# Most Idiotic Corporate Penny Pinching Decisions You've Encountered **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 8, 2017, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-idiotic-corporate-penny-pinching-decisions-youve-encountered/776661 "2017-01-08T21:22:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![gaffa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e68b1a/32.png) [@gaffa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gaffa)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2017, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-idiotic-corporate-penny-pinching-decisions-youve-encountered/776661/121 "2017-01-13T23:40:23Z")
> [@Jennshark](#): > > This may be apocryphal, but I read somewhere that several years ago American Airlines reduced the number of pimento olives in their first class salads and saved $1.5 million in one year. My guess is nobody noticed they were an olive short, but it is rather petty given the price of tickets. The guy I worked for at Hallmark, who was the smartest person for whom I’ve ever worked, dubbed that “Excel thinking.” When he started in business, a “spreadsheet” was a huge sheet of paper that covered a whole table and took two people several days to make. So before you made one, you: [ol] [li]Made damn sure that your data was accurate[/li][li]Lived with the results, because you didn’t want to have to make another[/li][/ol] But after we had computerized spreadsheets, you could fiddle with the numbers easily and do so until you got the results you wanted. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2017, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-idiotic-corporate-penny-pinching-decisions-youve-encountered/776661/122 "2017-01-13T23:50:14Z")
> [@Jennshark](#): > > This may be apocryphal, but I read somewhere that several years ago American Airlines reduced the number of pimento olives in their first class salads and saved $1.5 million in one year. My guess is nobody noticed they were an olive short, but it is rather petty given the price of tickets. For a long time, American Airlines planes were mostly unpainted, instead just having the logo on the bare metal skin. Less painting to do, and less weight on the plane. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2017, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-idiotic-corporate-penny-pinching-decisions-youve-encountered/776661/123 "2017-01-14T00:54:24Z")
> [@Gatopescado](#): > > Classic! I had the misfortune to work a couple places where, “College Boy” was considered an insult. :rolleyes: Sorry, lad, but this entire thread is an illustration of what “College Boy” means when used that way. Almost all of the stories here involve bean counters who learned all about business administration _in college_ and feel that their college education is a sufficient and superior alternative to real-world experience. ---
**Author:** ![Balthisar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/balthisar/32/2825_2.png) [@Balthisar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balthisar)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2017, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-idiotic-corporate-penny-pinching-decisions-youve-encountered/776661/124 "2017-01-14T00:56:56Z")
> [@xizor](#): > > A co-worker at a previous job was able to game the travel policy by showing that it saved the company $1200 for him to fly from Chicago to Tokyo with a 3 day layover in Hawaii vs flying direct. This is actually okay in my company, as long as you’re not billing the company for your hotel stay, and you’re using vacation or it’s the weekend. Say you’re going from Bangkok to Nanjing via Hong Kong, and you leave BKK on Friday after work. If you want to stay in Hong Kong until Sunday night and the airfare isn’t higher (or you pay the difference out of pocket), then it was accepted. And, yeah, this is a big company responsible for SOX, etc. ---
**Author:** ![leahcim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b4bc9f/32.png) [@leahcim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/leahcim)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2017, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-idiotic-corporate-penny-pinching-decisions-youve-encountered/776661/125 "2017-01-14T15:52:25Z")
> [@eschereal](#): > > Sorry, lad, but this entire thread is an illustration of what “College Boy” means when used that way. Almost all of the stories here involve bean counters who learned all about business administration _in college_ and feel that their college education is a sufficient and superior alternative to real-world experience. Maybe so, but I’ve personally never encountered such a situation where the complainer didn’t also have a college/uni degree, and usually had spent a lot more time there, too. It would be a strange thing for a quant with a PhD to refer to an MBA bean counter as “college boy”. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Doug\_K](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b5ac83/32.png) [@Doug\_K](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doug_K)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2017, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-idiotic-corporate-penny-pinching-decisions-youve-encountered/776661/126 "2017-01-14T20:17:18Z")
> [@leahcim](#): > > Maybe so, but I’ve personally never encountered such a situation where the complainer didn’t also have a college/uni degree, and usually had spent a lot more time there, too. It would be a strange thing for a quant with a PhD to refer to an MBA bean counter as “college boy”. 🙂 But the term “college boy” doesn’t apply to one with degree + experience. It applies specifically to one with a degree and little/no experience who thinks he knows it all. ---
**Author:** ![Driver8](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b5a626/32.png) [@Driver8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Driver8)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2017, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-idiotic-corporate-penny-pinching-decisions-youve-encountered/776661/127 "2017-01-14T22:20:49Z")
I’m curious about these travel policies where they have restrictions on the cheapest flights, etc that sometimes force non-optimal results. Its easy to go for the laughs with a story of how you spend $200 on a cab ride to avoid spending $50 more on a flight. But I wonder if these policies actually do make sense spread out over a huge real life organization? I don’t actually know the answer, I’m Just Asking Questions 😉 It strikes me that the best possible scenario is to have no formal restrictions whatsoever, and amazing employees who have enough common sense and integrity to pick the optimal solution. I’ve essentially had that in the past and it worked well. I was conscientious enough to make what I felt were sensible decisions that were cost effective and got me the time I needed wherever I was travelling. I also was able to take personal advantage of the travel without costing the company anything. So if I was going somewhere interesting (Sweden, Alaska) I might add a weekend to the trip or take some vacation days in the location. But I’d only do it if the airfare wasn’t more, and of course any additional expenses (hotel days, food, transport) associated with my personal days was paid for out of pocket. But maybe over thousands of employees in practice you just can’t expect that to work, and most people are idiots. That system worked for me, but I did hear about the guy who had to be talked to because he put his hotel pornography into his expense report. So maybe when they introduce a draconian policy for every $150 they lose to a stupid cab ride they gain $10k when a dozen employees are forced not to route their flights through Hawaii. I imagine its impossible to come up with a draconian policy that is detailed enough to always come up with the optimal solution (this would be sort of the same as a centrally planned economy), but maybe an imperfect system is better than none if you can’t have thousands of amazing employees? ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2017, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-idiotic-corporate-penny-pinching-decisions-youve-encountered/776661/128 "2017-01-15T04:30:33Z")
A friend told me this one. She worked at a dentists office with several other nurses and staff. Well that doctor decided to take a vacation and take his family somewhere for a week. He told the office staff with a big smile, that they could also have a vacation and take a week off. Of course, they would not be paid. They added the numbers and basically their total salaries missed for that week, basically paid for his vacation. You can bet that caused friction and the staff were just waiting for a chance to leave or get him back. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2017, 10:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-idiotic-corporate-penny-pinching-decisions-youve-encountered/776661/129 "2017-01-15T10:40:35Z")
I had dinner with some friends yesterday. Told by one of them: She works the weekend shift in a pharmaceutical factory. The factory has a bus to take people from the nearest town to the factory itself. On the same weekend in which she was returning to work after a period of medical leave, the bus was removed for the weekend shifts, claiming that “it’s underutilized”. Well, claiming that post facto: the company didn’t give warning beforehand or mention it to the worker’s reps. Using public transportation, the path after leaving the subway includes a 2km tunnel with no lights. The subject has been filed with the local Labor department. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2017, 10:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-idiotic-corporate-penny-pinching-decisions-youve-encountered/776661/130 "2017-01-15T10:46:00Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Be careful what you wish for. It’s possible to construct a real nightmare itinerary using public busses in most any US city. Once they realize it saves money from their budget, regardless of what it does to your productivity and morale, it’ll be _Katy bar the door_. I wish to be able to spend the least possible time in transit (the original option involved several more hours in transit) and to have my travel be checked by people who comprehend I do have a brain and it is switched on. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2017, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-idiotic-corporate-penny-pinching-decisions-youve-encountered/776661/131 "2017-01-15T13:27:39Z")
Back in the '90s I worked for a small company run by idiots. On the advice of their accountant, the owners decided they could save a lot of money by laying off their three employees with the highest salaries… including me. It never occurred to them that the reason we were paid better than the others was that we were the total creative force of the company; the other employers were pretty much useless without us. Of course they went out of business within weeks. ---
**Author:** ![leahcim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b4bc9f/32.png) [@leahcim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/leahcim)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2017, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-idiotic-corporate-penny-pinching-decisions-youve-encountered/776661/132 "2017-01-15T14:13:32Z")
> [@Driver8](#): > > But maybe over thousands of employees in practice you just can’t expect that to work, and most people are idiots. That system worked for me, but I did hear about the guy who had to be talked to because he put his hotel pornography into his expense report. So maybe when they introduce a draconian policy for every $150 they lose to a stupid cab ride they gain $10k when a dozen employees are forced not to route their flights through Hawaii. I imagine its impossible to come up with a draconian policy that is detailed enough to always come up with the optimal solution (this would be sort of the same as a centrally planned economy), but maybe an imperfect system is better than none if you can’t have thousands of amazing employees? I think of “travel policy rules” the same way I think of “password construction rules”. They’ll stamp out the more outrageous abuses, which are mostly “things people have done in the past” but not really get in the way of the guy who’s really determined to abuse the system. Itineraries that meet all of the travel guidelines, but still waste a lot of money for no good reason are the “P@assword1” of business travel. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Bill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Mr.Bill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Bill)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2017, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-idiotic-corporate-penny-pinching-decisions-youve-encountered/776661/133 "2017-01-17T16:07:50Z")
I used to work for a large document reproduction company. When I started it was a really great company. But then the founder cashed out and sold it to a venture capital firm who planned to take it public. At one point, the bean counters decided that there were too many big, high-volume machines in the stores. They made a non-negotiable decision to remove all the large machines and replace them with a new model of machine which was only capable of handling half or less the volume of the replaced machines. I can remember sitting in the office reading the memo on this, thinking “that doesn’t sound right” and digging out the latest monthly P&L. It turned out that the new machine, which was then going to be our primary machine, was only capable of handling about 35% of our monthly volume. As our primary machine, it needed to be capable of at least 60%. It also was going to be much more expensive to run, as our old machine was on a “we don’t really want to demolish this machine yet, so you can keep it really cheap” contract with Xerox. To add icing on the cake, the new model was so new that Xerox did not have anywhere near the technicians trained to service it 24/7, which was what we had for the old machine (and needed due to our business volume). And, like all new models of an extremely complicated machine, it was rife with bugs. For the first 6 months, it spent more time down than running. Prior to this decision, we had consistently been in the top 20 locations for sales in a company with close to 1000 stores. Now, we had to run around trying to get nearby stores to run jobs for us and share the sales with them. Some jobs had to be refused because we just could not run them. Our sales plummeted as a result. Seems to me the smarter decision would have been to look at the top performing units and see what they were doing right, with an eye to bringing everyone up to that level. Instead they chose to make everyone mediocre. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Bill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Mr.Bill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Bill)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2017, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-idiotic-corporate-penny-pinching-decisions-youve-encountered/776661/134 "2017-01-17T16:12:20Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > For a long time, American Airlines planes were mostly unpainted, instead just having the logo on the bare metal skin. Less painting to do, and less weight on the plane. Now that one makes sense to me. Who chooses their airline based on how pretty the planes are? ---
**Author:** ![Chimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2017, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-idiotic-corporate-penny-pinching-decisions-youve-encountered/776661/135 "2017-01-17T16:19:08Z")
> [@xizor](#): > > A co-worker at a previous job was able to game the travel policy by showing that it saved the company $1200 for him to fly from Chicago to Tokyo with a 3 day layover in Hawaii vs flying direct. I did that for a training class in Boston back in the 90’s. Was able to show that I could stay in a hotel 5 miles down the road _and_ get a rental car with unlimited miles for a week (class was only 2 days, I took PTO for the rest) for less money than staying at the hotel where the class was. ---
**Author:** ![lazybratsche](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ba8739/32.png) [@lazybratsche](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lazybratsche)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2017, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-idiotic-corporate-penny-pinching-decisions-youve-encountered/776661/136 "2017-01-17T16:43:54Z")
> [@Mr.Bill](#): > > Now that one makes sense to me. > > Who chooses their airline based on how pretty the planes are? I’ve actually heard (silly, naive) people say that a plane with _bare metal_ is dodgy somehow. I think they don’t like to be reminded that an airplane is a physical machine with a structure and moving parts, and rather like to think of it as some kind of magic sky shuttle. For similar passenger silliness, think about all the “OMG THE PLANE IS FALLING APART WE’RE GONNA DIE” news articles you see when some bit of interior trim isn’t completely secure. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2017, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-idiotic-corporate-penny-pinching-decisions-youve-encountered/776661/137 "2017-01-17T18:33:45Z")
> [@Mr.Bill](#): > > Now that one makes sense to me. > > Who chooses their airline based on how pretty the planes are? But doesn’t the paint… you know… kinda hold the plane together? 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2017, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-idiotic-corporate-penny-pinching-decisions-youve-encountered/776661/138 "2017-01-17T19:18:12Z")
> [@Chimera](#): > > I did that for a training class in Boston back in the 90’s. Was able to show that I could stay in a hotel 5 miles down the road _and_ get a rental car with unlimited miles for a week (class was only 2 days, I took PTO for the rest) for less money than staying at the hotel where the class was. This is commonly how I maximize my educational seminar/travel allowance at work. ---
**Author:** ![gaffa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e68b1a/32.png) [@gaffa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gaffa)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2017, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-idiotic-corporate-penny-pinching-decisions-youve-encountered/776661/139 "2017-01-17T19:25:43Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Ices costs as much as the soda does, so it wasnt to be cheap. I’ve found it’s the employees who pack cups with ice, to minimize time filling the glass. ---
**Author:** ![Grestarian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grestarian/32/3227_2.png) [@Grestarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grestarian)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2017, 7:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-idiotic-corporate-penny-pinching-decisions-youve-encountered/776661/140 "2017-01-19T07:58:28Z")
> [@Mr.Bill](#): > > Now that one makes sense to me. > > Who chooses their airline based on how pretty the planes are? I know there’s a doper out there who works or worked for either Boeing or AirBus so maybe that person can respond to this. I was reminded several years ago that, more importantly than making an object look spiffy, paint is a protective coating. In my conversation, the topic was wood. I vaguely recall another conversation with the same guy about paint inducing less drag than bare metal. Can our aeroplane guy give us some straight dope here? –G? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-idiotic-corporate-penny-pinching-decisions-youve-encountered/776661.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-idiotic-corporate-penny-pinching-decisions-youve-encountered/776661.md?page=8)