Inside Satisfaction

At work in my company’s packaging department, supervisors assign the task of making ready-to-use boxes out of cardboard flats to one person at the start of every shift. All this person does for 12 hours is make certain that the five or six packaging lines, which don’t have automatic box-making machines, are properly supplied with boxes. This usually entails converting roughly 5 thousand flats into usable boxes.

By supplying these lines with boxes, the box-maker is serving the needs of his or her customers, which in this example are internal. And in order for my company to reach total quality, it must place equal importance on satisfying these internal customers as it does on its external customers, who are, of course, the consumers who purchase the final product in retail stores.

Poorly made boxes can cause the product to fall out and get scrapped. Failing to supply these boxes in a timely manner can cause unnecessary down time. Both cases in point cut into company profits. Customers…both external and internal…are the judges of quality.

Higher Prices means Better Qual...er uh..Advertising!

Do we get what we pay for?


If it were a perfect world, high prices would translate into high quality. But in reality, the two do not necessarily go hand in hand.


There are countless examples of higher-priced products not having more quality than their cheaper competitors. One area where consumers often find this contrary price/quality relationship is in the prescription drug market.


The drug commercials we see on TV would have us believe that their brand-name drug is superior, but the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) says this isn’t so.
The FDA requires generic drugs to meet the same safety standards as their name-brand counterparts. Generic drug makers can charge less because they haven’t had to spend as much in developing the product. But let's not forget some this higher cost can be attributed also to advertising and packaging.

My Hell

The New York Yankees
Circle I Limbo

Libertarians
Circle II Whirling in a Dark & Stormy Wind

Ben Bernanke
Circle III Mud, Rain, Cold, Hail & Snow

General asshats
Circle IV Rolling Weights

Creationists
Circle V Stuck in Mud, Mangled

River Styx

George Bush
Circle VI Buried for Eternity

River Phlegyas

Republicans
Circle VII Burning Sands

Bernie Madoff
Circle IIX Immersed in Excrement

Osama bin Laden
Circle IX Frozen in Ice

Design your own hell