Corporate Monkey-Spank

The more things change the more they stay the same. And just when you think corporate weasels would start to get the message they prove that they just don't get it.
   I worked out this morning, and as I was walking home I decided to stop in at the convenience store along the way for a soda and a lotto ticket, my only two vices if you don't count curling up in my robe on the couch Friday nights to read the latest vampire book while my hot rollers set my hair just-so.
   The place is closing.
   They have a half-off sale on most things, including beer, as they try to liquidate inventory before they close in ten days. So I doubled up on the diet soda - half off is essentially 'two for one' - and I asked the guy behind the counter why the place was closing. I expected to hear 'raising rent' or 'losing money' or 'lost the liquor license' something like that. Not even close.
   The corporate offices decided to close the store because it wasn't making enough money. Not that it wasn't making money - the manager assured me they had been turning a profit since the day they opened - but that they weren't making the kind of profits the corporate weasels wanted them to.
   This is why I hate, hate, hate MBAs. They don't know how to run a business, they know how to do algebra on a spreadsheet. Some jerkoff who's never actually operated any kind of store, web site, or even a cart at the mall sets a sales goal, a number he creates out of thin air according to his flawed analysis of whatever bogus metrics he can think up. Then when the store doesn't meet those artificial goals, he makes the 'command decision' to shut the place down because, after all, not meeting goals needs to have consequences. Ridiculous and short-sighted.
   'But Don,' you MBAs say, 'there are all sorts of considerations beyond profitability that might call for closure.' Bull and shit. If a place is profitable it should stay open, even if the profit is only $1. If it doesn't make enough cash to contribute to the middle-manager corporate bloat of do-nothing asswipes then the ranks of those weasels needs to be thinned.
   So for want of a few extra dollars to pay the salary of someone who shouldn't be working anyway, people lose their jobs, the neighborhood loses a store, and I get an excuse to go on my anti-MBA rant again.
   Oooh... it just angries up the blood...