conflicted

My previous employer that put me in lurch, is having a bad run of luck (honestly, although it put me in a really bad way, I am glad I am gone).

MILLIONS in inventory they can't move, just shuttered the new facility because of no work and I just word that if nothing changes in 6 months more cuts may be coming.

I feel bad for the people I worked with but vindicated that the former boss (guy who hired me, no ill will toward him, good, honest and straight up), his oldest son (who fired me, rich entitled brat with little work experience, less intellect, an MBA, and a chip on his shoulder) and his youngest son (I probably would have gotten fired for kicking his ass. Even a more entitled brat with no real work experience, no education, dumber than his brother and an even bigger chip on his shoulder) are running the company in the ground.

It has already cost ~25 people thier jobs.

I feel Karma is kicking them in the feels for treating everyone like E36 M3 but the staff is paying for it in the un-employment line.

So I am happy and sad.

It's too bad that the joke's on everyone but the people responsible...top-level management is always among the last to lose their jobs in hard times (even ones they made themselves, as in this case), and they're the people who need those jobs the least.

I wish I could say the same thing about my former employer, Wal-Marx. I know it would cost quite a few decent people needed jobs, but would love to see that empire burn to the berkeleying ground.

It's been my experience that that's the way it works, the ones who wind up suffering are rarely the ones at fault. Hopefully this situation causes the two children to be pulled off of dad's teat so life can fully put foot to ass. Sounds like they need it.

The_Jed wrote: Hopefully this situation causes the two children to be pulled off of dad's teat so life can fully put foot to ass. Sounds like they need it.

I couldn't have said it better.

Thanks Obama.

This post was meant in a light-hearted non-political satirical manner

PHeller wrote: Thanks Obama. *This post was meant in a light-hearted non-political satirical manner*

Oh no, they supported Vitter and Jindal, so yeah, it's REALLY funny right now.

if they cant see that they're berkeleying themselves then they probably deserve it.

that's funny Idar.. I actually had a boss who was the real life "pointy haired boss" right down to his looks.

Dilbert became a real life for me..

Sadly though, I have seen more than one company run into the ground by the children of the founder. Dad builds the business up from nothing, everyone lives it and him, and after years at the helm, retires.

Kids come in thinking they "know better" and promptly destroy the company in search of more profits at the expense of quality, customer care, and employees. When it all falls down around their ears.. it is everyone's fault but their own

at different times in their lives, both of my parents lost their jobs due to mismanagement. Not as in management firing them and other good employees, but the whole place closing down. That was all pre-recession, too!

The oldest son had some really good ideas, but he didn't take care of his people or the buisness. If you didn't do it his way, he would undermine you and threatened your job.

Well doing it his was is fine, but the issue is he wouldn't tell you what that way was till after everything was done.

Everyone ended up not doing anything because they were scared for their jobs. I kept doing what I knew was right and refused to point fingers and play the blame game.

The lack of blame game got me canned.

Sadly I watched multiple rounds of layoffs at a gigantic mega conglomerate. Each time the people at the top all just played musical chairs while the people at the bottom paid for the songs. And so the newly re-homed upper management would make new exciting five year plan powerpoint slides to show everyone how they would get it right THIS time. New peons would be hired and some of the old peons would be allowed to re-apply for the new openings (which would always be for a different job title while somehow being the EXACT same job, thus making sure the newly rehired peon would again start at the bottom rung). Much fanfare would be made, new internal slogans would be printed on coffee mugs and mousepads. Maybe there would be a "team building event" for the survivors (hey we know we just canned 80 of your coworkers that you've worked with for a decade, but let's go bowling!). I wish I was making this stuff up...

It's part of the reason I don't have much sympathy for big business or high earners running those companies. Low taxes and no regulation just cover up inefficiencies and shifts costs (while too much obviously creates more).

We should reward those companies and earners who keep good jobs here in the USA. Tax huge non-profits and give tax breaks to companies with leadership who work alongside the peons. Obviously a difficult thing to measure, but I hate seeing the demise of small business where the owners knows all his employees and works in an office down the hall while corporate conglomerates exploit every tax loophole and outsourcing possible.

The rise and fall of enterprise! One of my fun studies. I love to tell the tail of a man who built a 1.45 BILLION dollar business (annual sales) from a $1600 initial investment. One day he realized "I'm richer than hell and am going to turn the running of my business over to these business guys" Well, the bean counters took hold and made a lot of changes because they knew better. Reduced product quality, increased product price, cut back on training, well paid, productive employees suffered pay cuts or stagnate pay if they were not outright fired, benefits cut, packaging cheapness resulted in damaged product returns and the new directors raised their own pay based on false profit indicators. When you get a blank stare back from a Vice President of a corporation because he does not understand that 5% of 10,000 is better than 7% of 5,000 you know the end is near.

Bruce

In reply to PHeller:

In reply to PHeller:

I think some of the saving grace there is the larger corporations often don't offer the same quality of service, or in some cases the same pricing. My dad owns a small business (appliance repair), meaning just him and my mom, no employees, and the low overhead they maintain allows them to charge far less while still making a decent profit. That only works for a few select industries, but it does for him. He charges half -not joking, actually half- of what Sears charges (or whomever they outsource their service to). Some of his calls are finished (like, show up, diagnose, order parts, fix problem) for the same price the other charges just to show up. The larger corporations don't pay well enough to get the guy with 40 years experience, and they charge too much for repeat customers. They have to pay upper management, the parent corporation etc... (all of whom are irrelevant in that industry) while the service guy who did the work makes peanuts, resulting in rapid turnover and inexperienced service people. Any repeat customers don't build a relationship with the repair guy, since it's a different guy every time. The people at the top making the decisions probably can't change a tire, much less rebuild an appliance. Fortunately it doesn't make sense for the larger corporations to really try to compete in that segment. Any larger size would result in too much overhead to be profitable.

I have said for years that I have learned more about business from reading Dilbert than from school for my degree in Business.

None of this is particularly new. The rise and fall of family owned businesses nor is the OP's ambivalence about his former employer. This has happened millions of times in human history and will happen

I think a root cause of much the mismanagement that happens in many organizations is misunderstanding the difference between leadership and management. Management is the art and science of bringing people and resources together to get things done. Leadership is the ability to raise, maintain and focus peoples energy.

They are two separate skills and yet people, particularly people in charge, routinely confuse one with the other. Good managers plan and organize well. Good leaders inspire people to go above and beyond. It is the difference between lighting a fire under people vs lighting fire in people. We have all worked for people who were good at one and not the other. In the motorsports realm, Roger Penske and Chip Ganassi got where they are by being good managers and outstanding leaders.

I guess where I am going with this is that business schools and MBA programs teach management. Human motivation is a messy intangible thing that doesn't lend itself to mathematical analysis easily. So it gets ignored regularly.

Dr. Hess wrote: I have said for years that I have learned more about business from reading Dilbert than from school for my degree in Business.

Dilbert got WAY funnier when I started at a gigantic mega conglomerate, then I realized how sadly accurate Dilbert was the longer I was there.

In reply to Type Q:

From my experience the other underlying cause is arrogance, particularly when there has been a change in leadership. Every acquiring company is confident they can do a better job than the acquired company, every new owner/president/executive team expects to do better than the last - and in many cases they're required to do so - by stockholders, upper management, whoever has rank on them. Unfortunately there are very few times it actually works out.

In reply to Rufledt:

Why charge half? Why not charge 20-25% less? He would still have all those customers he's saving money for?

The Profit is one of my favorite shows and I idolize Marcus Lemonis, because he talks about the importance of people, product, and processes. When ever he goes to a business where the owner/president/executive team is arrogant he slaps them into reality, some of which listen and some that do not. Those that do no listen, look incredibly stupid on TV.

Datsun310Guy wrote: In reply to Rufledt: Why charge half? Why not charge 20-25% less? He would still have all those customers he's saving money for?

He's worked hard in recent years to reduce overhead so profits have been soaring. Plus he may undercut the Sears guys by half, but there are other people around. He wants to stay competitive against them, too. Besides, they are comfortable with their current lifestyle that is easily supported by the business, no need to keep buying expensive luxury stuff they don't need, spending money they may need later. Happy customers keep coming back and referring others. Lots of reasons to keep prices very reasonable.

One thing he taught me was if the only reason to crank up the price was "because I can", don't do it. "Because overhead went up" is a good reason like when gas went through the roof, "because new services/equipment are required" is another, even "inflation" is fine, but not just because i can. It may not make for the most profitable business and it may not be very 'capitalist' of him, but he doesn't give a e36m3.

If everybody starts cranking prices for no reason, the whole industry prices itself out of the market. If someone keeps prices reasonable and can still offer quality service, that business wins. Less profit per call, but more calls. Like someone said earlier, %5 of 10k is a lot better than 7% of 5k.

In reply to Flight Service:

It's selfish, but be grateful you got out when you did. There's a big amount of shaedenfreude that comes upon loathesome people fail.

I was a retail rat for too long. Watched a solid regional company (MVP Sports out of MA) get bought out by a massive international corporation (Decathlon out of France). We told them all along that what they were doing was insane and the response was "it works all over the rest of the world, why wouldn't it work here?" The ran the company into the ground in 5 years. We were right in the end. Pyrrhic victory.

Later on, I was a bike tech at Dick's Sporting Goods. They went to the model of "pay nothing and micromanage in order to make sure things get done"--i.e. tormenting people barely making a living wage (granted, I was brought on with maxed-out pay by some former Decathlon people in order to save their bike dept).

Three store managers (in three years) later, I walked off the job (first time I ever did this). Buried my department right before Christmas and cost them a fortune in lost sales. The store manager I walked out on quit, hours before getting word he was getting canned, after having an in-store HR rep because of all of the complaints against them.

I honestly don't know how they're going to stay afloat. Whenever I go into the local store, it's empty and there are maybe 2 employees on the floor. If they can't afford to staff the place, the writing has to be on the wall. I'd LOVE to see them go under and have the mom and pop places absorb the business.