It does kind of astound me that people think anything at all has inherent value, even things like gold.
Like, y'all, everything is made up and the points don't matter. Things cost as much as people are willing to pay for it, that's why monopolies are bad because there's no competition to keep prices down on inelastic goods like food and healthcare.
Idk what it is but I feel like I got a lot more out of my economics studying than most people do in university.
+7
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AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
The trick to sales is knowing that everyone wants a deal and feeling like they came out ahead.
I'm not being contrarian, but isn't a fair price for a thing a deal? Instead of being told it's work X, but finding out it's really worth Y?
I always feel like "I haggled down a thousand dollars!" carries a lot less weight when the widget was really worth a thousand dollars less than stated.
Regardless, I'm sure the universe will provide.
I don't disagree with you. I hate haggling.
But if you're bartering with people you gotta build it in.
I was shocked to know that big businesses haggle prices like crazy. The ones that don't list their price on the website? It's not just because they're so expensive (9 times out of 10 that's the reason) but because they also want to not clue in their competitors (lol not a real reason) but it's because they're flexible on the actual price if you can get ahold of a sales person.
A lot of them can go as far as 25%, and some even further to 50%.
This is a particularly infuriating aspect of my job at the moment.
I might want a dozen N connectors, or something, and the front office people still have to talk to like 3 vendors and see how low they can haggle each before I can put a metal doodad on a cable.
+2
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
Also, sales at every company I've ever worked at will cave on price as soon as they think they might lose the sale. So the customer ends up with a deal and expects it going forward, and we don't actually make any money. I watched one company sell itself right out of business. Highest year ever in product moved, lowest year ever for margins. The mantra always being "we'll make it up in volume!"
Economics of volume work best in manufacturing or other commodity business, I think. I know I've saved thousands over a year by being able to buy a ton of steel at once, instead of piecemeal.
If you're selling a service or a general retailer, the volume argument only works if you have someone forward thinking in procurement.
This was manufacturing, the issue being we were on the low end of the next volume bump (25k units moved) and weren't going to gain significant savings until we could move 100k or so units per year . Our growth curve was pretty shallow too, maybe 5k growth each year. This was finished good technology manufacturing as well, so not a lot of raw materials buying.
Also, sales at every company I've ever worked at will cave on price as soon as they think they might lose the sale. So the customer ends up with a deal and expects it going forward, and we don't actually make any money. I watched one company sell itself right out of business. Highest year ever in product moved, lowest year ever for margins. The mantra always being "we'll make it up in volume!"
Economics of volume work best in manufacturing or other commodity business, I think. I know I've saved thousands over a year by being able to buy a ton of steel at once, instead of piecemeal.
If you're selling a service or a general retailer, the volume argument only works if you have someone forward thinking in procurement.
This was manufacturing, the issue being we were on the low end of the next volume bump (25k units moved) and weren't going to gain significant savings until we could move 100k or so units per year . Our growth curve was pretty shallow too, maybe 5k growth each year. This was finished good technology manufacturing as well, so not a lot of raw materials buying.
so theoretically you could've made it up on volume... if they were ordering hundreds of millions of widgets?
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
The trick to sales is knowing that everyone wants a deal and feeling like they came out ahead.
I'm not being contrarian, but isn't a fair price for a thing, a deal? Instead of being told it's work X, but finding out it's really worth Y?
I always feel like "I haggled down a thousand dollars!" carries a lot less weight when the widget was really worth a thousand dollars less than stated. I also know that when shopping for a boat, you don't even look at things above your price range. So tacking a grand on will probably limit my customer pool even further, especially if I'm willing to just give that money up at the first sign of resistance.
Regardless, I'm sure the universe will provide.
It turns out that Adam Smith's theories about capitalism didn't account for people being dumdums.
The trick to sales is knowing that everyone wants a deal and feeling like they came out ahead.
I'm not being contrarian, but isn't a fair price for a thing, a deal? Instead of being told it's work X, but finding out it's really worth Y?
I always feel like "I haggled down a thousand dollars!" carries a lot less weight when the widget was really worth a thousand dollars less than stated. I also know that when shopping for a boat, you don't even look at things above your price range. So tacking a grand on will probably limit my customer pool even further, especially if I'm willing to just give that money up at the first sign of resistance.
Regardless, I'm sure the universe Great Material Continuum will provide.
Anon, what about selling on consignment?
Is there a dealer you trust there who can keep the boat on their lot, sell it, take a piece of the sale price, and let you not have to worry about it?
It does kind of astound me that people think anything at all has inherent value, even things like gold.
Like, y'all, everything is made up and the points don't matter. Things cost as much as people are willing to pay for it, that's why monopolies are bad because there's no competition to keep prices down on inelastic goods like food and healthcare.
Idk what it is but I feel like I got a lot more out of my economics studying than most people do in university.
Monopolies are only bad if the populace doesn't have leverage over the people in charge of the monopoly. In the case of state-controlled monopolies, we can actually get cheaper prices than in a competitive market.
No no. My university gives out free soup once a week to students who are in the building at 6pm.
+23
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Brovid Hasselsmof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
edited December 2017
I saw my first chameleon of the summer on drive this evening. They are one of my favourite things, because when you've got your eye in they are really obvious and easy to spot at night, but to all the newbies on the car your ability to see them as you're driving along in the dark makes you seem like some kind of wizard.
They do a good job. Without them, we'd fail as a business. They can be called too ambitious at times, but they work really hard, and they get us new business. Say what you will, but that new business is critical.
It does kind of astound me that people think anything at all has inherent value, even things like gold.
Like, y'all, everything is made up and the points don't matter. Things cost as much as people are willing to pay for it, that's why monopolies are bad because there's no competition to keep prices down on inelastic goods like food and healthcare.
Idk what it is but I feel like I got a lot more out of my economics studying than most people do in university.
Monopolies are only bad if the populace doesn't have leverage over the people in charge of the monopoly. In the case of state-controlled monopolies, we can actually get cheaper prices than in a competitive market.
Yeah it's important for consumers to have some kind of political strength in order to actually have quality products.
Anon, what about selling on consignment?
Is there a dealer you trust there who can keep the boat on their lot, sell it, take a piece of the sale price, and let you not have to worry about it?
If I don't get any traction in the next two weeks, that's my next move. I e-mailed the owner of the shop I'm returning to asking about area contacts I might not know, and he replied with a picture of him on the phone and the caption "on it!".
I'm not actually worried about selling it, since there are a bunch of options and I'm in a pretty good situation in general. I mean, I know I'm returning to my old salary with better equity options than the ones I rejected previously, so I can absolutely afford to house it here and pay a broker to sell it.
But, like, I don't want to. That's a bunch of hassle, and I'd rather get it to someone I know wants a good boat and wants to sail.
The trick to sales is knowing that everyone wants a deal and feeling like they came out ahead.
I'm not being contrarian, but isn't a fair price for a thing a deal? Instead of being told it's work X, but finding out it's really worth Y?
I always feel like "I haggled down a thousand dollars!" carries a lot less weight when the widget was really worth a thousand dollars less than stated.
Regardless, I'm sure the universe will provide.
I don't disagree with you. I hate haggling.
But if you're bartering with people you gotta build it in.
I was shocked to know that big businesses haggle prices like crazy. The ones that don't list their price on the website? It's not just because they're so expensive (9 times out of 10 that's the reason) but because they also want to not clue in their competitors (lol not a real reason) but it's because they're flexible on the actual price if you can get ahold of a sales person.
A lot of them can go as far as 25%, and some even further to 50%.
This is a particularly infuriating aspect of my job at the moment.
I might want a dozen N connectors, or something, and the front office people still have to talk to like 3 vendors and see how low they can haggle each before I can put a metal doodad on a cable.
They're "adding value".
The worst is when I've already negotiated the quote from the company I want. I don't want some jackass in purchasing/buying to try and renegotiate it thus ruining the good-faith I've built with that vendor. I want them to just move the quote/purchase through the system, and pay the vendor so I can get my boards.
+4
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Librarian's ghostLibrarian, Ghostbuster, and TimSporkRegistered Userregular
I am being offered entry into a university program that would give me an instructional technology teaching endorsement for free and take one year.
Downside, it starts this summer right when my master's will be concluded.
I just don't want to think about having to go to classes or doing assignments for a while. Am I crazy in turning this down? It doesn't really get me anything more since I will already have both a teaching endorsement and masters in my existing field. Like, maybe I could be more of a technology expert?
The trick to sales is knowing that everyone wants a deal and feeling like they came out ahead.
I'm not being contrarian, but isn't a fair price for a thing a deal? Instead of being told it's work X, but finding out it's really worth Y?
I always feel like "I haggled down a thousand dollars!" carries a lot less weight when the widget was really worth a thousand dollars less than stated.
Regardless, I'm sure the universe will provide.
I don't disagree with you. I hate haggling.
But if you're bartering with people you gotta build it in.
I was shocked to know that big businesses haggle prices like crazy. The ones that don't list their price on the website? It's not just because they're so expensive (9 times out of 10 that's the reason) but because they also want to not clue in their competitors (lol not a real reason) but it's because they're flexible on the actual price if you can get ahold of a sales person.
A lot of them can go as far as 25%, and some even further to 50%.
This is a particularly infuriating aspect of my job at the moment.
I might want a dozen N connectors, or something, and the front office people still have to talk to like 3 vendors and see how low they can haggle each before I can put a metal doodad on a cable.
They're "adding value".
The worst is when I've already negotiated the quote from the company I want. I don't want some jackass in purchasing/buying to try and renegotiate it thus ruining the good-faith I've built with that vendor. I want them to just move the quote/purchase through the system, and pay the vendor so I can get my boards.
As near as I can tell they are "wasting time that could be spent getting more radios in front of me," but I understand - more or less - what you're saying.
I am not to be involved, even tangentially, in such negotiations myself unless it's for something unusual, which doesn't help matters.
+1
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
Also, sales at every company I've ever worked at will cave on price as soon as they think they might lose the sale. So the customer ends up with a deal and expects it going forward, and we don't actually make any money. I watched one company sell itself right out of business. Highest year ever in product moved, lowest year ever for margins. The mantra always being "we'll make it up in volume!"
Economics of volume work best in manufacturing or other commodity business, I think. I know I've saved thousands over a year by being able to buy a ton of steel at once, instead of piecemeal.
If you're selling a service or a general retailer, the volume argument only works if you have someone forward thinking in procurement.
This was manufacturing, the issue being we were on the low end of the next volume bump (25k units moved) and weren't going to gain significant savings until we could move 100k or so units per year . Our growth curve was pretty shallow too, maybe 5k growth each year. This was finished good technology manufacturing as well, so not a lot of raw materials buying.
so theoretically you could've made it up on volume... if they were ordering hundreds of millions of widgets?
Yes theoretically. Or at least broken even. Another big problem was minimal new business. 90% of our sales were spread between 2 customers, out of about 200. We spent a lot of money on overhead to sell small volume versus working with a distributor who's business model was high volume small quantity orders. We could have cut our overhead in half, along with our on hand inventory of every accessory under the sun if we had moved to that model. The business wanted to be a solutions provider to everyone though, even to the customers who only bought one with no chance of larger business later.
The trick to sales is knowing that everyone wants a deal and feeling like they came out ahead.
I'm not being contrarian, but isn't a fair price for a thing a deal? Instead of being told it's work X, but finding out it's really worth Y?
I always feel like "I haggled down a thousand dollars!" carries a lot less weight when the widget was really worth a thousand dollars less than stated.
Regardless, I'm sure the universe will provide.
I don't disagree with you. I hate haggling.
But if you're bartering with people you gotta build it in.
I was shocked to know that big businesses haggle prices like crazy. The ones that don't list their price on the website? It's not just because they're so expensive (9 times out of 10 that's the reason) but because they also want to not clue in their competitors (lol not a real reason) but it's because they're flexible on the actual price if you can get ahold of a sales person.
A lot of them can go as far as 25%, and some even further to 50%.
This is a particularly infuriating aspect of my job at the moment.
I might want a dozen N connectors, or something, and the front office people still have to talk to like 3 vendors and see how low they can haggle each before I can put a metal doodad on a cable.
They're "adding value".
The worst is when I've already negotiated the quote from the company I want. I don't want some jackass in purchasing/buying to try and renegotiate it thus ruining the good-faith I've built with that vendor. I want them to just move the quote/purchase through the system, and pay the vendor so I can get my boards.
As near as I can tell they are "wasting time that could be spent getting more radios in front of me," but I understand - more or less - what you're saying.
I am not to be involved, even tangentially, in such negotiations myself unless it's for something unusual, which doesn't help matters.
It wastes a lot of time. Not just the time buying wastes re-negotiating, but the time lost because we basically lose that vendor.
Some local places are really good at what they do, and they'll bend-over backwards to help us with re-work, if it's needed. Since they're local, we can have a turn around of less than a day on that stuff sometimes because one of the folks in their office will drive over in the morning, pick up the stuff we need reworked, and then return it to us by mid afternoon.
Like, these are high-tier working relationships with vendors to help us not sit on our butts for two/three days and it saves us a ton of money in shipping our thing to [redacted] and having [redacted] ship the thing back to us. Only for us to find out that the rework done in-house at [redacted] wasn't done right, so we have to ship it back... I digress.
Point is, once buying/purchasing burns the bridge with our local vendors, it destroys our ability to have nice things. Also, it tarnishes our personal relationship with the vendor which has a lot of follow-on repercussions for us personally in the local community here.
No no. My university gives out free soup once a week to students who are in the building at 6pm.
I should probably add only once a week! Not every day.
That was clear.
It's just awesome that they do it at all. Like, I'm used to universities trying to maximize their profits as much as possible in very evil ways. Once a week free soup for all y'all as you're working hard is in my book.
It's just awesome that they do it at all. Like, I'm used to universities trying to maximize their profits as much as possible in very evil ways. Once a week free soup for all y'all as you're working hard is in my book.
Agreed - its really good, you can stay until the building closes at 10pm if you get fed, I'm a very lucky person!
+1
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
The trick to sales is knowing that everyone wants a deal and feeling like they came out ahead.
I'm not being contrarian, but isn't a fair price for a thing a deal? Instead of being told it's work X, but finding out it's really worth Y?
I always feel like "I haggled down a thousand dollars!" carries a lot less weight when the widget was really worth a thousand dollars less than stated.
Regardless, I'm sure the universe will provide.
I don't disagree with you. I hate haggling.
But if you're bartering with people you gotta build it in.
I was shocked to know that big businesses haggle prices like crazy. The ones that don't list their price on the website? It's not just because they're so expensive (9 times out of 10 that's the reason) but because they also want to not clue in their competitors (lol not a real reason) but it's because they're flexible on the actual price if you can get ahold of a sales person.
A lot of them can go as far as 25%, and some even further to 50%.
This is a particularly infuriating aspect of my job at the moment.
I might want a dozen N connectors, or something, and the front office people still have to talk to like 3 vendors and see how low they can haggle each before I can put a metal doodad on a cable.
They're "adding value".
The worst is when I've already negotiated the quote from the company I want. I don't want some jackass in purchasing/buying to try and renegotiate it thus ruining the good-faith I've built with that vendor. I want them to just move the quote/purchase through the system, and pay the vendor so I can get my boards.
As near as I can tell they are "wasting time that could be spent getting more radios in front of me," but I understand - more or less - what you're saying.
I am not to be involved, even tangentially, in such negotiations myself unless it's for something unusual, which doesn't help matters.
It wastes a lot of time. Not just the time buying wastes re-negotiating, but the time lost because we basically lose that vendor.
Some local places are really good at what they do, and they'll bend-over backwards to help us with re-work, if it's needed. Since they're local, we can have a turn around of less than a day on that stuff sometimes because one of the folks in their office will drive over in the morning, pick up the stuff we need reworked, and then return it to us by mid afternoon.
Like, these are high-tier working relationships with vendors to help us not sit on our butts for two/three days and it saves us a ton of money in shipping our thing to [redacted] and having [redacted] ship the thing back to us. Only for us to find out that the rework done in-house at [redacted] wasn't done right, so we have to ship it back... I digress.
Point is, once buying/purchasing burns the bridge with our local vendors, it destroys our ability to have nice things. Also, it tarnishes our personal relationship with the vendor which has a lot of follow-on repercussions for us personally in the local community here.
That sucks. As a buyer currently and supply chain in general for over a decade at this point any decent company will try to get quality work done as close to home as possible. Like you said it cuts down on shipping time and being local people are usually more willing to bend over backwards to help somebody, easier to do QC, etc... I love my local folks.
The issues cone in when cost cutting comes into play. Trying to make everything look great on a quarter by quarter basis. All the local benefits are long term benefits and buying from china to save $1 on a widget is up front savings. Multiple companies I've been at have went the short term cost cutting route and it usually ends up sucking pretty hard. I hate being directed to do short term savings initiatives just to make numbers look better for an executive, when the overall business suffers.
The trick to sales is knowing that everyone wants a deal and feeling like they came out ahead.
I'm not being contrarian, but isn't a fair price for a thing a deal? Instead of being told it's work X, but finding out it's really worth Y?
I always feel like "I haggled down a thousand dollars!" carries a lot less weight when the widget was really worth a thousand dollars less than stated.
Regardless, I'm sure the universe will provide.
I don't disagree with you. I hate haggling.
But if you're bartering with people you gotta build it in.
I was shocked to know that big businesses haggle prices like crazy. The ones that don't list their price on the website? It's not just because they're so expensive (9 times out of 10 that's the reason) but because they also want to not clue in their competitors (lol not a real reason) but it's because they're flexible on the actual price if you can get ahold of a sales person.
A lot of them can go as far as 25%, and some even further to 50%.
This is a particularly infuriating aspect of my job at the moment.
I might want a dozen N connectors, or something, and the front office people still have to talk to like 3 vendors and see how low they can haggle each before I can put a metal doodad on a cable.
They're "adding value".
The worst is when I've already negotiated the quote from the company I want. I don't want some jackass in purchasing/buying to try and renegotiate it thus ruining the good-faith I've built with that vendor. I want them to just move the quote/purchase through the system, and pay the vendor so I can get my boards.
As near as I can tell they are "wasting time that could be spent getting more radios in front of me," but I understand - more or less - what you're saying.
I am not to be involved, even tangentially, in such negotiations myself unless it's for something unusual, which doesn't help matters.
It wastes a lot of time. Not just the time buying wastes re-negotiating, but the time lost because we basically lose that vendor.
Some local places are really good at what they do, and they'll bend-over backwards to help us with re-work, if it's needed. Since they're local, we can have a turn around of less than a day on that stuff sometimes because one of the folks in their office will drive over in the morning, pick up the stuff we need reworked, and then return it to us by mid afternoon.
Like, these are high-tier working relationships with vendors to help us not sit on our butts for two/three days and it saves us a ton of money in shipping our thing to [redacted] and having [redacted] ship the thing back to us. Only for us to find out that the rework done in-house at [redacted] wasn't done right, so we have to ship it back... I digress.
Point is, once buying/purchasing burns the bridge with our local vendors, it destroys our ability to have nice things. Also, it tarnishes our personal relationship with the vendor which has a lot of follow-on repercussions for us personally in the local community here.
That sucks. As a buyer currently and supply chain in general for over a decade at this point any decent company will try to get quality work done as close to home as possible. Like you said it cuts down on shipping time and being local people are usually more willing to bend over backwards to help somebody, easier to do QC, etc... I love my local folks.
The issues cone in when cost cutting comes into play. Trying to make everything look great on a quarter by quarter basis. All the local benefits are long term benefits and buying from china to save $1 on a widget is up front savings. Multiple companies I've been at have went the short term cost cutting route and it usually ends up sucking pretty hard. I hate being directed to do short term savings initiatives just to make numbers look better for an executive, when the overall business suffers.
This is/was the issue. The purchasing group was on an incentive plan that was directly tied to how much they could negotiate off of a quote. This lead to some of the most "successful" buyers basically having an "understanding" with shops local to them not us (we're a multi-site company). The understanding was that their local shop (likely also run by a family member) would inflate the initial quote, so that the buyer could then "negotiate" to the real price. Kick backs are assumed, but not proven.
These buyers tried to do the same thing with our local supplier, but the local supplier was like, "what no, that's horribly unethical", and that is what burned us the most.
To my shock (ok, not really, I'm resigned to the fact that everyone in this industry is a cutthroat horrible person), the buyer remains employed to this day (that I'm aware of).
Listening to 3 engineers struggle to unjam a copier and trying not to laugh too hard.
Normal machines are motivated by their machine spirits
It's fair to say that printers and copiers are more "haunted"
We’ve had the same shitty model of copier at this office for 6 years and people still aren’t familiar with even the basics of it, so every day when it inevitably jams it’s like a 15 minute ordeal right outside my door.
I’ve gotten to the point where if I hear it beep when nobody is there I’ll just go fix it myself.
0
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L Ron HowardThe duckMinnesotaRegistered Userregular
Listening to 3 engineers struggle to unjam a copier and trying not to laugh too hard.
Normal machines are motivated by their machine spirits
It's fair to say that printers and copiers are more "haunted"
We’ve had the same shitty model of copier at this office for 6 years and people still aren’t familiar with even the basics of it, so every day when it inevitably jams it’s like a 15 minute ordeal right outside my door.
I’ve gotten to the point where if I hear it beep when nobody is there I’ll just go fix it myself.
Listening to 3 engineers struggle to unjam a copier and trying not to laugh too hard.
Normal machines are motivated by their machine spirits
It's fair to say that printers and copiers are more "haunted"
We’ve had the same shitty model of copier at this office for 6 years and people still aren’t familiar with even the basics of it, so every day when it inevitably jams it’s like a 15 minute ordeal right outside my door.
I’ve gotten to the point where if I hear it beep when nobody is there I’ll just go fix it myself.
Get a baseball bat
The old one got taken out behind the shed last week and replaced with an exact duplicate.
Listening to 3 engineers struggle to unjam a copier and trying not to laugh too hard.
Normal machines are motivated by their machine spirits
It's fair to say that printers and copiers are more "haunted"
We’ve had the same shitty model of copier at this office for 6 years and people still aren’t familiar with even the basics of it, so every day when it inevitably jams it’s like a 15 minute ordeal right outside my door.
I’ve gotten to the point where if I hear it beep when nobody is there I’ll just go fix it myself.
I think this is the fate of whoever happens to be closest to the printer in every office
Posts
Like, y'all, everything is made up and the points don't matter. Things cost as much as people are willing to pay for it, that's why monopolies are bad because there's no competition to keep prices down on inelastic goods like food and healthcare.
Idk what it is but I feel like I got a lot more out of my economics studying than most people do in university.
This is a particularly infuriating aspect of my job at the moment.
I might want a dozen N connectors, or something, and the front office people still have to talk to like 3 vendors and see how low they can haggle each before I can put a metal doodad on a cable.
This was manufacturing, the issue being we were on the low end of the next volume bump (25k units moved) and weren't going to gain significant savings until we could move 100k or so units per year . Our growth curve was pretty shallow too, maybe 5k growth each year. This was finished good technology manufacturing as well, so not a lot of raw materials buying.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
so theoretically you could've made it up on volume... if they were ordering hundreds of millions of widgets?
It turns out that Adam Smith's theories about capitalism didn't account for people being dumdums.
It's not even hard, it's just a chore
Is there a dealer you trust there who can keep the boat on their lot, sell it, take a piece of the sale price, and let you not have to worry about it?
Are you homeless?
Monopolies are only bad if the populace doesn't have leverage over the people in charge of the monopoly. In the case of state-controlled monopolies, we can actually get cheaper prices than in a competitive market.
No no. My university gives out free soup once a week to students who are in the building at 6pm.
They do a good job. Without them, we'd fail as a business. They can be called too ambitious at times, but they work really hard, and they get us new business. Say what you will, but that new business is critical.
Yeah it's important for consumers to have some kind of political strength in order to actually have quality products.
If I don't get any traction in the next two weeks, that's my next move. I e-mailed the owner of the shop I'm returning to asking about area contacts I might not know, and he replied with a picture of him on the phone and the caption "on it!".
I'm not actually worried about selling it, since there are a bunch of options and I'm in a pretty good situation in general. I mean, I know I'm returning to my old salary with better equity options than the ones I rejected previously, so I can absolutely afford to house it here and pay a broker to sell it.
But, like, I don't want to. That's a bunch of hassle, and I'd rather get it to someone I know wants a good boat and wants to sail.
Grad student.
I will be spending the next week becoming intimately acquainted with hoops on ramps, and using overcomplicated math to describe their motion.
If I knew anything about boats, and were anywhere close to the coast (Minnesota), I'd help you haggle your boat, Anon.
They're "adding value".
The worst is when I've already negotiated the quote from the company I want. I don't want some jackass in purchasing/buying to try and renegotiate it thus ruining the good-faith I've built with that vendor. I want them to just move the quote/purchase through the system, and pay the vendor so I can get my boards.
Downside, it starts this summer right when my master's will be concluded.
I just don't want to think about having to go to classes or doing assignments for a while. Am I crazy in turning this down? It doesn't really get me anything more since I will already have both a teaching endorsement and masters in my existing field. Like, maybe I could be more of a technology expert?
More functions intending to attract grad students should give out free soup. Free pizza is nice and all but I much prefer soup.
As near as I can tell they are "wasting time that could be spent getting more radios in front of me," but I understand - more or less - what you're saying.
I am not to be involved, even tangentially, in such negotiations myself unless it's for something unusual, which doesn't help matters.
Yes theoretically. Or at least broken even. Another big problem was minimal new business. 90% of our sales were spread between 2 customers, out of about 200. We spent a lot of money on overhead to sell small volume versus working with a distributor who's business model was high volume small quantity orders. We could have cut our overhead in half, along with our on hand inventory of every accessory under the sun if we had moved to that model. The business wanted to be a solutions provider to everyone though, even to the customers who only bought one with no chance of larger business later.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
It wastes a lot of time. Not just the time buying wastes re-negotiating, but the time lost because we basically lose that vendor.
Some local places are really good at what they do, and they'll bend-over backwards to help us with re-work, if it's needed. Since they're local, we can have a turn around of less than a day on that stuff sometimes because one of the folks in their office will drive over in the morning, pick up the stuff we need reworked, and then return it to us by mid afternoon.
Like, these are high-tier working relationships with vendors to help us not sit on our butts for two/three days and it saves us a ton of money in shipping our thing to [redacted] and having [redacted] ship the thing back to us. Only for us to find out that the rework done in-house at [redacted] wasn't done right, so we have to ship it back... I digress.
Point is, once buying/purchasing burns the bridge with our local vendors, it destroys our ability to have nice things. Also, it tarnishes our personal relationship with the vendor which has a lot of follow-on repercussions for us personally in the local community here.
I should probably add only once a week! Not every day.
That was clear.
It's just awesome that they do it at all. Like, I'm used to universities trying to maximize their profits as much as possible in very evil ways. Once a week free soup for all y'all as you're working hard is
Agreed - its really good, you can stay until the building closes at 10pm if you get fed, I'm a very lucky person!
That sucks. As a buyer currently and supply chain in general for over a decade at this point any decent company will try to get quality work done as close to home as possible. Like you said it cuts down on shipping time and being local people are usually more willing to bend over backwards to help somebody, easier to do QC, etc... I love my local folks.
The issues cone in when cost cutting comes into play. Trying to make everything look great on a quarter by quarter basis. All the local benefits are long term benefits and buying from china to save $1 on a widget is up front savings. Multiple companies I've been at have went the short term cost cutting route and it usually ends up sucking pretty hard. I hate being directed to do short term savings initiatives just to make numbers look better for an executive, when the overall business suffers.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
French onion soup.
No soup for Uni.
"PC Load Letter", wtf does that mean?
"Load Letter" (load standard 8.5x11 paper)
It always annoys me because for software dudes they should've known that!
This is/was the issue. The purchasing group was on an incentive plan that was directly tied to how much they could negotiate off of a quote. This lead to some of the most "successful" buyers basically having an "understanding" with shops local to them not us (we're a multi-site company). The understanding was that their local shop (likely also run by a family member) would inflate the initial quote, so that the buyer could then "negotiate" to the real price. Kick backs are assumed, but not proven.
These buyers tried to do the same thing with our local supplier, but the local supplier was like, "what no, that's horribly unethical", and that is what burned us the most.
To my shock (ok, not really, I'm resigned to the fact that everyone in this industry is a cutthroat horrible person), the buyer remains employed to this day (that I'm aware of).
Normal machines are motivated by their machine spirits
It's fair to say that printers and copiers are more "haunted"
We’ve had the same shitty model of copier at this office for 6 years and people still aren’t familiar with even the basics of it, so every day when it inevitably jams it’s like a 15 minute ordeal right outside my door.
I’ve gotten to the point where if I hear it beep when nobody is there I’ll just go fix it myself.
Get a baseball bat
The old one got taken out behind the shed last week and replaced with an exact duplicate.
I think this is the fate of whoever happens to be closest to the printer in every office