the mental retardation of a corporate mindset

when i was in college, i tended bar at a wannabe fine dining restaurant. a corporation that owned fifty or so eateries across the country ran it, but that doesn't mean it was part of a themed chain. each restaurant was its own entity, not a series of red lobsters or olive gardens. that said, no individual location was ever allowed to function in a manner that made it unique to its region. in the three years i worked there, i saw five general managers and more manager-managers than i can remember pass through. each story was fairly similar; the place wasn't pulling a profit, so a gm was replaced and given a new strategy with which to grow business. each strategy was handed down from corporate, written by people who lived across the country and who had zero knowledge of the local market. so each gm would arrive with a puffed chest and the idea they should be respected and listened to, and each would leave defeated as the clientele wanted to be cajoled, not bullied, into eating there. no matter how many times the failed pattern repeated itself, corporate still made sure to dictate everything from afar; from how a manager should manage to what the customers should want, edicts were handed down from above. naturally, the only thing corporate actually succeeded in accomplishing was creating a disaffected staff. my personal revenge was to constantly dump full bottles of absolut down the drain; if a manager yelled at me i'd roll my eyes, wait until they turned their back, then pour their attempted profits away. others i worked with quit by simply not showing up; no loyalty to the business was ever nurtured.


one of my best friends manages a movie theater. like a majority of theaters, it is corporate and he is micro-managed from across the country. right now, many braches of the chain are losing money; my friend's location, however, is solvent. such things do not matter to a corporate head. when they make changes, they do so using a sweeping motion, uninterested in nuancing their way across the country. their solution to the overall loss of money was to implement several policies: cut the first showing of the day, effective immediately. cut payroll, by making one person do the work of three. and of course, raise prices. oh, and to go with those changes, naturally, was the new slogan: "our focus is customer service!" the problem being, of course, that every new policy enacted is in direct contradiction to customer service.

a competing theater chain by my friend's location cut their early show long ago. naturally, senior citizens who enjoy daytime events all flocked to my friend's theater. these would be the same senior citizens who will now be turned away from their weekly routine. by cutting payroll, my friend, who is salaried, has had to pick up the slack. he mentioned having several calls who had been put on hold hanging up because he couldn't get back to them quickly enough; he was trying to sell tickets to a movie starting in five minutes, a movie he needed to get to the projection booth to run. but hey, as those customers were hanging up, $5 an hour was being saved by having a worker cut from the shift! corporate also mandated a nationwide rate at the concession stand, one already gutted of all the specialty sweets the competition didn't carry and replaced with par for the course candy. when challenging the new corporate rate, my friend argued that his market would have a problem with the exceedingly high price. corporate argued back that a flat rate made sense. my friend was furious. naturally a flat rate makes sense on paper, but in reality a two-bedroom apartment in houston doesn't rent for the same rate as a two-bedroom apartment in boise, so why would popcorn in new york city cost the same as popcorn in tulsa? corporate had no answer. but hey, it's for the customer! they should want to pay more! right?


last month, lyds dodged a bullet. fed up with the way corporate new york was running their satellite iowa city business, she up and found a new job. part of her frustration came in the way corporate was panicking this year. for three previous years, the business grew at an amazing rate; every year profits exploded, so at the start of every new year corporate set higher goals to reach. for example, if they demanded "10," the business hit "15." when new york demanded "25," iowa hit "30." until this year.

this year, with the economy slumping, profits slumped, too. the best the iowa satellite was able to do was to near last year's numbers, not grow to new heights. this was a problem for new york, because they wanted to sell the iowa branch and was offering up the business as a profitable powerhouse. so, though in the black, corporate decided to eliminate 20% of the iowa city workforce; lydia's department was decimated. all but four people were outright let go, no notice given. the other four were told they would be training their replacements, people who would be working out of the new marketing department in of all places, new york city. that's right, in an attempt to save money, corporate decided to shut down an already profitable and well oiled machine based in the labor cheap state of iowa, and train a whole new crew based in the ultra expensive location of manhattan. all so several people on top could show better returns and increase stock shares, making the iowa business ripe for sale. never mind the people they put out of work one week before thanksgiving, one month before christmas, and all within the walls of an already profitable company.


these are personal stories and don't even begin to dip into the asshole nature of corporate greed. general motors dismantled its electric car program and destroyed all prototypes years ago; now they beg for billions of dollars in order to restructure its business because they took a hit on gas guzzling hummers this past summer. they beg while flying to and from washington in private jets.

aig received billions and immediately all the top officers ran to a horrifically expensive spa for massages and manicures. before receiving their bailout money, just in case they got shot down they spent the months leading up to asking by securing enormous bonuses for the top dogs.

after 9/11, the airlines were given billions in bailout money, and somehow it all stayed at the top as lower level workers were laid off.

my point, if i have one, is this: write to your senators and congressmen and shout as loud as you can: don't support the corporate mindset. don't bail them out for using backwards thinking that got them into trouble in the first place, let them go bankrupt, because even when they have money, they still don't give a fuck about the workers they claim to be begging on the behalf of. they don't care about workers, and they definitely don't care about customers. they never have, and never will. if they did, they'd understand what a classic song tried to teach the world many years ago: "what might be right for you, may not be right for some."

(sorry, couldn't resist)

regardless, while i may not be a religious person, i do hope there is a special realm of hell reserved specifically for corporate fucks who live their lives off numbers on a piece of paper.

i cross my fingers for it.


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good god, it's great to be white

normally, when you go on the road as a comedian, the comedy club puts you up in a hotel. sometimes, however, you get an apartment rented specifically for traveling comedians.

the problem with staying in an apartment is: when it comes time to check in for a flight and print boarding passes in advance, you're shit out of luck.

most cities have a little business called "kinko's" within their borders, but not all, and ocala florida, if you do a google search, is lacking such an establishment.

just my luck, i happened to be performing in ocala, and had little interest in arriving at the airport early just to check in.

what to do...

what to do?

well, when you're a reasonably normal looking white guy, you just find the nearest hotel, wander into the lobby like you're staying there, walk over to the elevator as if to go to your room, then change your mind and meander back to the front desk and say, "excuse me, i'd like to check in for my flight and print my boarding passes, where's the business center?"

not only will they tell you, they'll give you the access code to the computer.

and they'll do it with a smile.

take that, minorities who receive suspicious eyes whenever you enter a business.

:D



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