Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Brainless Business

Fortune Magazine has posted a list of the 101 dumbest moments in business for 2007.

Among my favorites:

  • An employee in a German screw factory stole thousands of screws every night, eventually swiping around a million units. He sold the screws on the Internet at cut-rate prices; and single-handedly depressed the screw market.
  • Google's Blogger (the hosts of this blog here) labeled a company blog as spam -- and disabled it.
  • Passengers forked over $15,000 each for tickets on the maiden flight of Singapore Airline's Airbus 380. They got a private double-bed suite on the plane, with endless champagne. But the airline asked the jet-setting passengers to refrain from having sex on the plane. (For $15,000, the airline should provide the sex . . . .)
  • Whenever we're in Japan, we marvel at the high-tech toilets, with built-in push-button bidets, cleaning jets, and seat warmers. But Toto Corporation of Japan had to issue apologies and offer free repairs when three of its super-commodes caught fire.
  • Taco Bell opened a store in Mexico City. It assured potential customers that it "does not pretend to be Mexican food."
  • An airline rewarded a gold-level frequent flyer riding in first class by taking the body of a woman who died in economy and plopping her mortal remains down in the seat next to him -- while he slept. When he requested compensation from the airline, they told him he should "get over it." And:
  • Intel promoted its Core 2 Duo Processor with an ad depicting a white businessman and, well . . . just look at the ad.

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