I hate greed- it's such an unnecessary condition yet one that manifests itself everywhere:
The person who piles his/her plate sky-high at the Chinese buffet or Sunday carvery then ends up leaving half of it.
The person who gets all exited for the Euro Millions rollover and buys extra tickets, as though the regular lottery jackpot (of which the odds of winning are far far greater) isn't quite enough.
The person who frequents Hot UK Deals to see if there are any pricing errors on 2-litre bottles of pop so he/she can go and clean out the supermarket's entire stock holding.
I once saw a bloke (who could regularly be found hovering around the supermarket reduced aisle and who would often intercept the poor store assistant before she could even get the product on the shelves) buy THREE birthday cakes just because they were on clearance. It went a long way to explaining his size.
Then you've got corporate greed, which I hate even more:
Companies prepared to destroy their hard-earned reputations by cheaping on products to squeeze a few more quid profit out of an item, or by trying to buy into the cheap-end of the market to milk every last revenue stream rather than focusing on the quality products upon which they built the name they now trade off.
Companies who issue profit warnings and see their share-prices plummet because they're only going to make £1.4 BILLION this year.
Companies who'll cut every corner and dodge every responsibility in the name of profit, and the short-sighted approach of screwing a customer for their money once being preferable to gaining a customer for life.
Probably the worst example I've ever seen was when I worked for a company about thirteen years ago- and who thankfully have long since gone bust, ironically largely because of their greed and short-termist business models.
At some point this company decided to put charity pin-badges on the counter. You'll have seen these before in other shops and petrol stations, accompanied by a donation box. But this company didn't use the box- all the donations went in the till. Was this in the name of security, ensuring that some light-fingered Larry couldn't grab the box from the counter and make off with it? No- it was because the company was creaming off 50% of the donation money; money that the customer quite rightly assumed was going to the charity. Despicable.
Why is enough never enough?
