Found on Facebook, written by a Southwest pilot:

[Ocelot II]

Voices From The Line: Larry Lonero

What happened to Southwest Airlines?

I’ve been a pilot for Southwest Airlines for over 35 years. I’ve given my heart and soul to Southwest Airlines during those years. And quite honestly Southwest Airlines has given its heart and soul to me and my family.

Many of you have asked what caused this epic meltdown. Unfortunately, the frontline employees have been watching this meltdown coming like a slow motion train wreck for sometime. And we’ve been begging our leadership to make much needed changes in order to avoid it. What happened yesterday started two decades ago.

Herb Kelleher was the brilliant CEO of SWA until 2004. He was a very operationally oriented leader. Herb spent lots of time on the front line. He always had his pulse on the day to day operation and the people who ran it. That philosophy flowed down through the ranks of leadership to the front line managers. We were a tight operation from top to bottom. We had tools, leadership and employee buy in. Everything that was needed to run a first class operation. When Herb retired in 2004 Gary Kelly became the new CEO.

Gary was an accountant by education and his style leading Southwest Airlines became more focused on finances and less on operations. He did not spend much time on the front lines. He didn’t engage front line employees much. When the CEO doesn’t get out in the trenches the neither do the lower levels of leadership.

Gary named another accountant to be Chief Operating Officer (the person responsible for day to day operations). The new COO had little or no operational background. This trickled down through the lower levels of leadership, as well.

They all disengaged the operation, disengaged the employees and focused more on Return on Investment, stock buybacks and Wall Street. This approach worked for Gary’s first 8 years because we were still riding the strong wave that Herb had built.

But as time went on the operation began to deteriorate. There was little investment in upgrading technology (after all, how do you measure the return on investing in infrastructure?) or the tools we needed to operate efficiently and consistently. As the frontline employees began to see the deterioration in our operation we began to warn our leadership. We educated them, we informed them and we made suggestions to them. But to no avail. The focus was on finances not operations. As we saw more and more deterioration in our operation our asks turned to pleas. Our pleas turned to dire warnings. But they went unheeded. After all, the stock price was up so what could be wrong?

We were a motivated, willing and proud employee group wanting to serve our customers and uphold the tradition of our beloved airline, the airline we built and the airline that the traveling public grew to cheer for and luv. But we were watching in frustration and disbelief as our once amazing airline was becoming a house of cards.

A half dozen small scale meltdowns occurred during the mid to late 2010’s. With each mini meltdown Leadership continued to ignore the pleas and warnings of the employees in the trenches. We were still operating with 1990’s technology. We didn’t have the tools we needed on the line to operate the sophisticated and large airline we had become. We could see that the wheels were about ready to fall off the bus. But no one in leadership would heed our pleas.

When COVID happened SWA scaled back considerably (as did all of the airlines) for about two years. This helped conceal the serious problems in technology, infrastructure and staffing that were occurring and being ignored. But as we ramped back up the lack of attention to the operation was waiting to show its ugly head.

Gary Kelly retired as CEO in early 2022. Bob Jordan was named CEO. He was a more operationally oriented leader. He replaced our Chief Operating Officer with a very smart man and they announced their priority would be to upgrade our airline’s technology and provide the frontline employees the operational tools we needed to care for our customers and employees. Finally, someone acknowledged the elephant in the room.

But two decades of neglect takes several years to overcome. And, unfortunately to our horror, our house of cards came tumbling down this week as a routine winter storm broke our 1990’s operating system. The frontline employees were ready and on station. We were properly staffed. We were at the airports. Hell, we were ON the airplanes. But our antiquated software systems failed coupled with a decades old system of having to manage 20,000 frontline employees by phone calls. No automation had been developed to run this sophisticated machine.

We had a routine winter storm across the Midwest last Thursday. A larger than normal number flights were cancelled as a result. But what should have been one minor inconvenient day of travel turned into this nightmare. After all, American, United, Delta and the other airlines operated with only minor flight disruptions.

The two decades of neglect by SWA leadership caused the airline to lose track of all its crews. ALL of us. We were there. With our customers. At the jet. Ready to go. But there was no way to assign us. To confirm us. To release us to fly the flight. And we watched as our customers got stranded without their luggage missing their Christmas holiday.

I believe that our new CEO Bob Jordan inherited a MESS. This meltdown was not his failure but the failure of those before him. I believe he has the right priorities. But it will take time to right this ship. A few years at a minimum. Old leaders need to be replaced. Operationally oriented managers need to be brought in. I hope and pray Bob can execute on his promises to fix our once proud airline. Time will tell.

It’s been a punch in the gut for us frontline employees. We care for the traveling public. We have spent our entire careers serving you. Safely. Efficiently. With luv and pride. We are horrified. We are sorry. We are sorry for the chaos, inconvenience and frustration our airline caused you. We are angry. We are embarrassed. We are sad. Like you, the traveling public, we have been let down by our own leaders.

Herb once said the the biggest threat to Southwest Airlines will come from within. Not from other airlines. What a visionary he was. I miss Herb now more than ever.
#SWAPA #SouthwestAirlines

[Nictuku]

1. That was very interesting. Thank you for posting!

[judesedit]

2. Well written. I sympathize with you. Bad managers are the problem,

Not the employees, in almost all instances

[Ocelot II]

4. Wasn't me, it was written by a SW pilot, found on Facebook.

But it's a good example about how putting profits ahead of a competent operation can bite a company in the butt.

[Hekate]

3. First thing hubby said to me when I went "What the hell?" was they were still using 1990s tech...

…(i.e. computer tech) from when they were 1/4 the size.

Confirmed:

A half dozen small scale meltdowns occurred during the mid to late 2010’s. With each mini meltdown Leadership continued to ignore the pleas and warnings of the employees in the trenches. We were still operating with 1990’s technology. We didn’t have the tools we needed on the line to operate the sophisticated and large airline we had become.

[MOMFUDSKI]

5. Thanks for this.

It points out, surprise, surprise, the rampant greed by the corporation. I flew SW for years and loved them. A well-run company for sure. Sad that those days are over. "Give a man some power and he will show you who he is". Flushed a great company down the toilet for a few bucks more.

[Hippo_The_Pointer]

6. This is sadly all too common a problem -

See also the following blog post about why projects fail - The bean counter's blind spot [link:https://calleam.com/WTPF/?p=4729|

[Buckeyeblue]

39. You're right. This is very common. It's very Republican.

And goes beyond why projects fail. The projects never get started. Many companies look good on paper because they effectively manage costs by doing nothing. In some cases not even doing the things that are required.

If you stay stagnant, you can run a business on the cheap. Even with customer attrition you can look good for a while. But eventually there is nothing left to cut. Then you start having the types of issues that proper oversight and technology upgrades would have prevented. You also create a culture that doesn't know how to adapt to change (real change not just whimsical reorgs).

Then you have to go back to your investors and say, we haven't been keeping up. This is why many companies get bought or merge. They get so far behind that catching up is not possible on a fiscal or infrastructure level.

Essentially, this is how Republicans manage things. Think about it.

[czarjak]

7. Greed.

[BigmanPigman]

8. Starting in 2004...no surprise here.

[Skittles]

10. it actually started with Reagan

but Herb was an exceptional man.....

[BigmanPigman]

13. Everything bad started with Raygun. Everything!!!!!

I am an avid hater of that asshole. When he was shot I was glad and so were my freshman roommates in art school. We all hated him for lying about the hostages and stealing the election from Carter.

[Skittles]

17. I absolutely detested him

but I could never root for an assassination, sorry!

[BigmanPigman]

18. I wish some people would get killed, like Putin

and a few like him. If they were passing a hat for donations to pay for a mafia hit on him I would happily contribute.

[kwijybo]

23. You mean his conspiracy with Iran

to steal the election?

[IbogaProject]

44. Funded the Contra terrorists

His admin funded Bin Laden and trained his crew. His admin funded the Contra Terrorists 'rebels'.
They emptied the mental hospitals.
Major union busting.
Regulatory decline leading to more unsafe products, I think his admin approved Aspartame.
They dramatically expanded the military by borrowing and nearly tripling our det.
Fooded america with cocaine and crack.
And he shifted the social security payroll tax from a graduated one to a flat one, that really hit our poorer communities. That is what creates urban decay and fuels the rural decline. It sucks out money from most areas and it ends up diverted to wealthy areas since any surplus isn't set aside.
So the GOP actor figure head watched over many horrible.

[kwijybo]

68. Not just funded Bin Laden

He was trained as part of the Mujahideen, as well as funded, by Reagan.

[orangecrush]

28. +1

[mountain grammy]

20. Yes he was

[Lonestarblue]

47. Yes, one thing Reagan did that damages corporations was make the stock buyback legal.

It had been outlawed under FDR until Reagan made it legal again. It’s allows CEOs to reward themselves with even more wealth instead of using corporate money to invest in the business. The average tenure of CEOs today is about 18 months, and they almost always get a huge golden parachute worth millions. The incentive to use corporate money to buy stock instead of investing i. The company is huge in this era of corporate greed. The practice of stock buyback needs to be made illegal again.

[czarjak]

35. Peak Repub.

[tiredtoo]

9. This "Greed" has taken over American economy

In the last 30-40 years and may soon be it's demise.

[Hippo_The_Pointer]

12. Was Jack Welch to blame

I wonder if Jack Welch (former CEO of General Electric - 1981 to 2001) was to blame. As I understand it he championed the idea of shareholder value metrics which focused on driving up the value of the stock - Which in turn encourages senior management to gut the core of the business (as described by the pilot above).

[kwijybo]

27. A friend's husband used to work for GE

What she has to say about Jack Welch and GE can't be said to people who don't swear like sailors. She told me, in minute detail, how badly he destroyed GE, to the point of saying don't bother buying GE appliances. She also mentioned that several of his acolytes took his ideas to other companies.

[Captain Zero]

56. Along with Pete 'Slice & Dice' Peterson. Yes.

nt

[LAS14]

11. Thanks for this. nt

[LT Barclay]

14. I'm waiting for the day when bean-counters and CEO's realize the biggest threat to profit and

efficiency is bean-counters and CEO's.

Hopefully they'll have a meltdown like this:

[markodochartaigh]

22. Mr Friedman, What does a company do?

Milton Friedman "A company produces a product needed by buyers."

Mr Friedman, What is the purpose of a company?

Milton Friedman "The purpose of a company is to produce a profit for its shareholders."

Mr Friedman, When the production of the product reduces the profit for the shareholders, what must be done to the company?

Mr Friedman, "Sterilize! Sterilize! The company must be sterilized!"

[halfulglas]

63. Bean counters lack self awareness. They will never realize it.

This system of maximizing profit for the investors is taught at Harvard and thus most "business" schools. They don't teach what's best for the business, the teach what's best for investors because Wall Street is now the hero, not the person who starts the business to produce a product, make a decent profit and employ their fellow citizens. In fact, people like Elon Musk want to run almost the entire Twitter without humans.

[LT Barclay]

64. That answers a question I've had for a while.

I was wondering if management stupidity was taught in schools or just picked up as part of management culture.

[iluvtennis]

15. KnR. n/t

[Xolodno]

19. And the previous guy got away with it.

Maximized his bonuses, stock options, etc. Then cashed out. Due to corporate governance by laws, its really hard to oust a CEO. The notable exception being companies like Disney who have a structure in the Board room to give them the boot. But even then, the shareholders don't have much say, it took a major shareholder revolt at Disney (and it wasn't enough to oust him) but gave Eisner the message it was time for him to go or the board will do it for him.

[Upthevibe]

21. Ocelot II ...........

I read the same thing on FB and I replied as follows:

I know someone who's been a flight attendant for SWA. She had always spoken very highly about the former CEO, Herbert Kelleher, This article confirms that the CEO (s) after Herb retired are responsible for this mess. Just another sad story about corporate greed.

[markodochartaigh]

29. After I escaped Amarillo in 1986

I flew Southwest from Dallas to Amarillo and back many times. A short flight, an hour, not really enough time to read a book so I would read the Southwest magazine. There was an article that told of a passenger verbally abusing a stewardess. A man got up and gave the abusive passenger a hundred dollars and told him to get off the plane and never fly Southwest again. The abusive passenger asked what right the other man had to tell him to get off the plane. The other man said "I'm Herb Kelleher and I run this airline."

At the time I was an RN at a large hospital in Dallas and I was seeing first hand the destruction of the health care system by a class of managers whose only goal was profit, and profit for themselves. It seemed to me to be a cancer. And the cure for that cancer is managers like Herb Kelleher. Ever since I read that short article I have only flown Southwest. I hope that Southwest can get back on track. I don't have many more flights before my time is up, but anytime I fly, if Southwest flies that route I will fly Southwest.

[KentuckyWoman]

37. only profit and for themselves

You are right, it is a cancer. Medicine might be the worst of the industries on this.
Maybe banking/ finance but it would be a tough decision ... bad is bad.

[ChazInAz]

50. I know someone in the ranks.

My Significant Other had worked for SWA for years. When she began to study for a real estate license in 2016, I asked why she was making the shift away from her old work. She proceeded to list what was going on in her beloved airline. It took a while.
I had never seen her angry, before.
She's now a very successful realtor.

[NullTuples]

24. "Gary Kelly retired as CEO in early 2022..."

Guys like that have a finely-tuned sense for when a house of cards is about to fall, but also they usually have the information shareholders, employees and customers don't. And once they're gone from that position, they are no longer held responsible. Interestingly, he only retired from being the CEO, something most media accounts didn't mention.

"When Kelly steps back from the day-to-day management of the airline in February — handing the reigns to longtime Southwest executive Bob Jordan — he'll continue in his role as executive chair of the board of directors"

https://thepointsguy.com/news/southwest-ceo-gary-kelly-retirement-interview/


Another interesting bit from two years ago:

"Although Southwest executives like to proclaim that the company has never had a furlough, that is simply not true. Such self-serving statements mislead current employees and the public, and it is an insult to all the Southwest employees that had been previously furloughed. Southwest may have forgotten them, but the Machinists Union has not.

Some examples of Southwest Airlines’ involuntarily furloughs were the stations of Newark, Flint, Dayton, Canton/Akron, Key West, Branson, Sarasota, Atlantic City, Asheville, Knoxville, Newport News, Lexington, Jackson, and the reservations centers in Dallas, Salt Lake City, Charleston and Little Rock. All told, thousands of employees suffered the loss and turmoil of losing their job or moving across the country.

Southwest Airlines has painted the false picture to their employees and the rest of the world that they have never furloughed a single employee. However, on February 28, 2004, over 1,900 hardworking and dedicated Southwest employees were involuntarily furloughed from DAL, SLC and LIT reservation centers. The Collective Bargaining Agreement provided the difficult options for workers to transfer to other locations, accept furlough with recall and bidding rights, or terminate their employment and go to the street."

https://www.iamdl142.org/southwest-misleads-its-employees-and-the-public/


And in 2016:

"Things are getting interesting at SWA. 4 of the biggest unions at SWA have publicly come out with votes of no confidence in SWA CEO Gary Kelly.
Pilots and Mechanics Unions yesterday. Today the Flight Attendants and Rampers Unions came out with the same message."

https://www.airlinepilotforums.com/southwest/96437-4-swa-unions-give-ceo-vote-no-confidence.html

[Silent3]

25. I'm sure Herb Kelleher walked away a very rich man

He got what he wanted out of his time at Southwest. This is what Republicans would call shrewd business principles.

[FakeNoose]

26. Every US corporation makes the same mistake - they ALL sacrifice efficiency for short-term profits

The Executive Boards of corporate America get rewarded - with huge bonuses - for making terrible judgment calls. Southwest Airlines was a house of cards, waiting for a disaster to happen. How many others will come tumbling down?

[PatrickforB]

30. Any time a Wall-Street oriented CEO comes into power in any company, you have

a meltdown like this.

Consider Sears. For decades it was THE place to get your appliances, and Kenmore Elite was just that. Not only that, but Sears backed up good quality products with an excellent appliance repair operation.

And then came Eddie Lampert. He didn't care about anything but shareholder profits. Now, a company has to earn profits, granted, but it also must invest capital in operational improvements and automation to drive improvements in productivity, and it has to invest in its workforce.

Lampert did none of that. Instead he destroyed Sears from within on a quest for short term profits over everything else.

My wife and I bought all new Kenmore Elite appliances in 2012, and our freezer went out about 11 months into it. And we got the capitalist runaround. Sears contracts with a warranty company. Well, it wasn't their problem. It was Sears' problem. We called and called and called and called and called. Finally, because Sears refused to honor the extended warranty we had purchased, we had to take a loss of ~$2,750 and just buy a new refrigerator/freezer. A GE this time.

Not only will I never, ever, ever, ever buy anything, ever again, from Sears...not ever, but I tell everyone I can about my experience. Now I've told all of you and you can make your own decisions as to where you might spend your appliance money.

As to Southwest, Gary Kelly ran that company into the ground just like the dirtbag Lampert did Sears.

[Sogo]

36. You don't have to worry about every buying appliances from Sears again.

Sears Hometown went bankrupt on December 13. It is the appliance store division, and now all those stores are closing.

I just found out yesterday, when I drove by our local store and saw the "Going Out of Business" sign out front. I stopped in to talk with the manager, whom I knew from buying all new appliances a couple of years ago when I moved into a new condo. He said they had no foreknowledge of it, just that these signs arrived two weeks ago.

He was really good at his job, and his small store was one of the top selling stores in the country out of thousands of Sears Hometown stores. I really feel bad for him, as someone who loved his work....

[halfulglas]

62. Felt the same about the Montgomery Ward-Kmart fiasco.

Back when I lived in a small town in Connecticut my Montgomery Ward was the dependable source for so much of my shopping, especially since for a big part of my time there, my husband was out of town on business for most weekdays with our at that time only car. Even though I don't live there any longer, to have that great company destroyed made me want to cry.

[Tarc]

31. This is an unverified Facebook post, marked as "Unproven" by Snopes

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/southwest-airlines-pilot-imploded/

Do your research before running to the DU with something plastered over social media with no actual source., FFS.

[Ocelot II]

34. The Facebook post discussed by Snopes is not the same as the one I posted,

which included a name, Larry Lonero, and the logo for the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, the company's union. That gave it at least some reasonable indicia of authenticity. Larry Lonero is a real SWA pilot. https://www.linkedin.com/in/larry-lonero-870370a/ His Facebook post was quoted in a reputable magazine for pilots. https://www.flyingmag.com/southwest-airlines-and-pilots-disagree-over-causes-of-flight-cancellations/

Maybe you should read your own sources a little more carefully.

[mopinko]

41. no call to get nasty.

clearly labeled from fb, so most of us take that w a grain of salt.

[Ocelot II]

45. Also researched, verified and quoted in another, reputable source.

See post #34.

[yardwork]

46. Snopes itself is not always a reliable source.

They lean right and tend to have a bias.

[Ocelot II]

48. They are usually pretty good; the problem here was that the Snopes article

referenced in the rather snarky post above, wasn't actually about the Facebook post in my OP, as to which I did find other verification.

[yardwork]

60. Right, I'd seen that. I was just making a general observation about Snopes.

The FB post in your OP has internal consistency and other indications that it might well be true. Most importantly, the overall point in it is corroborated by lots of other reports. Beginning in the 1980s and accelerating in recent years, maximizing returns for stock holders became the primary goal of corporate management. The result has been wholesale destruction of many American companies, as referenced in this thread.

To bring this full circle, right-leaning organizations like Snopes aren't going to reveal that trend.

[Warpy]

33. I wondered what happened to them after 2006-7

and I suppose now I know. Accountants are who you hire to make sure the company isn't bleeding money it can't afford to lose when an operations guy wants to do everything at once. They make lousy CEOs and COOs, no matter what they're trying to run. My worst experience with them has been in health care. They are dreadful.

I hope Southwest recovers to what they once were, they were great, fantastic crew morale. The only thing I hated was the line to get on the plane, assigned seats came in rather late.

[progressoid]

38. k/r

[bdamomma]

40. Thank you for posting

Like you said, I hope SWA can steer the ship in the right direction/s, but that will take time.

[spanone]

42. K&R

[Hortensis]

43. Thanks. Hope his explanation and speaking up for the new top management

will have the effect they all need.

[Baitball Blogger]

49. I want to hear more of this.

The years where the bean counters ruled at the top, are going to take its toll in the future.

Now we know the cost.

[MadMike47]

51. I seriously doubt Southwest will survive the latest debacle.

Judging from what I've seen just in Denver the past week, I have a feeling that Southwest will declare bankrkuptcy very soon.

[Ocelot II]

52. They'll survive; if the financial damage is serious enough for bankruptcy

they will file chapter 11 (reorganization), not chapter 7 (liquidation). I survived an airline bankruptcy - it was stressful but most of the pain was internal and mainly involved restructuring debt. Even so, the operation kept going pretty much as previously. But SW's reputation has taken quite a hit and they will have to do something to fix that.

[ybbor]

53. Met with a pilot friend last night

I asked him about the mess at SWA and he explained it pretty much as he says in the letter above.

He blamed the lack of current communication technology in the mess. He said that all of the SWA pilots, and he has a few as friends, get their information through a phone-call systems, where as his company, Delta, uses a text-based system.

He showed me how when he is reassigned, or even assigned a flight it is done via text with a simple reply required to confirm.

He also explained how just a few flights being late due to complications in one region can throw the whole operations into chaos. Each flight has three separate components: flight crew, flight attendants, and plane. They don’t all stay together from one flight to a next. When that plane lands the flight crew may have go to different planes at that airport. Same with the flight attendants. So those flights are now delayed, and the problem just begins to spiral out of control.

The outdated system only made the matters worse.

Another thing he told me years ago that I was somewhat shocked at was that he rarely, if ever flew with the same captain (he has since made captain himself). He said doing so could lead to complacency and possibly skipping over essential steps due to familiarity and assumptions. I found that very interesting.

Anywho, that is what I learned last night from a buddy who flys for a living. Pretty much confirms what the employee says above.

[Ocelot II]

55. This is exactly the way it works.

I am retired from a major airline (not SW). Flight operations are extremely complicated, with lots of moving parts as your friend explained. The hub and spoke system used by all the big airlines (except for SW), in which the planes and crews keep returning to a hub airport after delivering passengers to a spoke airport, makes it much easier to ensure that airplanes, crews and maintenance will be available even if there is a weather delay or other problem somewhere in the system. Because of scheduling and FAA crew duty requirements, the crews often have to reshuffle at a hub. If a required crew member is unavailable (stuck somewhere or called in sick) they can easily find a replacement. But under SW's point to point routing system, if a plane is grounded at Podunk because of bad weather and the crew uses up their duty time, it's extremely difficult to bring in a substitute crew. And because their scheduling system is phone-based, not automated using text as your friend described, when everybody was grounded they couldn't call in because the phones were busy for hours. The airline didn't know where its crews or airplanes were. It must have been absolute hell, not just for passengers but employees - and especially the poor gate agents, who are regularly abused even on a good day.

[BradBo]

54. I wouldn't have a surgery at a hospital if I though it was miss managed.

No freaking way am I ever flying SW.

[Grins]

57. Seen it before, I called it "Spreadsheet management"

I’ll bet the CEO and COO were charged and motivated to increase shareholder value and granted HUGE stock options, so skimping on operations to accomplish that was the rule.

[Captain Zero]

58. Yes if SW gets sliced and diced because of this,

Those guys will walk out the door with a parachute package they wrote.
Go somewhere else and start over same way.

[Ocelot II]

66. If your company board of directors hires an accountant or other finance guy as its CEO

and/or its COO, run away, unless (maybe) it's some kind of finance company. If it's a business that actually has to produce consumer services, a CEO who doesn't know anything about the operation but who cares only about shareholder value will drive the company into the ground, sooner or later.

[moondust]

59. "We've been harping on them

Last edited Sat Dec 31, 2022, 12:14 PM - Edit history (2)

since 2015-ish every year," Mike Santoro, a captain and vice president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, told CNN.

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/southwest-flight-cancellations-friday/index.html

2021 Southwest executive compensation (mainly equity and cash):

Gary C. Kelly
Executive Chairman of the Board & former Chief Executive Officer
$5,691,551

Robert E. Jordan
Chief Executive Officer
$3,049,336

Michael G. Van de Ven
President & Chief Operating Officer
$3,388,652

Thomas M. Nealon
Strategic Advisor & Former President
$3,388,652

Tammy Romo
Executive Vice President & Chief Financial Officer
$3,066,324

Andrew M. Watterson
Executive Vice President & Chief Commercial Officer
$2,823,017

[TexasBushwhacker]

61. That's good to know

It sounds like they have a new CEO that will be able to put it all back together.

I also hope the IRS notices and gets their antiquated computer system upgraded ASAP now that they have the funding. It's running on hamster power and held together with duct tape.

[NowISeetheLight]

65. Reminds me of Obama and Biden

Inheriting a mess and having to fix the other guys screwups. It won’t happen overnight… but it WILL HAPPEN.

[SunSeeker]

67. Yup. Another example of a bean counter CEO ruining a business he knows nothing about.

It seems all business schools teach is how to take over a company, suck it dry by cutting costs to the bone, then go on to the next victim. Basically, it's the vampire business model.

[Liberal In Texas]

70. Exactly. Please save Southwest from the Bean Counters!

It used to be rated one of the top places to work. And you could tell when you flew them.

I'm hoping they can figure out how to get back on top and do it soon.

[burrowowl]

69. When I lived in France a bean counter really fucked up things

The maintenance, user manual, operations and parts manuals were written with Steadtler pencils that gave clear photocopies for sending to the typing pool and translators. A bean counter thought they were too expensive and ordered pencils from Czechoslovakia (70's in 80 we got IBM mainframe for text editing using mark-up language). The pencils were really cheap the leads broke all the time and made unreadable photocopies. It took 3 months before the writers got the Steadlers back. I could give more expensive examples of bean counting but involves government secrets crap so can't talk about it. Bean counter mentality was installed, implemented and glorified under Raygun, I hate him and Bush I for Iran Contra under which 200,000 to 250,000 Guatemalan Indigenous people were killed and Barr for preventing these war criminals for being investigated.