Pretend you’re a business owner. What’s your job? Make money. How do you make money? Spending less than you bring in. The less you spend, the more you make. Duh.
What are your biggest expenditures? Your location, your supplies, and your people. If you go cheap on location, you could lose business. If you go cheap on supplies, you could lose quality, thus losing business. If you go cheap on people…?
We’ve been in a startling financial crisis for too many years, and we’ve found too many things to blame. The war. Wars. All three of them. Bush’s tax cuts for the rich. Obamacare, which didn’t come along until well after. Wall Street. Mortgage lenders. Bad investments. Goldman Sachs. They’re probably all guilty in some way, but there’s one area of blame I haven’t heard from anyone yet. The Bosses.
We have record unemployment. Why? People are being fired. Why? Because the Boss isn’t making enough money? Why not? Not enough people are spending money. Why not? Because we have record unemployment. Why? Sheesh.
Expenditures. A company’s most important expenditure is people. Why? Because we are real. We think, we do, we did, we will be, we can be, and we are.
One day, there was a company somewhere that had about twenty employees. One day, three were out. On that day, the boss saved 15% of what would have normally been paid to those twenty hourly workers, but there was no loss of 15% of production. The boss told the remaining 85% that today’s work must be done, and the rest of the workers were going to have to pitch in and pick up the slack. They did. At the end of the day, 100% was done for only 85% of the pay.
The Boss looked over the days plus/minus and realized it was a good day. He realized it was a day he wanted to have happen again. However, for that to happen again, he needed two things: 1. To fire three people, and 2. To motivate the other seventeen to continue to pitch in and pick up the slack. However, what if they didn’t? He could be in trouble.
He announced to the twenty employees that “times were tough” and he would have to let three people go. He wasn’t sure which three, but he warned them, apologetically, that it would happen. And then he watched. He watched those twenty bust their twenty asses to prove that they should not be one of the three, that they should be one of the seventeen. The twenty worked hard, hard as hell. They distanced themselves from each other. They did extra, asked for more, and smiled through it all. They said, “Yes, Sir,” and “No, Sir.” They spent less time at lunch and worked through breaks, all to be seventeen and not three.
When the Boss decided on who were three, he picked up the phone. He called three people, gave them the bad news from a distance, and told them they could pick up their things on Saturday, when the shop was closed and they wouldn’t have to face the others. The Boss knew it would be a little embarrassing, and he was so kind to spare them.
On Monday, the seventeen had a lot of work to do. The Boss had just gotten 120% of production from the twenty because the twenty were working extra hard to not be the three. Now, there were 85% of the people trying to do 120% of the work. The Boss expected that 120% was now going to be the new 100%, and he expected it to stay that way. And he announced that if it didn’t stay that way, he would find a different seventeen who could make it stay that way.
How did the seventeen did the new 100%? Fear. Fear of being not one of the seventeen.
This is where so many jobs have gone, but nobody wants to talk about that. Is it legal? Of course. Is it right? Depends if you’re one of the three, the seventeen, or the Boss.
Posted by brainsnorts 
