The Irony of the Big Three
November 20th, 2008 by Nubby
On Tuesday, hope for a bailout on behalf of the Big Three automakers faded even further. Democratic congressional leaders chastised the CEOs for failing to convince them that a $25 billion bailout would be well-spent and gave them a set timetable of 12 days to prove otherwise.
This point was made glaringly obvious when Sentator majority leader Harry Reid called attention to the three CEOs for each flying into Washington separately on private corporate jets.
“There’s a delicious irony in seeing private luxury jets flying into Washington, D.C., and people coming off of them with tin cups in their hands,” Democatic representative Gary L. Ackerman said. “It’s almost like seeing a guy show up at the soup kitchen in high-hat and tuxedo. I mean, couldn’t you all have downgraded to first class or jet-pooled or something to get here?”
If any of these CEOs had any common sense, they would have chatted with Guy Kawasaki beforehand about proper etiquette in this sensitive situation.
In The Art of Laying People Off, rule #6 is Share the pain:
When people around you are losing their jobs, you can share the pain, too. Cut your pay. In fact, the higher the employee, the bigger the percentage of pay reduction. Take a smaller office. Turn in the company car. Reassign your personal assistant to a revenue-generating position. Fly coach. Stay in motels. Sell the boxseat tickets to the ball game. Give your 30-inch flat-panel display to a programmer who could use it to debug faster. Do something, however symbolic.
In layman’s terms, flying to meetings (no matter how important) in a private jet to ask for billions of dollars just makes you look like a total ass. As Dana Milbank says, “There are 24 daily nonstop flights from Detroit to the Washington area. Richard Wagoner, Alan Mulally and Robert Nardelli probably should have taken one of them.”
Tags: excess, Social Change
