When Cheap is just Cheap

America,
There is some crazy nonsense going on at this place I work. The company is finally making money, become profitable, and yet has become so cheap in the process that it is now becoming a negative.

They have scaled back the office in recent move, everyone is in cubicles now. While I understand reducing overhead, do you do it at the expense of productivity and moral?
Everyone is on edge and extremely annoyed.
Is that good for efficiency?

That's not all, oh no, we have a whole serious of bad decisions based on being cheap.
For 7 years now this company has been leasing a piece of junk business copier. The last time the lease ended the old controller renewed with the same manufacturer and we got a second piece of crap. Well at the same time of our move that lease ended and the manufacturer swore and promised that all of their problems had been fixed with the new one. They wined and dined our current controller and gave him the "cheapest bid". So mister squeaky walk fell for it and not more than two days after installation was the thing jammed so bad that we had to send people to Kinko's in order make the bid proposals that were due to go out that day.
Effing Brilliant!

Finally, our department was told we were going to get a new plotter. Do you think they would consult the people who actually use the damn thing as to what our needs are? No, someone who knows nothing about AutoCAD or anything we do is making the choice.
For 7 years our department has been promised a large format copier, these days the plotters can be purchased with scanning and copying built in versus sending jobs out or purchasing two large pieces of equipment.
We made all arguments, did the research, and showed why it made sense financially, and even after all hoops had been jumped through...NADA.
All of our competitors and civil engineer clients have this capability in house.

Does buying inadequate equipment help the productivity, marketability, and overall profitability of the company?

Sometimes being cheap is just being cheap.

Nome out!