This is the thread to post examples of decisions or behavior that can be said to be “penny wise and pound foolish”. It is okay if they are invented examples, but of course real-life examples are a little more fun.
I can think of a few examples off the top of my head, but I don’t want to start things rolling in any particular direction. I think you get it- let’s see what other people come up with.
Using cheap, single weight motor oil and stretching the change intervals.
Not repairing your bridge, and then one day it collapses, just like all the engineers said it would.
What? Listen to people who use science??
A former landlord of mine said that when the washing machine broke, he could fix it himself using a guide on the Internet and save some money. Two days later there was an entirely disassembled washing machine all over my kitchen, and he was buying a new one at a cost of $450. Could have saved himself $350 by hiring a handyman who actually knew what he was doing.
Waiting and hoping that a medical condition will “get better.” End result, a trip to the emergency room and huge additional expenses.
Also known as “An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure.”
My go-to example is the way the USA and Canada, during the 1990’s when even Grits and Democrats wanted to be seen as cost-cutters, restricted the number of med school residents they would pay to train. There was some unconvincing talk of a coming physician glut, but of course those who’d studied North American health issues knew the real risk was a shortage of general practitioners. That seems penny-wise and pound-foolish to me.
The fact that at time the public were easily distracted by manufactured moral outrage over arguable perjury in a civil case, because while it was OK for the government to fight undeclared wars and cock up the nation’s economy long-term, it was suddenly really important to scold a sitting President for lying about a sexual affair–that’s probably also an example.
A store deciding to save money by making fewer employees work harder, and skimping on their training to boot. Then they wonder why more and more people go to the new business full of more responsive & available employees who know what they are doing.
Back years ago, I temped at a state agency. They had planned to move to a new location that would have saved them $10,000 a year in rent. However, moving costs were $5000, so they stayed where they were.
My boss giving me shit for double-stapling paperwork, but then buying an extra company vehicle that demands an unrealized 10% increase in sales just to cover the extra cost. How’s that?
The company got a new copier/fax/multi-whatever, and insisted I use it for medium sized print jobs to save printing costs (outsourced). So the other day I had to print 2500 copies on 80# gloss, doubled sided. It wouldn’t print the drop shadows on the document, so they had to be removed. The color was crap. I ran thru 4 cartridges, wasted a ream of paper, and finally ended up with the mother of all jams, which meant the copier was not able to be used at all, and we had to call the repair service. I ended up having to send 1000 out to my print house. Not to mention all my time loading and watching the goddamn thing .
When I worked at Safeway and was working overnights managing the stocking crew, there was a bit of a management shake-up and the new middle managers decided that they could increase profits by cutting hours and running stores with minimum personnel.
When I started in that position I had a crew of 4 and the shelves were well-stocked and faced (all product was pulled up to the front of the shelf; it looked great and gave the illusion that every item was fully stocked) every single day. Then they cut the hours and my crew eventually got reduced down to just myself and one guy.
Obviously, you cannot squeeze 40 man-hours into 16, no matter how good your employees are at their job. The only way to even get the nightly order onto the shelf, let alone making it look good, was to put in extra hours, and I ended up working at least 12 hours a day for more than 6 months straight without a single day off. This violated all kinds of union rules, but I was doing what I had to do to do my job. My one guy and I were earning OT for all those extra hours, so ultimately they were getting a significantly lower level of result from 2 guys than they would have gotten out of the original 5-man crew at a normal pay rate.
I even wrote up and submitted an analysis of this to upper management clearly demonstrating that this policy was actually costing them more, but of course this fell on deaf ears, if they even looked at it at all (which I doubt). Eventually I burned out and just stopped showing up. I didn’t feel bad at all; they lost one of the best, most loyal employees that store had ever had, because I can’t imagine anyone else putting up with that shit as long as I did (though the cynic in me has to wonder whether that was the plan all along).
Many years ago, the company I worked for let go their entire Research and Development team.
It saved money in the short term…and destroyed the company’s innovation in the longer term. They had to spend a lot more money recruiting a replacement team, after a five year hiatus.
The same company also did the stupid “outsourcing” deal, where they arranged all employees to be hired by a third-party management company. Again, ultimately, it cost more money than it saved.
At one hospital job where I worked medical/surgical floor: if the census was below a certain level, we had no nursing assistants for that day. Nursing assistants do baths and assisting patients to the bathroom, primarily. When the management disallowed nursing techs for the day, each of the nurses had to work overtime for 1 to 2 hours per shift to give everyone a bath and assist them with toileting. A nursing assistant was paid around $120 a day, total overtime for 4 nurses was $150 for 1 hour each to $300 for 2 hours each.
crazy!
I used to work for a small family-run business. At the advice of their accountant, they could save a lot of money by laying off the three highest-paid employees, including me. They totally ignored the reason why we were the highest paid . . . that we were virtually the “brains” of the company. Of course they didn’t stay in business long.
One that lots of people do, is drive out of their way to save a couple of cents for fuel. Unless you have a a super efficient car, with a large tank it’s generally not worth it. This also doesn’t take into consideration the value of your time.
My dad, bless him, has a bizarre aversion to paying for car parking. I remember our shopping trips were a painful process as he would spend 15 minutes circling residential streets looking for a space to avoid paying 50p in the town car park. (This was back in the 1980s, but even then he must have used far more in petrol than he saved on parking.) And then when he did find a spot we’d have to walk another 10 minutes to get to the shops.
My mother, to her credit, has now finally persuaded him that he can afford to pay for parking. It’s only taken her 40 years of marriage…
My wife and lights. She’s on a holy mission from God to turn off every light she sees, lest it burn the precious electricity. I’ve spent years trying to make her understand that a) lights are there so people can, you know, see and stuff; b) CFLs burn very little electricity, even over the course of a year.
Not content with the outside driveway lights being controlled by the sensor, she kept turning the damned things off every night at the switch. Eventually, one of my kids backed (hard) into the other one’s car because it’s painted black and difficult to see in the dark! (you know, that dark that happens when you turn off the lights).
Total repair cost over a grand, but it’s OK 'cause we saved 3 or 4 dollars over the course of a year.
I finally put my foot down and threatened to rewire all the outside lights if she didn’t stop. I explained to her that when I finished there would be no way to turn them off without climbing a ladder and unscrewing the bulb. This went over exactly like you’d expect, but during that time I learned where all the good porn sites were. :rolleyes:
The classic example is Sam Vimes’ Boots. Sam grew up very, very poor, and when he married into money, he reflected that the poor could only buy the cheapest boots, which would quickly develop holes, while the rich would buy good quality boots, which kept their integrity and didn’t wear out nearly so quickly. In the long run, the rich spent less money per wearing on their boots, and they had dry feet most of the time.
hoarders who keep crap around just because it might come in handy someday.