# What's the lamest/most miserly way you've seen a business try to save a buck?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-lamest-most-miserly-way-youve-seen-a-business-try-to-save-a-buck/424254
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [October 27, 2007, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-lamest-most-miserly-way-youve-seen-a-business-try-to-save-a-buck/424254 "2007-10-27T19:26:21Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@TLDRIDKJKLOLFTW](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TLDRIDKJKLOLFTW)
#### Post date: [October 27, 2007, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-lamest-most-miserly-way-youve-seen-a-business-try-to-save-a-buck/424254/1 "2007-10-27T19:26:21Z")
I went to a Thai place the other night that had no hot water in the bathroom - when you turned the hot water knob on the faucet, _nothing came out_ - only the cold knob worked, spewing ice cold water for hand-washing. **Classy**.
It struck me as such a nearsighted and miserly way to try to save money; if you’ve got a restaurant full of people on a weeknight, you’re clearly doing all right. Is disabling the hot water in the bathroom really going to save you that much money over the course of a month? Sure, you may have trimmed eight bucks off of your water bill, but the giant middle finger to me, the customer, really soured me on the experience. You’ve lost infinitely more in respect and effect than you’ve saved.
What are things like this that you’ve encountered? I’m immediately reminded of places I’ve been to that ration napkins like they’re made out of gold.
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### Author:  [@Garfield226](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Garfield226)
#### Post date: [October 27, 2007, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-lamest-most-miserly-way-youve-seen-a-business-try-to-save-a-buck/424254/2 "2007-10-27T19:37:16Z")
It’s interesting you would assume first that the restaurant is trying to screw you over to save money, rather than that they, say, had a plumbing problem.
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### Author:  [@TLDRIDKJKLOLFTW](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TLDRIDKJKLOLFTW)
#### Post date: [October 27, 2007, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-lamest-most-miserly-way-youve-seen-a-business-try-to-save-a-buck/424254/3 "2007-10-27T19:47:56Z")
[QUOTE=Garfield226]
It’s interesting you would assume first that the restaurant is trying to screw you over to save money, rather than that they, say, had a plumbing problem.
[/QUOTE]
I would hope that a plumbing problem of that caliber would result in the restaurant not being open for business. :eek: I mean, employees not being able to wash their hands before preparing food… ☹
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### Author:  [@Incubus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Incubus)
#### Post date: [October 27, 2007, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-lamest-most-miserly-way-youve-seen-a-business-try-to-save-a-buck/424254/4 "2007-10-27T19:54:48Z")
If the cold knob worked, there’s no reason people can’t wash their hands. Is cold water seriously that bad? I never really cared. Its not like you’re taking a little shower in the sink or anything.
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### Author:  [@qubed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/qubed)
#### Post date: [October 27, 2007, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-lamest-most-miserly-way-youve-seen-a-business-try-to-save-a-buck/424254/5 "2007-10-27T19:57:31Z")
[QUOTE=Incubus]
If the cold knob worked, there’s no reason people can’t wash their hands. Is cold water seriously that bad? I never really cared. Its not like you’re taking a little shower in the sink or anything.
[/QUOTE]
I think that’s cause you live in San Jose. Here in the bay area, i’m very indifferent to the temperature of the water coming out the faucet.
But when i lived in colder climates, cold water coming out of the faucet sucks during fall & winter.
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### Author:  [@Auntbeast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Auntbeast)
#### Post date: [October 27, 2007, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-lamest-most-miserly-way-youve-seen-a-business-try-to-save-a-buck/424254/6 "2007-10-27T20:08:17Z")
I know a card room that purchased the cheapest plastic cards available. Now in poker, you don’t switch the decks often, so the quality of the cards is important. By the end of the first week, the cards were warping. By the second week, the ink was beginning to come off, the third week, you couldn’t tell if a card was marked or not because they were all so shoddy. Now? Whole decks can’t be replaced because we’ve gone through all the back up decks, only individual cards.
We’ve replaced the decks maybe 5 times in 3 years, each time with progressively cheaper cards. Some of them have swelled so much they won’t fit in the well. Some are warped so much that you can almost read the card with it being face down on the table.
A good deck should cost around $30. Granted, replacing 100 decks of cards plus extras is a big expense, but it is a CARD ROOM. In less than 30 minutes, a table could feasibly make enough to replace both decks.
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### Author:  [@Cyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cyn)
#### Post date: [October 27, 2007, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-lamest-most-miserly-way-youve-seen-a-business-try-to-save-a-buck/424254/7 "2007-10-27T20:09:19Z")
Way back when, I worked housekeeping for a small resort hotel. The owner, Mike, would go into each room personally when a guest checked out and tell us what special needs that room had: the bathroom trash only had a few tissues in it, so don’t change that liner—just fish out the used tissues. The mini-fridge appeared untouched, so don’t bother to clean it. Don’t vacuum–the carpet looked fine. He must have saved pennies on each room!
My sister-in-law and I moved to a little bigger hotel the next season to work and I was amazed that I was daily finding money in the rooms. SIL shook her head at my amazement—didn’t I realize Mike was stealing our tips?
I always tip housekeeping when I travel and I try to \*hand \* it to them with a “Thank You”.
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### Author:  [@Cub\_Mistress](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cub_Mistress)
#### Post date: [October 27, 2007, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-lamest-most-miserly-way-youve-seen-a-business-try-to-save-a-buck/424254/8 "2007-10-27T20:16:17Z")
Several years ago, a doctor had to call a bigger medical center and make an appointment for my husband to be seen there. When we got our phone bill a couple of weeks later, we found that he had charged the long distance call to our home phone bill. I thought that was crazy cheap of him.
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### Author:  [@Millit\_the\_Frail](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Millit_the_Frail)
#### Post date: [October 27, 2007, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-lamest-most-miserly-way-youve-seen-a-business-try-to-save-a-buck/424254/9 "2007-10-27T20:20:20Z")
Not a business, in that sense, but…the crappy, ghetto CUNY school where I’m taking night classes seems to have disabled the hot water in most of the bathrooms.
They also don’t provide disposable gloves for their lab classes. I had to bring my own latex gloves to every Microbiology, Anatomy, and Organic Chemistry lab. So far I’ve handled E. coli/Staph/Strep/etc, dissected a fetal pig, and messed around with several acids and known carcinogens. And they don’t provide soap in the lab sinks either. Sometimes no paper towel Maybe this is standard practice, but it wasn’t this way at my college.
I won’t even get in to how old/falling apart/carefully rationed the lab materials are.
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### Author:  [@Merkwurdigliebe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merkwurdigliebe)
#### Post date: [October 27, 2007, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-lamest-most-miserly-way-youve-seen-a-business-try-to-save-a-buck/424254/10 "2007-10-27T20:29:56Z")
[QUOTE=Millit the Frail]
Not a business, in that sense, but…the crappy, ghetto CUNY school where I’m taking night classes seems to have disabled the hot water in most of the bathrooms.
They also don’t provide disposable gloves for their lab classes. I had to bring my own latex gloves to every Microbiology, Anatomy, and Organic Chemistry lab. So far I’ve handled E. coli/Staph/Strep/etc, dissected a fetal pig, and messed around with several acids and known carcinogens. And they don’t provide soap in the lab sinks either. Sometimes no paper towel Maybe this is standard practice, but it wasn’t this way at my college.
I won’t even get in to how old/falling apart/carefully rationed the lab materials are.
[/QUOTE]
Haha, I imagine you’re alluding to BC?
Lemme guess, you’re talking about Ingersoll? 😃
But for me, it has to be BoA (Bank of America)
I went to one of their ATMs and I was appalled. I had just taken out 800 dollars and paid it twice. I then proceed to the teller and ask for hundreds and they tell me I can’t because I’m not a BoA customer. I told them I had just paid 6 bucks in ATM fees to get it, and that I deserve a bit of respect. They said no. I wanted to punch those assholes through the \*$(@ing teller window glass.
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### Author:  [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)
#### Post date: [October 27, 2007, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-lamest-most-miserly-way-youve-seen-a-business-try-to-save-a-buck/424254/11 "2007-10-27T20:37:37Z")
[QUOTE=VCO3]
I would hope that a plumbing problem of that caliber would result in the restaurant not being open for business. :eek: I mean, employees not being able to wash their hands before preparing food… ☹
[/QUOTE]
Perhaps they just wash thier hands when they get back to the kitchen.
Here’s the WORST one I’ve ever heard. A friend of mine had a son that had both lukemia and prostate cancer at a very very very young age (like 3 years old). They got it all cleared up over a few years and he’s been in remission for quite some time now. When you’re in remission you still have a lot of testing, I don’t know how often it is, but he was back at the hospital for tests several times a month for the first year and then it tapers of. After being in remission for a few years, the mom got a call from her insurance company asking if they could maybe cut some corners on all this testing since it’s so expensive. After she stopped lauging she said no. I mentioned to her that if they ask again, ask them to look at all the hospital bills, he spent quite a bit of his life in and out of the hospital his first few years. I beleive at one point she told me it was something like $5000 day, just for the room, then the drugs and therapy and tests on top of that. Anyways, I told her she should tell the insurance company to take a look at how expensive _that_ was and ask them if their willing to risk his cancer coming back because they wanted to cut some corners on the tests.
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### Author:  [@SnakesCatLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SnakesCatLady)
#### Post date: [October 27, 2007, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-lamest-most-miserly-way-youve-seen-a-business-try-to-save-a-buck/424254/12 "2007-10-27T21:02:52Z")
The restrooms (at least the ladies) here are crazy cheap. They have the automatic faucets (with cold water, of course) but they only work when they are in the mood. So you have a bunch of women waving their hands under the faucets to get them to start. Then they move their hands to get soap, and the water stops. About a third of the time the water won’t come back on, so you have to move to another faucet at the trough (no individual sinks) to try to get a faucet to come on so you can rinse your hands.
A hot dog and large soda here is $8. You’d think they could at least have lukewarm water.
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### Author:  [@Susie\_Derkins](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Susie_Derkins)
#### Post date: [October 27, 2007, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-lamest-most-miserly-way-youve-seen-a-business-try-to-save-a-buck/424254/13 "2007-10-27T21:15:03Z")
My aunt used to own a small motel on the beach in Destin, FL. She used Wal-Mart bags to line the trash cans, and she would only replace them if they were too nasty to just empty out. She charged between $75-150 per night, depending on the season.
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### Author:  [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)
#### Post date: [October 27, 2007, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-lamest-most-miserly-way-youve-seen-a-business-try-to-save-a-buck/424254/14 "2007-10-27T21:31:42Z")
The community college where I work makes students pay for the Scantrons they use for tests. 20 cents, I think, for a small piece of paper.
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### Author:  [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)
#### Post date: [October 27, 2007, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-lamest-most-miserly-way-youve-seen-a-business-try-to-save-a-buck/424254/15 "2007-10-27T21:57:54Z")
I once temped for a company that paid employees 17 cents a mile for travel in their own cars, when the IRS rate was 31 cents a mile. I wonder where that extra 14 cents a mile was going?
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### Author:  [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)
#### Post date: [October 27, 2007, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-lamest-most-miserly-way-youve-seen-a-business-try-to-save-a-buck/424254/16 "2007-10-27T22:14:36Z")
I worked in a gorgeous New Orleans mansion/hotel in college. Everything looked great on the surface but we cut corners a lot. The two egregious examples of saving money were that there were no TV’s in any of the rooms. We were trained to say that the ambiance and period feel of the hotel would be diminished by the addition of TV’s in individual rooms. There was one TV in a side room downstairs however but there were no seats in it on purpose.
The other one was worse. There was no air-conditioning in the kitchen. Keep in mind this is New Orleans and we had to wear a full tux even during the summer. I collapsed from heat exhaustion twice as the kitchen temperature rose to 130 F and the outside wasn’t cool either. I had to be packed in ice and sit in front of an air conditioner for an hour to get better during some major events. The actual kitchen staff just shedded clothes as the day went on until some of them were practically naked. We didn’t want guests to see that so we were careful how we opened the kitchen doors.
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### Author:  [@Prosecutrix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Prosecutrix)
#### Post date: [October 27, 2007, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-lamest-most-miserly-way-youve-seen-a-business-try-to-save-a-buck/424254/17 "2007-10-27T22:21:03Z")
Here’s something annoying…paying a fee to pay your bill over the phone. It’s not late and you are trying to actually give the company the money owed and they want to charge you to do so. It doesn’t matter that they are charged, I think it’s highway robbery!
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### Author:  [@Enderw24](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enderw24)
#### Post date: [October 27, 2007, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-lamest-most-miserly-way-youve-seen-a-business-try-to-save-a-buck/424254/18 "2007-10-27T22:28:15Z")
[QUOTE=Joey P]
Anyways, I told her she should tell the insurance company to take a look at how expensive _that_ was and ask them if their willing to risk his cancer coming back because they wanted to cut some corners on the tests.
[/QUOTE]
Yes. Yes they are.
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### Author:  [@ivylass](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivylass)
#### Post date: [October 27, 2007, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-lamest-most-miserly-way-youve-seen-a-business-try-to-save-a-buck/424254/19 "2007-10-27T22:52:15Z")
[QUOTE=Prosecutrix]
Here’s something annoying…paying a fee to pay your bill over the phone. It’s not late and you are trying to actually give the company the money owed and they want to charge you to do so. It doesn’t matter that they are charged, I think it’s highway robbery!
[/QUOTE]
Why don’t you set up online bill pay through your bank? Most banks don’t charge for the service.
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### Author:  [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)
#### Post date: [October 27, 2007, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-lamest-most-miserly-way-youve-seen-a-business-try-to-save-a-buck/424254/20 "2007-10-27T23:18:14Z")
Working as an underling in a reasonably prestigious hotel. While stocking the bar up, I spotted some fruit juices past their sell-by date, by about two years. So I put them to one side, finished up, and left the out-of-date ones in a box in the back room, to deal with later.
Duty manager finds them ten minutes later, erupts with a self-important ‘who the hell is leaving stock lying around like this?’ I explain, and receive a condescending explanation that if I put them at the front of the fridge, they’ll be sold before anybody sees them.
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