Muffingate, or how to shoot yourself in the foot

Large organizations, be they private or public are wasteful. I know this because I work for a large Fortune 500 company, and choke every day on the amount of bureaucracy I and my coworkers have to deal with. We all see waste in government as well. A recent flare up over government waste involved a report issued by the Justice Department where they stated that $4500 was spent on 250 muffins, or $16 per muffin at a conference at the Capitol Hilton. Naturally this set the Right Wingers off on a crazy diatribe about how wasteful the government is. Of course, the $16 muffins turned out to be false. $4500 was spent at the conference, but it was spent on the event space and refreshments but the original invoice just listed the total spend and the muffins. So no $16 muffins. But then the Justice Dept does an audit on this to dispel any myths about government waste and....wait for it: I present to you a 150 page audit report that defines exactly what was spent. 150 pages. WAY TO GO!!! So instead of just saying 'no we bought more than just muffins.' we get a huge report that no one reads except to get a good laugh at how dumb things can get. Here's the report. Now we DO have proof of government waste. It's a self fulfilling prophecy. I'm not against audits. It's good to check things. But instead of wasting how many thousands of dollars paying people to write a report to cover your ass, why not TRAIN your people on how to do proper inventory and invoicing? Waste is going to happen. It's human nature. But let's try to learn from it so that it won't happen again.