Bean Counter

How Bean Counter Mentality is destroying quality of life, individual freedom and integrity. It creates unsafe conditions, lower quality health care, lower insurance coverage's, and poor quality government services.

The term bean counter has had a negative connotation for years as it relates to one who puts numbers above all other considerations. A bean counter is employed by corporations or organizations who put their bottom line above everything else. It is the concept of making as much money as possible. Its concept is to buy a company and strip it of every thing possible to increase the immediate bottom line. Usually it means fire all the higher paid employees and replace them with lower paid ones.

We see the results of this kind of mentality in many large corporations such as the major retailers and manufacturers. Unfortunately it carries over into HMO's and hospitals as well.

My brother in law buys school busses. He found that International busses were very dependable and for years bought them both because of their reliability and the dealers service. A now owner bought the dealership and reconfigured labor based on saving money. The service disappeared. One of the last busses he bought from them was to have air conditioning. They delivered it without air conditioning hoping the buyer would not realize that it was missing. When the buyer returned it to have the air conditioning installed they kept it for almost two months. Each time the buyer asked about it they had a different excuse such as the part was sent to another state by accident and so on. Finally the bus was returned and in a short time the bracket that held the air conditioner broke because a lighter bracket was installed than required. Again the song and dance routine to get it replaced took another month and a half. After his and other larger bus purchasing agents experienced the poor service they began to buy a different bus from another dealer. It was more cost effective for them to buy a lessor quality bus that they can get quality service on, than a better bus without quality service.

So it is through out our world today. The bean counter mentality does not look to the long range future or if so calculates it into their computer as a calculated risk. They gamble on either bleeding the company dry before it fails, or wanting it to fail for a write off or other purposes. Other companies simply buy up or force out of business their competition. Just look at what Office Max, Staples, Wal-Mart, Lowe's and Home Depot have done to the smaller stores everywhere they go.

As I stated in the title of this article it even makes our lives less safe. Did you know that traffic lights are installed not based on safety but based on a point system. Deaths and accidents are part of the point system. The standard that dictates this policy is written by a private company and it's standards are adopted into law by every State and government jurisdiction in America. I learned this when my 18 year old daughter was killed in an unsafe intersection. I learned that our past City Mayor and others had tried to get a light at this intersection The State Hi way Department would not do it because it did not have enough points. The death of my daughter gave it enough points and now it has a traffic light. This same situation was repeated just a few months later at another intersection where a mother was killed leaving behind her husband and children.

Another example is the box stores that have become so popular. We all like to save money and have the supply of items we want. Box stores are great for these two attributes. Yet the service of yesterday is gone. I can no longer get the some of the items the friendly neighborhood store used to carry. They are forced out of business by the big box store. The box store carries only items that are profitable not specialty items. They hire employees that are cheep and often have little or no knowledge of the product they are selling.

A bean counter does not count lives, feelings, quality of life and similar essential qualities that make our lives happier and safer.