What I would have personally done in the situation would be to sell anything I had that I didn't need, to keep the company afloat, and my employees paid, because I know if we can weather it, it'll pay off in the end.

But a lot of people are assholes and don't give a shit about their employees... And that's why they have a revolving door and churn through employees like no tomorrow.

Contacting (in the uk at least) is much more honest, you work you get paid, you want to have a sick day, you don't get paid. If your crap you go, if your good they try to keep you.

It's OK to own nice cars. If the company is doing well, drive it to work.

If things are not good, it would be good form to at least drive a camry to the office.

Maybe. But most employees don't seem to care that:

1) the boss may have gotten the money to buy the car before owning the current company. Most people in business have had multiple businesses throughout their lives. Even if it's not, they risked everything to create the company that now employs you.

2) The boss probably lost much more than the employees. When an employee loses a job, it sucks. But they can often times get unemployment and find another job (I've worked for plenty of companies that went under over the years).

The boss loses: money (if they are a co-owner, they probably invested money), reputation, and credit is possibly damaged.

EDIT: Don't mean you personally. :)