Same Old Story, Same Old Song and Dance: The Honest Weight Blame Game

Every week it is the same old story. We members and staff of the Honest Weight Food Corporation get a email message from the ever increasing number of mid-level bureaucrats that populate the powers that bes sanctuary in the back of the store. It goes like this. Store sales up from the same time last year. Customer count up from the same time last year. Basket size up from the same time last year. Bureaucratic projections not met.

Another of the same old songs and dances at the Corporation is the blame game at Honest Weight Food Corporation. Who, the bureaucrats ask, is too blame for the store's inability to meet the projections of the back room bureaucrats?. For a year or so the villain of the bureaucratic and manichean passion play was Whole Foods which was about to open a store in the Capital Region. Now it appears to be, to paraphrase the man with a way with words, former Board President Bill Frye (Frye remains a member of the Board) and his words as they in a cameo role the Times-Union, staff and staff inefficiency. Other bureaucrats including Roman Kuchera, Leif Hartmark, and Deb Dennis, appear to share Fry's explanation for the wicked that Honest Weight's way comes.

So what is an "inefficient" worker to do? Forget that bureaucrats like Kuchera and Hartmark locked us into an awful loan so we could tear down an old building and build a brand new shiny new one? Forget the cost overruns on the new building thanks to bureaucratic mistakes? Forget that it is not only competition from Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, Price Chopper's Market Bistro but also the ever expanding natural and organic food sections at Price Chopper, Shop 'n Save, and Hannaford? Forget that the powers that be issue coupons periodically in the Clipper and elsewhere but have no way to track them? Forget that in my experience a significant number of these coupons are being used by members? Forget that we never should have built a new store in the first place? Forget that the projections are too damn high? Forget that is the sense of community and informality that is the heart and soul of Honest Weight and one of the reasons that people shop at the Corporation? Hey inefficient workers, let's too put the blame on Mame. We have met the enemy and it is us.

This bureaucratic formulaic way is all rather reminiscent of the Koch Brothers and their political running dog lackey's like Scott Walker putting the blame on the unions for the decline of the American automobile industry when, in fact, they don't design the cars, bureaucrats do, they don't sell the cars, salesman do, they don't run GM and Ford, bureaucrats puffed up on their own genius do. Speaking of evil unions note that the Koch's and their anti-worker ilk don't praise the Japanese unions for their role in making Honda cars that sell globally. Welcome to the looney world of corporate bureaucrats. Beware, be very be ware, of the pied pipers of surreal pop Alice in Kafkaland demagoguery.