I was here during the dark days of T, where layoffs were bad and often they whacked you by saying the following to you on a Friday afternoon at 4:00 - "Your job is in New Jersey starting Monday morning, if you still want it."
My point being that every time there were massive layoffs at T, there was an inevitable stock market drop to further screw over the retirees. The whacked people then saw a 30% or 50% drop in their IRA, and many, many ended up working as Sprawl-Mart Greeters, cashiers at the local Jo-Ann Fabrics, or whatever. Not quite the retirement they were expecting.
I blame T limited investment options. Until they provided full control back in 2008(?) when they came up with Brokerage Link could I get a decent return instead of T's garbage investments. And then T only let you put a portion into Brokerage link - a lot was still stuck on the other side with their $hitty choices.