Re: Circuit City's harsh layoffs give glimpse of a new world

On Apr 4, 8:18 pm, c...@xxxxxxxx (Curt Welch) wrote:
Don Foreman <dfore...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Wed, 04 Apr 2007 08:01:08 -0700, Jack jr <jac...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

In article <1175652793.702782.93...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"Too_Many_Tools" <too_many_to...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

There is a lesson here for the workforce of the United States....

SNIP!

Duh, in case you haven't noticed, no business is in business for the
benefit of its employees.

Not quite true. A business must make a profit to stay in business,
but I know of a couple of privately-held corporations that hold
employee welfare as their highest value after making enough profit to
sustain the biz. They nearly always exceed minimum profit
requirements, and they distribute the excess as profit sharing.

Publicly-held businesses can't do this because they are driven by the
greed of the shareholders -- and nowadays by greed of their executive
management as well.

It's good to see companies that can manage to do that. However, they are
the exception, not the rule. If that management style produced to most
successful businesses, then we would see far more of it.

The truth however is that the first priority of all businesses is to stay
in business. Evolution guarantees this to be true. When times are good,
they can then feed the employees a line of shit about how much they care
about them. They can actually make the fools that work for them believe
that it's all about taking care of the employees and even management can at
times get sucked into the idea. But it never lasts. If you are lucky, you
might stay in business 80 years - and a generation of people might spend a
life time being taken care of by the business. But times will change. In
the end, the employees will always be second to survival. When times get
though for the business, and because of the constant change that exists in
the world, times will always get tough at some point, the employees are the
first to be sacrificed.

I just happened to be in Philadelphia this weekend and saw something very
ironic that relates to this. Downtown, as we walked around sight seeing, I
came across a Strawbridge & Clothier store. It had recently been shut down
and the signs taken down, but you could still easily see the shadows of the
letters in the dirt on the walls. In one of the windows, was an award the
store had received (maybe from the city?) for being such a success. It was
a reward for having continually operated at that location for something
like 125 years. So now, the only thing left at that location is the
reward. Everyone lost their jobs. :)

Reading wikipedia, I see it was their flagship store:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strawbridge_and_Clothier

If you work for a company and actually believe they give a shit about you,
are are a fool setting yourself up for a fall.

This tendency by non-managers to blame the managers and the managers to
blame the workers, is both silly and stupid on both ends. It makes for
good comedy but nothing else. People at all levels of a company are just
trying to do their job and save their ass as best as they know how. The
rhetoric that comes out of the board room can be just as stupid as the
rhetoric that comes from the employees at the bottom of the hierarchy -
thought for the most part, the people at the top of the larger corporations
tend to be smarter and better educated than the people at the bottom and
then tend to say fewer stupid things. However, there are always exceptions
at all levels.

It can be fun to look at the actions of management like CC and second guess
what they should have done and make fun at how stupid they are and how they
"don't understand". But unless you have ever been in their position, you
won't get any nods of the head from me.

Either what they have done will work, and management will get to keep their
jobs, or it will fail, and they will all loose their jobs. We don't need
to judge them - the free market will be the final judge - and seldom will
anyone correctly out guess what the judgement of the free market will be.

--
Curt Welch http://CurtWelch.Com/
c...@xxxxxxxx http://NewsReader.Com/- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

thought for the most part, the people at the top of the larger corporations
tend to be smarter and better educated than the people at the bottom and
then tend to say fewer stupid things.

No...they just lie better....

The higher up the ladder they are, the less likely they are honest.

TMT

.

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