Every cost-cutting decision has a consequence — even the easy ones

Dear Bob …

After reading your columns on companies looking for ways to cut costs, I would like to share a bit of contrary cost cutting.

We were acquired a couple of years ago. Prior to that, management had always provided coffee service. Our new owners discontinued it at the start of the new fiscal year.

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The coffee drinkers couldn’t come to a consensus on what to do: whether to pay for the service themselves, find a new one, or pay for a communal brewing center. So now we have 40 individual coffee pots in 40 individual cubes and 40 individuals storing coffee, making coffee, washing pots, etc, etc, etc all day long.

So far we don’t have anyone who grinds their own, but I imagine it’s a matter of time.

I don’t really care (I don’t drink coffee), except that I am concerned about the potential hazards of 40 coffeemakers and 40 glass coffee pots. We’ve come into the office a few mornings already to the smell of burned coffee. And although the company is saving money on the coffee service, it had to be cheaper than electricity and water for 40 machines.

– Bemused

Dear Bemused …

On the flip side, of course, those who drink the most coffee bear their fair share of the cost. And your fellow non-coffee-drinkers no longer have any complaints about the company’s failure to subsidize their soft drink habit. I imagine, though, that at times altercations break out over access to limited sink space.

As for the fire hazard, think of it this way: When the office burns down — after hours, of course, due to an untended coffeemaker — then the company will go fully virtual through the necessity of the crisis.

Add the financial benefit of being fully virtual to the insurance settlement, and you see the potentially huge payoff.

Clearly, your company is run by very smart people.

– Bob