Mark McDonald

Last month I was travelling and staying at a top shelf hotel in Mumbai India.  For those who have been there you know that you generally land in the middle of the night and your clock can be a little messed up.  I have found that I need a little boost sometime to get going in the morning for me that is a Coca-cola and a Chocolate bar from the mini-bar.  Guess you can never get away from being a software engineer.

So imagine my surprise when I reached into the mini-bar to select a Toblerone chocolate and found that the package had been carefully opened, half of the chocolate bar eaten and the rest carefully repackaged so you would not know it had been eaten unless you picked it up.

While a staff member may have eaten the chocolate bar, I kind of doubt it since that kind of theft would eventually be found out and cost the person their job.

It is more likely that a guest ‘borrowed’ half the Toblerone and that is just a sign of how tough the economic recession has been.  While mini-bar chocolate is not cheap, it is hard to see that a company that would fly a person to India and set them up in a top hotel or the person staying in the hotel would have the means to pay for a price-inflated chocolate bar.

Economic times are tough and they are expected to remain tough for much of 2010 as enterprises keep a focus on expenses and other costs.   The sign of a half eaten Toblerone indicates just how challenging things are.

While pilfering chocolate from a min-bar will not save a company’s earning, it is a symbol.

What are the most effective means you are using to manage your expenses?

Are there some innovative ways you or your company has used to manage such expenses?

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Category: Economy Personal Observation     Tags: Economic Recovery, Economy, personal musing

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