Tag Archives: corporations - Page 2

UberBastards

Posted by on June 17, 2019 No comments

I just got a piece of spam mail, to my Uber email address.  I don’t recall saying I was ok with that.

The email is sketchy as fuck.  A company name of “Opinion Research”?  None of the proper CAN-SPAM hallmarks like indicating what email address this was sent to, or why it was sent.  Only because I use unique addresses for every account, do I know this came from my Uber signup.

image

The survey is run by Qualtrics, which doesn’t mean much, since they’re just a survey platform, like SurveyMonkey.  This company has their own subdomain, opinionresearch.co1.qualtrics.com, so they’re at least somewhat legit (as legit as it looks so far).

As you see in the email screenshot, I did click to unsubscribe, which I thought would bring me to a page asking if I was sure.  It didn’t, it just took me off that list.  and it gave me another link to unsubscribe from all lists.  ALL lists?  How many have I been put on?

It’s really not a big deal.  If I see that my Uber address suddenly gets spammed, I’ll shut it off and create a new one.  But really, the point is, Uber has sold me out.  Those mother fuckers.

Then, I clicked on the privacy policy.  In bold type, in very simple to understand language:

image-1

No fucking thank you.  Recall what the original email said, “…will not be used to sell you anything.”  However, they will tailor the ads you see to the information you have given to them, then will ask you why they were or were not effective, so they can try harder next time.  What is this world coming to?

As a recent implementer of Pi-Hole (maybe a future post on that), this wouldn’t have worked at all for me anyway because my entire network is actively ad-blocked.  Suck my dick, Opinion Research!

Where To Go, What To Do?

Posted by on May 29, 2019 No comments

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/amazon-to-unleash-a-long-feared-purge-of-small-suppliers/ar-AAC1xhQ

For me, it’s the growing dawn of a new realization.  It’s not really anything revelatory; it’s a topic that has been bantered around for years.  Essentially, the thought is, Amazon is getting too big and too powerful, much like Walmart was before.

It sure is easy to be addicted to quick shipping, which is what Amazon is very good at.  I was disappointed by an online order from Lowes that took a week to arrive, and an item I ordered on Ebay just the other day is going to take a week to arrive (shipped from Canada, so, ok…).  Some other things, I’ve ordered recently have also taken time to arrive, like a new kitchen sink, or lights, or CDs.

But notice something, all of these items were not purchased from Amazon.  That realization is somewhat important to me.  Amazon is not the one-stop, end-all, be-all shopping destination for me.  And, with recent news like this, I feel I should wean myself from Amazon’s grasp further.

It’s not all bad.  There’s a lot of things that don’t need to be received in a couple of days (and there are some that do).  There are times I’ll use Amazon’s no-rush shipping option, and never claim the little reward they offer for doing so.  Price-wise, other places can be competitive and sometimes even much better.  Home Depot beat out Amazon by almost 50% on one item I needed.  When it comes to selection, not even Amazon can match a specialized online store, especially when it comes to furniture and other home goods.  And in a lot of those cases, Amazon’s selection is only much broader because they have a massive selection of cheap import products.  If that’s ok with you, EBay can be just as fruitful.

I’ll admit, sometimes, I find what I’m looking for on another site and will check it against Amazon.  If Amazon is close in price, I’ll usually order it from Amazon.  This is solely because I don’t want to have to go through the hassle of creating a new account on a new site.  But, with my planned dependency-reduction, I may begin doing so to spread the wealth a bit further.  For some people, this might not be as feasible, because if you are reusing your email address on many sites, you are increasing your risk of having your email harvested for spam.  Since I use a different email address for every site, I don’t have this worry.

This reliance on Amazon for a lot of things is sort of a downward spiral.  As we buy more stuff online, stores make fewer items available to purchase in-store, which forces us to buy more online.  I wish there was a way we could reverse it.  Some places have an in-stock check, like Lowes, Home Depot, and Staples for example.  So you can check to see if an item is there before driving to the store.  And if it’s not in stock, well, would you order it from there to be shipped or held for pickup, or would you just return to Amazon to buy it?  I know I’m going to have to be more proactive in that choice.

Why can’t someone with more business connections than I have make a website that tracks who sells what.  This should be easy as hell.  Any store that has an electronic point of sale system must have a list of products they sell, and that list of products would contain a UPC.  It should be trivial to upload a list of UPCs to a website to indicate what products your store sells.  The website allows someone to search by product and a list of who sells that product is displayed.  It could work the other way too, where manufacturers upload a list of UPCs and the retailers they distribute to.  The data is there, it just needs aggregated.

Micro-Macro McDonalds Views

Posted by on May 19, 2019 No comments

In an older post, in passing, I wrote about how I sometimes clean up a store where I enjoy shopping at, to make it nicer for me and for everyone else.  Tonight, I saw it being done by other people.

I was slumming it at McDonalds.  Not saying McD’s is a slum, but I was really dressed down – something I don’t really do when I go out, even for McDonalds.  But tonight, maybe more than usual (I don’t know since I hardly ever eat there anymore), the place was really a disaster.  I really shouldn’t be surprised.  I bitched about their new kiosks years ago and knew that it wasn’t going to change anything service-wise.

So of course, the place is understaffed, just as it should be.  One person at the counter who had to take orders, prep orders, deliver orders to tables, and also keep the whole dining area clean.  Fucking yeah.  What a load of crap.  So it’s no surprise after the dinner rush that all the trash cans were full.

But on top of that, it seems that the customers are… worse?  There was trash left on tables, food on tables, food and paper on the floor.  It’s something I just can’t get over in any environment.  How can someone come into a place, which is in a certain state of affairs and purposely leave it worse off than when you arrived?  Doesn’t matter if it’s a restaurant, store, house, park, or anything.  Ok, I understand accidents, like you drop your drink at a convenience store.  But even then, you should make an effort to clean it up until an employee tells you they will handle it.

And that’s kind of what happened tonight at McDonalds.  While I was waiting for my food, a woman walked up to the counter carrying a stack of trays.  One of the employees met her and seemed confused.  The woman said, “I packed down all the garbage cans as best I could, but they’re going to need changing.”  They employee replied, “We really appreciate that…” and seemed like he was going to say it was unnecessary, but the woman had to explain.  “We come here all the time and blah blah”.  I didn’t catch the rest, but I pretty much understood.  This was a place they enjoyed being in and they didn’t want it to be a shithole.  Yeah, I understand that.

When I did get my food and walked back to my table, out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of someone sweeping the floor and knew without looking further it was that woman’s husband.  The person working at the counter followed me out and confronted the man.  “Sir, our store doesn’t allow customers to do any employee work.”  The guy jokingly said, “I forgot my hat.”  She replied, “I’ll get it, thank you.”  The guy handed over the broom and the floor got a quick sweeping.

What a sad state of affairs, that businesses staff their stores so poorly that customers feel compelled to help out?  And maybe I would feel some compassion for the business because taxes and competition and it’s so rough being a small business owner today, but this place is a fucking gold mine.  There is rarely a time that I don’t see it busy, with drive-through lines out to the street.  This place isn’t hurting at all.

But, back to this old couple, and people like them.  It certainly does seem the world is in decline on many fronts.  And when that does happen, what do you do?  …  I was going to say, do you let it go or do you fight?  I quickly realized “fight” is not the right word, whereas, “help” is.  That word choice suddenly made a lot of things uncomfortable for me.  Because, as we know, there are a lot of people who see the world declining in different ways.  What is their choice of words for their solution, “fight” or “help”?

That’s something I don’t want to dwell on.

What Has Brown Done To You?

Posted by on April 26, 2019 No comments

I mentioned in another post that I was expecting a package and got a solicitor instead.  So, now on to the story of that package.  I was at my computer at around 8:00 and an email came in saying, sorry we missed you.  Your package requires a signature and you weren’t home.  Bull. Shit.  I’ve been here all night.  I went to the front door and there was no post-it saying they had been there.  There was no doorbell ring (and I know it works because, solicitor dude).

I’m buying a box of wire from Amazon.  No shipping notification from either Amazon or UPS said the delivery would require a signature.  Why would a box of speaker wire require an adult signature, anyway?  I think someone ran late and decided to go home for the night.  I’m sure their tracking software doesn’t have an option for “Don’t feel like it”, so the driver flagged it as needing signed and no one home.  All done for the day!

Some part of me is annoyed by this, but another part of me isn’t.  It’s not like I needed that wire tonight.  But what if it was something I needed right away?  And this driver, he’s lying.  I’m not sure what sort of repercussions he could face if I should call him out on it.  He’s human, he’s a lazy American, just like the rest of us, he wants to go home after probably a 12-hr day.  And I can’t fault a person for not working hard at their job.  I’m a lot of things, but not a hypocrite.

Here’s how that one progressed.

I went to UPS’s site and changed the delivery to go to my nearby UPS Store.  I chose this for a couple of reasons.  If they were correct about the delivery needing a signature, I didn’t want to miss out again.  If they were lying about needing a signature, I wanted a person to confront about it.  I submitted the change and stewed about the situation for the night.

I had plenty of time to stew.  The missed delivery happened on Tuesday.  I got no notifications and the tracking showed no movement for the rest of the week.  The next Monday, I stopped by the UPS service center and asked if they could find my package.  The manager there took my phone number and said he’d call me with an update.  I told him, “I don’t care if it comes to the house, the UPS Store, or here.  I’ll get it.”  Oh, and I did ask about the signature required.  He said that the package probably came back and was scanned incorrectly.  So I guess, there is no commitment to deliver everything on the truck for the day.  Huh.

I did get a call later from the UPS manager who said the package could not be found and I would need to call the corporate office and “open an investigation”.  So I call their number and tell them I need to “open an investigation”.  The operator said I’d be transferred to the right department.  I ended up getting a voice menu of options that were way above my head, full of international shipper industry terms.  I heard “lost” in one of the options and chose that.  The person that answered, after hearing the full story, and probably expecting to be talking to a fellow UPS employee, said that Amazon has to initiate the claim, not me.  Ugh, fine.

So by this time, I could have re-ordered the speaker wire 3 times over and gotten it delivered.  An “investigation” doesn’t sound like it’s going to get me my package anytime soon, so I place a new order on Amazon for the same thing.  Then I research my options for filing a claim for the old order.  The option I was steered toward was contacting the shipper to file a claim.  Great.  No one wants to take responsibility here.  Eventually I found Amazon’s general chat help link and got a resolution.  They refunded my money.  But I wasn’t all that happy, because UPS should be paying for this, not Amazon.  I apologized that they were being hurt for this, and actually, it’s not them being hurt, it’s the small business seller on Amazon being hurt, because Amazon just won’t give them the money they refunded back to me.  It’s a shitty resolution.

I’d already received the replacement and finished my project when, two weeks later, I get an email.  My package is ready to pick up at the UPS Store.  I jump back on Amazon’s help chat and ask if I should just refuse the delivery and have it sent back to them.  The CSR says, the refund has already been issued, take the package as a gift from Amazon.

On one level, I get it.  The amount of money already spent on the package to ship it, then again to return it would be a waste of time and money, resulting in a net loss.  But that’s Amazon’s loss.  Or is it?  The seller still won’t see any money for the product lost.  UPS is getting off the hook and if I returned it, would be making more money of their fuckup. 

But really, we’re talking about a $10 purchase here.  This is nothing to a large business.  But multiply that by however many fuckups UPS can make, and it could be terrible for some smaller businesses along the way.

In the end, it didn’t matter.  I got an email from Amazon saying, “give us our shit back or you’re going to be charged for it.”

It’s Not Always About The Benjamins

Posted by on April 22, 2019 1 comment

The other day, I was at home and the doorbell rang.  Yay, UPS has dropped off my package!  But, no – That’s a story for another post.  I opened up the door and a dude was outside.  Yay, a solicitor!  He introduces himself as being from Spectrum.  I suppose I’m fortunate in that I don’t live in a place where the cable company has a monopoly.  Instead it’s a duopoly, between Spectrum and Frontier (formerly known as Brighthouse and Verizon – how weird).

Dude says he’s in the area to talk about their services, and who provides me my cable, phone, and Internet?  I reply that I just recently had Frontier drop my cable and phone and now I have 100MB Internet only.  Dude wants to know how much (of course).  It’s something like $75/month.  Jackpot, I can hear his brain announcing.

So, Spectrum offers 100MB Internet for something like $50/mo.  Or you can get 400MB for about $75/mo.  He’s got his clipboard out and ready to sign me up.  But I just said, no, I’m ok with what I have.  He had a confused look on his face, which really pissed me off, because there’s no way it was an honest confused expression.  It was a insulting, “are you stupid”, reaction.  And in a similarly confused tone, he asked, “But… it’s faster… for less money.”

I tried to explain my reasoning, but I don’t think it came out well.  I said that it would be a hassle, ending one service, scheduling a new install, then if it didn’t work out, cancelling the new one and setting up the old one again.  He tried to defend his company by saying they didn’t have any contracts, so you could leave at any time for any reason.  I just replied that if anything went south in my current setup, I had his card and I would definitely call.

After I closed the door, I realized what I really wanted to say.  Yes, his offering was cheaper, and I am personally biased against internet over coax, vs internet over fiber, but the point that I really wanted to make was that Frontier/Verizon has been rock solid for me for over a decade and aside from one billing issue after the ownership switch, I have zero complaints.  What dude wanted was for me to jump ship to a company I have no history with and no idea of their service or quality.  The best I could hope for is going from great to great and saving some money.  But, I could be going from great to nightmare and saving money as well.  That’s not worth the risk to me.  Besides that, there is also the installation fee.  Then if it doesn’t work out, the installation fee to revert back to Frontier.  Not worth the risk to me.

I Can’t Sleep – Web Crawl

Posted by on July 4, 2018 No comments

This crawl started by seeing AK in a snapchat picture with a BK+Budweiser filter.  I wondered what that bullshit was all about and ended up reading a press release saying Burger King had a limited time burger for sale.

The burger was hyped as best as it could be, I suppose.  It was a double cheeseburger with more shit on it.  The part that caught my eye was “features two savory flame-grilled beef patties totaling more than ¼ lb.* of beef”  Wow, guys.  Two patties to make a quarter-pounder, huh?  I’m not going to say it’s more than a quarter pound, because otherwise they’d be bragging it was 1/3 pound.  Or maybe not, since stupid Americans don’t understand 1/3 is more than 1/4.

Anyway, that got me reminiscing about how I used to love double cheeseburgers at BK.  They were the absolute best value on the menu.  And then they shrunk the fuck out of them around the great recession, 2008 or so.  I wish I could prove it.

Maybe I can.  I went looking for nutritional information and ended up on a site that had these impressively accurate meter thingies about the BK double cheeseburger.

image

Does the taste good?  Of course the does!

And from this page, I got a number, a serving size.  171 grams, which is .377 pounds and must include the bun.  So, how do I find out how good things were back in the day?  Well, I use my favorite tool for exposing embarrassing facts, the Wayback Machine.

Looking at the nutritional info for the double cheeseburger on BK’s site from 1999, I get another number, 198, which is .436 pounds.  So, you do the math and see how much it’s lost over the years.  Tip, calculate it as a percentage to make it sound more impressive.  The Fake News Media does it all the time. (Seriously, I don’t care which side you’re on or what you believe.  If you see an article on anything that only uses percentages, be skeptical.  They’re selling it to you.)

But that’s not the end of the data.  After I got the serving size from the old archived BK website, I felt like an idiot for not just going to the current BK site instead of this “Durr, click Delicious or Disgusting button, pleez” website.  And when I went to BK’s current site, I got yet another number. As of May 2018, the size of a double cheeseburger is 148 grams, or .326 pounds.

To summarize, in 1999, BK’s double cheeseburger was .436 pounds, and in 2018 it is .326 pounds.  That’s a reduction of .110 pounds, which is a 25% reduction from the 1999 size. Oh no! Percentages!  I’ve destroyed my credibility by at least 108%.

My Cat Is Suffering Because Of Your Shitty Design

Posted by on January 28, 2018 No comments

My poor cat, Rump, has been struggling for a while ever since I bought her a new feeder.  Her last feeder was pretty much wrecked and a new one was needed.  She’s a pretty big girl, so I always get the largest feeders available.

The previous feeder that I had was a Le Bistro model.  This seems to be made by both PetMate and Aspen Pet.  Over the years, it was redesigned and it was redesigned in a very shitty way.  See the difference between the old design on the left and the new one on the right.

  41wcghle7dl6b3b0246-a2d5-48d0-9502-9d5dd348610b_1-b63e229476658c3aed80b4bdd7931924 

Do you see the major difference?  The bowl on the new model on the right is a goddamn waterer bowl.  The only difference between this and their waterer is the hopper.  The waterer hopper is sealed, but the feeder has a removable lid.

Obviously this was the company saying, “Why do we have two bases for these two products?  We can save a shitton of money here.  It’s the same thing.”  You assholes, it’s not the same thing, and I’ll tell you why.

The first problem is that the food doesn’t come out.  You see the slide on the old model?  You see how the opening of the chute is higher than the lip of the bowl?  That lets the food come out.  Food doesn’t act like water, in case you didn’t know.  On the new model, there is no appreciable slide and you will also notice the new model’s chute opening is half the width of the bowl and the hopper’s neck is more narrow.  That would all be sufficient for water, not so with food.

My poor cat gets noticeably anxious when she sees the hopper empty.  There can be food in the bowl, but she understands what the reserve supply looks like and when it is not there, she starts crying.  Now, she has to deal with the fact that the bowl is empty, because the food doesn’t fall, but there is a visible reserve.  That’s damn cruel.

The second problem with this design is that stupid lip.  Again, for water, yes, you need a lip that is uniformly high all around the bowl.  For food, my cat has to to jam her head down into (I want to stress, into) the bowl to get food.  And when the hopper doesn’t flow the food, she has to stick her head even further in back to get food.  I said, she’s a big girl and she has a big head.  It’s not a good situation.  The bowl needs to be lower in front, especially because the hopper supplies so little food.  One other shitty design aspect is that the old lip rolled to the outside and smoothly transitioned into the bowl wall on the inside.  The new design has a lip that overhangs the interior of the bowl wall.  Why would you ever have that on a pet bowl anyway?  Animals push food against the wall to get to it, they don’t want their face bumping into a protruding lip.

So I’m off in search of a new feeder, but everywhere I look, it’s the same crap as this.  Great job on cornering the market with your shitty new design.

The Haves And The Have-Nots

Posted by on January 25, 2018 No comments

There’s something I want to bitch about.  It’s nothing new or profound or even really interesting.  It’s the issue with income inequality in America.

The people in charge of America recently made a change to the taxes applied to corporations.  They lowered the top tier from 35% to 21%.  This was promised intended to save a lot of money for businesses and help save jobs and keep business strong and profitable.  Then, recent news says that the corporation Kimberly-Clark is going to eliminate 5k jobs.  And even more recent news say that they are using the money saved from taxes to pay for the costs of downsizing their business, including the layoffs.  That doesn’t sound like the expected result that was sold to us.

For all the bitching that could be done on that specific case, what I want to focus on is the fact that when KC announced they were cutting jobs, their stock price went up.  This is a double-insult to the working class.  I am fortunate to have a 401k plan, but I am acutely aware that many do not.  And those people are not reaping any – ANY – of the growth that has been going on in the last decade.  And that really pisses me off.

Some people, who are oblivious to the pains of the working class, would ignorantly say, “All you have to do is put some money in the stock market and you’ll get the benefits.”  Sure, it doesn’t matter whether it’s a 401k, Roth IRA, or simple mutual fund.  They are correct.  But the part they ignore is “What money?!”

Wages aren’t going up for the working class.  Expenses are going up, though.  Think about that for a minute.  If there was some available money, that money could be growing.  But because there is none, there is no growth.  It has to be the most painful thing ever to see someone making only slightly more than you pull away in net worth because they have that small bit of extra income.  You either have money to invest or you do not.  And there is a world of difference between the two.

That’s my biggest sticking point is that corporations are holding back prosperity from their employees.  They are making changes that only enrich the already-established instead of considering how to enrich everyone. 

Somehow, we need to increase access for everyone to be able to take advantage of growth opportunities.  Increasing pay is the easiest, most direct way for that.  “But, the company will suffer because it’s an additional cost!  The stock price will drop!  My monies!”  But, with more people being able to put money into investments, the stock price will rise from the additional demand.  There is a common aphorism for this: “A rising tide lifts all boats.”

It’s not difficult.  All it takes is is a little less greed.

How To Close

Posted by on January 11, 2018 1 comment

It’s in the news that Walmart has closed a bunch of Sam’s Club locations.  Just for the record, I despise Walmart for many reasons, so don’t be surprised at the stance I’m taking with this most recent news.

A while ago, a regional Walmart closed down unexpectedly for “plumbing maintenance”.  It was part of a series of closures as well.  At the time, there was a massive conspiracy swirling around that the store was shut down to quell a union organizing.  And, on schedule, the store reopened, with an all-new crew and no union considerations among them.  Who’s to say what the real reason was?  Maybe it was plumbing?

In both that case and this new case with Sam’s Club, the closures were done with no warning for either employees or customers.  This is the part that really bothers me.  It reminds me of a time when I was working for a pizza chain and there was a coordinated closing of a bunch of neighboring stores.  The manager would show up in the morning and the district manager was already there to inform him the store was closing immediately.  The other employees would find out eventually, whenever or however.  It’s a shitty way to do business.

That Walmart is operating this way says a lot.  However, I’m not sure if they are making a commentary on their customers, their employees, or both.  In all cases, including my own near-closing experience, it’s all about a lack of trust.  It’s a disdain for people and an assumption of the worst in people.  The owners believe that if a closing date was scheduled, their assets would be at risk for theft or damage.  So, to mitigate that possibility, they surprise everyone with the closure.

I say that this really bothers me, but I really do understand it.  I can easily see an employee pocketing some merchandise, because, “Why not?  I’m only here another week anyway.  What will they do, fire me?”  I can see an employee turning a blind eye to shoplifters, because “Why should I care?”  Hell, I can see this happening at Walmarts that aren’t even closing.  And that’s what makes me think differently.

Walmart has built an entire culture on worthlessness.  All their products are cheap and disposable.  They’ve created a culture of customers that think this same way.  The customers have no pride for shopping there.  The employees clearly aren’t trained to actually care about their store and take pride in their jobs.  How can they when the chain has the reputation it does and the customers reinforce that belief every day?

Is it possible to create a culture where employees will be loyal to the end?  Maybe if given a fair severance?  Maybe if treated well during their entire career?  Maybe if the corporation was respected?  Maybe if the employees and customers took a little pride in their store.

Here’s a little factoid about me.  Sometimes when I’m shopping somewhere, I’ll clean the place up.  I’ll rehang a shirt from the floor or straighten a display.  I’ll organize things (especially CDs) as best I can.  I leave the place better than I found it.  But, sometimes, I don’t.  And in the cases I don’t, it’s a gut feeling that it’s of no use, that it would never be appreciated.  And, in the extremely rare instance I’m in a Walmart, my only desire is to leave, not to try and make things better.

Because, when I’m in a store I enjoy, I want to be comfortable there.  I want it to look nice.  I want other customers to enjoy it as much as I do.  Yes, that’s a role for the employees to fulfill, but there’s no reason there can’t be a family-type feeling in the place.  And if I remove one source of disarray and the result makes another customer more cheerful at how non-disheveled the place is, then the store will succeed and I’ll get to keep coming there.

And I would hope, that on the day my favorite stores have to close, there is a nice structured ending.  Kind of a farewell parade – a little bit sad, but dignified.  And nothing like the shotgun finalities of any of Walmart’s closures.

Innocent Villains

Posted by on December 7, 2017 No comments

It’s in the news today that Toys R Us executives are going to be granted bonuses, despite the company entering bankruptcy.  It was a little over a year ago that the same thing happened with Sports Authority.  In the case of Sports Authority, there were going to be bonuses, then a judge said no, then another judge said yes.  There was lots of public outrage.  Why should executives get bonuses for a failed company, especially when all the floor workers just lost their jobs?

I’m going to take an unpopular position and say that the bonuses should be awarded.  I can’t address the loss of employment for the rank and file workers.  I am also very sensitive to income inequality and I would hope that somehow we can curb outrageous executive pay in the future.  The only thing I am focused on is putting the blame where it belongs.  And that blame is actually not on the executives.  The fault is higher up than them.

Both Toys R Us and Sports Authority are victims of leveraged buyouts.  You can expect that Guitar Center will soon be joining them, because Guitar Center has the exact same situation stemming from its own leveraged buyout.  This article has a very succinct description of how the bought-out company is doomed after a leveraged buyout.

Private equity firms like Bain take mid-sized companies and pump them full of debt with the express intent of making them industry-dominating competitors, selling them to the stock market as a candidate for massive growth, and cashing in. To make this possible, private equity’s stake in the company is usually represented by “payment in kind” (PIK) notes, a type of bond that pays crushing interest – in this case 14.09% – but requires no cash outlay until the bond’s maturity. So that 14.09% is accruing, but it isn’t due for years, ideally after the company has been sold to what is often charmingly referred to as “the dumb money,” the retail investors who buy a stock without knowing the company’s true financial position. Before any of the company’s real problems are revealed, the private equity firm receives its payback in the form of stock, since PIK notes can be paid back in any medium of exchange. If all goes to plan, the stock price shoots up after the IPO and the PE firm makes a tidy profit – all in about three to five years.

The end result is that the company has enough money to pay the daily bills, but has no reserve cash to pay off this growing obligation.  It’s a lot like interest-only mortgages back before the last housing crisis.

But back to the executives.  These guys didn’t write up the buyout.  They weren’t able to stop it from happening.  When the buyout did go through, they kept the machine running.  They kept the company viable, if not spectacularly profitable.

So, how much at fault are they?  They did their job and fulfilled the duties in their job description to receive their full compensation package, which would include defined bonuses.  You can very easily protest, “They didn’t earn it!  The company went bankrupt!”  The company didn’t go bankrupt through their actions.  That card was cast long ago by people much higher than them.  These executive’s only fault was hitching their wagon to a falling star.

My point in taking this controversial stand is that the blame needs to go where it deserves.  It’s not with the executives, it’s with the companies that are executing leveraged buyouts and destroying perfectly valid corporations for their own gain.