Another shining example of corporate stupidity!

@uath13 (8192)
United States
December 19, 2008 9:06am CST
A couple of weeks ago 3 cases of T shirts landed on our UPS dock. That's nothing out of the ordinary except these didn't have a purchase order. Several days later I was notified that these cases were supposed to be a drop shipment directly to the stores & should never have come to us. I promptly sent them back out. Now a few days later they've returned. We're supposed to retag & receive them then send them BACK to the store. The tags weren't even WRONG! So now even after explaining that to the buyer I'm still cutting off the old tag just to stick a new one with the same information on it back on there. I could as easily just throw the new tags away, they wouldn't know the difference. If they wanted it received on our records they could have just counted it at the store & we could have punched it in on the computer. Why are we wasting this time , effort & shiping cost? I shouldn't complain...It's giving me something to do so I don't go home early, but STUPIDITY annoys me. Are there any halfway intelegently run companies left out there?
1 person likes this
7 responses
@jands1 (835)
• United States
19 Dec 08
Sadly, no. Unless you work for a small business. You know, one that has less than 100 employees and the owner is there every day. Redundancy has become "built-into" major corporations. I often wonder if it is just an excuse to keep all those people on the payroll. After all, without the redundancies, there would be less work. Less work means less work hours. Less work hours means less employees.
@uath13 (8192)
• United States
19 Dec 08
Continueing the thought, Less employees means lower overhead & a cheaper product with potentially greater sales.... Better sales means more products being sold, more porducts being sold means bringing employees back in to make more of the product.
@jands1 (835)
• United States
19 Dec 08
Actually, you overstepped yourself and missed a crucial step. Less employees means less people employed. Thus there is less money to be spent by people and even more companies scale back. And thus even more people are out of work. And either one of three things tends to happen: 1. Economy collapses or 2. People no longer buy certain products, those businesses earn less and end up laying off more workers and even going out of business. or 3. Everyone just sucks it up and everything goes back to the way it was before and the cycle starts again. :D
@uath13 (8192)
• United States
22 Dec 08
Just saying that if they were able to do the work more efficiently they would be able to decrease the cost a bit. That would probably increase sales & make more work for the employees who were now able to do a better more effective job.
@kerriannc (4279)
• Jamaica
20 Dec 08
I wouldn't say that it is corporate stupidity. Every companies has their rules and how they do things. Your company might do things different than another but one should always try and respect the other opinion. Remember that it was sent wrongfully at first. In doing this they need to have a well kept record so that when push comes to shove they can explain where the wrong went first.
@uath13 (8192)
• United States
22 Dec 08
I'm all for a well kept record but how does sending it out to the store, having it shipped back from the store , printing & then re tagging it with the same bar codes it already had on it & then sending it back to the store accomplish anything except spending money? This is only one such incident where they do things that make absolutely no sense. It's a daily thing.
@eanna13 (133)
• United States
19 Dec 08
remember this company is old. (over 85 years old) the brain starts to shut down after a while. Oh, and I think the CEO must still be the original CEO!!! and of course don't forget the motto! the more we spend the better!!!
@uath13 (8192)
• United States
19 Dec 08
It's official... You've been working here too long too.
@snowy22315 (169575)
• United States
20 Dec 08
Everybody makes mistakes I guess. By the way the word is intelligently. I don't know how you are going to make them be responsible. I guess just do the work and be glad that you have work to do. Alot of people don't these days.
• Malaysia
19 Dec 08
Procedures procedures procedures. That's the thing that most companies failed to escape from especially big companies. It is also the thing which makes the companies inflexible and sometimes stupid. But they are not willing to change because they believe such standards are what made them successful in the first place.
@uath13 (8192)
• United States
19 Dec 08
Personally I'd like to beat these idiots senseless, unfortunantly they're already senseless! Seriously... I once had to send an email that read something like ---------- ( brand name ) Po:# 7878434 Variance Style#-------- ( also blank to keep me out of trouble ) -10 pcs. Received 50 cases ( 490 pcs ) as per packing slip. Authorization ( which is how many our company says we're supposed to receive )calls for 50 cases ( 500 pcs ) Their response " Is this a shortage or an overage?" DUH.. read.. They say they sent 490 you say they should have sent 500 fool!
@LaurenInLA (2270)
• United States
19 Dec 08
I'm beginning to think that there are not. How is it that we've allowed procedures to override common sense? I took an early retirement last year because I couldn't deal with corporate stupidity any longer. I had the opportunity and every day got to be more and more frustrating. This year, I decided to work in the retail environment for the Christmas season. In my department, we have 14 people on the floor on the weekends when we need less than half of that. I know that it's impossible to predict how many people will come into a store during the Christmas season but it seems ridiculous to spend twice as much money on labor as you need to. Then on Thursday, there were only 5 people on the floor from store opening to closing so that from 5:30-7 (when people left work and the store could get busy) there were no employees on our department's sales floor. Amazing, isn't it?
@uath13 (8192)
• United States
19 Dec 08
As I've said before, common sense is now so uncommon it's likely going extinct.
@irishidid (8688)
• United States
19 Dec 08
I used to work at a well known company as a packer in the warehouse. Everything is rush, rush, rush and to keep your job you have to rush even more. Mistakes get made from the company's insistence of hurry. Mind you there are often catalogs and flier to throw in. Bins are to be emptied, sorted and boxed to be shipped out in a matter of 15 to 30 minutes. Sounds easy until you consider the missing product you have to wait for, product that doesn't like to come out of the bin and the amount of half-filled boxes you have to step over while you work. So to the guy who received the Water Bra, sorry bout that and Merry Christmas!