Adventures in My Mind

Archives | Mailing List

Mar 29, 2007

Circuit Stupidity

SignOnSanDiego.com -- Circuit City fires 3,400, will hire lower-paid workers

In one of the ballsiest moves EVER, Circuit City announced that it has fired 3,500 of its hourly employees.

Why?

Apparently they are getting paid too much. Que? Retail sales associates who average $10 - $12 an hour are too expensive?

Never fear, though. The generous folks at Circuit City will allow any fired workers to reapply for their jobs, at reduced pay, after a 10 week waiting period. How nice.

The pain, however, doesn't seem to have been spread throughout the orgnization. CEO Phil Schoonover will not be forfeiting any of his $1.9 million pay, $97,000 in expenses, and additional $6.4 million in stock options, thereby showing how tough things are allover. A paltry sum, indeed, compared to that bastard over at Best Buy who pulled in $3.9 mills just in compensation!

There is only one reason for a company to cut large amounts of employees: expense. Labor costs are always the number one cost for any business and downsizing happens all the time. Even euphimistic terms like hiring freezes, buyouts, and early retirements are about reducing the cost of labor on an organization.

Companies just have too many employees sometimes. Very few, however, say that they have too many expensive employees, especially in the pay range that Cicuit City is targeting.

Where's the PR? Where's the spin? Where's the "We're sorry, but ..." Where's the f*****g loyalty? Afterall, these people are so "highly paid" because they've been there the longest and conceivably account for most of the sales, which obviously translates to profits.

Do you think that maybe somebody somewhere in the organization said, "We can't just come out and say that we're firing people because we pay them too much? They'll crucify us!" If someone did, they didn't speak loudly enough.

I mean, just do the math. If every one of those employees and only 2 of their friends or family never shop at Circuity City again, that is 10,500 lost customers. I don't know what the lifetime value of a Circuit City customer is, but I bet that they do. And I don't see how they could've ignored that number multipled by 10,500!

And what of the affect on those not fired? Do these people have any incentive to look at Circuit City as a long-term employment choice? What incentive do they have for doing their jobs well? This move, I hope, could be disasterous for Circuit City.

The last time they schtuped their workforce, by going to hourly instead of commission, they suffered a sales lull they've not fully recovered from yet.

If only Schoonover got paid more. He probably would've come up with a better strategy.

0 Comments | Link to this post   posted by Teddy 11:50 AM

Mar 27, 2007

Tony Snow Has Cancer Again

Bush's spokesman Snow has recurrence of cancer | Reuters

There are volumes that I might write to comment on this story, none of them charitable or sympathetic. In an act of self-restraint, I will not.

Be well, Mr. Snow.

Link

0 Comments | Link to this post   posted by Teddy 10:54 AM

Mar 21, 2007

Blind Loyalty

The president demands loyalty to him, but what about loyalty to us?

The Miami Herald's Leornard Pitts Jr. asks the question that begs to be answered: Where is the loyalty to the American people?

Much the same way it was a fool's game to say that the Clinton White House was the first to peddle influence, it would be even more ridiculous to say that the White House of King George III is the first to award loyalty among its friends. In both cases, however, I think it's fair to say that each took their pillars of political vice quite a bit further than anyone did before them.

With Clinton we saw the renting out of the Lincoln bedroom to the highest bidder. At the time, it was a political scandal. Pols from both side of the aisle were appalled by such behavior.

"How could the august halls of the White House be sold for monetary favors?" they howled. "How have we sunk so low that anyone with enough lucre could sleep within the same walls as the Man Who Saved the Union?" they decried. "How do we gain control of the White House and rent out the Eisenhower bowling alley to the pharma lobbyists bowling league?" they schemed. You see, shame doesn't last long in D.C., especially when donations are involved.

Now we see the same type of never-seen-on-this-scale thing with loyalty in the Bush White House. Clearly every politician from local school board member to the POTUS uses loyalty as a reward for supporters, friends, and contributors. But one must ask if that loyalty has ever come at such a cost to the greater good, i.e., the common people.

Anyone remember good old Brownie, Mike Brown? His name is still, and will forever be, cursed along the Gulf Coast. That single reward of loyal support most certainly cost scores of lives and hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, when his little guerdon, FEMA, failed miserably in its attempts to react to, first, warnings of impending doom at the hands of Hurricane Katrina and ultimately actual doom as the storms impact on Louisiana and Mississippi became evident.

In his article Pitts speaks of Rajiv Chandrasekaran's "Imperial Life in the Emerald City" in talking about how loyalty above all else determined fitness for serving in beaurocratic Iraq:

"People who applied to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority -- the agency governing Iraq -- told Mr. Chandrasekaran, former Baghdad bureau chief for The Washington Post, that they were asked in job interviews about their political party, their opinion of Roe v. Wade, their religious affiliation and whether or not they voted for Bush in 2000."

So the lives of hundreds of thousands of American troops and tens of millions of "free" Iraqis were, and still are, charged to a small cabal of right-leaning elitists who scoff at checks and balances and look to recreate the U.S. as a theocratic oligarchy?

And now we see the same thing playing out in the latest loyalty flap regarding the firing of eight U.S. attorneys for what can only be described as a political reason: to protect Republican interests by padding the Justice Department with Bush lackies and FORs (Friends of Rove). Thanks to a little known and late-added provision in the PATRIOT Act, all eight posts have since been filled without approval of the U.S. Senate.

But here's the best part of this brewing Constitutional powerplay between the Congress and the White House: District of Columbia U.S. Attorney, Jeffrey Taylor, will be the one to determine if the Bush administration is in criminal contempt of congress when they, in all likliehood, ignore upcoming congressional subpeonas for Carl Rove's and former presidential attorney Harriet Miers's sworn testimony.

"And what's the big deal about that?," you ask. Well, Taylor holds his position as a direct result of the PATRIOT Act provision mentioned above. He was appointed by the White House, without Senate approval, after his predecessor was promoted to another job within the DOJ. Sounds like this was the exact event that such a provision was created for.

I may be cynical, but even my active imagination has a difficult time envisioning Mr. Taylor recommending criminal charges in the matter. How about you?

Labels: Politics

0 Comments | Link to this post   posted by Teddy 2:06 PM

Mar 19, 2007

Vote Different in '08

Actually, don't wait that long. If you are a registered Democrat, please participate in your states primary or caucus and help make a change.

Also, please donate to my Obama 08 fundraising efforts.

Thanks.

0 Comments | Link to this post   posted by Teddy 12:30 PM

Mar 14, 2007

Hooray for Jesus! Hooray for Jesus!

Jesus-Loving Americans Totally Ignorant of Jesus, Religion - Wonkette

A nice riff on a few recent surveys and anecdotes about the appalling lack of spritual education on the part of the Religerati. It's nice to see that the 81% of Americans who identify themselves as Christians know bupkus about their religion.

A few highlights:

• The USA is the “only developed nation in the survey where a majority of citizens reported that religion plays a ‘very important’ role in their lives.”
• Only one in three Americans can name the four Gospels, while less than half can even name one of them.
• A majority couldn’t identify the preacher of the “Sermon on the Mount.”

I could go on all day about the irony of this article and the irony of the current political situation that, as far as I can tell, has been created exclusively by and for those with a Christian bent to them. But I won't. The glory of "Christians" not knowing the names of gospels is a rich and deep mine that digs plenty of riches all by itself.

Don't get me wrong. I don't mean to dump on people of faith as one step removed from ignorant cave dwellers worshiping shadows on the cave wall ... um, wait ... well ... yes. Yes! That is exactly what I mean to do. I hate the obligitory "respect" that expressions of faith are afforded in this world, especially in this country, unless of course your faith has anything to do with something outside of the out-stretched, up-raised, stigmatic palms of Jesus Christ, the Savior. But this is a topic for another rant.

BTW, Alberto Gonzalez and Robert Mueller must resign or be fired immediately! There admissions to trampling on rights to privacy and the independent judiciary are certainly the most flagrant of this administration's 6 years of kiss my ass politics.

0 Comments | Link to this post   posted by Teddy 5:47 PM

Mar 1, 2007

What's a Post-Scarcity Dinosaur to do?

If I were the Oscars (or Viacom)

Jeff Jarvis starts this post with:

If I had the Oscars or Viacom — both of whom pulled their clips off YouTube — here’s what I’d do to deal with — no, to exploit and profit from — the inevitable trend toward your audience promoting and distributing your content:

Let's concentrate on that last bit, "the inevitable trend toward your audience promoting and distributing your content." As in gratis, free, no-charge marketing.

When will the dinosaurs wake up and realize the tar is lapping at their heels ... no, their knees. People who post your content do so mostly because they love it or it's weird or it's funny or a combination of all. They are telling the world, "Hey, look at this cool/weird/stupid/fun thing that I found." And this does not cost the dinosaurs a dime in their already ridiculously high marketing budgets.

Here's a thought: Imagine if the dinosaurs spent millions less in marketing and litigation and instead spent that money on content generation.

Imagine if they actually cared about their audiences and their brand lovers and worked with them to help get their clips onto blogs and sharing sites!

"But ... but ... but ...," all of you freemarketers belch. "How does a copyright holder benefit? How do they make money from YouTube? Why it's un-American!" No, not really. It's just a differnt business model. Think of it as one of those precious life boats still floating as the Titanic spiraled to the bottom of the North Atlantic.

Certainly Google, et al, would be open to discussing revenue sharing from their bilions in advertising that they generate. All it would take is each of the Hollywood studios to send a letter to Sergei and Larry saying that they would like to make all of their content available on YouTube, but for a price. Do you really think that they would say no? In exchange for some revenue sharing they get no more threats of litigation and a flood of new content that users would immediatley upload. I think they would fall all over themselves to make such a deal.

And what do the copyright holders get? Exposure. Revenue. Good press. Free marketing. And what if they went a step further and ended each clip with "If you liked this clip, visit www.dinosaurmedia.com/yourfavorite show to purchase the entire show."?

Yes, just imagine.

0 Comments | Link to this post   posted by Teddy 10:28 AM

Archives | Mailing List