Category Archives: humour

Summertime Blues

Well, it’s time to raise a fuss
  and it’s time to raise a holler
About diminishing returns
  from the corporate dollar
I just heard from my boss
  who governs me
If I don’t save the cash
  he’s gonna fire me

Sometimes I wonder
What I’m gonna do
If there ain’t no cure
For the summertime blues

The purchaser he told me to
  go beat on the supplier
That his margins must be high
  while ours are under the wire
So I talked to the supplier
  he said that costs were elevated
He was losing all his money
  at the rates we had created

Sometimes I wonder
What I’m gonna do
If there ain’t no cure
For the summertime blues

So I found a consultant
  told her about my problems
She discovered that
  the supplier was just stalling
Material costs were falling
  and the exchange rate was fair
I had wasted all my time
  just pulling out all my hair

Next time I have a problem
  I’ll find me a solution
I’ll find a sourcing expert
  and get my retribution

No more will I wonder
  What I’m gonna do
I’ll find me a cure
  For the summertime blues

The Cynical Sorcerer Comes Out of His Shell

Perhaps not yet ready to stop celebrating US independence, the elusive Tony Poshek, the inventor of The Puddy Principle to Strategic Sourcing, and our very own Cynical Sorcer(er), has decided to stop throwing us bloggers scraps and yesterday, for the first time, offered us a glimpse into the mind of the manic marauder with his inaugural post on Spend Matters (Paris Hiltons dog dead due to pet food from China*) that lamented the cruel fate that may yet befall the Paris’ Pup.

The post, which lamented the recent run of bad luck to befall our eastern exchange partner, whose citizens have apparently just discovered Weird Al’s 1985 hit Dare to Be Stupid and decided to add a verse or two of their own:

Put down your Mobal and listen to me
It’s time for us to join in the trade
It’s time to let our babies to grow up to be cowboys
It’s time to remove the blockade

It’s time to make diethylene glycol toothpaste
It’s time to paint our toy trains with lead
It’s time to lace pet food with melamine
It’s time to leave the gum out of the tread …

points out that as simultaneously entertaining and terrifying as the referenced stories are, the most interesting ones are the smaller stories that deal with consumers actually trying to boycott products from China, such as How one woman said ‘No’ to Chinese imports and
“U.S. family tries living without China” (Yahoo News).

All I can say is that I hope we see more posts in the future. He’s no Spend Fool (but then again, who is?), but his swift style is scandalously satirical, and that’s a breath of Chicago air we all need once and again.

* All posts prior to 2012 were removed in the Spend Matters site refresh in June, 2023.

Naughty Procurement Down By The Lake

Despite The Cynical Sourcerer’s prodding that we bloggers should tackle the subject of naughty procurement now and again, like how MyPrivateDance.com has come up with an innovative way to advertise its services (through field advertising) or how Brooklyn, Il collects three quarters of it’s revenue from the adult industry (primarily because he doesn’t think we have the perfect balls to do it), I think it more relevant to tell you about the amazing disappearance of the 100-foot deep Andes lake as this is a perfect metaphor for your corporate bank account if you do not have good e-sourcing and e-procurement processes and systems in place.

Confusing Times for Oompa Loompas

Cadbury is trying to become synonymous with the color purple (Metro.co.uk), dry weather has harmed the development of cocoa crops in West Africa (Economic Times), and this could lead to a global deficit of 145,000 tonnes, and Bioversity International has begun a new project on sustainable and organic farming (Confectionary News) in a remove area of Nicaragua to improve future yields. This follows recent news that Hershey is closing its last Canadian factory (York Dispatch), that they have to compete against individuals selling marijuana-laced chocolate candy (Yahoo News), and that they also have to add desert chocolate (News Australia) to their repertoire.

I don’t know how they keep it all straight – but at least we won’t be surprised when we start seeing synthetic marijuana-laced cocoa-free purple chocolate made using 100% sustainable practices.

Even Heroin Smugglers Need Freight Optimization

According to a recent article on Yahoo! News, Tajik police have arrested a woman for trying to smuggle heroin in a refrigerator through express delivery firm DHL. Apparently, the DHL office in the Tajik capital Dushanbe grew suspicious after noticing that its transportation cost to Moscow exceeded the actual cost of the fridge by several times. Upon a search, they found 17.4kg of heroin hidden in the innver cover plate.

What was she thinking? Or more importantly, what was she not thinking? “Let’s see … $200 fridge … $500 shipping … makes sense to me!” What isn’t wrong with this picture. First of all, as a consumer, you should never pay more to ship a commodity than you pay to buy it. Secondly, you should never import something you can buy locally. (Who wants to deal with customs and import duties when someone else can do it for you?) Furthermore, if you have approximately 2.2M* worth of heroin, certainly you could afford to buy and ship a small car, which would cost roughly 1% to 2% of the total value and have a shipping fee only one tenth of its value – which would surely not be as suspicious since shipping would be much less than the value and people import cars significantly more often than they import fridges.

So, I guess there are two lessons here:

  • If you’re going to smuggle drugs, make sure you smuggle them in an item where the shipping cost doesn’t (significantly) exceed the item value.
  • If you’re going to buy and ship internationally, make sure you’re not paying too much for freight, or risk getting your shipments stopped and search by ambitious agents looking for the next bust.

* Based on an estimated street value of roughly $125/gram, which appears to be the median value returned from various sources in a Google search on June 1, 2007.