some big garbage companies are inept

Posted on September 9, 2012 by mcooper

“I want to cancel my service.”

Those words strike terror into the heart of an entrepreneur.

When you call a major corporation, you have to press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish, then press 1 for residential, 2 for commercial or 3 for industrial. “I’m sorry, I didn’t understand your request. Your call is important to us. Please hang up and dial again.”

Really?

Do some customers just get so frustrated with the phone BS they give up until next month? Makes you envy “The Sopranos” and their form of customer service, doesn’t it? When I was doing acquisitions in NYC back in the day, I recall a sales call with one of the “alleged” goodfellas while I was doing due diligence.

” ‘Scuse me” he says, “I gotta handle ‘dis. Won’t take a minute.”

We take the elevator up to the 97th floor of a building in Manhattan. Walk into a small office complex that handles telephone soliciting, apparently for insurance agencies, a lot of women on the phone and at their computer stations. They just opened up about two weeks ago, according to the manager.

Big Sal, short for Salvatore, barks, “Da trash fee for youse guys is twelve hunnert a mont.”

The manager is appalled and begs off, saying, “We recycle all of our trash; it’s paper. We’re lucky to produce one grocery bag a week of garbage and I take that home. It’s mostly coffee grounds.”

Big Sal reiterates, “Wha parta twelve hunnert a mont din you unnerstan? I don care if you tro out nuttin or whatevah youse got, it’s twelve hunnert a mont!”

In the real world, we have to deal with our customers in a different manner.

With the economy flat and the “big boys” falling short of their projections, the battle is on for volume and cash flow. How do you get that volume? Pricing has gone right back to what it was in the ’70s. You heard me: Pricing is once again in the toilet, while fuel, labor and disposal are quadruple what they were 40 years ago. How do they do it? The only reason it’s not labeled “predatory pricing” is that everyone is a target.

We fire sales managers who do not appear to perform in the midst of all the competition, and they wind up working for our competitors and chew away at all of our existing accounts they once befriended. It’s a vicious circle.

The decision is made to let the hauling company duke it out in the trenches and we’ll show a profit at the landfill. That only lasts for a quarter, maybe two. The guys in the trenches suddenly begin to divert the volume. A pricing war begins and once again the customer wins! But that too is short-lived. Wall Street and mom-and-pop haulers now see way to much month left at the end of the money.

This signals the return of “let’s get involved in things we aren’t good at” — port-a-potties, fencing, trailers, snow plowing, whatever. Why not try to do our own landfill gas projects?

Then we decide to go back to micro-management and do everything out of the corporate office. We’ll hire a whole passel of new management. We’ll expect them to make decisions over areas they have never been involved with. They’ll put side-loaders in Chicago, not knowing how narrow the alleys are. They’ll go front-load residential in Philly, where all the wires are not much more than 10 feet over the street. Now why can’t we get by with a 250 hp unit in San Francisco? Someone transferred a roll-off truck from Michigan to Chicago, why doesn’t it work? Someone didn’t know there was a difference between a stinger and a dead lift?! Whoops!

In our government, at corporate and on Wall Street, we’ve gone from a democracy to an “ineptocracy.” What the hell is an “ineptocracy”? It’s a system where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers.

This leads me to proclaim on behalf of all the “real garbage men” in this great country: “There is no justice. … Just us.” If you ever “hope” to see any “change” it needs to start from within.

Vote them all out and endorse term limits. I think Warren Buffet has a point: If they can’t balance the budget they shouldn’t be eligible for re-election.

“Ineptocracy” doesn’t have to be a silent killer.

Poll your employees, they’ll know if you have the symptoms.

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