Manager's obsessive cost-cutting initiatives cost the company more money when double-sided printing policy causes problems with important client: 'All printing must be double-sided—no exceptions'

A double-edged sword cuts both ways, and you could probably get a paper cut from a double-sided print job, too. Cutting costs might seem like a good idea, but really, you're probably just going to slice right through other important things like customer satisfaction and, by extension, your company's profit. After all, as the old saying goes…You gotta spend money to make money.

Overly inflexible policies are almost certainly a double-edged sword. When you demand rigid adherence to rules, leaving no room for people to make necessary and practical adjustments, you're going to end up with results that you might not have anticipated, with your initiatives backfiring in unexpected ways.

That's what happened when this manager, who was obsessed with cutting costs, insisted on enforcing a strict double-sided printing policy with no room for exception, even with important documents for an important client that simply could not be printed double-sided. The rush print job and priority shipping needed to properly print the documents afterward quickly ate through any possible savings that the policy would have created. While the manager in this story might have learned his lesson, far too many fail to do so.