# Dumbest thing your employer has done to cut costs. **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [August 8, 2018, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dumbest-thing-your-employer-has-done-to-cut-costs/819305 "2018-08-08T22:01:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![corkboard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e9bcb4/32.png) [@corkboard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/corkboard)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2018, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dumbest-thing-your-employer-has-done-to-cut-costs/819305/81 "2018-08-14T18:00:04Z")
Many years ago I worked at a university theatre. One day I came in to work to see a memo written by our business manager: “Recently the cost of printer paper has gone up and it is getting very expensive to print documents. Please refrain from all printing unless it is absolutely necessary. Thank you.” Was this memo posted on the bulletin board next to the mailboxes, where notices like this were meant to be posted? Oh, no. He had printed one out for each of the 50-some mailboxes. We each got the same 2-line memo in our mailbox, telling us to stop wasting paper. I read it and started laughing. He came out of his office angry that I wasn’t taking the situation seriously. ---
**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2018, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dumbest-thing-your-employer-has-done-to-cut-costs/819305/82 "2018-08-14T18:20:45Z")
> [@corkboard](#): > > Many years ago I worked at a university theatre. One day I came in to work to see a memo written by our business manager: “Recently the cost of printer paper has gone up and it is getting very expensive to print documents. Please refrain from all printing unless it is absolutely necessary. Thank you.” > > Was this memo posted on the bulletin board next to the mailboxes, where notices like this were meant to be posted? Oh, no. He had printed one out for each of the 50-some mailboxes. We each got the same 2-line memo in our mailbox, telling us to stop wasting paper. > > I read it and started laughing. He came out of his office angry that I wasn’t taking the situation seriously. Bart Simpson scribbling on chalkboard some 500 or so times: “I will not waste chalk. I will not waste chalk. I will not waste chalk. I will not waste chalk. I will not waste chalk. I will not waste chalk. I will not waste chalk. I will not waste chalk. I will not waste chalk. I will not waste chalk.” Etc. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Spiderman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spiderman/32/230_2.png) [@Spiderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spiderman)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2018, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dumbest-thing-your-employer-has-done-to-cut-costs/819305/83 "2018-08-14T19:01:39Z")
> [@TruCelt](#): > > Consolidating desk space repeatedly (including purchase of all-new desks and professional moving services after set-up) until they finally installed an expensive hoteling system. For people who are 95% on a customer site, hoteling is an OK solution. It is still much nicer to have a set shared desk where you can keep the items you need on the days you’re in office. But these numbskulls even made the daily HQ workers sign in for their desks every day. > > The result, of course, was a near shutdown as 14 year employees with set jobs and requirements got up from their desks and walked down the hall for a form every time they needed one. They had no place to store a stack of the ones they used six times per week. I think the management was hoping we would all go buy wheelie briefcases and schlep all our needed supplies home every day. I worked for a place (for a short time, thank Og) that went 100% hoteling. Dumbest. Idea. Ever! We each had one _small_ locker to hold our desk supplies. However, since you didn’t get the same desk every day, the fist 10 minutes were spent scrubbing it down & adjusting the monitors to your liking. Need anything? It’s get up & walk to get it as opposed to just reaching in your desk for a pen or a napkin. Departments got mixed up so you couldn’t just turn to the person next to you to ask them something because frequently, they were not in your group. Need to talk to someone? Walk around looking for them, if you don’t see them, try again as you don’t know if they’re not in today or just in the bathroom since you don’t know where they’re sitting. It also sucked for morale as you couldn’t keep anything on your desk like pictures of family or drawings from your kids, etc. You could have them on your desk, just need to put them away in your small locker every night. :smack: Any savings in a few less desks were more than offset by lost productivity, & that’s _before_ decreased morale. At the desk you had your laptop, two other monitors, a keyboard & a mouse. However, we were supposed to do conf calls in the one of the small meeting rooms so as not to disturb others. We had virtual phones - software on the PC & headsets that plugged into the USB jack. However, when you disconnected from the wired connection, you’d lose the call as the wireless didn’t pick up properly. Also, since you were now disconnected from the network, you lost all of your documents; this meant save everything & reboot 5-10 mins before any meeting. When you finally did get into your meeting, you only had one screen, which means you couldn’t share your screen & take electronic notes at the same time. If we were at our desks, you could share monitor 1 & do other things on monitor 2, take notes, sidebar emails, etc. So it was handwritten notes that would then need to be typed after the call was over. Like I said, glad I left shortly after they made this change. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dumbest-thing-your-employer-has-done-to-cut-costs/819305.md?page=4)