Greetings,
Possible you have read the story of our Justice department practice of spending our money on 6 dollars cans of soda, 16 dollar muffins, 8 dollar cups of coffee? But our justice department , most likely in an effort to prove it can spend money faster and dumber than any other government department, paid these prices for several hundred persons at each conference. Spending 10's of millions on conferences in 2008, 2009. This way president Bush and Obama get to look bad.
It is possible that the Department of Justice, has continued to waste money, and had done it longer than 2008. Additionally, it is most likely just the story of the day, thus leaving out the other agencies that toss tax dollars away like used Kleenex. Why this blog could focus on wasteful spending, with ease, however....yes there is a "however" The poor choice by Justice in picking the venue that charges 16 dollars a muffin is not the real issue.
How many of you recall, many years ago. the story about the air force coffee maker for several hundred dollars. The head line was infuriating to tax payers. Had the story dug deeper ( it did but that would not have sold papers to tell the whole story ) the coffee maker was designed to go on, than B -52 bombers, which frequently flew days at a time. It had to with stand, combat maneuvers ( that a B-52 ) could make, last under the conditions of those flights, and possible combat missions.
The 16 dollar muffin isn't the issue, the real issue is how does a muffin get to cost 16 dollars.
Beyond the fantastically stupid who will pay 16 dollars because they believe this muffin is made with virgin Tibetan flour and the filtered perspiration of 25 confirmed Saints, and miracle workers the 16 dollars is over head.
Now you or I making a muffin at home, if we include what we paid for material, $1.50 a muffin. Lets not include our time. But in the service industry that muffin cost less....so lets say ingredients cost, cost 75 cents per muffin. Lets give the cook 100 dollars per hour. ( most of them working for hotel or convention center are not making that, but lets make it 100 dollars per hour ) and between pre time and cooking that is one hour. So there is $100 dollars. but a decent cook can make at least 100 if not more muffins in that time, so we have 100 dollars to the cook and 75 dollars in ingredients of $175 dollars for 100 muffins or $ 1.75 cents per muffin to put out there for the idiots from justice. Don't do an ah ha yet.
Hotels have other expenses that come out of the muffin. Setting up the venue,,, the tables and chairs, serving ware. heating and or cooling, water, glass, audio system, cleaning, each item has to take a portion of the expense and be charged to the muffin. But not 10 times the actual cost.
Remember each item is being billed on that conference, and each item, the coffee, the set up, the chair rental, each is taking a piece of the invoice for this conference.
Lets look at what makes everyone involved dumber than the 85 percent dumber than rocks.
The conference room being provided is not "free" beyond the advertising which is free to the hotel by having the Justice department there, we have potential guest of the conference or families using the hotel to stay.
They are charging for the free room by over charging for the services.
The same financial brains who have plunged the world into financial crisis repeatedly over the last 60 years, has come up with ways to over complicate business.
First lets cut to the heart of the matter. The reason that financial people do this, is not to operate more efficiently, they come up with these plans and concepts to justify their jobs. Other wise you wouldn't need so many of these very stupid people making life more complicated than it needs to be.
I say stupid, because they don't even realize the problems they cause, nor do they realize their processes are largely in efficient and costly. Finical people are the worst offenders thinking that the organization must fit them, and not the other way around. For example... General Motors makes cars so the financial department will have something to do. This is how they think, and as a result, make everyone else miserable.
Point two.... while making everyone else miserable the heads of these departments get on their spread sheets and determine. " If we took the profit from this 16 dollar muffin and put it into Apple Computer stock, we could be making 10 percent more money, than if we put the profit back into the company to do our muffin making better, we would only make 6 percent more money"
No I'm not making this up, perhaps exaggerating but this is how they think.
Very few Executives have the brains or courage to remind the Financial executives
" Listen we make and sell muffins, we are not an investment firm, our profits come from muffins not investing in "Apple" or " Face Book"
So the financial department gets what ever it wants, including a less efficient operation over all.
Which leads us back to the 16 dollar muffin. In order to show profits comparable to investing in "Gold Futures" the hotel has to charge 16 dollars for the muffin and 6 dollars for the can of Coke.
While it is true that the Dept of Justice are a group of people worthy of our scorn and contempt, the real bad guys in this are the financials who lie and cheat and have sold there souls to the almighty dollar.
I'm not suggesting losing money, I'm only suggesting that you make money with the business you are in and not worry about how much more you would get if you invested it. Your business...is supposed to be what you enjoy doing your company to make cars, books or muffins. Investing in that to increase your profits. Stop and think when you hear that a given company has lost money this year. More times than not, they didn't actually loss money... they just didn't make as much money as they had projected they would, or as much as they made last year... or as much as they could of had they invested their profits....but they made money.. they paid there salaries and covered there operating cost and the owners and shareholders put some cash in there own pockets... so they made money, just not enough to satisfy the mentally corrupt and defective
And less you feel intimidated by their lofty MBA, or BS, or certificate of finance...if you can balance your check book , they are no smarter than you. They might know more laws than you, but that is doubtful
The 16 dollar muffin is a symptom of a disease called greed and greed equals the 5 percent dumber than the 85 percent dumber than a box of rocks. Now its time for some coffee and my $ 1. 50 muffin
No comments:
Post a Comment