Today I bring you three more spenderific stories from the hat of The Satirical Sourcerer, the great Metals Miner from Aptium Global.

Why teenage wannabe beauty queens don’t make good sourcing professionals:
A 14 year old British teen racked up a £1,175 phone bill by texting votes for herself in an online beauty contest in an effort to win a £100 prize of make-up. Awkward.

A spokeswoman said: Chelsea’s mum knew what she was letting her enter. In the final round the girls are judged by our judges. It is all above board. Above-board or not, shameful behavior is shameful behavior. For example, just because your sourcing professionals can accept free trips from potential suppliers, doesn’t mean they should!

Dollar’s fall raises costs of outsourcing to India
Countries that outsourced many of their service jobs to India, are now saying that the dollar’s decline is making Indian workers too expensive. Bonus: The featured company in the article is RFQConnect, a broker of shipping and warehousing services.

According to the article, as the dollar was plunging against the Indian rupee a few months ago, the Pune programming shop raised its hourly fee from about $22 to $25, an added expense an infant company such as RFQConnect could ill afford. When are they going to learn, it’s not cost, it’s the return on investment multiple that matters. Costs are always going to go up and down with currency fluctuations and the economies in general, but a great software developer who’s three times as productive on average will always be three times as productive, and the relative cost is not going to fluctuate as noticeably with currency woes.

Pour me another!
This week in auction news: A 157 year old whiskey recently fetched the highest price ever at auction at $59,200. “Rare Scotch whisky tops world record auction price”

Not bad, but still a far cry from the $500K Bottle of Ale!