Caboose of Progress

[Moridin]

I am quickly learning why bank’s are called the caboose of progress

I work for a bank, not a small bank, but one of the largest banks in the US. We are going through a merger and I am trying to figure out how the h*** the bank that bought us has survived this long.

I will point out up front that the CEO of our bank and the CEO of the bank that we are merging with are brothers…how did that get past the FTC and stockholders?

I recently went to a “Meet the CEO” gathering to find out a little about the new CEO and his ‘vision’ for the new bank. I walked out of the meeting feeling like I just took a wild ride through the Twilight Zone.
As with any merger, you look for a way to cut costs. This is usually done through a process called “best practices” in which they look at the duplicate functions of the two entities and eliminate the ‘costlier’ or ‘less productive’ of the two. Our banks did this, but to our surprise, this “best practices” usually translated into “we are going to keep the processes of the buying bank and scrap the processes of the bought bank, even if those practices are prehistoric”. Anyway back to the CEO meeting. Our new CEO gave quite a show. He had a nice power-point presentation, fancy lighting and groovy music. As he got going into the meeting, I was starting to feel impressed by his enthusiasm and energy and thought that he really was going to make us, in his words “the best bank in America”. But then he started to explain his vision for cutting costs….get ready….this is so innovative, so breath-taking, so far out there….ready……we are going to cut costs by not buying Post-it notes and pens (DA DA)….yes folks you heard me right….here we stand on the edge of the 21st century. We have phones that can connect with the Internet. We have smart-cards that store money, personal data, etc…we have mapped the human genome, we stand on the verge of human cloning, we have dug under the English Channel, sent a man to the moon and probes to mars, we have seen up close pictures of the moons of Jupiter….and this is our CEO’s innovative way of taking our bank into the 21st century, by cutting costs through an innovative idea of not allowing us to purchase Post-it notes and pens He even had calculations backing his mind boggling idea. He figured that we could save $750,000 a year by not buying pens! We have revenues in the range of $2-3 Billion a year!!! At our current outstanding stock, that works out to .0004 cents per stock. Well get in the car grandma, our CEO saved us .0004 cents, we are going on a shopping spree OMG is this man insane? Here are some wild and crasy ideas we could do to cut costs…get rid of 3 of our 4 corporate jets that cost us $50,000 a month to operate, or how about, not sending out our ‘propaganda’ newspaper to every employee at a cost of $15,000 an issue, or how about not allowing our ‘execs’ to fly first class on a whim at a cost of around $2500 per ticket!

Oh well…further evidence of our caboose of progress. My job revolves mostly around an Access database. One of our systems persons wrote the database and maintains it. Well every month she has to spend about 3-4 days preparing the database for my use. I asked my manager if it would be better, if I could attend an Access programming class so that I could maintain the database and we would not have to waste the systems persons time (I know Access pretty well, but not on the level needed). He took it to his boss and it got a NO! Why? It cost too much and since we already have a person that knows Access programming, we do not need another! WHAT!! The class was $200. Or about 1/3 of his monthly clothing allowance (yes he gets a monthly clothing allowance ) but it was suggested that I could by a programming book and learn it on my own!

Oh well that is the start of my rant, there will be more to follow

Feel free to rant here about your job as it is refreshing to see that other people are going through the same hell that I am!!!!


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Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig
I've got to admit it's getting better, it's getting better all the time

Moridin, you have probably forgot more about bank business than I will ever learn!
Our new Secretary ,I think you know him a little, is only the second non-scholar type that the Institution has ever had. He has shaken this place up and down to see what falls out. Scientists and scholars are up in arms full force on what areas he wants to ..lets say re-direct. Have you heard anything about the SI out there? The ex- Fannie Mae CEO counts dollars and cents very well. Research costs alot and sometimes not much comes back in return. A contracting attitude is carefully being set in place and the emphasis on the numbers of visitors are becoming very important. Temporary positions are filling the personel offices certs. Slots are being directed to a type of micro management styles. Directors are retireing(ours is one of many) due to the pressures of fund raiseing. Had enough yet...

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*\Conan/*

[This message has been edited by Conan (edited 08-15-2001).]

wierd......




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this is my last resort, cant work a sig....
LOSIN' MY HEAD LOSIN' MY MIND OVER SOME SIGNATURE!!! WISH I HAD DIABLO HERE!!!


fish?
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Wishes to be annubis
movvvvve.....zigggg......
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US!!! how are you gentlemen?

[Larry_OHF]

I am good friends with a guy at one of the two banks that I think you are referring to. Can I share with him what you said, and see if he has anything to add to that? He is a gossip lover, and will probably have alot to say concerning other issues you may / may not have covered.

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Devoted member of the Ironworks
Loyal guardian of the OHF
Member of the Ancients' club

[SSJ4Sephiroth]

excuse me, im still laughing so hard over his idea! it reminded me of a Dilbert cartoon... NYAHAHA! NOT BUYING PENS AND POST-ITs!? AAAHAHA!!

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With each kill, I grow wiser, and with added wisdom, I grow stronger. Does anybody have any idea what this means?

[Moridin]

Originally posted by Larry_OHF: I am good friends with a guy at one of the two banks that I think you are referring to. Can I share with him what you said, and see if he has anything to add to that? He is a gossip lover, and will probably have alot to say concerning other issues you may / may not have covered.

You most certainly can If he is from around your area, he is probably with the 'acquiring' bank, and has a better knowledge of the CEO's ingenious actions.

My group went to lunch yesterday and after a long discussion, came to the conclusion that the CEO must be mentally unstable. He would have to be to go to a meeting (with around 1000 employees) and actually claim that we can save costs by not buying post-it notes and pens. Furthermore, his idea for building revenues is this: We have 50,000 (roughly) employees. If each employee can get 5 people/day to switch to our bank and buy one of our products then that is 250,000 people/day. At an average of 300 days/year (these are his numbers) then that is 75,000,000 new customer sales per year and at an average profit of $10/sale that is rougly $750,000,000/year in profit! He does not realize however, that our bank only operates in 21 states and that these 21 states only have around 30% of the US population. At roughly 261 million people (total US population) then 30% is roughly 78,300,000 people. So we would have to get all but 3,300,000 people in our banking area to commit to our bank now that is a good goal to shoot for, but I don't think the FED would go for a 96% marketshare (I believe this is called a monopoly )



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Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig
I've got to admit it's getting better, it's getting better all the time

[Larry_OHF]

I was wrong. You left me thinking it was Wachovia and First Union, but my friend at Wachovia says you are not referring to anything that he knows about.

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Devoted member of the Ironworks
Loyal guardian of the OHF
Member of the Ancients' club

[Moridin]

They probably have a CEO with a brain and an ounce of business sense at Wachovia

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Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig
I've got to admit it's getting better, it's getting better all the time

[Moridin]

Oh...could you ask your friend if they get post-it notes?

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Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig
I've got to admit it's getting better, it's getting better all the time

[MILAMBER]

You know they might not pay me quite as much as I think I'm worth, but I'll stick with my company anyways because I have a huge stack of post-it's on my desk right now, a drawer full of pens and life is good.

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"The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his."
-General George Patton (1885-1945)

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