What are some of the craziest examples of commercial mismanagement you have heard of?

this all makes my head spin, much like the conspiracy theory one

Dasani is selling purified tap water, I know that one is true. I know there was also something about KFC not actually being chicken, but I don't know about that one.

I can't think of anything right off hand.

Which of these are true? It's hard to believe most of them.

I'm more bothered by the financial fraud done by companies like Enron and MCI...

well chapstick did that, it was in the news a few years ago. the dasani thing was just in the news. and the mcdonalds transfats thing was all over the news (not the fact that they started using them again though. i found this out by reading the mcdonalds nutritional facts last year when they went to healthier fats, and now when they are using hydrogenated oils again)

theres a legend that kfc genetically bred 6 legged featherless chickens. um, possible sure, but probably not true.

When I was little we used to say that Carl's Jr. (a fast food chain) used worms in their burgers. It was a widely-held belief in my primary school.
I have also heard claims that tampon manufacturers put things in the tampons to make you bleed more and therefore have to use more tampons.
I don't believe either of these.

How about a computer company that knows . that they have a bad printing design in their software, but the developer that wrote that peice left their company.......so they go on without fixing it for a long time - not hiring a new developer, no apparent intention of fixing the software problem. And yet they continue to sell the faulty product, and charge 135$/15 minutes to talk to technical support about it.
I worked for this company.
And was also subpoenaed in a case to sue them about it too.....

Taco Bell had rat turds in the taco meat.
Taco Bell had roaches in the meat.
Big Boy had kangaroo meat in the burgers. (Thats how I heard it )

I used to work at KFC and know that the chicken that was delivered to our store was chicken and not altered. It came from a very reputable poultry place here in town. KFC in large cities and towns is owned by Pepsi Cola. The ones in smaller rural areas are individually owned franchises.

I heard the Jack in the Box one. Didn't know McDonald's had changed their cooking oil back. Oh well..................

It seems like you're willfully engaging in spreading misinformation. You've mixed things that may have happened with stuff you just made up. It's sort of like putting a lie between truths.

I found some articles about the Dasani incident. You neglected to mention that they use purified water. Coke hasn't hidden that; my wife an I were aware of it last year, if you look at the bottle it's clear. UK tabloids picked up on it, characterizing it as expensive "tap water". It ended up killing Dasani in the UK.

I looked for info on the Chapstick/fiberglass thing and only found a few references to it being an urban legend. I also saw it associated with Carmex (another lip-balm).

I checked on the McDonald's trans-fat thing as well. Found this, which does seem to show McDonald's went back on their promise (though, they characterize it more as "extended the time-frame"). I wasn't able to tell if McDonald's ever really stopped using trans-fats.

Interestingly, I found this article that J.R. Simplot Co., the supplier of frozen french fries to McDonald's (and other fast-food chains) is removing trans-fats (articled dated June 2004).

Anyway, shame on you. I'm all for a little muck-racking, but misrepresenting, distorting, and mixing in lies with truths is under-handed and only undermines real progress toward making stuff like this better. What you did here reminds me of a Michael Moore film... there are some good points mixed in, but more harm than good is done in the end because of the half-truths he spreads.

Anyway, I know it's just a stupid survey, but I hate seeing this sort of thing.

It wasn't the piece of crap that Dept. Of Labor bought for job corps was it? This worthless program allowed me to print a master class schedule of only 700 pages. We only had 125 students at this center. Dept. Of labor paid for a lemon. It was called CIS--Center Information system. It had bugs in the master schedule and input areas for GED test scores and classes. Totally worthless. We actually went back to using a DOS program to do the master schedules which only took 5 pages to print. Go Figure!!

I thought they were all owned by Pepsi--that is why they only serve Pepsi products in there. Ours (we are a small town--12,000) is KFC and TACO BELL together in this store. Is that the way it is in the cities? So this would be a franchise? Didn't know that.

It could be either a franchise or Pesi owned. It really depends on the area that it is in. We have one combined Taco Bell/KFC in Cincinnati that I know of. Ask them next time you go I am sure they would know.

Some of the stuff my brother's employers used to get up to with people's photographs. If the shop ruined them while developing them, they would tell the customers that they must have loaded the film wrong or done something else themselves. That way, they wouldn't even have to give them even a free film as compensation and the customer would have to pay for the development. Photographs are precious and it really upset my brother. Sometimes these would be wedding photos or children's birthday parties.

I don't think it's fair to say that calling Dasani tap-water is distorting the truth. Most bottled water in the UK comes from natural springs in the North where it has filtered through limestone. Dasani came from a tap in the Thames Valley. That's the water that I drink while I'm at university and it's really quite good as it is. Most of the people who would be buying bottled water to drink regularly will already own water filtration systems (those jug things) and that's pretty much how Dasani's process worked. Completely failing to mention that it's had the mineral ions taken out (the good stuff...) would be misleading, but it's still tap water. I would be interested to know exactly what the bottles say on them. Do they say "purified tap water" or something more like "purified water from a source in the United Kingdom"? The second is Coke being misleading but I suppose the first would never garner them any sales.

What really killed it in the UK was the revelation that the purification process converted bromine in the water into bromate. Not so good! They had to recall an awful lot of it and people were never going to trust it after that. Not to mention that our water supply is excellent virtually everywhere except for when a pipe gets damaged. There was a big boom in bottled water but I think the bottom is falling out of the market a bit now. I buy it from time to time (not Dasani) but then I refill the bottles from the tap - it's pretty much as good. Not as good as up-north water (mmm, peaty goodness and fewer oral contraceptives) but it tastes ok.

GM didn't realize when they introduced the automobile Nova into Spanish speaking countries that it meant "goes slow" in Spanish.
The question DOES say 'mismanagement', not illegal conspiracies.

i dont think you understood the point of the survey, its about stories and urban legends. i didnt make stuff up. i could come back with links to the articles i read, but why bother? just because i read it does not make it true and vise versa. i just wanted to know what stories and urban legends of this nature people had heard, and obviously should not have used the word true anywhere.
but yes mcdonalds did stop using trans fats, i read the nutritional info everytyime i eat there, and for a period those ingredients were missing. now they are back. not big deal, and not really mismanagement. just deception.
as far as the mike moore film, i hope i see it soon.

pepsi owns kfc taco bell and and pizza hut, when i worked at pizza hut, the pepsi name was on the checks, and of course we bought our supplies from and food from pepsico. coke owns a few too, including burger king.

it does?
when i've been to mexico i notice a lot of american cars under different names. they had something that looked just like a nova and i thinkk its called a chevy corona or something like that.

I've also heard that a 3 musketeers lite is only lite because it's smaller in size.http://darkseam.com/Archive/200307.html
Starbucks adds extra caffeine to it's products to make it more addictive.
http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20...
Red Bull has been banned in some European countries. http://www.snopes.com/toxins/redbull.htm

I am just to be nosy

Does that mean beer in spanish?

Nothing wrong with that!!!

I didn't know coke owned burger king. Wow--you learn something new every day. I did know about Pizza Hut but forgot to mention it. My 19 year old son used to work there. They had all pepsi products and the trucks did say pepsico.

I agree about that--it was mismanagement. We all laughed when we heard that one, because No va (NOVA) means doesn't go. ie: El automovile no va. (The car doesn't go/doesn't move)

a corona is a crown in spanish

What's wrong with Kangaroo meat?

Some real estate developer built a mall down the street from me. The idea was that it was going to be a really high end, posh place with lots of designer fashion stores and the like. Problem is, it is right on the edge of the poorest neighbourhood in Canada. They opened about 45% leased (which, in itself spells disaster for any mall), maybe increased that to about 55% leased after a year, and then the tenants started breaking their leases and moving out in droves. Some of them attempted a class action suit against the leasing company, claiming misrepresentation, but I doubt that they won. At one point, the only tenants they had were a theater, the food fair, McDonalds, Quizno's, 7-11 and Starbuck's.

Kaleb: can you eat this for real? I guess because we don't have kangaroos here, except in zoos we are ignorant in that area. But I have seen folks eat bugs and armadillos and snakes. So who knows. Is this common in Australia and if so--what does it taste like? (please don't say chicken ) But I do know that rattlesnake (diamondback) and rabbits do taste like chicken.

There are so many kangaroos in Australia that they are pests. Their numbers have exploded since Europeans came here. Most of the pet mincemeat sold is kangaroo, but it is also sold for human consumption. Human kangaroo meat is farmed while pet meat is shot by farmers wild.

It is very, very lean red meat high in iron and tastes richer than beef. Because it's so lean it can be dry so it's best for stirfrys rather than steaks.

I thought maybe the spanish people thought they were getting a drinking car or a car full of beer

I've never heard of any of these but I'd be inclined to believe they would do so if they could get away with it.

no, but i forget what corona means

nothing. but selling kangaroo and calling it cow is bad. i dont know if that ever really happened. wouldnt kangaroo cost more?

I haven't heard any of these except the Coke/Dasani one and that was because they did a story about bottled water on 20/20's Give Me a Break segment hosted by John Stossel. All they really mentioned about Dasani is that you were basically paying good money for a bottle of water that wasn't much different from tap water. Some brands, however do come from underground springs and are naturally filtered through substances such as volcanic rock, etc., but that doesn't necessarily mean that they are any better for you than tap water. If you want to get rid of the chlorine taste that you find in most tap water, get yourself a water filter such as a Brita or similar brand. It will get rid of the chlorine taste.

Here's an article about Ivory Soap that might interest you. They've decided to come "clean" about the invention of floating soap after all these years!
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/06/22/tech/mai...

I'm abstaining for now, but if I think of any later, I'll share them with you.

freebird says crown

sounds right. that would make sense calling the ring around the sun a corona

It must not have cost more, otherwise what's the point?

Lite olive oil is lite because of the colour, not because of the fat content. BTW, the light colour is actually worse for you than dark cold pressed olive oil.

To me, "tap water" is a pretty meaningless thing to say. The tap in my home goes to a well that pulls the water from 160 feet down. We have a couple other wells, one is only 20 feet deep (surface well - like the "Jack and Jill" kind, basically). Then, there's another that's more like 600 feet deep. All produce fairly different waters. My wife tests it and has to condition it this way or that for her fish tanks. The acidity varies, the hardness varies, mineral content varies, etc. When we lived a couple hundred miles south of here, we were on town water, which went through a treatment plant (it had some chlorine and fluoride added to it among other things)...

I think bottled water is pretty much a joke. Clearly, they charge too much for it, no matter where it comes from (spring or tap). There's a serious mania going on in the States with bottled water, you see it everywhere now. Some people seem to always have one in their hand. I'm sure it's harmless, but it seems pretty silly to me. We're all so convinced that we need to drink water all the time...

There was a chilling report I read several years ago in Ad Busters magazine. They had obtained a copy of an internal Coke marketing strategy presentation. Coke had achieved dominance in the drink market, but they began to realize their new competition was water. Clearly, Dasani is the solution they came up with. It's a brilliant business strategy, really. It's just shocking that so many people are willing to pay all that money for a bottle of water. I guess people just don't trust their tap anymore... they'd rather trust Coca-Cola® ?

Yeah, I think "lite" olive oil is really more about taste, it doesn't taste as strong a real olive oil (many people don't want to taste it, I guess).
I hear cold pressed extra virgin olive oil is one of the best oils you can use, health-wise. It's what I use for most things...

"no va" is "it does not go" in Spanish.

yeah. i dont know if the story is true though

Well I am glad that the human kangaroo meat is farmed--probably grain fed or something. But the fact that it is very lean red meat and high in iron is good. So they use the wild kangaroos for pet mincemeat. Well that is good that there is a use for them. It's hard to believe there are so many of them. Did the people who came in start feeding them or protest the killing or something that the numbers multiplied. Do they send the wild one's to zoos? This is very interesting.

they probably wish they were. At least the one full of beer. Heehee.

That's right, I was close. Knew it was something like that.

corona is a crown in Spanish, heyzeus

Yeah, it's one of the only oils that doesn't change its chemistry after being subjected to high temperatures for frying. Most other oils have constituents that change to carcinogens after they have been heated.

No, Kangaroo range is grassland. When Europeans came with their grazing animals they cleared a lot of scrub so grassland area expanded and so did the kangaroo population.

It's a real problem then? Are they trying to control the population of the Kangaroos?

claro que si!

pizza hut too.

how old are you? where do you learn all this stuff from? i just use the net for games, e-mail and SC.

Usually the population falls during drought, but when it's high, farmers are permitted to cull excess numbers and sell the roos to pet food companies.

I live in Australia, so the roo facts are just on TV here.

When I was a kid, there was this newscaster on local TV. Somehow, a nasty rumour spread about him that he got off on putting gerbils up his butt. It completely ruined his local career, but a later on (a few years?) he showed up on a national television show, and remains there to this day. I don't want to say his name, 'cause I always felt bad for him, and I'm glad he's able to find work which gives him even more exposure.

Como no? Intendes espanol? Viviste en Arizona, que no? prendites espanol ay? Vas a senar tus hijos como avlar espanol?

We are in a drought here in the southwestern part of the States. Are you all in drought in Australia? It's good that the government allows for some of the roos to be put down in order to control the population. Do they populate real fast. Kind of like rabbits do down here? We cannot get the Mexican grey wolf numbers back up because the rachers keep killing them. They are predators but they are really endangered--almost extinct. We call them LOBOS. We need to find some kind of balance between the ranchers interests (cattle/sheep) and the Lobos. Don't know what that would be, though.

that's what heyzeus was telling me. I bet there are others too.

All of Australia is in drought except the northern tropics. Kangaroos do breed very fast. They usually have one in the pouch while they are pregnant with the next. They have the ability to suspend a pregnancy when food is scarce and restart its progress when it rains.

We had a similar problem with dingos attacking sheep. Our solution was to build a 5400km dingo fence. Sheep country is to the south of the fence and cattle country to the north where the dingos are. I don't think it would work in the US because you don't have the space.

Here's a pic of the fence out in the desert.

wow we need that on the border with Mexico too. That's a good idea. I didn't know that they could suspend their pregnancies. That seems neat, but it could cause problems I can see that too. We might be able to do the fence thing for the Mexican grey wolves but the ranchers have grazing rights in some public areas and which they are overgrazing right now with the cattle. This picture sure looks a lot like New Mexico in the southern area, where the Lobos are.

las cucarachas entran pero no se puedan salir!
Si, cuando viviendo en arizona yo (insert spanish word for learned here) alguna espanol. solamente la cantidad que es neccessario por la vida en arizona, y nada mas. no recuerdo las palabras prendites o alvar.
in fact, i was passed over promotions at my job because my spanish wasnt good enough.
also my mother speaks fluent spanish, cause she likes to travel guatemala and costa rica and such. she plans to retire in guaymas, i think.

wow! what a spell check that comment was!

Esos cucarachas no se salen Avlas muy bien. Prendites (learned) muy bien. En este lau de la Estados Unidos si necessita a avlar espanol. Yo soy de la jente espana, y yo no avlo muy bien. My father is an expert in spanish and also in barrio spanish (spanglish/pachuco/etc) he used it in his job as a parole officer and then later as a certified spanish interpreter. Mine can be bad at times. But I try--I have to know it because of my job--I work in children's medical field for the state of NM and many of our clients are Mexican Nationals so I have to learn. But medical terms in Spanish are hard, hard, hard. Do you know of any websites that offer medical terms in Spanish?

uh, no. i am sure my mother might. she studies that stuff too, and is a cvertified herbalist. she is MIA however, i think shes in seattle.
yeah, you couldnt even get directions from a bus friver in tucson if you didnt speak spanish. ha!
true though.
i worked for a nafta company, and was on the phone regularly to folks in mexicfo in regards to the days shipments, etc.
my co-workers called me jesus, in spanish
hence my web-name

Oh that's cool--the web name. My grandson is actually named Jesus. He's a cutie-pie. So did you like Tuscon? It too hot down there, that's for sure. If you track down your mom--could you ask her about the website for medical terms--if you happen to remember--I'd appreciate it.

that's cool. the U.S. is so Disneyland and fastfood it makes me sick. I've been to Germany and things are so much more real and not temporary. one day we've got a mcdonalds on the corner and next there's a huge shopping center built around the mcdonalds. i won't even eat there. i quit eatting out. i am afraid of what they put in my food. i cant cook very well but I stop at the chinese place and get veg. fried rice and veg. delite. at least i tell what everything is. and that'll last me 3 days. i'm getting weird about food.

I want to come visit you. i will pay room and board. i just need a tour guide. i'm not weird or anything and won't take advantage. say i can come. even though i really don't have the $$ right now at least i can dream. i am 32 next month and pretty to myself and will help w. clean up and dinner. how old are you? i just hate the states. getting out of her just once will make you hate it. i just need to believe i can if i want to.

i am awe struck

Why do you hate the US? Where do you live?

Louisiana, the south, rebel flags etc... I want to live in a city where i will become invisible. I don't want to run into people I know and pretend like I don't see them or pretend I'm glad I did. I am very antisocial. I'm not a shut in I just don't care to pretend that I am happy when I am not and in a small town you're usually running into someone & I don't want anyone asking q's about what's wrong w. me so or feeling sorry for me so I pretend to be happy. It's exhausting.

Isn't New Orleans fairly big? Move there for anonymity.

I would love to. Currently I can't. My mother is not well. I help take care of her. She is here.

LOL, genetically altered chicken like creatures without beaks or legs mass produced in growth chambers for KFC. Seriously though, I hear that there is fiberglass in some cigarettes???

http://www.snopes.com/snopes.asp Here is a great di-bunk site regarding urban legends, very thorough.

yeah, great site... very-linkable!

Enron.