Misquotes to destroy a nation by

Henry Ford is quoted as having said, “Make the best quality of goods possible at the lowest cost possible.”  For those that KNOW that quote they will recognize something missing.  We’ll get to that.

That exact quote was hanging from a wall of a plant manager for a company I used to work for.  He lived by that rule.  Another great quote he had, sitting on his desk was from Harry Truman, "I don't give them Hell. I just tell the truth about them and they think it's Hell."  Another great quote, but the first one always bothered me.  It became a quote that would haunt me for the rest of my life....

I loved that job, and wanted to work there to make the company better.  I hurt my back during my stint in middle management and got fired 21 days coming off medical leave for talking to a subordinate.  Yeah, that’s a whole other story....  Anyways, after that job I had quite a few temp jobs.  I jumped into the automotive industry for a fashion and found those guys to be the most disgruntled people I’ve ever encountered.  And they had many reasons why.

The biggest reason why was; even though they made great salaries, they were being denied raises, and during that slump being offered time off without pay, though unemployment would have covered their lost wages; that the head of the company was completely rolling in cash.  He was getting multiple bonuses of millions of dollars per year.  Meanwhile the workers weren’t respected at all.  They had worked at the plant for 20 or 30 years, and their suggestions for making the work place better and more efficient were always trumped by an office worker’s idea that had never set foot in an industrial factory.  The callousness of the upper echelon’s dealings with the workers was astounding.  There was zero respect for the hard work and dedication, and the intelligence, of the floor workers.

“Make the best quality of goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible.”  The highest wages possible.  Those guys made great salaries, more money an hour than I’ve ever made.  Yet they were broke.  It was their own fault.  Making so much money, you don’t see the big picture, just that you’ll be able to make that mortgage payment.  I’d watch them buy houses that were amazing, knowing that if I was making what they were making, I’d be living mortgage free after just a handful of years....  Those guys found themselves dependent on the raises, needing them to fill in the ever growing costs of living.  It was truly a sad thing, meanwhile, the big boss man, whom none of them had ever, or would ever meet because he was so far above them, was spending his bonuses on yachts.

The animosity that exists between the upper management and the workers of most of the industries in the United States is unreal.  I’ve often said very publicly, and very loudly, that I would be hard pressed, to ever buy another automobile made in the US.  The US worker is disallusioned, they fully believe, and have hard evidence, that they are working to make upper management rich.  They refuse to take pride in their own work, because to them, it is not their own work.

In the end, if the US worker would be smarter with his/her money, the problem would be far lessened.  But it would also help if management wouldn’t keep such a huge margin of the profits.  I end with another quote.  I don’t know who said it, or where it came from.  I don’t ever remember hearing it before I said it, but it’s prevalent enough to have been quoted by someone.  “Take care of your employees, and your employees will take care of you.”  That quote is lost, for the most part, in US industries.  And that, I believe, is so much more sad, than dropping that last little part of Henry Ford’s quote, as dropping that little part is just a symptom of the ideals that are threatening to destroy this nation from the inside out.

–Dan