Bank Of America Can't Afford Soap For Employee's Break Room
After waving good-bye to billions in the subprime mortgage market and bailing out nefarious mustache-twirling mortgage lender Countrywide, Bank of America says it can no longer afford soap for its employee's break rooms.
They can still afford to pay CEO Ken Lewis a cool $28 million a year says the New York Post:
Bank of America chief Ken Lewis may have taken home $28 million, but he's still slashing wasteful perks such as free soup and crackers for employees.What a marvelous company. Well, now you know what to get your favorite banker for her birthday.The nation's second-largest bank posted grim notices yesterday around its offices here and elsewhere that it no longer can afford giving employees any freebies.
The notice listed goodies it will eliminate at its employee kitchenettes: soup, crackers, flavored teas, sugar-free hot chocolate and hand soap.
The bank presumably will keep hand soap in bathrooms. City laws require it, but not necessarily at snack counter sinks.
Since there are no food or beverages to handle anymore at the kitchenettes, there's no need for soap to wash hands - a found bonus for bean counters.
"We'll continue to have plenty of soap in '08," a bank spokesman said dryly.
CLEANING OUT BOFA [New York Post](Thanks, Yossi!)
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Comments:
Lucky for those employees, they can still count on having regular sugar hot chocolate.
im sure their CEO is still raking in a couple million though....
How much does refilling the soap on a yearly basis cost? This is really pathetic. The cost of soap could be deducted from the CEO's salary and I doubt he would miss it one bit.
The media had a field day with B of A when this story hit Friday. CNBC was ripping puns and jokes every hour. Fast Money had riffs of them every 15 minutes.
If they go the Worldcom route, next, they'll RIF the office plants, and replace the coffee machines with coffee vending machines.
Wow... just wow. This story is sorta like a sad clown - made me feel mixed emotions. If they're taking the hand soap away, chances are the employees aren't going to be treated as well as they have been in the past... which will lead to people searching for new work... this sort of overall company loss can lead to a nasty downward spiral.
Since they have less of that nasty dirty money to count this makes perfect sense.
If you have a Bank of America branch in your town, you should go to the drive-through and give the teller a bottle of hand soap and a pouch of Cup 'o' Soup.
As a BofA employee myself (by way of a takeover), I've never gotten a single free cracker, soup, or hot chocolate. Looks like my worksite has been missing out! Time to stage a protest to get compensation for all those missed entitlements.
I'm more concerned (as an employee) about the cuts to my pension contributions that take effect next year. I'd gladly give up my crackers (if I was getting any) to help fund my retirement. Funny, but I've seen nothing in the media about that!
One of my favorite fallacies: save money, by removing some "non-essential" things from your budget.
Hint to corporations: just because you didn't assign a value to employee goodwill doesn't mean it's not part of the equation.
Skimping on something silly and cheap to make your empoyees lives just SLIGHTLY nicer (for example, a memo goes around: "Paperclips should be recycled, we're cutting the amount of them we're buying."[a real example]) WILL cost you MUCH, much more in lost productivity.
No wonder I can never find a person at their call centers that has a clue about anything... they're all afraid to touch the phones and catch each other's colds.
My office lost plants, coffee, tea, hot chocolate and filtered water about 7 or 8 years ago. This past year, they took away cups, plates, napkins, plastic utensils. This is supposedly company-wide, but oddly enough our headquarters building (where all the executives are) was exempt. They still have the lot of it.
I've heard a rumor that they're going to start charging us $40 a month to park (the company owns the building, and it's in a suburb, not downtown).
He's not struggling to run a bank -- he's practicing to run an airline!
Cut the CEO pay.
Cut the CEO pay.
Cut the CEO pay.
Cut the CEO pay.
You would think that a bank, of all things, would have better common sense with money. Cut the CEO pay.
My office once got a note tacked up in the restrooms about the "excess usage of toilet seat covers." Another good one was when the building HVAC was set to go on at 8 AM, even though folks were onsite from 5 AM--this was done in the name of "energy savings" during the winter. Those pre-8 AM folks all brought in space heaters and the building utility bill reached an all-time high.
When my ex-roommate temped at BofA she used to come home with those little packs of ground Starbucks coffee. Maybe they have to make do with Maxwell House or Folgers now?
if the CEO is failing so badly that he cannot pay for soap for his employees, which can directly affect their health, why does he make $28M? and yes, he is DIRECTLY responsible as CEO for the failures of his company. why isn't he held accountable just like the little people are for their screwups?
hopefully, the shareholders will see it this way, too, but i doubt it.
@zsouthboy: Who DOESN'T recycle paperclips?
@timmus: Presumably, they signed a contract with the CEO. Are you saying that they should go back on their contract and open themselves up to potential litigation?
@ptkdude: Why should they waste money giving you food when you are probably going to complain about it anyway? Why should I-- someone who doesn't drink sugar free hot chocolate-- subsidize your hot chocolate habit through my lower pay and lower profit sharing and lower stock dividends?
It just boggles the imagination to contemplating the executive management sitting at their big conference table brainstorming how to cut costs. Umm, how about hand soap? No wonder this company is crashing!
@iamme99: Presumably, the executives have nothing to do with this. They told the facilities management folks to cut expenses, and they did.
CEO's do not deserve that much money...period. Especially one's that help contribute to the subprime meltdown....
@swalve: @ptkdude: Why should they waste money giving you food when you are probably going to complain about it anyway?
Oh, piss off, for chrissakes. What are you? The CEO's nephew or something?
Perfect business opportunity...time to launch my Boa (note that's not BoA for all you lawyers out there) Soup Wagon. I'll drive from bank to bank, selling soup and hot chocolate at cutrate prices. Best of all...I'll provide customers free hand soap!
No fair stealing this idea, boys and girls, cause I thought of it first. I will be selling franchises after the first of the year.
@zsouthboy: Yeah no kidding. If you take food away from your employees, after providing it for years, they'll be upset at you, lose loyalty, AND have to leave their office to get their lunch. Lost productivity!
Don't these people think?
I think they had to cut luxuries because they keep having to pay me for the mistakes they make on my account. They've have to (in addition to refunding fees) compensate me $35 bucks on two occasions. Stupid bank ...
@ptkdude: Wow, might be time for a new job.
If my company even suggested charging me $40 to park they would be looking for someone else to manage their call manager/routers. Not that I'm uppity or arrogant or think I'm all that, but I'm just not down with company's doing stupid shit and I have an irrational temper towards those things.
Personally, I was shocked to learn that BoA was providing these items in the first place. I haven't worked for a company that provided more that coffee ( and the last few not even that) in many moons...
@swalve: Look, I realize it was a slightly irrational response, but c'mon. If you've done these things as a company (as a way to make employee's lives a little easier, which is a thoughtful gesture) and then you yank them away under THESE circumstances...WTF?!?!?
BoA is in the toilet because of who's actions? Upper management, not the employees who make up 96% of the work force. And yet, who gets their little (and they are little) perks taken away? Sure as hell not the same people who put the compnay in it's current situation.
You have a CEO making an obscene amount of money (Yes, $28 million is obscene no matter who you are), and Joe Average loses the his soup and hand soap. Tell me you don't see something wrong with this. If you can't, then my previous questions remains...are you the CEO's nephew.
No soap? WTF?
So what if there's no food. Doesn't anyone know that a keyboard is still pretty dirty after years of use? I don't think anybody cleans them regularly.
What's that a rash?
And crackers?! Crackers?! Is there no justice?
I think if I were a BoA employee, I'd look towards bailing out on that company ASAP. Not because I need sugar free hot chocolate on my breaks or anything like that.
It's just a pretty alarming warning sign.
If a company can't even afford to keep stocking soap and other small items for the break room, I doubt there's much chance of getting a significant raise anytime soon. Not much prospects there.
Isn't there a health code regulation about having soap or hand sanitizers in the restrooms?
This is kinda silly. Who cares if their kitchen doesn't have HAND soap. Chances are, there is still DISH soap to clean their coffee mugs. Who uses HAND soap at their office kitchen anyway?
As much as I like to rag on Bank of America, this is just a New Year's Eve filler article.
Ease up people!! Yes they cut some perks and that sucks but to be honest do any of you work for a company that offered that stuff in the first place? I work for one of the larger financial institutions in the Northeast and we NEVER had anything like that. Free Coffee, that's it... I would also not be worried the BoA is going to be tanking anytime soon.. They are probably just looking to get their dividends up a tad to ease some stockholder tension because of the subprime fiasco. If they were trying to save the company from financial ruin, you'd see more than tea, soap and soup being cut. And if you think they REALLY want to pay someone 28MM to drive the ship than you are out of your mind. CEO salaries are driven by supply and demand just like everything else. If any of you feel you can run a multi billion dollar enterprise for 50K please feel free to submit an application but I doubt ANYONE reading this forum has any experience in running a (let me say it again) multi billion dollar finacial instituion. There are not many of those people out there and the market will dictate what they get paid.. And for the record, I am not affiliated with BoA at all, in fact they recently rejected my application for employment..
Why is this a big deal, you guys need to read more. It says they're cutting the soap at the snack counter sinks. But it also says "The bank presumably will keep hand soap in bathrooms. City laws require it".
Slow news day.
This is retarded. They are not going to stock soap and snack stations? Seriously...this is so dumb it should of never been printed. Who cares about hand soap and crackers? I'd much rather not have hand soap and snacks and maybe make .0002$ per hour more.
In 2002 BoA had 132,583 employees [www.encyclopedia.com] assuming an average of 3 hot chocolates a month, that is 397749 packets. A box of 50 Nestle hot chocolate is $10 @ Office Depot. That translates to $79,550 a month just in hot chocolate or just less than $1 million a year.
If the CEO wanted some really loyal employees he would make a grand gesture and take the cost of the soup and crackers out his own pocket.
A note or two on the CEO pay. And the several reasons that exist (some good, others less so) for it being so damn high.
Reason the first: stock options. Stock options arose in the 80s and 90s as boards hired economists in order to figure out how to align CEO interests with their interests. CEOs were inclined to screw with the numbers in order to get their profit-based salaries to go up in the short term. The idea was then that CEOs would have the same incentives as the board of shareholders. The rules about exercising options were to prevent running the stock price up one quarter then bailing on the insider info before the crash.
This didn't work, because they paid them so much in stock that they ended up SITTING ON THE BOARD. They in many ways set their own salary. Next post will have reason #2.
He's not slashing it... He's keeping it for himself. Maybe they are actually paying him in Sugar Free Hot Chocolate and Soup and Hand Soap...
Reason #2 why CEO pay is too high: economic rent.
There is a relatively small group of "known" CEOs. They do have a large impact on company bottom line (particularly in that a bad one can screw it up royally). Because of this, there is a good amount of competition for a good CEO that is known not to be likely to tank the company completely. This high competition causes economic rent. CEOs would certainly work for less pay, but the companies hiring will keep bidding upwards because there is such competition for the small pool of qualified applicants.
This is similar to why pro athletes get paid so much. Tom Brady would be a quarterback for MUCH less than his current pay, but if the Pats lowered it, he would go to another team, so they can't. The difference between the minimum it would take to get him to work, and the amount he is paid.
Next post will have the third and last main reason.
@huadpe: Exactly- it's not the CEO's fault the board of directors made the job offer. Nobody seems to complain about sports start making too much money. Same thing- competition for resources.
there's no need for soap simply because they aren't handling food? are they kidding me? money is probably one of the dirtiest items around. i used to work in a check cashing store and my fingers would turn grey after just a couple hours of handling cash. also, people bring in some of the most disgusting money. i have been forced to take in sticky, wet, or even smelly bills.
come on now bofa, buy hand soap!! quit being such a greedy bitch so your employees can avoid illnesses from handling dirty cash.
They still use the "Higher Standards" slogan? ROFLMAO. That's probably one of the most contradictory statements that marketing has thought of.
Third reason for high CEO pay: stability.
It is difficult to retain employees when corporate policies change every 6 months and there is no clear direction, with little job stability.
Even when a CEO institutes larger changes than snack-room cuts, there tends to be a larger plan involved, which requires both planning and execution and time. If you offer a $1 million a year CEO salary for a large bank, you will get applicants, and some pretty smart ones, but they will get poached out from under you every 3-4 months when they get proven to be good and other banks hire them to be CFO or something at 10x that salary. If your leadership changes 3 times a year, you won't be able to develop and execute long term strategies, and that's what the board should be looking for.
I don't know who everyone else works for, but I want to work for a company that doesn't waste money. Trim the fat and pay me more. I'm an adult, I don't need to be tricked into productivity with free coffee or free hot chocolate or bottomless paperclips. Offices and companies with cultures of freebies are generally less productive- when it comes to real profit, not wasting capital.
SWALVE - Ken Lewis's ball washer.
@ZGEG
Yes, I've worked for several companies that provide such perks and better.
I spent a year handling marketing for a law firm in Washington, D.C. The firm had 30 mini-kitchens scattered throughout so that you didn't have to walk further than 100 feet for coffee/decaf/soup/crackers/hot choc./flavored tea/plastic utensils/napkins/paper towel/screen wipes or starlight mints.
Every Monday they provided sandwiches/chips/cookies for lunch, and every Friday they had a rooftop happy hour from 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. with free beer/wine/snacks.
Other perks included quarterly financial bonuses, Christmas parties with huge door-prizes (trips, electronics, etc), and "corporate silver" on your birthday and certain holidays (i.e. engraved tiffany key rings, fountain pens, leather and silver monogrammed coasters, biz card cases, etc.).
Even the non-profits I've worked at provided coffee and hand soap, although at one, they didn't provide paper coffee cups, but they did cover taxi's.
Read my upcoming response to SWALVE for info on the other, better end of the scale, where perks are required, and actually prevent a company from wasting money.
I guess the sugar-filled hot chocolate will still be in stock.