I agree but then we live in a greedy,materialistic world. Hence we are in this mess

oh i totally agree with your sentiments, up until yesterday i worked in retail, and because of the freeze on overtime we couldn't give the standard of customer service that we were used to giving, its not for the staffs lack of trying, there just weren't the hours there to get the right amount of staff working

because all they see are their wallets it doesn't matter that i have in essence been forced out of a job i loved because there wasn't enough hours for me to live. Its survival of the fittest and they are looking after the most important people in this current 'recession'

I work at a college and I work closely with the CFO, comptroller, and senior accountants.

Yes we have frozen overtime, no one should be getting overtime unless its approved by their supervisor first. We have also...slowed our hiring and cut back on promotions for now.

However...doing this DOES NOT mean poor service. We are doing what we do because its necessary. We survive on federal and state money and the rest on enrollment growth with tuition. This year...the state cut education spending significantly. We got 1 million cut last year and we struggled...this year we got 1.2 million cut. The state has compromised however with giving us about $500,000 in funds, but as a non-recurring funds...therefore it wont be there next year...so we need to find some money to plug in for that, as well as finding funding to fill the gap of the non-recurring funds given to us last year.

It truly sucks...our enrollment growth is up 6% this year...we have gone from having 16,000 students to 19,000 students this year alone. We need to hire more instructors...we need more employees in the places like student services, financial aid, registrar to keep up with our enrollment growth...but we haven't hired that many people.

However...our customer service, our teaching, etc have not gone down. It has actually increased significantly because we have great upper support and the college prides itself on doing the best. Yes we are asked to do more to meet the demand...but we have help and we have AN AMAZING president (college) and and equally amazing board that truly put the community and its employees first.

We also realize that WE DO NEED to do this now...the economy once it picks up again..we can resume to hiring more instructors, more help, and also giving out promotions and bonuses to all employees.

I think it needs to be done...looking at the numbers everyday...what we have done to me seems right...because we will get back more in return once the economy picks up again.

The important part is in bold.

Providing a better service costs more money. But these businesses are already losing money, which means they'd have to charge customers even more.

Businesses lean up and cut back on services during hard time to save money. Very often the "extras" cost more money than they bring in, so getting rid of those and getting rid of non-core staff helps the business remain competitive. They know that concentrating on more core business goals will sacrifice some customers, but the hope is that they will save more money than they lose revenue.

They're trying to stay afloat. In general, business owners and their accountants aren't total idiots who have no idea how to make money.

Yeah, charles. I remember some smarty pants saying things won't get like that. Hmmmmm.

First of all I didn't name names. Second of all they are blocked. And third of all isn't this a free press?

You don't have freedom of speech on TFS. It's a privately run site with a list of things you can't say.

And clearly you're talking about someone in particular since you know who it is and you say you have him/her blocked. So does it matter if you say the name or not? Does it really make a difference whether I say "Jimbo is a stupid jackass" or "that poster in the last thread I was arguing with is a stupid jackass."