Accountants Take Control!

It’s finally happened, the bean counters among us now control every product and service.

Years ago accountants got into the airlines and they posed a simple question, “What would happen if we were to add additional rows of seats to airliners?” Airline management answered, “Every additional passenger we can wedge onto the airliner is almost pure profit.”

The result – travelling by the commercial airlines has become a cattle drive.

The original bean counters at Maxwell House coffee, of good-to-the-last-drop fame discovered that the consumer could not detect if they substituted 1% more coffee beans of lower quality each and every month. In time the quality of the coffee was eroded to the point there was a hole in the marketplace that was appropriately filled by Starbucks.

Now the bean counters have taken hold at a least three more companies: Kimberly Clark, Unilever and Bumble Bee Tuna.

We recently purchased each of these products and found them to have been transformed. And not in a good way.

The Bumble Bee solid white albacore tuna is still a high quality product but the cans have gone from six ounces to five ounces. It will not be long before the cost of the packaging is more than the cost of the product. I enjoy tuna but my sandwiches have been devalued.

I picked up a twelve pack of Scott paper towel rolls and it was so light I felt like the Incredible Hulk. When you buy bulk paper products the easiest way to test the quality is by comparing the weight of equal size containers. This is surprisingly easy to do.

Then when we opened a roll of Scott’s towels they are nothing like the towels they used to produce. They’re flimsy and tear awkwardly. They look like they’re made from recycled toilet paper.

It was so bad my wife phoned and complained to Kimberly Clark. Their representative was sharp and extremely responsive. They even sent us coupons. They handled it incredibly well but I’m not going to buy any more Scott paper towels. A poor product is a poor product.

What would you do for a Klondike bar? Apparently now it’s not what you would do for one but what’s been done to one. Remember when you’d bite into this creamy confection covered in a thick coating of delicious chocolate that was so thick it crunched with every bite. It was like having two desserts in one. Now it’s like the chocolate has been painted on with a sprayer and you need two of those lousy Scott paper towels to catch the splinters of thin chocolate coating.

Apparently the accountants felt in their tiny little analytic hearts that less is more.

Accountants are not samurai wielding Pilot Precise V-7 rolling ball ink pens as many of them seem to believe.

Some products have to be inviolate. Some CEO’s have to have the guts to hold the line. I’m not saying that the accountants should be fired, kicked in the testibles (as our grandson would say), or killed as my wife suggested. Accountants must not be allowed to roam the land decimating the quality of products at will; they must be controlled. Contained.

The dark-comedy lesson: Less is not more.