I like to read the news. It allows me to become utterly depressed. After all, watching the stock market it rose pretty good, then a group says “we have officially been in a recession since Dec. ’07.” Then the stock market plummeted. Some say it was caused by profiteering where people saw profits from the previous week, and sold which caused the down turn, but I think it’s a mixture.

Anyways, today I was on CNN and saw the following (to the right) headlines that sort of contradicted themselves. For instance, first Unemployment claims fall…That’s great news right? Well then the next story is AT&T is slashing 12,000 jobs. Well that means unemployment will go right back up.

With so many companies doing so many things there is no wonder why the economy is in trouble. Auto makers begging for billions to “keep customer confidence. Umm Auto industry, you have already lost the confidence of the consumer when you said “we need billions to stay afloat.” Filing bankruptcy would actually bring confidence from most consumers because we would know your business model was being restructured and you were being put into a stronger position to continue to conduct business. Being handed billions on a failing business model isn’t going to do anything but delay the collapse.

And I know the “bail out” for the auto industry is more of a loan, but come on. We all know it’s not a loan when we all know that auto industry is likely to collapse and not be able to repay the loans.

Corporations around the country are laying off seasoned workers to bring in others for a much lower wage, but with that you have to realize that you just lost a ton of experience and wisdom. Mistakes will be made that have the potential to cost your company a lot more then the salary of one seasoned worker simply because you wanted to “cut payroll expenses.

Pizza is another industry that is a bit irritating right now. When fuel prices sky rocketed Pizza hut and others implemented a mandatory delivery fee of about $2.00 per order. This fee from what I understand doesn’t go to the driver but the company for the increased cost of delivering goods to the pizza franchise. Well, with gas prices at a 3 or 4 year low where they have been for a few weeks now. That meakes me ask why did I pay that $2 fee last night when I ordered pizza?

Companies really aren’t making a lot of sense right now. The big thing is they aren’t being honest to the consumers, sort of reminds me of this dude to the right.

The companies are all begging for money and really it doesn’t take a freebie to solve your issues. It takes figuring out the problem and fixing the PROBLEM and not the SYMPTOM.

It’s like consumer debt. Flooding money into consumer debt to pay if off isn’t going to do anything unless you change the behavior of the individuals. Sure you may get out of debt really quickly but the behavior hasn’t changed so within a short period you’ll be right back where you started.

Companies really need to grow up, they need to figure out where the strengths are and use those strengths to fix the weaknesses they have. Throwing money and firing seasons workers really isn’t the way to that.

That being said, I have nothing against eliminating positions if it is required because the position is obsolete, or the worker isn’t earning their salary or a more efficient way to do the job has come around. But this total lack of common sense, that is where I have a problem at.

All companies need to do is:

1. Admit there’s a problem
2. FIX IT!