Having just seen the new Wall Street movie (and being thoroughly disappointed to say the least), I got to thinking about the poor business policies and decisions companies make and how corporate greed, heck, greed in general, really drives this economy straight into the ground.  

Case in point: having been on a wide-spread hunting expedition for over the knee flat boots that don’t make me look: a) like a jockey; b) like a soldier; c) like an over-stuffed burrito; and d) like a woman without any modicum of fashion flare, I finally meandered with a shopping daze into a mass-market department store at lunch. Having selected about ten boots to try on, I gave the bunch to the store clerk who, despite it being the lunch hour rush, wasn’t busy—at all. In fact, other than the four people in the 75% off aisle, the shoe galleria was virtually a ghost town. Except for my huffing and puffing , grunting and moaning, desperately trying to shimmy myself into some boots that would take me through fall and into the winter—there was no one around. When the store clerk finally brought over all the boots, the first thing out of his mouth was, “Whoa, are you trying to blind someone.” Bewildered, I failed to see how boots could do that. No, of course not—he wasn’t talking about shoes—he was talking about my ring. Blah. Blah. Blah. Give me the shoes mister and shut up. But I knew once he said that, it was all over. He’d tried to shove the most expensive ones in my face and I could just forget about the discount I was smartly carrying in my bag. Maybe this was partly his own fault, wanting a higher commission, or maybe he was promoting his department’s sales roster—whatever it was, I was marked.

Predictably, I fell in love with the expensive ones and somehow justified their price-tag with the value of my time spent looking for them, oh and the discount would make the price more palatable. Well, as I expected, dippity-do-head vehemently refused to honor my discount.  Not so fast mister. I’m no fish out of water in this store. In fact, shopping for bargains are my middle names. I fought and fought and fought with him…so much so that he called up reinforcements from his mangers. Yes, plural. Managers.  For the life of me, I couldn’t understand why a store like this, which today will probably make two sales, wouldn’t honor the 10% discount on a pair of several hundred dollar shoes.Where’s the economic sense? Wouldn’t this store want to keep me as a customer, make the sale and a profit? I guess the three ring circus hoops a customer has to jump through to get a discount coupon honored are all set in place because of greed—the same greed that stifles the economic revival and the same greed that pads the salaries of the CEOs of these department stores.

The poor corporate decisions, namely, to deny customers a “sweet deal” or to honor even a small discount, has to come from some brilliant mind at the top of the totem pole of these companies, right? But, what do these large-company CEOs really know or care about a 10% discount? And, more importantly, how do we get them to care more because, not only is it the right thing to do but, it would also drive the corporation’s profits in the long run. There’s a reason why Target is flourishing today and why Walmart has gotten such a bad rep. At any rate, when you’re a CEO, making millions of dollars and rolling around in your Maybach never having to worry about when the next sale on Windex and Bounty will be at your local store, noting really matters. In fact, the only deals that may matter to you are the multi-million real estate purchases and the stock trades that will increase your portfolio tri-fold. Here’s an interesting tidbit: in 1980, the average CEO made about 40 times more than an average employee in his firm. By the time 2000 rolled around, that same CEO made about 400 times the salary of an average worker. I have to believe that the 400-fold increase has not only thrown the greed into over-drive, but has contributed to this country’s financial slump.

P.S. Maybe my overly-loud reasoning as to why I was entitled to the discount were convincing or maybe because the store clerk and "managers" just wanted to get rid of me, but I walked out wearing my "discounted" boots.