Dave Barry's Money Secrets (3 page)

(W
ILD APPLAUSE)

Does this mean you should cut up your credit cards and throw them away? No. It just means that you should use them wisely. Suppose, for example, that you see an item in a store that you really need, but you don’t have enough cash on hand to buy it. This is the logical time to use a credit card. Wait until the store closes, then slide the card into the door crack and use it to jimmy open the lock.

Ha ha! Suze and I are just pulling your leg again. It’s against the law to break into stores, and a credit card is the wrong tool for the job.*
 
⁵

Our point is that there are many simple and effective techniques that you can use to reduce your unnecessary spending, and just because we haven’t been able to think of any in this chapter, that is no excuse for you not to employ them. Suze and I are sick of your excuses.

4

HOW THE CORPORATE WORLD WORKS

The Critical Role of Office Furniture

T
HE BEST WAY TO UNDERSTAND the corporate world is to open up any newspaper to the business section and read a story at random. Chances are it will say something like this:

TROUBLED AIRLINE ANNOUNCES GIGANTIC LOSSES

Troubled Unideltican Airways today announced third-quarter losses amounting to $7.1 billion. This comes on top of second-quarter losses of $6.6 billion and first-quarter losses of $6.8 billion, meaning that so far in this year alone, the troubled airline has lost more money than the gross national product of Central America.

“Sweet Lord Jesus, this is troubling,” commented Unideltican’s chief executive officer, E. Harmon Swackette III. “Every time I come back from a golf tournament, there’s another billion gone! I’ve never seen anything like it, except at the last six companies I was CEO of.

“Clearly we need to find more ways to cut costs,” continued Swackette, a former executive in the troubled Internet-poultry industry who currently makes $17.3 million per year, including performance bonuses. “We saved some money by laying off nonessential personnel such as the whaddycallem, copilots. And of course we no longer feed the passengers, who now, on our longer routes, get so hungry that they eat the in-flight magazines. But we need to look in other areas, such as those big loud things on the wing, the whaddycallits, engines. My people tell me those things use a LOT of costly fuel. I’m thinking maybe they don’t all have to be turned on all the time.”

Swackette said the troubled airline would also be looking for new sources of revenue. “For example,” he said, “after takeoff, we could make an announcement like, ‘Once we reach a comfortable cruising altitude of 35,000 feet, you will be free to move about the cabin, although this may be difficult for our non-Sherpa passengers, because Unideltican Airways no longer offers cabin pressurization in coach. So those of you who plan to breathe during the flight might want to rent an oxygen canister for $138.75 from one of the flight attendants now passing down the aisle. As always, exact change is greatly appreciated! We’re also selling a selection of condiments to put on your magazine.’ ”

Swackette added that if the troubled airline’s losses continue, he would have “no choice but to seriously consider jacking up executive bonuses.”

These stories aren’t always about the airline industry. Every day there’s news about large companies in other industries that, to judge from their losses, are setting fire to bales of cash in the parking lot. These stories teach us three important facts:

Fact 1:
Large corporations are
really
rich, so rich that they can piss away ridiculous amounts of money and still remain large.

Fact 2:
These companies pay excellent salaries to top executives, who, to judge from Fact 1 . . .

Fact 3:
. . . do not necessarily know any more about how to run a business than you, or, for that matter, a reasonably bright Labrador retriever.

Ask virtually any employee of virtually any large corporation about the competence of the people in charge, and you will be assured that they are complete morons whose apparent goal is to destroy the company. High-level-executive moronity is a universally observed phenomenon, although nobody really knows what causes it. The most plausible theory is executive office furniture. This theory holds that, in small quantities, there is nothing harmful about your quality hardwoods such as walnut, oak, mahogany, Formica, etc. But apparently when you have a very large mass of this type of wood—as you would find in the office of your typical high-level corporate executive, who, to indicate his executive stature, has a desk with the same surface area as Vermont—the wood emits some kind of invisible Stupid Rays that penetrate and ravage the brain of any human who remains too long within range, as depicted in the following scientific diagram:

How Executive Office Furniture Shrinks the Human Brain

SOURCE: The Mayo Clinic

Photography Credits

Furniture Induced Brain Shrinkage (FIBS) is the only possible explanation for certain unbelievably bad decisions made by theoretically intelligent executives in charge of huge corporations with access to vast amounts of data:

(
T
HE SCENE:
T
HE EXECUTIVE CONFERENCE ROOM OF THE
C
OCA-COLA
C
ORP.,
1984.
T
HE
CEO
RISES TO SPEAK.)

CEO:
Gentlemen, our primary product, Coca-Cola, is the number one soft drink in the world. The question is: What are we, as highly paid executives, going to do about this? Anybody have any suggestions?

(
T
HERE IS A LENGTHY PAUSE, WHILE EVERYBODY THINKS HARD, STARING AT THE TABLE.
F
INALLY, A HAND GOES UP.)

CEO:
Yes, Bob?

BOB:
I have one.

CEO
(
puzzled
): One what?

BOB:
Suggestion.

CEO:
Oh! Right! What is it?

BOB
(
puzzled
): What is what?

CEO:
What’s your suggestion?

BOB:
Oh! Right! I was thinking maybe we could change it.

(
D
EEP FROWNS OF PUZZLEMENT ALL AROUND THE TABLE.)

CEO:
Change
what,
Bob?

BOB:
Change the product.

(
E
VEN DEEPER FROWNS AROUND THE TABLE.)

BOB:
Coca-Cola.

(
S
MILES, NODS OF RECOGNITION AROUND THE TABLE.)

CEO
(
thoughtfully
): So, Bob, if I understand you correctly, you’re saying that we should take Coca-Cola—which is not only the most successful soft drink in history, but also the single most successful product of
any kind
in history; a product whose formula has remained the same for nearly 100 years; a product whose consumers are fiercely loyal—and you’re saying we should
change
it?

BOB:
Yes.

CEO:
I like it!

(
N
ODS AROUND THE TABLE; MURMURS OF “
I
LIKE IT, TOO!” AND “
M
E TOO!” AND “
W
HAT ARE WE TALKING ABOUT, AGAIN?” AND “
I
WET MYSELF!”)

CEO:
Then it’s settled! We’ll change the formula! I’ll call Research and Development!

(
P
AUSE)

CEO:
Does anybody remember how to operate the phone?

Another example of a major corporation doing something that appeared to be clinically insane was the decision by General Motors—which must have an
enormous
executive conference table—to manufacture the Pontiac Aztek, a car so ugly that it routinely causes following motorists to go blind. I mean, OK, imagine you’re a high-ranking GM executive, and the New Car Design Group comes to you with a proposal for a new car, and they show you
this
hideous image:

Photography Credits

No! Sorry! Wrong image! They show you this:

Photography Credits

Now, if your IQ is a positive number, you’re going to look at this image, and you’re going to have some questions. Such as:

•                  Who, exactly, is the target market for this vehicle? Does research show that there are a lot of potential car buyers out there saying, “I want a squat little car with a
really
big ass”?

•                  What are we going to call this vehicle? The ButtMobile? The HunchCar of Notre Dame?

But apparently no GM executives asked these questions. Instead, they chose to spend millions and millions of corporate dollars and actually
make
this car, which they called the “Aztek,” which isn’t even
spelled
right,*
 
⁶
and if that isn’t scientific proof that executive furniture destroys brain cells, I don’t know what the hell is.

Or take my business, the newspaper business. I know many high-level newspaper executives, and individually they are all smart and wonderful people, especially the ones who have, for whatever reason, given me money. But when they get together to decide things, newspaper executives display the intelligence of soybeans.

Why do I say this? Consider:

For decades now, newspaper readership has been steadily going down. A major reason is that young people don’t read newspapers. Young people either don’t care about news, or prefer to get their news from alternative sources, such as the Internet, TV, cell phones, cereal boxes, skywriting, and other people’s tattoos. But whatever the cause, these young people
do not read newspapers.

As I say, the readership decline has been going on for decades. And over those decades, newspaper executives have tried many, many times to solve the problem. Unfortunately—and this is what convinces me that exposure to office furniture must be involved—they
always come up with exactly the same solution, at newspaper after newspaper, despite the fact that it has never once, not a single time, actually worked.

The solution they always come up with—after hiring consultants, doing extensive surveys, and holding many meetings—is
to appeal to younger people.
They always try to do this via a two-pronged approach:

•                  Prong One:
Do fewer stories about heavy boring topics such as the world, and more stories about topics that, in the view of middle-aged newspaper executives, are of interest to young people who do not read newspapers. These youth-oriented topics include extreme sports, video games, hip-hop music, skateboarding, celebrities, tattoos, celebrity tattoos, and extreme-skateboarding hip-hop video-game celebrities with tattoos.

•                  Prong Two:
Give the paper a jazzier, more youthful look by publishing more graphics, more bold colors, and more pictures of interest to young people who would not pick up a newspaper if their lives depended on it. Make stories shorter, so that they do not contain so many pesky words. Make paragraphs shorter. Make sentences shorter. Use shorter words. Like this. If you
must
write about the world, write about countries with short names, such as Chad.

This two-pronged strategy always produces two results, both entirely predictable:

•                  Result One:
Older people, the ones who actually read the newspaper, notice that their newspaper is starting to look and read like a cross between
The National Enquirer
and a comic book, and that it contains an inordinate number of stories about topics they have no interest in, such as hip-hop video skateboarding in Chad. Some of these older readers become disgusted and cancel their subscriptions.