And You Thought Lost Luggage Was Bad…

One could probably suggest that without the Airline industry, this secondary blog would never have made it out of the gate; I first got the idea for Racing to the Bottom when I realized that by the time I’d written an airline rant and posted it something worse would have surfaced on the news, and I’d be starting all over again. Of course, it’s also true that given how low the bar has been set, all the industry would have to do to get me (and probably five to ten million other bloggers) to stop ragging on them would be to just spend a few weeks operating with the same competence demonstrated by your average fast-food stand. This is not one of those weeks, however…

In a story that hit yesterday, MSNBC is reporting that a nine-year-old boy travelling by himself from San Francisco to Ottawa was left stranded at O’Hare International Airport for nearly eight hours because the airline personnel who were supposed to get him onto his connecting flight forgot about him and left him in the daycare center in the terminal. It wasn’t until his plane arrived (late) in Ottawa and his mother realized that he wasn’t on it that anyone realized anything was wrong…

Now, there’s no evidence to support the mother’s contention that her son was intentionally bumped off an overcrowded flight, on the principle that a child isn’t going to complain when adults tell him to do something. It’s actually quite possible that the ramp agent who was supposed to be looking after the boy was diverted to other duties, sent home early, or just didn’t realize that no one else was going to come and pick him up from the daycare center. None of that changes the fact that the child’s parents had already shelled out a hefty “unaccompanied minor” fee, or that the airline had a contractual responsibility (not to mention legal, ethical and moral obligations) to make sure that someone looked after the boy and got him onto the correct airplane. Nevertheless, it does make you wonder just exactly what was going on in O’Hare that would classify as more important than not making the company look like blithering idiots in front of the entire world…

That is, until you realize that the airline in question is United; the same people who managed to lose the luggage of a musician who had already become world-famous for mocking them on You Tube. In this case, they’re just lucky that the boy in our story had a pre-paid cell phone on him, and the presence of mind to call his mother and tell her what had happened; most parents in that situation would have informed the authorities, and since this was an international flight, that would have involved the FBI and their Canadian counterparts. There’s a very real possibility that there would have been arrests, criminal charges, or even an international incident, if the wrong people got their noses out of joint. As it is, the airline is going to considerable limits to avoid being sued – and I’m not convinced that any of them will help…

It’s been said that if you can’t get the little things right, you’ll never get the big ones right. It’s probably not fair to say that a company that can’t get one small customer from one gate to another without losing him for eight hours doesn’t inspire much confidence, but there’s no question that it would suggest a careless, lackadaisical and unprofessional attitude that we can only hope does not extend into the people who operate or maintain the airplanes. Because if that ever happens, United is going to be racing straight into the ground…

In a Nutshell

Sometimes a story comes along that is such a perfect Racing to the Bottom piece that I know I can’t even get 500 words of snarky comments out of it; I can only present its moronic goodness to the Universe (or whatever part of the Universe wanders by my blog from time to time) and let all of my readers (assuming I have readers) bask in the dull-witted glow. This is one of those times: I bring you the story of a large group of people who live in public housing who decided to attack safety and rescue personnel with incendiary devices just for the fun of it…


You can pick up the story from the local news here if you want to, but the basic story is that a mob of people who live at the Oakwood Housing Complex in Alton, Illinois, decided to call in a false alarm to the local Fire Department, and when the firefighters showed up, the people in the crowd started shooting bottle rockets and firing off Roman candles at them. The same miscreants decided to give the same treatment to several Alton police officers who showed up to investigate as well. However, there are currently no suspects, since no one who lives in the complex saw or heard anything, or was within 50 miles of the place on Sunday night. Or, at least, that’s the story they’re all telling the authorities…


Now, I’m not going to sermonize about the lack of trust that has grown up between various at-risk communities and the police in the United States over the past fifty years. The fact is, there have been enough atrocities on both sides of that war to make you wonder if anyone left in this nation has pure intentions, and I don’t have anything approaching the arrogance to assume that I can settle anything with a little humor blog. I do have to wonder about the intelligence of people who do something like this and then complain that emergency services are slow to respond to their complex, or even to their part of town, however…


Several authors, notably including the late Robert A. Heinlein, have argued that once basic courtesy disappears from a society, that civilization is simply and frankly doomed, and there is no way to save it. Heinlein in particular cites several examples, noting that this sort of decay is almost rationalized by the people who are doing it as a matter of “strength” in taking full advantage of their opportunities and not allowing anyone to take advantage of them. I call this to your attention because it takes little imagination to picture the people shooting fireworks at firemen being very pleased with themselves, for taking advantage of “the man” or “the system” to provide them with free entertainment, or justifying their treatment of these underpaid rescue workers by citing some wrong done to their parents, grandparents, or ancestors at some point over the last 150 years…

So far, this is still drawing outrage and Internet ridicule from the so-called “decent people” who object to this sort of hooliganism, but it’s hard to imagine any such events occurring even 50 years ago in this country. Which means it’s just possible that I might be onto something with this whole “Racing to the Bottom” concept…

Negative Energy? Really?

Sometimes the hardest thing about writing a post for Racing to the Bottom is just coming up with a title that doesn’t involve profanity, obscenity, or just asking “Are you putting me on?” over and over again. The point of this blog is to showcase news stories, events and trends in our society that are outrageous or jaw-droppingly stupid or both, and thus a lot of the time I’m just staring at the screen going “No way!” or the equivalent with more cussing. You’d think after three years of writing a business blog, five years of graduate school in business where one of my research interests is institutional failure, and more than 20 years in Corporate America, there would be nothing left in the news that would surprise me that much. The story of a woman from Omaha who was fired because her boss thought her unborn child carried “negative energy” would prove you and me wrong about that, however…


According to the story from the Associated Press an employee of Hearthstone Homes was fired because her boss, the CEO of the company, thought that the child she was carrying was causing harm to the company by giving off negative energy. When a number of psychics, including a chiropractor who the CEO described as an “energy worker” confirmed his suspicious about the fetus, he fired the employee, who had up to that point been his personal assistant. She is, quite logically, proceeding with wrongful termination and discrimination lawsuits, while the company (and her former boss) are being mocked by the local radio stations, television news, various Internet news aggregators, and of course, your friendly neighborhood bloggers…


What struck me about the story was that I honestly can’t decide which would be worse: if the CEO in our story honestly believes this new-age negative energy claptrap, or if he doesn’t. On the one hand, if he does, he’s allowing a preposterous lash-up of superstition, animism and self-help nonsense to interfere with the proper operation of his business, costing the enterprise a huge amount of money (even before the cost of legal fees and possible legal sanctions are applied), in addition to revealing to competitors and customers alike that he runs his company based more on his emotions and insecurities than on any responsible business principles. If, on the other hand, this is simply a ploy to avoid having to pay for having an employee out on maternity leave (and possibly increased insurance premiums for having a dependant child on the firm’s policy), or a mean of ridding himself of an employee who will now have childcare responsibilities that might interfere with her demanding work schedule (e.g., his demands), then he’s a cretin and should be imprisoned as well as sued…


Now, I realize that just because I don’t believe in something, that doesn’t make it wrong. Every American has the constitutional right to believe in whatever he or she wants to believe in; if you want to make decisions based on “intuitive spirituality” and your beliefs about “reincarnation and energy fields” that’s your business. But your rights to believe in and be guided by exotic new-age beliefs do not supersede the rights of other people. And if our society has actually reached the point where we have to use legal proceedings to discourage people from doing so, or from using such beliefs as a cover for eliminating employees who might become expensive and/or inconvenient, then our race to the bottom is starting to pick up speed…

Wasting Your Time

In the main blog, I have occasionally gone off about frivolous lawsuits, although technically they’re not really a business topic. Actual business suits are, of course; if you are sued (or sue someone else) because of a broken contract, a dispute over debts, or a product that failed and/or caused harm to someone while being used as suggested, then it’s hardly “frivolous” and is most likely just part of doing business. By the same token, there’s nothing you can do about truly frivolous legal actions – most municipalities allow you to counter-sue the person, but for the most part, if someone wants to sue you because the weather today was ghastly, they can. However, this blog is more oriented toward making snarky comments at people who deserve them, and the woman who is suing because she was arrested for illegally taping a movie falls into that category…

You can pick up the story off of the local broadcast station if you want to, but the facts of the case appear to be that the movie theater operators noticed the woman taping the opening of the second “Twilight” movie and summoned the police, exactly as they are required to do under both criminal law and their contract with the studio that made the movie. The police arrived and arrested the woman taping the film, but the charges were later dropped when it was discovered that she hadn’t actually taped the whole movie and was mostly just recording a few scenes and images of other members of her party in the theater. Now the individual who was arrested is suing the theater for the “great public ridicule, embarrassment, humiliation, inconvenience, damages to her reputation, and other damages” that her lawyer says resulted from the incident…


I call this to your attention for two reasons. First, this individual is wasting your time – more so than I am, I mean. You, the taxpayer, are the one who ponies up the funds to operate the courthouse; every moment it is open costs you, and this individual is wasting those moments trying to capitalize on a profoundly stupid, self-absorbed action that is, in fact, in violation of both civil and criminal statute. Second, this individual is wasting your money – you, the movie-going member of the public who actually pays to see movies on the big screen. Because the movie studios, production companies and theater companies aren’t just going to suck up the costs of the lawsuit (and the damage award, if there is any); they’re just going to pass those costs along to you in the form of higher prices at the box office. And since time IS money – you have to work, for the most part, in order to get the money with which to buy these ticket, your time is being stolen and wasted again…

Now, I certainly don’t want to suggest that people shouldn’t be allowed to sue corporations for actions that embarrass or humiliate them, or that businesses should be able to use law enforcement agencies to damage whomever they wish without risk or penalty. But I’m also opposed to frivolous lawsuits (for all of the reasons stated above, and many more) and I’d have to say this one fits the description well enough. Suing a company because they had you arrested for an actual crime – even if the local district attorney decides not to bother trying you – is not an appropriate use of civil court, and should not be something you can just cash in on for money…

So before you call this a victimless crime, or express your approval for the gutty little consumer who is getting to really “stick it to the man” here, just keep in mind: it’s not the big, bad corporation that will suffer here, it’s you. That’s your money she’s going to walking away with – and it’s your time she’s wasting…

Does It Come With a Side of Hemlock?

One could legitimately argue that fast food companies have been racing for the bottom ever since Ray bought the burger stand from the McDonald brothers and set up for mass production; however, it’s also true that no one has ever been compelled to purchase fast food, and healthier options are almost always available. Thus, I’m not going to do a lot of posts about how junk food meals (“made with real junk!”) are an insult to your intelligence as well as your health. When I saw the new Friendly’s sandwich being offered, however, I thought it deserved at least a mention in passing for its truly creative use of things that are not good for you in a single entre…


You can pick up the Consumerist story about it if you’d like, or go visit the company’s website for yourself here if you prefer. Basically, the new product is less hype than it is a hamburger patty with grilled cheese sandwiches for buns. You read that correctly, folks; a large flattened spheroid of ground beef stuck between four slices of buttered toast with cheese between each of the bread layers. It’s 1500 calories, 79 grams of fat (38 grams of it saturated), and 101 grams of carbohydrate, although to be fair I suppose we should also note that it provides 54 grams of protein (the equivalent of two cans of tuna). It’s kind of a lot for a single meal, but what makes it truly remarkable is that’s not even the worst thing on the company’s menu…


A quick search of the menu items turns up four other sandwiches with even higher calorie contents, as well as seven “basket” entre items and a few other things that go well above these figures. Any of these choices far exceed the much-maligned Hardee’s “Thickburgers,” the largest of which only weighs in at the 1320 calories. To those asking “why” anybody would field such a product (and risk another round of Doonesbury strips making fun of them), it seems clear that this is an attempt to compete with the much smaller (and far less destructive) “Double-Down” product from KFC, which uses pieces of chicken as the bread in a sandwich. A much better question would be why anyone would actually eat such a thing…


Now, I realize that there are people for whom 1500 calories really is just a light snack; there are also a fair number of people in our society who will routinely eat two smaller entre cheeseburgers for lunch, which is all this product really is. It wouldn’t rise to the level of mind-blowing, coronary-inducing excess unless you started with, say, the Loaded Jumbo Waffle Fries (1650 calories) and washed it down with a Butterfinger shake (990 calories), at which point you really do have one of the 4,000+ calorie meals parodied in the comics pages. And even then, there would still be people who could eat this will no ill effects – as could most people, in fact, if they were careful not to indulge too often. That’s not really what makes this a race to the bottom…


My point in calling all of this to your attention is that it clearly is an attempt to compete with several of the other “mega-entre” offerings produced by competitors in the same industry – which means that it’s really just an escalation in an ongoing war to see who can make the most unhealthful thing a person could ever eat. If this trend continues – and it’s hard to imagine why it wouldn’t, given how lucrative these products are – then eventually we can expect to see a single food item introduced to the public that is more hazardous to your health than smoking a carton of Lucky Strikes while chugging a case of rum, and can be ordered by yelling into a clown’s head and then driving around to the window…


Of course, you don’t have to purchase that ultimate product, anymore than you have to go to Hardee’s or Friendly’s right now. But I think we can say with some confidence that the fast food industry isn’t about to stop Racing to the Bottom any time soon…

Profiles in Scumbaggery: BP

Okay, I will admit that this post is a lot like kicking a guy when he’s down; it’s also a lot like shooting fish in a barrel or making “Nixon” jokes. But as I’ve noted elsewhere, I don’t actually have all that much condemnation for British Petroleum regarding the disaster in the Gulf. The fact is, if we had demanded proper environmental accountability from our national government at ANY time in the past fifty years, none of this would be going on, and if we’d made even the most casual efforts at improving fuel economy and energy conservation during the last forty years the price of oil would never have gone high enough to make deep-water drilling economically viable in the first place. The blame for the current disaster has a lot more to do with people who want to leave all of their lights on in empty rooms and use a 7,740-pound SUV to transport one person and one briefcase to and from work everyday than it does with an opportunistic corporation exploiting lax regulations and laughable enforcement in order to make obscene profits. The company’s treatment of their clean-up personnel and insults to our intelligence are another matter, however…


First, you have the issue of BP insisting that the people it is employing to clean up spill-related problems on the ground not wear hazardous materials gear, because it looks bad. It’s hard to keep maintaining that nothing terribly alarming is going on when you have people dressed in white coveralls and respirators (level 2 or 3 hazmat gear, depending on what they’re using) on camera. But if you spend any time in the petroleum business you rapidly find out just how toxic this crap is; I had the Level 1 hazmat training at Unocal, and the stuff in crude oil (let alone gasoline) would turn your hair white it you knew about it. It’s toxic, carcinogenic crap that can literally corrupt the DNA in your genes if you’re not careful with it, and BP is pressuring otherwise innocent people to risk exposure to it simply because it might be bad for their image…

Then there’s the whole business about lying to the press. There have been a lot of stories about this, but here’s one from Yahoo! News in case you need another one. This kind of thing was bad enough when Halliburton did it in Iraq; what BP is doing here is happening on American soil and doesn’t even have the excuse of military security or “encouraging our enemies.” Until such time as the affected beaches declared a State or Federal disaster area and placed under martial law, all that is going on here is a private company preventing members of the public from gaining access to public lands. In other words, they’ve got people giving pious statements for the press about openness and transparency and accountability, while at the same time using hired muscle to restrict information and intimidate anyone who challenges their version of events…

Would any other oil company have behaved better under these circumstances? It’s hard to say for certain; Exxon’s response to the Valdez disaster was blasted by environmentalists and libertarians alike, but I don’t remember anything quite as scummy as what we’re seeing in the Gulf this week. On the other hand, it’s many years later, and things that would have been considered unendurable violations of our civil liberties and way of life even a few decades ago have now become commonplace. Perhaps what we’re seeing along the Gulf Coast is simply the new normal; the level of outrageous and unethical behavior that will become the standard for life in the 21st Century…

In which case it’s time to start investing in interstellar spacecraft, because if this level of scumbaggery becomes the standard, this planet’s days are numbered…

Striking Back At Random

By now, some of you will have heard about the now-resolving pilot’s strike at Spirit Airlines, and the fallout that resulted from it. Spirit has a special place here on Racing to the Bottom; they were the company profiled in the original post from the main blog that inspired this one in the first place; you can read about their new carry-on baggage fees by following the preceding link, assuming you still want to. But as much of a new low as this concept was just two months ago, their performance over the past week, while their flight crews were out on strike, may have shattered their previous record or even established a new standard for their industry to avoid – all during a week in which the company wasn’t even operating…



Spirit had been wrestling with the Airline Pilots Association (ALPA) for some time; there’s a Federally-mandated 30-day “cooling off” period between the time when talks break down and when a labor action can legally be started, and that time had obviously expired before the Spirit pilots walked off the job. However, as reported on Portfolio.com, the company did not inform any of the people who had purchased tickets on Spirit that a strike was forthcoming, or that they would be cancelling all of their scheduled flights over the weekend; nor did they allow anyone who had purchased their tickets to change their flight dates or request a refund for the flights without paying a $100 fee. The company did promise to find pilots from other airlines to operate their flights, or purchase tickets for their passengers on other airlines to make good the loss, but neither activity ever occurred…



Now, I understand that Spirit is one of the most heavily discounted airlines in the world, and that they don’t manage to offer cheap airfares because they have little airplane fairies working for them. They pull off both their operational and financial performance by pinching pennies harder than anyone else in their industry, and all of these games with the cancelled flights are only what you should expect when you attempt to do business with a “low bidder” as low as they are. We can also understand their CEO’s attitude in refusing to extend any loyalty to customers who have no history with the company and are only flying with Spirit because of the low price. Neither partner in such a relationship is extending any loyalty, in fact; the customers are only doing business with Spirit because it is cheaper to do so, and the company is not likely to run out of people who want to travel but don’t want to pay for doing so – unless they keep doing things like this, of course…



In all of the years I have been observing (and making snarky comments about) bad business practices, this is the only occasion I can remember in which a company accepted money from customers, refused to provide the service that had been paid for, and refused to fully refund the money – without being shut down by the Federal authorities while Law Enforcement personnel took all of their executives away to jail. I’m not even sure I’ve ever seen anything to compare to knowing that upcoming flights had been cancelled and still selling seats on them in the first place, but this behavior on the company’s part was so bad that people are now complaining to Congress about it, and there may be an investigation in the next few weeks. This just leaves us with the question of what the company thought it was doing – other than racing to the bottom of how you treat your customers, that is…