[Keith Seymore]

GM Suggestion Program

Seeing the reference to the GM "Suggestion Program" made me think of a story dad told on more than one occasion:

Naturally, as he and the other skilled tradesmen in the shop went about their work they found better, cheaper and/or faster ways to do things. They decided to form a team of three or four individuals who would specifically be on the look out for good ideas and then they would go back, as a group, and corporately submit their Suggestion ideas into the proper channels. These days the maximum suggestion award is $20,000; I don't know what it was back then but I will say Dad earned enough money from suggestions on the '65/'66 Chevy pickup truck grill that he was able to buy our first truck, a '69 GMC, for cash.

This arrangement worked pretty well until one of the guys decided he wanted all the Suggestion reward money for himself. He started taking the ideas from the group and then he would hurry back and write them up by himself and submit them under his name only. As you might guess, after he did this a couple times the rest of the group caught on and they were none too happy about it.

They decided to write a series of bogus suggestions and assign this guy's name to them. They started out innocently enough, but since the "fake" suggestions continued to be accepted and implemented the suggestions got more wild and more outlandish as time went on. The coup de tat (...whatever that means...) was when they wrote a suggestion to remove all the stall doors in the restrooms out on the floor (to combat the skilled tradesman from reading while sitting on the pot) as a cost savings idea.

When this was followed up with a Suggestion to install "clear polycarbonate" doors on the stalls (presumably for security purposes), also submitted under his name, the gentleman was called into the office and it was "suggested" that he not submit any more ideas...