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Similar story -- back when I worked at a physical engineering company, one of their cost-cutting methods when things got tight was to cut down the amount of tim

Similar story -- back when I worked at a physical engineering company, one of their cost-cutting methods when things got tight was to cut down the amount of time they ran the A/C during the day. This applied to all floors of the building except the one where the partners' offices were. This led to a number of people routinely using their breaks to take the elevator up to the "partners' floor" and cooling off / airing their sweaty BO for the bosses' benefit.

gav 4y ago
I think that these cost-cutting schemes never really work out, they either cause the best people to leave or trade money for work-done. I worked for a bank where they had terrible coffee on our floor. We used to joke about how bad it was until one day these fancy automatic machines showed up that ground the coffee for each cup, they even had milk! Times were good, we'd walk over to somebody's desk--"I'm running a build, do you want to grab a coffee?"--and we'd chat in the break room about how great these new machines were. Then we had a couple of quarters in a row with bad numbers, cutbacks were being made, if we do this then we don't have to have layoffs, etc. We lost our fancy machines. The impact to morale was huge, we only had had them for a couple of months, taking them away once we got used to them was a huge deal. But more importantly, most people on our floor were now used to drinking partly-decent coffee. A couple times a day we'd go to the nearest coffee shop and buy our own, which involved walking to the elevator, waiting, going 23 floors to the lobby, badging out, walking across the street, getting coffee, walking back, badging in, waiting for the elevator, going up 23 floors, then finally back to your desk. This had to waste at least 20 minutes, more if the elevators were busy.
- greedo 4y ago
  People have a high level of loss aversion.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
7402 4y ago
There are places that do cost-cutting the other way around. I recall from a place a long ago where it was handled by 1) freezing annual raises for everyone, 2) cutting managers' salaries by 5%, 3) cutting executives salaries by 10%. Sometimes that's called, "Leading from the front."

gav 4y ago

I think that these cost-cutting schemes never really work out, they either cause the best people to leave or trade money for work-done. I worked for a bank where they had terrible coffee on our floor. We used to joke about how bad it was until one day these fancy automatic machines showed up that ground the coffee for each cup, they even had milk! Times were good, we'd walk over to somebody's desk--"I'm running a build, do you want to grab a coffee?"--and we'd chat in the break room about how great these new machines were. Then we had a couple of quarters in a row with bad numbers, cutbacks were being made, if we do this then we don't have to have layoffs, etc. We lost our fancy machines. The impact to morale was huge, we only had had them for a couple of months, taking them away once we got used to them was a huge deal. But more importantly, most people on our floor were now used to drinking partly-decent coffee. A couple times a day we'd go to the nearest coffee shop and buy our own, which involved walking to the elevator, waiting, going 23 floors to the lobby, badging out, walking across the street, getting coffee, walking back, badging in, waiting for the elevator, going up 23 floors, then finally back to your desk. This had to waste at least 20 minutes, more if the elevators were busy.

greedo 4y ago
People have a high level of loss aversion.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

7402 4y ago

There are places that do cost-cutting the other way around. I recall from a place a long ago where it was handled by 1) freezing annual raises for everyone, 2) cutting managers' salaries by 5%, 3) cutting executives salaries by 10%. Sometimes that's called, "Leading from the front."