Eureka MuthaF#$%er!

So, Alex and I have finally figured out the logical thought processes behind choosing what hardware/ machines/ programs our company's president decides to buy into. We were talking about one of our press machines and how it hasn't made any money to date, how our prints are 3 times the cost of others providing the same or better service, and how we as a company keep doggedly throwing money at it only to have to redo jobs several times and destroy all chances of profit.

You know how I think you should figure out whether or not to buy something? Weigh the costs, don't guess, research, get the figures, pay someone else to get it if you can't, get ACCURATE market data, don't expect to be able to CREATE a market that isn't there, don't expect to be able to grow the existing market. Know your competition. How lean is their profit margin? (overhead, machine costs, repair, wages, materials etc.) How do you compare to them in all these areas? RESEARCH,RESEARCH, RESEARCH! Talk to your managers. If they ALL disagree with you, maybe you should look at why and consider that THEY might have a point.

BLAH blah blah. Okay, so you know what strategy he's using? Seriously, I think he's using the

South Park Gnomes Profit Model:

Step 1: Steal underpants
Step 2: ????????????
Step 3: Profit!!!!!

It's all become so clear since we made the connection.

Okay, this is for REAL, this really did happen. We all went to a meeting in our Hamilton store, and the boss got up and started explaining about colour profiling and profits and monkeys on their backs so you can see their bellies (still real, not made up) and then got down to how we do quotes. You know how the entire company does quotes? They crunch the numbers, they figure the costs and our profit margin, they do ALL the math and then...
Put their hands on their guts, throw the numbers out the window and say, THIS price feels right.

Not a single word of a lie. He asked me if that made sense and I said "It fucking scares me."

It still does.

NOW, we HAVE actually been given some tools to standardize pricing and they are improving rapidly. Hurray for the owner! (he's been making all the excel sheets we use - but you can't use them from the Mac because the mac doesn't have excel. Or Word, or any other word processor.)

You know what would be quicker? HIRE A PROFESSIONAL.

Bah*waves hands in disgust* forget it. I'm looking for a new job.

Buster