| Originally Posted by Unregistered you really want to piss off someone in upper management, ask them what happens to net profit. Any answer they give you will be total crap. Any answer they give you should be accounted for somewhere else in the spreadsheet.
Call your controller/business manager and ask them to tell you what the corporation did in OP, FLIP & NET last month (tell them you want to see how your office stacks up against the company average). Be nice, don't be hostile -- they'll probably tell you with glee.
Then do the raw math based on 500,000 cars in the fleet (it's more than that, but no one will argue that point with you when you ask). Multiply 500,000 X corporate NET and ask someone where that money goes. The profits are staggering.
One month back in the spring when the used car market was taking off again, the net profit for the company was in excess of $179M!!! That's right -- $179M! Where did it go? It didn't go to open new branches -- that's branch overhead. It didn't go to pay off loans -- that's interest in your gross costs. It didn't go into your pocket -- that's employee expenses. All those things are already accounted for on the spreadsheet. Where does it go? NO ONE can give you a straight answer, and they will be pissed if you ask and then refute their answer.
It's not a theory, it's a reality. Enterprise is a cash cow, and that is why it is not going to change anything. In their minds', their business model is extremely successful -- so why change?
Look, it's not a joke about how the numbers are ficticious. Don't you ever wonder how branches don't really change their profit numbers? No matter what you do, it's always something that keeps it relatively even. If a branch has historically done well, they will continue to do so. If a branch has historically done poor, it will always do poorly, no matter how good they think their current month's numbers are. An employee accident will go to uninsured losses from before the manager got there, or a big reserve hit will happen that happened months ago, or the infamous "DW write-offs" will adjust for bad debt -- it's always something. I won't argue that sometimes people can 'change' things at a branch. I would simply say they have an honest accountant in their region (or someone that matters really likes that manager), but believe me when I tell you all that matters to the upper management is net profit as a whole area/region/group etc. They don't care about how it impacts the local manager or assistant because it won't impact the upper management nearly as much as it impacts the local manager/assistant. Upper management will simply hide behind the guise of 'run your business better and these things won't happen'. Bull. I had a conversion one time that never came back. Had to take the full uninsured loss one month on a car because an alcolholic decided to leave his wife and go to another state and not tell anyone. No big deal. It happens. Commission check that month was not fun. Assistant felt it worse than I did. Time passes, and the car is found. Got the uninsured credit. Had a different assistant manager. Do you think ERAC did the right thing and credited the assistant who I had at the time of the conversion? Hell no. They simply said, "That's the breaks." And gave my new assistant a fat credit for nothing. When I suggested that my previous assistant get the credit on his paycheck, they looked at me like I was from another planet. Why did they not credit the right assistant? Because upper management hadn't changed and they got the credit themselves, so why worry about the little assistant? It's total crap. VOODOO Economics from Ferris Bueller.
And don't even get me started on what a joke ESQi is.... |
2005-11-17 
Re: Also good Post! 
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