[geeks] Is it me, or is this group awfully cheap?

[dave at cca.org]

nick at snowman.net writes:

>I don't know, I diferentiate between "Frugal" and "Cheap".  To me
>"Frugal" means cutting corners where you really can't afford the more
>expensive item, and the job will be done by the item you can
>afford.  "Cheap" to me means "No we won't buy you a local backup
>loader.  How about a dds-1 drive for each customer system?".  Fucking
>suits.
>	Nick

I saw the ultimate example of that a few years ago:

$200,000 printing press. Its "time" is roughly estimated to be
worth $600/hr, though that is probably low.

Cardboard cores that the material coming off the press gets
rolled up onto: a couple of pennies apiece.

Brilliant Plant Manager: "Don't buy new cores - scrounge used ones
from the materials department downstairs!"

So the $200,000 press is down for at least a half hour a day, as
the operators scrounge for the correct size & thickness cores.

Brilliant Plant Manager gets to show piece of paper to Plant 
Owner, showing a couple of hundred dollars saved per year. The
hundreds of dollars lost PER DAY in press time do not appear
anywhere, except to be generally dismissed as "The press department
isn't running at maximum capacity. Maybe we should get new press
operators.".

------ David Fischer ------- dave at cca.org ------- http://www.cca.org ------
----------------- Live each day like the Triffids are coming. -------------