Posted on 01/27/2006 8:14:40 AM PST by oxcart
Employees at Ford's Dearborn Truck Plant in Dearborn, Mich., will have to drive Ford Motor Co. vehicles to work or park across the street, the plant manager announced earlier this week.
The new parking policy, which is scheduled to take effect Feb. 1, was instituted by plant manager Rob Webber just as Ford reported losses of $1.6 billion from its North American auto operations in 2005 and Monday announced plans to close 14 plants and cut 30,000 jobs as it tries to reverse losses and respond to declining U.S. market share.
(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...
LOL. You would be amazed how well that magnet works. Amazed.
Careful, dude. You might get in trouble with that remark. ;-)
Public Relations 101......Grade = F
Stupid 101......Grade = A
It's very difficult (nay, impossible) to feel sorry for a company which employs high level management personel so deficient in simple reasoning skills.
already am.
Of course we had the GM employee discount, which was somewhat cheaper than what other dealers would make, that was a lot of encouragement right there.
I missed replying to this in my original response to you.
Yeah, you're right. I am the exceptional American. No one but me can find another job. /end sarcasm
I prepared myself in a number of ways to not worry about losing a job and none of them involved having enough money. The more I made, the more I spent. What I did do was try to make myself indispensable to the degree possible so that I wouldn't get fired. But by being very good at what I did I could almost always get a new job within days. That didn't happen one time but during that time, using initiative and hard work still netted more in a month than many do working full time.
I have been fired from various jobs 15 times. I've quit another 30 jobs when I wasn't happy with the job or needed to make more money. I learned that job security is within the individual, not in a union contract or a job promise.
I then started a business from scratch at a time when I needed 4 grand a month just to pay the bills and the money that I had on hand and due was enough to last 10 days. I gambled. It wasn't always easy, but I've been in business for 10 years now. I still don't earn a dime until someone calls on me, but I haven't had to look for customers since the first year. My business is all repeat and referral.
I'm not the only one to do this. I am not wealthy, but I am happy and healthy. I know that all of my customers won't fire me the same day and if I need to, I can find more customers.
BTW, I have a high school education and I was in the bottom half of the class. It's not just what you do that makes you valuable to an employer but how well you do it and the attitude with which you do it.
My advice to young people starting out is to get fired early in their career and do it often enough to gain the confidence in yourself that you won't fall to pieces if it happens to you later in life.
This isn't to brag and you could make a strong argument that I made a lot of mistakes along the way. Maybe I was lucky, but I tend to believe that I was blessed and prepared and don't regret a thing. It's been a wonderful ride and it allows me the time to be involved in the political process and advance causes that are important to me and also, since I work from home, was able to take my elderly mother in to live with me. She's healthy except for the Alzheimer's and not ready to be in a home. This way I can be sure that she is safe and that is invaluable to me.
At one time, the discount was extended to almost everyone related to anyone involved in the production of the car in any way.
In my last post I did state that 12 years had elapsed so I am sure that changes have been made to their program, but they are still better than what Joe Customer gets.
Are you suggesting that the total savings from sticker is only $2000? Or $2000 better than the regular buyer?
$1250 taxable = What $300 to $400?
The discount is worth 4 to 6 times that using your numbers.
Still not shabby.
It's a shame that discriminating has been made to seem like a bad thing.
I guess that we all need to be sued because we all discriminate everyday in every decision that we make. We choose chocolate over vanilla, coffee over tea, a great steak over hamburger, and good employees over bad ones.
It would be sad if this were left up to a judge rather than the market place of free ideas and competition.
No, Ford certainly has the right to tell their employees that they can't park their non-Ford cars in the lots, that they need to park elsewhere. That's management's right. Of course, I'm sure that it does a world of good for employee moral, being told you can't park here, after announcing that they're going to lay off 30,000 employees.
Yup, great publicity move, and employee moral builder.
Mark
It should tell Ford something when their employees would rather drive something else, even with hugh discounts.
Thats a nice Ford. I'd buy one.
Think about it. An item or service you also make??
Screw them!! If they can't buy from where their paycheck comes I personally would fire them.
Your example with the bank is hardly apropos.
You are a Ford employee parking your XYC car in the Ford lot. Your banking affiliation isn't in anyone's face, much less your employer's.
So only some product and service companies should fire their employees for using competitors. Is the determining line the extent that the use of the product is in someones "face"?
I think you'd be better off waiting for one of those rebate or cash-back deals (unless the employee discount can be added on top of those--I can't find any information as to whether it can).
From the vehicles I looked at, if the MSRP is $26,000 then the employee price will be $24,000 (give or take a couple hundred)
As I mentioned in the previous post, I have no idea if you are allowed to take rebates and incentives when you take the employee discount. Nothing I read said anything about that.
I don't know what you are looking at or where you get your info, but that's nowhere near the numbers that I'm used to dealing with. A few cars have 8% markup from cost to MSRP. most are between 10 to 15% and few more have 20 to 25%.
No car that I know of that stickers at $26K only has $2000 in markup. And then the employee pricing goes down from there.
If all of those italicized words are mine, please tell me what in what post I said them because I sure as hell can't find them. If not, I resent your implication that they are.
Again, NO ONE is getting fired.
In reality, yeah it does depend on if it's in your face.
It's like cheating on your wife. You can get away with going to a 'competitor' if you aren't in your wife's face with the affair. If you do bring the competitor home with you, your spouse may move your parking place too.
Buying from your competitor is just as stupid, but sometimes you can get away with it. Sometimes you have to walk a bit further to work.
I'm looking at the http://www.gmfamilyfirst.com/ website.
Here's an example:
4WD Trailblazer LS
MSRP $26,530
Employee price $24,084
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