open-shared space offices WeWork rents out, they’re the only place where tenants can go to have a phone convo. Providing such space is a key part of their value proposition.

WeWork did react pretty quickly when tenants started complaining about odor and eye irritation, but just the idea that they’ve been renting out a toxic-y environment is not going to help them along. (Or further Adam Neumann’s quest for that trillion.)

Exposure to formaldehyde can cause respiratory symptoms, and eye, nose, and throat irritation, according to the agency, which considers it a probable human carcinogen.

How long’s it going to take before someone takes them to court over this one?

There was other recent bad news for WeWork, although not the sort of news that’s hazardous to anyone’s physical health.

Last week, the company said that another subsidiary, WeGrow, a for-profit private school in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan that opened in 2018, would close next year.

The school, which has about 100 students and where tuition for 3-year-olds starts at $36,000, has described its mission as “elevating the collective consciousness of the world by expanding happiness and unleashing every human’s superpowers.”

Hmmm. How about a little less unleashing of superpowers and a little more attention to details like not installing cut-rate phone booths that make humans sick.

Anyway, doesn’t look like happiness will be expanding for anyone associated with WeWork anytime soon.