When you run a business, you need to be smart with what you spend your money on or you can use up all your profits on things that aren’t needed.

What would you do if the management team was always looking for ways to cut costs, but they often did it in a way that actually created more waste?

That is what happened to the worker in this story. The owner said to buy washbowls for the hotel, but the supervisor wanted to fulfill the request in the cheapest way possible.

Let’s read all about it.

My supervisor’ MC to “save money”

A little backstory – the hotel where I work is at the seaside, so sand is everywhere.

People bring it on their feet despite showers available at the beach.

Our staff cleans the corridors everyday and to deal with the sand in the rooms it was decided to buy a washbowl for every room.

People filled them with water and put their feet there before going in their rooms, this way our cleaning ladies were relieved from constant nagging of guests to clean the room from sand like every hour.

It is nice when things work out like this.

Also many who were too greedy to pay for the usage of washing machines could wash their clothes themselves.

Anyway it proved to be a good decision in previous seasons.

One summer we faced with the problem that the amount of washbowls was not enough to put them in every room. Some were broken, some were stolen (by guests and later staff in off-season probably).

Buying new things like this is just part of running a business.

Nevertheless, it was about time to buy a few new washbowls and I informed my supervisor about it.

At first it was OK but when the hotel started to fill up first complains about washbowls appeared.

Most of the guests were understanding, – I am not in charge of acquisitions and as soon as I get anything I give it to guests/put in rooms etc.

Some guests are very particular.

But one particular guest (let’s call her Alice) was pretty straightforward – when I told her that I have no washbowls and am waiting for them too she somehow managed to get in touch with the hotel owner the same day and told him everything in person.

Here I need to make a little remark. There is a strict and a bit stupid hierarchy in our hotel.

There is a hotel owner who does nothing except receiving some fixed amount of profits. He never listens to common workers pleas, always directs us to our supervisors.

There are 5 CEOs each responsible for their own parts of hotel (kitchen, security, reception & cleaning staff, garden territory, technicians and repairs).

Work always rolls downhill.

Then goes supervisors and finally me (aka one of common workers). So, if for instance I need something to be bought I ask my supervisor she puts it in a letter of request and gets it to her respective CEO and then they, upper-ones decide whether to give money for that or not.

This goes for literally EVERYTHING that needs to be bought, even toilet paper.

As far as I know the amount of profit the owner gets is fixed somehow so for CEOs it is not only a question of how to do the job properly and earn more for the hotel but also how to spend less in any aspect (this way CEOs will get more profits for themselves).

This stupidity still haunts me in nightmares even though I’ve been working in different hotel for a few years already.

It is in the supervisor’s best interest to keep costs low.

My supervisor was trying to cut expenses in everything, since she received bonuses for doing that (or even stole saved money idk).

One day she decided to hide our water cooler in basement to cut expenses on water (no free water for guests – more profits for hotel).

Sometimes it took weeks to buy light bulbs which, were in a store like a minute away, because there were no approval to buy light bulbs and we were waiting for it.

This can be very dangerous.

Nobody cared that half of corridors were black at night for weeks.

As far as I know nobody cares about anything there still.

So, back to washbowls. Alice told owner about the problem. Now we got instant approval since it was not us who asked something from CEOs but the owner himself.

Ok, so they will have plenty of these washbowls for a while.

He ordered to buy much more washbowls than needed and the money needed to buy them were given to my supervisor.

Now comes the malicious part.

She thought that in this matter a good old ”money saving approach” was necessary, so she decided to save half amount of given money and still manage to follow the letter of request and buy 30 items.

He can’t buy them if he doesn’t have all the money.

Half of the money was given to the guy that had to buy them washbowls.

A couple of minutes later he calls her asking what to do. There were not enough money to buy all thirty washbowls specified in the list.

He could buy roughly 15 or all 30 but much smaller ones.

People will know that things aren’t adding up.

Now there were 30 washbowls specified in the list and that is the list everyone saw, then anyone can notice that 15 does not equal 30 eventually and something is wrong here, so she told the guy to buy 30 smaller ones just to be on the same term with the list.

So, the guy buys bowls so small they are more fit to put a portion of salad than to clean feet from sand.

The customers are going to complain about this, for sure.

He brings all 30 of them to me replying to my questions with a poker face and telling me that’s what he was told to do.

The same poker face I show to Alice when I give her a salad bowl instead of a proper washbowl.

I tell her if she managed to find the hotel owner maybe she can tell him about the circus that is going on here.

She probably did. Nothing changed.

The funny thing is that spending the money on the small bowls ends up being a complete waste. So many companies put in work to reduce costs, which ends up making things more expensive in the long run.

Read on to see what the people in the comments on Reddit have to say about it.

It does seem like something illegal.

It went right into the supervisor’s pocket.

Yeah, this seems very shady.

The hotel won’t stay in business long.

If only it were this easy.

Stepping over a dime to pick up a penny.

If you liked that post, check out this one about an employee that got revenge on HR when they refused to reimburse his travel.