Business Waste
It’s amazing to me that any business makes a profit. The amount of waste in companies that are supposed driven by the bottom line is incredible. And I’m not talking about high paid CEOs, or marble lobbies, it can be argued that there is a business justification for both. I’m talking about the ridiculous amount that companies pay for some things, and the things that they throw away.
Today I got an email from work regarding my telephone. According to the email, the company will start charging the business units for their telephone, pager, and cell phone usage. Apparently, mine was $57 a month in November. I have only a deck phone, no pager or cell phone. I made no long distance called in November. And I started on the 15th, I’m guessing this is not prorated to the half month. Apparently, they are paying $57 a month for a phone line. I don’t have call waiting, caller ID, or even a speaker phone, but somehow this is $57 a month, how can that be?
Business lines are more expensive than home lines, and this is likely due to heavier usage and a way to subsidize, and keep the price down, of home lines, but $57? My home line is $24 a month with taxes. For $57 a month, I could get a second cell phone and use it for my work line and pocket, or save the company, about $30 a month. Actually, I could do that in theory only, most cell phones do not work in this fallout shelter of a building.
Then there is the waste. I just heard a story about a guy whose company continually throws away perfectly good test equipment while they keep up with the best available. They write it off of their taxes, getting them a pittance of a tax savings, and throw it in the dumpster, literally. If this was $50 office equipment, the waste would be nominal, but this is equipent worth thousands of dollars.
The company I work for pulled parts off the line for engineering samples for testing. These samples are normally used enough that they are no longer new, and cannot be sold as such. Some of these samples are also pre-production, or prototype parts, which could never be sold as new. To prevent the liability of somebody buying one of these parts and, perhaps suing the company for some reason, these parts are sent to a scrap dealer to be recycled as scrap metal. Again, if these were, say, $20 water pumps, that would not be a huge deal, but these are engines that seel for $20,000 to $100,000 each. It’s cliche, but they are sold for scrap at a few pennies to the dollar.
Even if you ignore the cost of throwing these things away, think of the energy, and materials, and the pollution generated to make this garbage. Some waste is innevitable in business, but this waste is part of the companies normal operating procedure. Businesses need to thing outside of the box occasionally an realize that there are other ways to cut costs and waste than eliminating jobs, moving them to cheaper countries, or selling flimsier, cheaper products.
