Sadly, them cutting the paper cups fooled a lot of their employees, in which they genuinely didn't think things were that bad. Anecdotally, the ones who thought nothing was wrong with cups being cut were the ones that were laid off weeks later.
Makes sense. The ones who didn't parse out the puzzle were probably the employees of lowest relative IQ and savvy, so they were probably the least valuable ones.
Hindsight bias. What if the GP told you he was lying, and that the people who didn't notice were the last ones to get laid off, because they were so absorbed by their work that they didn't have time to notice the cups? Does that make more or less sense than the alternative?
Perhaps the people laid off were the most intelligent but least politically connected because they were focused on their work to the exclusion of water-cooler chatter.
Makes sense. The ones who didn't parse out the puzzle were probably the employees of lowest relative IQ and savvy, so they were probably the least valuable ones.