How To Hide Poor Sales: Force Employees To Buy Products

from the hmmm dept

Wed, Feb 2nd 2005 1:07pm — Mike Masnick

It's often unfortunate that Wall Street forces companies to take a quarterly view of life. Everything is based on meeting the quarter, which means you miss out on some long term strategic plans. It also leads to a variety of "games" that companies play to try to meet their quarterly numbers. When misses happen, it often means that things like layoffs occur, to cut down on expenses. It appears that Sanyo is taking a slight different approach. According to Good Morning Silicon Valley, the company is "asking" employees to buy expensive Sanyo products, including " televisions, refrigerators, mobile phones and insurance," in order to boost the quarterly numbers. Of course, the whole "asking" term makes it sound like its optional. However, the fact that they've given different amounts for employees to spend, suggests that it's far from optional. Executives are told they need to spend nearly $20,000, division chiefs around $5,000, and other employees around $2,000.

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Jelly Roll, 2 Feb 2005 @ 3:18pm

No Subject Given
I suspect I'd "ask" my boss to have an auto-erogenous relationship, and would be out of a job.
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Feb 2005 @ 7:00pm

Like Charities in Some Places
Many moons ago I worked for a tech company that had a montly donation option to United Way. They "suggested" what everyone should donate, and managers were graded on compliance. I think the policy has changed (I long since left), but I thought that was chicken $&@# . I do know that UW never saw nor will never see a dime of my money due to that policy (I incurred the rath of my boss, but so what).
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thecaptain, 3 Feb 2005 @ 4:48am

Mandatory sales???
Suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure...

If I was "asked" to spend 2000 dollars/yen/whatever on my company's products, I'd demand an immediate raise and bonus to cover my expenditures.

What the heck...free stuff.
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