Most Idiotic Corporate Penny Pinching Decisions You've Encountered

In My Humble Opinion
41

In order to save money, it’s decided to eliminate the receptionist/secretary position.
So instead of paying one person to handle:
Answering the phones
Greeting visitors
Signing for packages/mailing out packages
Ordering supplies
Organizing frequent customer training, including lunches
Filing paper
etc

Now each, more highly paid, sales and management member has to do these things. So every time the main phone line rings, someone has to pick it up. Whomever is sitting closest to the front door ends up with every visitor and delivery person stopping by their desk, looking for help. Everyone has to occasionally figure out how to order pens (because no one does it often enough to actually learn it well), etc.

42

Cheapest thing I ever heard of was Radio Shack’s “Golden Quarter”, where they reduced the commissions earned by sales staff from November to January. :rolleyes:

You know, the only time of year that it made* any* sense to work in that shit-hole at all.

Pissed off everyone who worked there, except those pesky part-timers. Not that *I *would have any personal experience ;), but I would guess the ill-will it fostered in the work force cost them far more than they saved by fucking them.

43

Yeah, getting rid of the receptionist/office admin is a good one. If you think they’re not being productive half the time, give them some more responsibilities they can tackle when they’re not answering the phones.

44

When the Great Recession hit our government organization opted to save money by firing nearly every admin and communications person on the payroll (the head honchos got to keep their’s naturally). The logic was that at least we would have the technical staff to do the really important stuff.

Then, of course, we had high paid technicians ordering office supplies and distributing mail. And, did you know that an engineer can graduate with honors without being able to write a coherent sentence?

45

How about a leading tech/industry company continuing to lease under-specced out-of-date laptops (over 5+ years old) to their resource-intensive developers and engineers. The constant attrition of long boots, frequent crashes, poor productivity due to slow machines for people being paid $50/hr and more, while paying over $100/mo lease agreements for workstations, must surely be better than simply refreshing with a new sub-$1000 laptop, eh? :dubious:

46

I once worked for a company that manufactured and installed large ticket items to other businesses. My job at the time was to make sure everything was manufactured, shipped and delivered to site prior to install,
verify 100% of the install team was there the day booked, verify the finished install was 100% satisfactory & to make sure the customer agreed with the bill before we billed them (which then booked the revenue).

One day, a bright & shiny manager called an emergency meeting to tell us all that we were to bill 100% of the project the minute the contract was signed and not after the install,
“…because thats a faster and more efficient way to show revenue.”

When she was done, I voiced a concern that we couldn’t operate that way because it violated GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principals).

“Well, you go study your books some more. We’ll do it this way and WE KNOW what we’re doing.”

And, less than a month later, we had Another emergency meeting.

“Well, our accountants and our lawyers tell us that we can’t book revenue before the install, so we’re going to need to go back to the old way.
Also, on your own time, you’re all going to have to go back and re open all of the projects you closed out, reverse all the entries, and track the parts ordered…” etc, etc, etc.

“Do you mean that they told you that it couldn’t be done because it was against GAAP, Generally Accepted Accounting Principals…?”
“Are you being funny, College Boy!? Get back to Work…!”

47

At my job there is an expectation that we will come in to restore services hosted in the building if there is a major natural disaster. However, the company does not stock emergency supplies for the building because of “budget issues”. So I’m supposed to brave disaster conditions to go to a place that has no food or water? I think not.

48

Classic! I had the misfortune to work a couple places where, “College Boy” was considered an insult. :rolleyes:

49

This is the standard practice for the federal government. It’s politically driven to appease Congressional bean counters in satisfying ignorant voters thinking fewer federal employees means fewer tax dollars being spent, etc. It’s also a windfall for federal contractors. During the Bush II administration my agency was targeted for outsourcing. Two things came out of that time: of those jobs slated for outsourcing, 85 percent were retained (meaning federal employees could do the job better, faster, cheaper) than contractors. Of the fifteen percent that were initially contracted out, all the work eventually came back to the remaining federal employees. Every outsourced contractor failed in their initial contract, either with deliberately under bidding the cost of work to be done (causing cost over-runs) just to win the contract, or outright fraud. When the GAO report came out, the cost of outsourcing federal employees in our agency over five years was pegged at $50 million, but the actual tax savings would only be $40 million. :smack:

With the new Congress and administration, this short-changed thinking is expected to come back in spades. We are already hearing of 3:1 or 4:1 attrition rates where three or four federal employees must leave the job (retirement, death, quit, etc.) before one fed is hired to replace. There are other worse horror stories already in the works by Congress.

In the early 1980s the superintendent of Yellowstone National Park had in excess of $800,000 in cash near the end of the fiscal year. He had to spend it quickly or lose that amount for the following year’s budget. So he bought $800,000 worth of toilet paper. He was roundly laughed at by the higher-ups, and criticized to boot. However, there was plenty of storage space at the old Fort Yellowstone. He justified the purchase because of basic visitor needs. Heard it all directly. I shit you not. Smart move on his part.

50

I was working (as a contractor) at Monsanto in the early 90s before it went into organizational kablooey. They did recognize the business knowledge of their employees - when they offered a generous early retirement deal to cut down on pension costs, they hired 90% of those retirees back as contractors. HQ campus had so many contractors, that they didn’t have labs or offices available for the actual employees.

Of course, when the government cracked down on these shenanigans, the companies that used to be Monsanto got rid of all those contractors, and their knowledge, probably hastening the ultimate doom of Solutia, etc.

51

Well, there is that old joke (?) about the engineers and orange genitalia…

52

A former employer (a subsidiary of a multi-billion dollar aircraft OEM) hired a new General Manager for the helicopter maintenance, repair, and overhaul facility I worked in. Over the course of several months in 2011:

  • He raised the shop labor rate by $30/hr, “to attract a higher caliber of customer”… in an industry where customers will choose another facility for a $5/hr reduction in shop labor rate without even thinking twice.
  • He decided the uniforms (company-issued jeans and T-shirts with the company logo, laundered by the employees) we had been wearing for decades weren’t good enough, and contracted with Cintas for full uniform exchange service.
  • As our workload dropped off and our customer base dried up, he ignored dozens of leads on potential new customers & jobs suggested by our long-time employees, who each had decades of networking with helicopter owners & operators all over the area.
  • As our workload dropped off and our customer base dried up, he allowed the supply chain manager to spend over $20k on “improvements” to our new-inventory storage, by taking away our customer-parts storage mezzanine AND taking 10% of our hangar floor space for another parts cage.

At the beginning of 2012 he left unexpectedly, in the midst of our 3rd reworking of the hangar floor layout (that he directed), but told us that the “mother ship” had high hopes for our facility’s future.
The facility was shut down June 30, 2012, due to no revenue; the hangar had been empty for nearly 3 months.

53

Company based in the Midwest US, farmed out a bunch of report development tasks to a shop in India. Not only did our hours of operation not coincide with theirs, our developers weren’t allowed to communicate with their developers (not a language issue - the US team included native speakers of several languages of the Indian subcontinent, and English is a popular second language among tech professionals throughout India). Trivial requests and fixes that could have been addressed with a phone call or email between developers turned into multi-day exercises in frustration as they made their way up and back down the respective chains of command.

54

Not sure if it was penny pinching or “save the earth” bullshit, but last year all the shredded cheese packaging got smaller. Only now, I the opening in the bag isn’t big enough to reach in to extract the cheese so I have to cut open the other, longer side of the bag to get my hand in, and as a result use another, larger ziploc bag to put the first bag in to seal so it doesn’t go bad.

55

The company I worked for decided to “save money” by doing away with its entire Research and Development group. It saved money in the short term…and annihilated the company’s future. They realized their blunder a year later, and re-constituted the group, including some of the same personnel they’d laid off.

The same company out-sourced their entire IT department to an HR management firm. It was a disaster, and they had to bring us all back in again. We’d gotten raises in the interim, and the company tried to take those away from us. We made it very clear that wasn’t going to fly. Upshot, we benefited, and the company ate the extra costs.

56

Maybe an attempt to hide the reduction of cheese.

57

Imagine having the choice of:
a - MS DOS (straight)
or
b - MS DOS + Windows

One uses line commands, the other has a GUI and raises productivity a factor of 50. Not 50%, 50 TIMES.

That was exactly the same comparison in the mainframe world in 1981 when I was assigned to Wells Fargo to bail out a person placed there.
The actual situation, for those with memories of mainframe: they bought TSO (which was a real resource pig) but did not buy SPF (later called ISPF).

They had 100’s of very expensive programmers trying to develop serious systems using a damn line command interface. They wasted millions paying for not paying thousands.

Bechtel (world-class engineering and construction company) wanted a new system. They hired Author Anderson to build it.
This was the infamous CFIS project.
For reasons unknown, the thing was to have two components:

  1. the normal COBOL batch and CICS system. It could not do ANY I/O or CICS system. For those functions, they were required to use
  2. “Framework” - a system to do all the actual file and terminal access. It was written in PL/I. There is a reason why PL/I never became used.

IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO CALL PL/I FROM COBOL AND RETURN TO COBOL

They didn’t know this and did not find out until 3 years of $125/hr Arthur Anderson “Senior Consultants” - who were 24 years old.
The “AA Children” were famous for f*ck-ups

Apparently AA had convinced Bechtel that FRAMEWORK would be so useful they could package it and sell it. That was the scuttlebutt at the place.

The rest of the story is incomprehensible to all but ancient techies: the only way to get the COBOL-to-PL/I call to work was to hard link every compile. Since both the applications and Framework were being developed simultaneously, the compile/link business became critical.
I put up some ISPF screens to submit 10 complies at a time.
Even with that tool, it took 3 of use 8 solid hours to recompile/link the system.
And it still didn’t work.

Due to a fantastic revenge-against-former-employer, an “outside recommendation” report said “You’re Screwed for trying to build this thing”, all 30+ of use from one contract house were terminated en masse. I never did hear what became of that mess.

One thing about being an expensive contractor: you don’t see good projects - you see the messes that are 6 months behind schedule and grossly over budget. When a VP’s ass is on the line, the money for hired guns is found somewhere…

58

In the mid-90s the privately-held manufacturer I worked for didn’t use email yet. There was a monthly lunch meeting of 5 department heads and the Veep (owner’s son, permanent Veep) and I was too busy one day to call each one for their lunch order, so I faxed the menu to them and they faxed it back w/ their choice circled.
The company accountant (owner’s daughter) saw it on the fax machine later, asked me about it and when I explained what it was she flipped her nut b/c didn’t I know that EACH FAX COSTS 25 CENTS?
Nevermind what it cost the company for each of the department heads to talk to me on the phone for 5 minutes and for me to be away from entering orders for the product we made; I was never to fax within the company again. Everyone around glared at me b/c it was always impressed on us that since there was profit-sharing that meant loss-sharing as well. Like I took a quarter out of each of their pockets!

59

WHile I have similar stories, none of them come to mind that are any better than what I’ve read.

In case you don’t know. THe reasoning to reduce stupid costs like this isn’t to save the company money. Its to make current management look like they are doing something like saving money. They get promoted or take a new job based on the fact that they cut costs so well. The next administration has to deal with the fallout. Doesn’t matter that it ruined the company, the cost cutting boss has moved on in a successful career.

60

This is real low-rent compared to ALL the other stories in this thread, but maybe there’s a point here :dubious: :

I was a manager for a Mom-and-Pop video store back when “E.T.” came out on VHS (quiet, peanut gallery). Pepsi had a promotional tie-in if you bought a copy of the movie: a 2-liter bottle of Pepsi (probably sold at deep discount), and (I think) a box of microwave popcorn. Plus, “E.T.” was being sold A LOT cheaper than any other video at the time. And, the Pepsi supplier for the area would truck it in and set up the display with whatever other materials the video supplier sent the store. The Boss figured To Hell, with that, he went down to the convenience store at the end of the shopping center and bought a few dozen 2-liters of Pepsi, set them up in the store (no promo display, just stacked by the check-out) and even charged the same price as the convenience store (figuring people would pay the same price rather than walk down to the store?). I’m not sure if he ate those 2-liters, but he didn’t sell any and didn’t sell ANY copies of “E.T.,” either. Word got around like you wouldn’t believe back then: there was a network of locals who would call each other and every video store in the area every Wednesday (when new releases came in), and I know they got the word out. They told me so :).

Two or three days before the Pepsi promo deal was finished, what do you think showed up at the store? Yes, the Boss ordered the “E.T.” display, the soda pop and popcorn, had the guy drop off the goods and set 'em up, nice display. Which the video distributor was not going to supply with cheap copies of the tape anymore. So TB paid full price to keep the display looking good. And still didn’t sell any tapes or pop or popcorn.

You should have seen the size of his desk.

(He had married into money.)