We let MBAs, who have no skills other than “buy low, sell high”, take over everything.

Story time:

I used to work at a place that sells exclusively to local factories. We had an insane warehouse that may very well have had the Ark of the Convenant in the back, and small shops in each factory. Workers could get gloves, drive belts, fans, and other day-to-day stuff right there at the factory or order from the warehouse. The big Fortune 500 plant manager (engineer, nice guy, smart) tells me that he’s retiring and the New Guy (MBA) wants to have a meeting. Ok.

New Guy immediately starts making demands, “I want to know how much we are buying off your shop”. Well, we send a weekly update every Monday and each month a full report that tracks trends and notes any major purchases.

“I want the full report TODAY”. Ok, here is the most recent report.

“No, run it for today”. Sir, it’s the middle of the month so all the metrics will be skewed comparing two weeks to previous months.

“I don’t want your opinion, I want the report. Now.” To which I think I’m this guy’s supplier and he talks to me this way, I can only imagine what employees hear. So I print the report and leave.

Start of next month I get a call “You’re robbing us blind!” Well good morning to you too, what is the problem. “This report you sent says you’re charging us way too much. We’re going to fix this.” After some back and forth, it’s clear he was using the two week report as the baseline for what he thinks our services should cost. I try to get him to look at literally any other monthly report or grasp the basics of how time works. Nope.

Then he says the greatest thing a human in charge of a factory has ever said. “It looks like the maintenance guys are the ones spending the most money…” I pause trying to figure out what he is getting at since of course the people replacing parts are the ones buying parts. “…the maintenance department doesn’t even make us any money!” It was at this moment I realized I wasn’t dealing with an asshole, I was dealing with an idiot asshole.

They also moved most of the maintenance guys over to the line. Soon after, our shop was kicked out. Idiot Asshole would bulk ordered parts, usually incorrectly. Parts, tools, and safety gear kept disappearing from their new storage room which he tried to make my problem, somehow. They ran up absurd levels of delivery fees over the following months because the line would shut down so they had to emergency order the replacement from the warehouse instead of walking to the shop. Lots of wrong parts ordered because while the shop had the most commonly replaced parts for that factory handy, the warehouse list had a million billion almost identical parts and good luck figuring that out looking at a part list.

My last week I had to emergency deliver ($$$) some fuses over and they had a team of suits there trying to figure out why productivity had cratered. I caught a smoke on the way out with one of the remaining maintenance guys who informed me the first thing the suits did when they walked in was fire his boss, the miracle worker who kept the place somewhat running with Idiot Asshole in charge. The maintenance boss didn’t say a word when he was fired, just got in his truck to drive across the street where they hired him on the spot.

This was a few years ago. The plant is still down more than it runs. The company has done two huge stock buybacks in recent years, so the stonks is way up even with their largest facility barely operating. The Roaring 20s keep on roaring.