Why Are the Smartest Guys in the Room So Dumb?

[Joe Shlabotnik]

Any MBA's here? Finance types? Enlighten me if you can...

The NYT just posted a loong feature article on Walmart.

Walmart figured out that they made more money if they did three things:

- Paid people enough to live on.
- Gave them a promotion path within the company.
- Provided employees with consistent work schedules they could count on.

You finance / MBA guys - why is this a revelation? Isn't this common [expletive] sense?

Who read that list and didn't say "Well, yeah, if you don't add to people's anxieties, they'll be able to focus and be more productive. You know - basic needs, human decency..."

Does an MBA just prove that you no longer are able to work from first principles and have to relearn simple truths?

WTF? This kind of [expletive] just pisses me off. I'm 57 years old and my whole life has seen a walk back from common sense to some kind of surreal value system that makes absolutely no sense.

[sighyoung]

http://www.theonion.com/article/company ... yees-37947

[Joe Shlabotnik]

http://www.theonion.com/article/company ... yees-37947

Exactly sigh. How did we get here?

[Diddy]

The irony of that is that that's how Sam built Walmart into the success it is. Good to see them getting back to it because everything changed when he died.

[vinsanity]

I think the conclusion sounds obvious but it's also not the kind of question worth researching. People are notoriously wrong about what they say they want. Many people may say they enjoy flexibile work schedules or value fulfillment over marginal pay increases.

My guess is they did the research to find out and the results seem obvious.

[IMADreamer]

K don't understand how anyone can enjoy a sporadic schedule. I like to plan ahead and not knowing when I'd be working next week would drive me nuts.

[obucard]

K don't understand how anyone can enjoy a sporadic schedule. I like to plan ahead and not knowing when I'd be working next week would drive me nuts.

This.

[vinsanity]

K don't understand how anyone can enjoy a sporadic schedule. I like to plan ahead and not knowing when I'd be working next week would drive me nuts.

I have a flexible schedule. Football team playing on Sunday night and I wanna get bombed? Work from 11-7 Monday.

Wanna go visit my parents for a weekend? I can work 10 hours Monday to Thursday, take off Friday and sleep in Monday. I took my current job because it's 100% remote mind could have made more money showing up at an office 5 days a week.

Inconsistent when your boss sets a schedule sucks. Flexible when you set your schedule is awesome. Not everyone at Walmart is an hourly cashier. They have marketing, HR, corporate management and accountants, too.

[tlombard]

I'm the same way. My schedule is reasonably flexible as long as I'm in the office sometime between like 7 and 9 the majority of the time and if I'm a bit later every so often it is fine. I can also work from home if I want or need to. The only important thing is that the work gets done. Heck, being the only one in my group in St. Louis nobody even knows if I work from home. There is one other person in St. Louis that I work with closely under my organization and he works from home every Monday and Thursday so I do let him know if I work from home any other day of the week but he's literally the only person who would even notice.

I also have friends that I've worked with for years here that have left for other companies and they are always telling me that I should be making a lot more and if I went somewhere else I could get a lot more. And a few friend who have left for more money have regretted it and tried to come back and weren't able to. The company realizes that if you left us once chasing money, you'll probably do it again so it isn't worth the expense of letting you come back only to have to replace you six months down the road.

But for me having the flexibility that I have and honestly loving the people I work for and work with makes it worth staying for me personally. I make enough to be perfectly comfortable so I never seriously consider leaving. Heck, they've kept me happy enough to stay here for over 19 years now so I might as well just see how far I can stretch this.

My only regret is that I was in Boston on the day that marked me working here half of my life. I planned on taking that day off and drinking the bar dry but I wasn't able to. And then commission work started right up and I can't take a day off for another week or two still for a belated celebration. Or a day of mourning. I can't decide which. Maybe I'll start by mourning half my life gone to this place and since I'm a happy drunk it will turn into a celebration! The people at my normal bar actually laugh at me and give me a hard time because I'm a nice person to begin with but apparently when I get plastered I get even nicer.