We're Going To Save Money

We’re Going To Save Money
No Matter How Much It Costs

For those of you who have spent a fair amount of your life in a corporate or company work environment, the above statement should bring forth fond memories of past work-place follies. You know what I’m talking about here, don’t you? Come on now. Think back to when a big meeting was called at your respective workplace and the Harvard Business School trained suits would do a stand-up about how the latest management brain-fart would save the Company, reap huge profits, and probably save the free world from tyranny in the bargain. Wow, a delicious Chris Matthews type shiver runs down my leg just thinking about it again. Do you remember how we would go back to our workstations with the soaring buzzword laced rhetoric ringing in our ears as we bent our intellectual backs to the company wheel in order to make happen what the suits and management said needed to be done. After a fair amount of management-induced enthusiasm had worn off, reality began to kick in when the graybeards of the company begin to question the wisdom of the new program or policy. The graybeards actually had numbers to show that the new “thing” would cost five times any conceivable return on investment, wreck the engineering department, and make it impossible for the field salespeople to operate. The usual response from the suits and management, after concerns were expressed, was to label the graybeards as dinosaurs and accuse them, and everyone else associated with them, of being obstructionists and an unnecessary impediment to business progress. One of two things usually happened at this point. (1) Mouths would snap shut for fear of losing one’s job and the employees would work around the new thing in order for business to remain profitable thereby saving one’s job in spite of the suits and management new directives. Of course, this course of action by the employees was accompanied by sincere sounding lip service to management’s cause while doing what was necessary to keep the company ship afloat. (2) Even though the responsible employees knew that the suits and management new directives would wreck the company, they would follow the directives right down to the last crossed “T” and dotted “I”. This course of action would come to be called “Malicious Compliance” because it would eventually demonstrate to management that they had their collective heads stuck up somewhere where the sun doesn’t shine while avoiding being labeled an obstructionists and impeding management directives. All in all, this method of responding is a rather intellectual and oblique way for mere employees to support management. I keep hoping that a merciful and benevolent God will some day point his finger down at the Harvard and Yale business schools and cause great sinkholes to swallow them up before the country is driven into final ruin. But I digress. I got to thinking about this saving money at all costs while observing the goings on in Washington these days. You know, “Cap and Trade’, “Health Care for All”, “Government Motors”, “Financial Collapse”, etc., because most of these programs have been presented as absolutely necessary in order to save money and the country from ruin even though we all know that these programs are in reality “Trojan Horses” that provide a fortuitous way for the Government to expand their power in order to implement great social change. I guess people will never learn that it is impossible for the Government to make business decisions because Government is a Political entity that can only make political decisions. When the graybeards challenge the wisdom of the programs by pointing out that there is no way on this beautiful blue planet that these programs can save money, they, along with all of their associates, are labeled obstructionists and even worse. It looks like responsible graybeard citizens, and those who are of like political persuasion, are beginning to react with a “Malicious Compliance” course of action in order to let reality demonstrate to a swooning public that these current Government actions will be the cause of their eventual loss of freedom and wealth.