What's the lamest/most miserly way you've seen a business try to save a buck?

In My Humble Opinion
41

This is a classic - right out of Dilbert - that happened at a company that I worked at.

When contracts started getting tight, the CEO had the brilliant cost-savings idea of reducing the janitorial cost. So we were informed that the office garbage would only be taken from bins placed in the hallways, and that we were now responsible to dump our own garbage in the bins (like taking your garbage from your apartment to the dumpster).

Well, enough lazy, slovenly people would forget or just not dump their trash…including their lunch garbage. Soon the office space was swarming with these little gnats and fruitflies. It was ridiculous. And had it not been so annoying, it would have been comical.
They never did do away with the bins, but they also had the janitors come through and dump the trash from the offices.

42

At one company I temped for, the owner would not allow the office manager to purchase paper clips or rubber bands. She had to get paper clips from the bank and rubber bands from the post office. We also had to reuse paper, after lining through the wrong side. After both sides had been printed on, I had to go through the used paper and cut out the non-printed on pieces to be used as scratch paper.

At another company, they went through a name change, and then changed it back a couple of months later. A memo went out that the old business cards had to be used up before they would order new ones. They were supposed to line out the old business name and handwrite the new name. Most people “used up” their cards by dumping them in the shredders.

43

[QUOTE=VCO3]
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.
[/QUOTE]

Sounds like they were trying to re-create an actual restaurant in Thailand. Of course, to do the re-creation right, BOTH knobs would not have been working.

44

I was at a small town cafe this summer where one had to go to the cash register and ask for toilet paper if a trip to the restroom was in order.

45

IKEA has stopped helping people out who want to buy a new kitchen with them. A good IKEA kitchen will cost the client about 4000-5000 bucks, and IKEA is too cheap to allow one of the store people to sit down with the client and help him design the kitchen from scratch. Yes, IKEA offers downloadable “planners” . And while most people will be able to use those, there are just so much ergononomic decisions to make. Sure, anyone can throw some cabinets together in the planner and call it a kitchen. And have it built. And have a dysfunctional kitchen for the next five years where you still have to prepare a meal in every day. Just two hours of personal assistance by the sales people, who design kitchens every day, would make all the difference. Every other store offers that. IKEA used to offer that. And now IKEA has discontined the store help to save some bucks.
Also, the telephone menus where you start paying as soon as you hear: “Good morning, this is company X. Please press " one” to start our lenghty telephone menu and still be put on hold after you reach the end of it. On your own dime. "

46

I once worked for a small company that rationed office supplies like they were big ticket items. Stuff like only being allowed to have two pens or pencils and one post-it note pad per month. I once asked for paper clips to keep in my desk. I was given four. There was a stack of used paper next to the printers with a sign above that encouraged us to use reuse them as much as possible when printing inside-use documents. There was one restroom in the whole building for almost 30 people. Besides the logistics issues of managing its use for both sexes –TP was frequently in low supply and some employees actually kept their own TP stash in their desk. Long distance phone calls were heavily scrutinized, mileage was paid well below the IRS rate at the time. Because of major road construction detours, a three mile trip to a major customer suddenly became seven miles, yet the company insisted on still paying for three miles only. The owner’s wife came in frequently to pressure the employees to buy cosmetics from some Avon-like business she was always pumping (“are you sure you don’t want to buy something for your wife? This moisturizing lipstick is really nice.”). I lasted four months at that place.

I’m sure they’ll blame it on the software, but my current company rounds down the fraction of a cent on my weekly paycheck and never adjusts for it on future checks. So my yearly income ends up being $.52 less than my stated salary.

47

Years ago my company was pretty cheap. The supply cupboard was locked at all times. Pens, paper clips, rubber bands and post-pads were like gold. People would hide their staplers as well or they grew legs and walked off in the night.

Most of the time we just bought our own supplies and if you had white out most of it was used to mark your supplies with your initials so if it came up missing you could ninja your stuff back.

I remember once when an entire department was let go and before it could be cleaned out we scavenged through their desks for all the supplies we could carry. I scored a three hole punch, a staple remover and some scissors in the raid.

There were hardly any computers. My boss and I shared an office. We finally got a computer that we had to share. I can not tell you the amount of times that we had to shift our work load so we had equal computer time.

48

[QUOTE=Auntbeast]
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.
[/QUOTE]

Say again? When I was playing at the bridge club, we had clean cards for every table every week, and often evening. A pack of ordinary playing cards is cheap, especially if you buy them by the shedload. And if you’re buying a lot, you can print them with your logo or whatever for some cheap advertising

49

[QUOTE=Siam Sam]
Sounds like they were trying to re-create an actual restaurant in Thailand. Of course, to do the re-creation right, BOTH knobs would not have been working.
[/QUOTE]

Ah, Thailand. Where a “toilet” in an upscale mall consists of a squatting hole in a concrete floor in the middle of a wide-open room. Hope you remembered to buy your five sheets of toilet paper (the transparent kind that disintegrates upon human contact) from the vending machine on the way in, farang. Oh, and pity about the traveler’s diarrhea…

Examples? I have several!

I delivered pizzas for several years in my teens and twenties for a large chain whose name I won’t mention, but it rhymes with “Pizza Hut.” They initially had a nice system of monetary rewards for delivery drivers based on the number of “accident-free hours” worked—starting with $50 or so (IIRC) and gradually working up into the hundreds and even thousands of dollars for the long-timers. After a few years they announced that the reward system was being revised—for example, where a driver might’ve once received $200, the award would now be a special Pizza Hut hat with an embroidered logo. Instead of $1000 cash, now you’d be the proud owner of a very cheap no-name plastic camera. Et cetera. What irritated me wasn’t that they did it—I’d long thought the cash award thing was too good to last—but that it was spun as the company’s response to employee complaints that they wanted awards that were more “visible.” I defied my manager to find, anywhere, a delivery driver who actually said “you know, this $500 is nice, but I’d really rather have a $30 Pizza Hut sweatshirt instead!”

Example #2: I had a horrible short-term temp job with the credit collection department for a large retailer. Almost my entire job consisted of pulling up credit reports on delinquent customers—taking a long list of Social Security Numbers printed from one of their computer systems and manually typing them into another system, which would print out hard copies of the reports. Why they didn’t find a way to interface the two systems, I have no idea; the entire department I worked in seemed to be one simple script away from obsolescence. (Strangely, nobody there really seemed interested when I asked about it.) This was the mid-1990’s and they were using groaning, clattering dot matrix printers that were at least ten years old. When one of them needed its ribbon changed, I asked where I could get a replacement. Oh no, I was told: this had to be authorized. They called a manager (wielding a key to the supply closet) who inspected the faint print on the paper and declared that it wasn’t quite ready to be changed. The policy was that “barely legible” was still good enough—the print head had to literally be making no blemish on the page before it was time for a new cartridge. (Which, of course, meant that one or more reports would need to be reprinted, would be out of order, and would need manual rearranging to be in sequence.)

Example #3: My (now former) employer recently announced, via email, that they were discontinuing the free coffee supplied in the breakroom (which had long been a very cheap nameless brand and one of the last niceties they still provided us) and replacing the equipment with coin-operated coffee machines. The same day, they also announced that the company had exceeded its quarterly profit expectations in stellar fashion, and congratulated us on a job well done.

50

I am a teacher. We got a memo once upon a time that the district had determined that personal electronc items such as “fans, lamps and microwaves” were costing the district up to $50K a year and had to be stopped immediately. Understand, it’s one of the biggest districts in the country. There are over 200 campuses and at least a dozen other office buildings, and a total operating budget of close to 2 Billion. But teachers weren’t suppossed to have lamps in their classroom–that’s just abusing the taxpayer, wanting to have actual light.

We ignored the memo. AFAIK, the entire district ignored it.

51

[QUOTE=Manda JO]
I am a teacher. We got a memo once upon a time that the district had determined that personal electronc items such as “fans, lamps and microwaves” were costing the district up to $50K a year and had to be stopped immediately. Understand, it’s one of the biggest districts in the country. There are over 200 campuses and at least a dozen other office buildings, and a total operating budget of close to 2 Billion. But teachers weren’t suppossed to have lamps in their classroom–that’s just abusing the taxpayer, wanting to have actual light.

We ignored the memo. AFAIK, the entire district ignored it.
[/QUOTE]

Sometimes your local bosses have to do stupid things just to comply with orders from above. They have no real expectations of you complying, of course.

OTOH, my MIL was asked the same thing by her school. Thing was, most teachers were bringing their own AC window units and they were overloading the circuits.

52

Wiki says:

-------QUOTE------------
According to Forbes Magazine, the Redskins are the most valuable sports team in the United States, valued at approximately $1.423 billion, and have been the most valuable sports team in the U.S. for seven years running. They are the wealthiest and most profitable team in the NFL, generating over $300 million in revenue and netting over $100 million annually. They also rank No. 1 in average attendance per game in the NFL and have broken the NFL’s mark for single-season attendance six years in a row.

Owner Dan Snyder had turned them into a billion dollar business. Yet he decided to charge $10 to attend Training Camp (no team in the then ~70 year history of the NFL had ever done so) and $10 to park which may have brought in what $200,000 (see above)? The howls and bad press where resounding and it is a big reason no matter what the team ever does the press reaction is usually negative.

53

[QUOTE=Harriet the Spry]
I nominate hotels that make a huge show of asking you to reuse towels for environmental reasons, when it’s pretty obvious from the rest of their operation what kind of “green” causes they are committed to.
[/QUOTE]
I think this is a great idea. Are the doing it to be green? Or save money. Doesn’t really matter to me.

My Wife and I regularly use an extended stay hotel. We have no need for someone to come in and vacuum, change all the towels and bedding every day. I prefer that they don’t.

It’s not just a waste, it’s intrusive. I can decline of course, but I would still pay for it.

54

[QUOTE=jimmmy]
Wiki says:

-------QUOTE------------
According to Forbes Magazine, the Redskins are the most valuable sports team in the United States, valued at approximately $1.423 billion, and have been the most valuable sports team in the U.S. for seven years running. They are the wealthiest and most profitable team in the NFL, generating over $300 million in revenue and netting over $100 million annually. They also rank No. 1 in average attendance per game in the NFL and have broken the NFL’s mark for single-season attendance six years in a row.

Owner Dan Snyder had turned them into a billion dollar business. Yet he decided to charge $10 to attend Training Camp (no team in the then ~70 year history of the NFL had ever done so) and $10 to park which may have brought in what $200,000 (see above)? The howls and bad press where resounding and it is a big reason no matter what the team ever does the press reaction is usually negative.
[/QUOTE]

Just a little nitpick here, but the Dallas Cowboys have surpassed the Washington Redskins as the richest sports franchise in the world. Cite

55

[QUOTE=Cowboy8467]
Just a little nitpick here, but the Dallas Cowboys have surpassed the Washington Redskins as the richest sports franchise in the world. Cite
[/QUOTE]

Pretty sure that is based on the projections on what the new stadium will be worth - but you can update wiki if you disagree.

56

My first job, in high school, has embittered me for life. I worked at a craft store called Ben Franklin (for those who have not had the pleasure, it’s like a Michael’s or Hobby Lobby, but a bit smaller). I cleaned the place and did odd jobs, including building displays and shelves. Whenever anything required nails, the owner would bring out his coveted coffee can full of used nails. Yes, he pulled nails from other projects and reused them! They were, of course, bent all to hell and back by the time he pried them from the previous shelf or whatever. So, I had to try to hammer them straight, then drive them into whatever I was trying to build.

Now, I never put it on a spreadsheet, but my guess is that, even at minimum wage, the amount he paid me to sit there and hammer the nails straight was more than the cost of a few pounds of nails. Jesus, that guy was a boob.

57

Back in 1991, the Insurance Company I worked for got a new CFO who was decidedly hostile to the company’s employees and decided to make a few changes.

  1. Fees for the company parking ramp would rise from $35 to $85, which was in line with other ramps in the downtown area. He actually used the term “competetive”.
  2. There would be a massive increase in the cost of the company insurance benefits and a severe cut in the benefits. Direct quote: “If our employees were an outside customer, we wouldn’t insure them!” Quite a few married employees were actively looking at switching to their spouses company plans.

I was on the Employee Council at the time. We asked the CFO to come in and explain. He came in swinging and very hostile. When he’d said his peace, not one person in the room had anything to say.

Except me. A lowly Programmer.

  1. The other ramps down town are FOR PROFIT. Raising our parking fees to match theirs sends the message that we are trying to make a profit off of our employee parking. “Competetive” is not a positive term in this context. Given that the employees of suburban companies do not have to pay for parking, this is a very negative message.
  2. You work for Target (another local company), you get a discount at Target. You work for an Airline, you get free (or cheap) flights. We work for an Insurance Company. We expect to have good insurance. What message does it send to our employees, or our potential employees, when we have internal insurance which is so bad that many of our married employees have moved to their spouses insurance carriers? What message does this send to our customers when they are contemplating what their next rate increase might be or whether or not we are competetive with other insurance carriers?

The other members of the employee council were scattering to the winds, terrified that someone dared to argue with the CFO. It was quite humorous.

But I won. I convinced him that he was wrong.

  1. Parking fees went to only $50 per month.
  2. We kept our benefits, without much of an increase in cost.
58

I hate those cones that some places serve fries in.
From above it looks like you have a reasonable portion but in actual fact theres not very much there .
I mean how expensive are potatoes for gods sake.

59

I’ve been through several company bankruptcies.

I usually know when the company is in trouble due to cheap-ass cost-saving accountancy:

  1. Any newspapers delivered to reception are cancelled. Saving: about £1 per working day.
  2. Milk is no longer provided for tea or coffee. Saving: about £4 per working day per 100 staff.
  3. In the final throes, tea and coffee are no longer provided for the staff. Saving: about £5 per working day per 100 staff.

So, that’s about a £10-per-working-day saving, or about £2,500 a year. Well done Mr CFO - that’ll help! Of course, shaving a similar amount off the CEO’s £200,000 p/a salary to prevent the staff getting demoralised, worried, and demotivated, never gets considered.

60

You know those cups a lot of the chain restaurants bring kid’s drinks in? with the plastic snap-on lid and a straw stuck through? The straw is often fairly substantial, as in you could in theory wash/re-use them.

We were eating at a restaurant a few years back, that we’d eaten at numerous times before. Only this time, the drink they brought for one of the kids came with a pre-chewed straw. ICK!!

We sent it back.

Not surprisingly, the restaurant was closed within a month or so. Clearly they were trying to save money any way they could. But reusing a straw???