Every day I feel like I read another article despising the enormous profits of companies. And recently, most of these barbs have been directed at oil companies–who, according to the media, have been gouging customers while raking in enormous amounts of money. When the Chairman of Exxon was given a $400 million (approx.) retirement package, media outlets across the country went bizerk…at least for a little while. But I just don’t know why.
Exxon’s chairman was responsible for huge amounts of corporate growth; he directed the companywhile it created more wealth and gave the investors more wealth. Which brings me to the main point for this post/rant. Corporations are not large, evil institutions hell-bent on taking people’s money. Corporations are entities created by people and managed by people. Exxon’s wealth pays the salary for hundreds of thousands of people, plus it gives value to many people’s stock portfolio.
Of course, you say, stock is only owned by the rich. First, I have some stock, and I’m certainly not rich. Secondly, many pension funds in America own stock. That means your little granny has a vested interest in seeing the stock market go up; she has a vested interest in Exxon making money to keep her retirement account from going bust.
Corporations don’t hoard wealth–they share it with employees and stockholders. It’s an amazing process. If you want to know about an entity that hoards money, think of the Federal Government. But that’s another topic for another day.
Mainly, I think we need to shift our thinking away from seeing these corporations as evil. Sure, Enron and Worldcom were corrupt and terrible companies. But that’s two out of thousands. Let’s not forget that corporations are owned and run by people .

Two entries from Seth Godin: a writer who constantly has good things to say while saying them very briefly. I appreciate people that don’t waste my time with unnecessary words.
Post 1: Bonuses
What sort of bonuses should we pay?
His answer that bonuses and raises don’t actually motivate people surprised me at first. But then I started thinking about greed, want and the temporary feelings of importance, I realized this was a very valid point.
Post 2: Stupid Billboards
Fresh Fish Here
This strikes directly at what I despise about modern advertising: trying to be cute while not really saying anything at all. Some good quotes from the article:

The worst thing you can do is be boring and vague.
The second worst thing you can do is be boring and verbose and obvious.

I was at Chipotle the other day…all of the employees were running around the kitchen, frantically trying to refill their meat supplies (I think they were out of chicken). At any rate, the line continued to pile up, and all of us were waiting. But everyone in the back looked busy, but for the life of me, I can’t figure out what they were doing.
They were frantic. But they didn’t do anything. If someone was in charge, the cashier could have continued checking out people or they could have served the people further back in line who didn’t want chicken. They could have done something to help the problem. Some would say they were busy. I say they were busy doing nothing!
So what’s the moral of this post? I don’t know. It just made me think about how people accomplish their work–efficiently or slowly. Do companies reward frantic inefficiency? I tihnk employers naturally like to see their employees working, but you need to take a step back and consider is the jobbing getting done well?
Because at the end of the day, frantic inefficiency does no one any good. It just makes us wait longer for our burritos.

Has anyone seen the new Ford commercials–you know the one where Bill Ford, Jr. is trumpeting Ford’s storied history as an innovative company. Every time I see it, I laugh.
1) Ford was an innovative company. The Model T, the assembly line, Mustangs, Firebirds, and the venerable F150 pickup–all good products/concepts at one point or another.
2) Ford is not an innovative company now.
Whenever a company has to resort to marketing to redefine itself, it is almost certain that there are many more internal problems. Hyundai hasn’t billed itself as the “New Japanese Car Company” (even though they’re Korean) but what they have done is upped their warranty period and have started producing better cars. And people noticed. Their sales are up.
Meanwhile, Ford continues to mire in mediocracy, using a flashy campaign to deceive the public and pronounce that they are an “innovative company” once again. I hope people aren’t that stupid to buy their ads.
Like I wrote earlier in Mission Statements, who you are defines what you do. And if Ford was innovative, you could see it in every product they sell.

I just posted about Adobe Technical support. They were right, I was wrong.
Well, I was wrong because ML Credit Card services was stupid and told me that everything was fine. Then two hours later came the courtesy “fraud” call… Hmphpmp.
So to the poor Adobe tech support guy that I got mad at: Sorry.
To ML Credit Card Services: a call (even a computer one) would be very helpful. Or some sort of website that you can approve flagged purchases.