No. Really. GM’s top execs [not shown] stood up in front of their Midwestern dealers at the Rock Financial Showplace and told them that new car sales will rebound by 15 percent next year, ascending to an annual tally of 12.5 million vehicles. That’s fantastic news. But the real shocker: our mole reports that the suits only said the word “faster” once. The company’s new mantra: our costs are less, so we can charge you less. No, wait; that’s a local Toyota’s dealer’s come-on. I mean, our costs are less, so we can keep our jobs longer. Or make a profit. Or something. Meanwhile, Automotive News [sub] reports that GM has formed a special task force to “try to retain 3 million ‘free agents’ — customers that have lost their favorite brand, nameplate or dealership this year.” Interesting use of the word “favorite” . . .
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The new Clean Tricks Squad (we hope) is headed by Julie Heisel, a Harvard MBA grad who’s been doing the GM CRM since the good old days, when Old GM was New GM, only not so much. In 2001, Heisel was busy talking up IBM software designed to let the American automaker “respond to customers individually.” True story. She even had a “Plan to Win” that “ensures that we continually talk about progress and check ourselves against the vision,” said Heisel. Better luck this time, eh?
New GM’s new plan to win centers on Chevrolet. Chevy boss Brent Dewar admitted that the General came to that conclusion through a process of elimination, and told the remaining dealers that they’re going to carry the can for the nationalized automaker.
‘We’re asking them to step up to higher sales targets’ that follow a reduction in Chevrolet dealers following GM’s bankruptcy and the reduction of brands, Dewar said.
‘The Chevrolet brand is elastic enough’ to cover the vacated spaces in the marketplace, he said. ‘Dealers will have to think differently about small-car values. We’ll still have low-price value versions but also more premium choices.’
Like . . . Buick? As has become its custom, Automotive News ends its otherwise credulous report on New GM hyperbole with some sobering stats.
Through July, Chevy’s U.S. sales plunged 34.5 percent to 718,135 vehicles. Total GM sales slipped 37.7 percent to 1.13 million, giving Chevy 63.2 percent of GM’s U.S. sales over the seven-month period.
The heartbeat of America is in arrhythmia, and New GM wants it to lead its march into battle. Then again, what’s the alternative?
Not much smarter than the “old” GM types, are they?
Is there an actual engineer the bunch?
Probably doesn’t matter. The prerequisite lobotomy required to bring all to the Obamaloon cabinet level will take care of that.
Good luck GM.
Without me, of course.
What is it in the water of Detroit?
Good luck getting 10% of those 3 million buyers back.
BlindOne :
What is it in the water of Detroit?
Whatever it is, it ain’t in the water. I grew up drinking water from the Detroit area, and I’ll tell you, it’s some of the best-tasting water I’ve ever had.
No, I suggest that instead of looking in the water, you start your search in the education system. That is where this started. And ended.
Having owned 1 Camaro, 1 Tahoe, and 3 Suburbans over the last 25 years I bailed on the bailout and went Toyota Tundra this time around. I hadn’t EVER set foot in a foreign car dealer to purchase a new car before that. I will, of course, NEVER visit a GM dealer again. GM had their flunkies in Congress and the Executive Branch reach into my pocket and steal thousands of dollars and I won’t ever forget it. While I would have bought a car from a bankrupt GM, I refuse to buy a car from a government owned GM. Good luck with that 15% number, GM clowns. How many Chevy Cobalts will you have to sell to replace the margin I gave you on my last $51k Suburban?
ZoomZoom : Whatever it is, it ain’t in the water. I grew up drinking water from the Detroit area, and I’ll tell you, it’s some of the best-tasting water I’ve ever had.
When did you grow up in Detroit? When I saw all the crusty stuff left behind by the water tray in my ghetto-rigged radiator/humidifier (I was trying to make my Detroit apt feel like Houston) I immediately bought a Brita and realized my mistake.
On topic: I can’t wait to hear GM’s reforecast when the ether wears off on this plan.
Should have been titled: “New GM Chapter 7 Watch #2: 15% Market Growth in 2010.”
Looking at all those people in the picture, I can’t determine which one’s ass those numbers came out of.
Texmin has his priorities straight.
Due to political maneuvering by GM executives, but more so as political payback to the UAW, the Obama administration has bailed out greed, slacker work attitudes and management incompetence … using money forcibly taken from our paychecks.
We can’t turn back the clock, but we can help make sure that this doesn’t become on of those government “forever” precedents by helping foster the quickest possible demise of GM by refusing to buy its products (ditto Chrysler and to a lesser extent Ford).
The obvious answer is that a guy with the best crack money can buy is dealing in the shadow of the Ren. center.
If CFC is any indication, the mythical 15% growth will go largely to Hyundai/Kia and Ford, not GM.
Any stats on how dealers are doing? This is over and above those being pushed out.
texmln: which is exactly why I would buy a Korean built Saturn before I would buy a GM built anything.You nailed it.
Didn’t one of the recent articles here at TTAC say Mahindra (sp?) was going to build its small pickup in the US, even as early as 2010? With Korea, India, China poised to sell more cars here, GM Ford Chrysler are in deep shit. Maybe Toyota and Honda are too.
No, I suggest that instead of looking in the water, you start your search in the education system. That is where this started. And ended.
More specifically we need to look into what’s being taught in our business schools. High school drop-outs tend to see things more clearly than the Ren Cen bunch. How can people with Ivy League MBAs be so completely inept?
There’s a good reason why the OEM’s refer to this group as “orphaned” owners.
The brand is dead to them.
Not to hijack the thread, but…
Colleges period are cranking out more drivel than ever before. The emphasis seems to be on teaching/showing “how clever I am!” rather than grounding students in how the hell things work.
This has tragically seeped all the way down to elementary education. My HS daughters have to buy graphing calculators at over $100 a pop. I leave it to the collective wisdom of my fellow posters to provide the punchline to that.
/rant
That’s nuts. Stabilizing the current market share ought to be the ONLY target.
There should also be a plan in case the market share falls OR the economies of the world turn south for a second shock.
Anything else is dreaming or speculating with other people’s money.
The news here, of course, is that the GM suits have decided that Chevrolet will become the new Saturn, the new Pontiac and the new Hummer (and maybe Saab?)
Why does this sound so familiar. Oh yes, it is because Chevrolet was essentially competing with almost every other GM brand, stealing sales from all of them for the last 40 years. What is with this great race to the middle? We are going to see smaller Buicks and Cadillacs, and now more premium Chevrolets. AAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHH!
These people are as clueless as ever. Chevrolet cannot take on Ford and Toyota on a one for one basis because to do so would eliminate the need for GMC and Buick. For GM to compete in the markets covered by Ford and Toyota (forget Scion and Mercury, because they are non-factors), GM needs to divide those areas between Chev, Buick and GMC, then build the fences between them strong.
But we all know that they are incapable of thinking like this. Half the company will push Cadillac, Buick and GMC, while the other half will build Chevy to compete one for one with Ford and Toyota, and we will be right back to old GM.
An increase in the size of the market is a perfectly logical conclusion to make. The economy is most likely recovering as we speak while the average age of a car is up, so the existing fleet will have to be replaced by something.
What may not be so logical is for GM to claim that it will be able to get that market share for itself. I don’t see the product lineup that’s going to be able to do that, as competitors continue to make improvements and fight for their share of the pie.
If GM is serious about reducing the importance of fleet sales, I don’t see how GM can take full advantage of this. The market may grow, but GM may not.
So I follow the link below and find that the government gives these clowns 3 million dollars to build an in-call centre. In Sault Ste. Marie. About as far as you can get from the centre of commerce in Ontario… Oh well I guess GM needed the money back then. Again. Still….
http://www.mndm.gov.on.ca/gallery/PGView.asp?PGMID=96&PGLAN=EN
You know, GM and it’s Faithful remind me of fanatical Nazis who believed in victory right until the moment the Russians crashed in and stole the sofa.
You missed the key line:
We’re asking them to step up to higher sales targets’
In practice this means: “Hammer the crap out of any one stupid enough to walk on your lot, ‘lose’ the keys to his trade-in, lock him in the room with the closer, do what you have to do to get a sale or expect to get bupkis on the high demand cars (if we ever build any)”.
In other words, make life even more miserable for any potential customer. S*** flows downhill, and the bosses are making it clear to the underlings what they expect. Oh, that Harvard MBA has other people get cars for her, so she has no idea what the experience of a volume GM dealer is like to the proles out there. Good luck on keeping or getting back customers when you have just told your dealers to screw ’em.
No. Really. GM’s top execs [not shown] stood up in front of their Midwestern dealers at the Rock Financial Showplace and told them that new car sales will rebound by 15 percent next year, ascending to an annual tally of 12.5 million vehicles.
To that, I will quote the late Rick James:
“Cocaine is a powerful drug…..”
The rocket scientists at GM are making a big to do about orphan owners all the while they are creating more. The only Caddy dealer in our county is being shut down. It doesn’t seem to matter that they were always above national average in customer satisfaction, and the paint hasn’t dried yet on their $3 million remodel for the exclusive Caddy showroom. The nearest Caddy store is an hour and a half away during rush hour, 45 mintues when there is no traffic. Double said times when the roads are covered by snow and/or ice. If that wasn’t brilliant enough, the next county west of us will also lose their only Caddy store. When does Chapter 7 watch begin?! Independant franchisees take note, your rights are erroding with every store Gubbamint Motors is allowed to take down.
ZoomZoom : Whatever it is, it ain’t in the water. I grew up drinking water from the Detroit area, and I’ll tell you, it’s some of the best-tasting water I’ve ever had.
When did you grow up in Detroit? When I saw all the crusty stuff left behind by the water tray in my ghetto-rigged radiator/humidifier (I was trying to make my Detroit apt feel like Houston) I immediately bought a Brita and realized my mistake.
All tap water has some mineral content but Detroit tap water is relatively soft. The only folks who need water softeners for bathing and laundry purposes are the folks with their own wells in the far suburbs. The near suburbs get their water from the Detroit system. Detroit city water doesn’t come from wells, it’s drawn from the Great Lakes, which are ultimately spring fed.
I’m sure that if you looked at mineral residue in any big city’s water supply, you’d find plenty of places worse than Detroit. Detroit city tap water is some of the best tasting water you can find. The only water I’ve had that tasted better has been from an artesian well in the Upper Peninsula and straight from the rock at the Banias nature preserve in Israel. The Banias spring is one of the Jordan’s sources.
The city of Detroit makes a lot of money selling water to the surburbs so it’s in the city’s interest to keep the water treatment facility in top shape. That and a billion dollar improvement forced by the Feds during hizzoner Coleman Young’s mayoralty.
Frankly I prefer the taste of Detroit tap water to most bottled water.
@Rick Korallus. Exactly on Cadillac buyers. They will not travel that distance to purchase a new Cadillac and especially not travel that distance for warranty repairs. Many will migrate to whatever the local dealer offers. Lincoln should take note.
# Canucknucklehead :
August 29th, 2009 at 11:53 am
You know, GM and it’s Faithful remind me of fanatical Nazis who believed in victory right until the moment the Russians crashed in and stole the sofa.
Perhaps the most egregious example of Godwin that I’ve ever seen.
VW, whose iconic vehicle’s design was stolen by Dr. Porsche and the Nazis from a Jew, Josef Ganz, then steals $1.5 million dollars from the Jewish son of Holocaust survivors but GM gets compared to Nazis.
Okee dokey.
The economy is most likely recovering as we speak while the average age of a car is up, so the existing fleet will have to be replaced by something.
You must only listen to what the White House says. Lately I’ve been reading about a possible “double dip” or “W” shaped recession.
Economies are cyclical. Unless governments do stupid things that prolong recessions and depressions, like FDR and many of his policies, the economy will eventually turn around.
Unfortunately for us all, redistributive Democratic ideology will retard that recovery. Of course, politically the Dems are just fine with that because the longer there’s a “crisis” the more the Dems can argue that radical “fixes” are necessary.
Respectfully, the REAL message out of this meeting was quite different.
The higher sales requirements go hand in hand with the new Sales and Service Agreements that allow GM to require new facilities.
A shitstorm is coming as GM tries to enforce these rights (acquired under chapter) and demands hundreds of new stores that are scaled to meet GM’s new–and completely unattainable–sales targets.
It might be like sports–when your team is losing no one buys a ticket, but once they start to win all is forgiven. Don’t know if GM has better karma than Michael Vick, though.
And things can get ugly elsewhere, too. With VW’s Stefan Jacoby promising not only bigger, but a lot more cup-holders in their cars, the General sure has its work cut out…
@Brewster123
Sault Saint Marie is probably exactly the place to run a call center in Canada, unless you need to have operators in five languages or something.
Low wages with reasonable levels of education are the desired goals. The center of commerce, with higher wages, high turnover, harsh urban speech patterns, and many different foreign accents is exactly the place you don’t want to have one.
Western Maryland is a popular place for call centers in the eastern U.S. Low Appalachian wages with reasonable education levels and neutral accents.
The economy is most likely recovering as we speak while the average age of a car is up, so the existing fleet will have to be replaced by something.
I was going to touch on that too.
With anywhere from 416 banks (according to the FDIC) to possibly over 1800 (according to Institutional Risk Analytics) which didn’t include the 19 stress tested banks.
Foreclosures still outnumber homesales, State & federal sales taxes are down and any number depressing statistics well outnumber any good ones. (good things being that things aren’t declining as quickly)
texmln :
August 28th, 2009 at 11:13 pm
I will, of course, NEVER visit a GM dealer again. GM had their flunkies in Congress and the Executive Branch reach into my pocket and steal thousands of dollars and I won’t ever forget it. While I would have bought a car from a bankrupt GM, I refuse to buy a car from a government owned GM.
Well, Tex, here’s a double dose of bad news for your “argument,” such as it is:
1) If not for government help, “bankrupt Gm” would have meant “liquidated GM.” The idea that the company, as it was before BK, could have somehow righted itself without massive government help, is straight out of a bad peyote trip.
2) Had the company been liquidated, it would have been nothing less than a death blow to the economy. And where would all those laid-off workers, cut-off retirees, and out-of-work dealership employees be making their living from? That’s right, they’d be living of your tax dollars.
Small government platitudes are nice, but ideology isn’t going to help get us out of this mess. Spending will. Sucks, but it’s true. Then again, the alternative would be utter catastrophe. Take your choice.
Ronnie Schreiber :
August 29th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
The economy is most likely recovering as we speak while the average age of a car is up, so the existing fleet will have to be replaced by something.
You must only listen to what the White House says. Lately I’ve been reading about a possible “double dip” or “W” shaped recession.
Economies are cyclical. Unless governments do stupid things that prolong recessions and depressions, like FDR and many of his policies, the economy will eventually turn around.
Unfortunately for us all, redistributive Democratic ideology will retard that recovery. Of course, politically the Dems are just fine with that because the longer there’s a “crisis” the more the Dems can argue that radical “fixes” are necessary.
Was this Rush Limbaugh’s talking point this week – the “government intervention prolongs recessions” prattle?
Unfortunately, that thesis isn’t provable. Why? Because the government has, in, fact, intervened and increased spending in EVERY recession since the Great Depression. Even Reagan did it.
There is simply no evidence to back that argument up, besides argumentative rhetoric. However, the inconvenient fact is that government spending DOES work to end recessions.
>>2) Had the company been liquidated, it would have been nothing less than a death blow to the economy. And where would all those laid-off workers, cut-off retirees, and out-of-work dealership employees be making their living from? That’s right, they’d be living of your tax dollars.
That’s the official line, but it’s bull.
GM certainly would have come out of CH. 11 in far better shape than it’s in now. FIrst of all, a bankruptcy judge would have imposed realistic (instead of symbolic) concessions on the UAW. The main purpose of the government bailout was to prevent that.
Second, look at all the resentment out there over “government motors” – outside of myopic Michigan there are millions who resent being forced to bailout GM. People, like me, that might have considered one someday – if GM ever gets its quality act together – after a Ch. 11, but now won’t because of the bailout.
First of all, there are cars being manufactured in the U.S. that are not GM / Chrysler. Even if we were to assume for the sake of argument that GM / Chrysler would have gone down absent a taxpayer bailout, the slack would have been picked up by other companies. The disappearance of GM / Chrysler would have been a hiccup in the economy, but no worse that the disappearance of unionized steel companies and airlines (PanAm, Eastern, TWA, Braniff …).
Congress has passed “Stimulus”-type bills during every recession, but this doesn’t mean that the higher government spending helps the economy start growing again. More likely, the recession ends on its own when demand perks up. Government action takes so long that the spending kicks in after the recession is over. Look at how little of the present so-called stimulus money has been spent.
Nothing has yet been done to get us out of the Depression. Democrats and Republicans are still clueless. What got us out of the Great Depression was full employment created by WWII. Everyone had a good paying job with all the overtime, at time and a half, that they wanted. This was a bottom up solution.
Neither what FDR did, or what the Republicans wanted, got the US out of the Great Depression. What is proven – top down solutions do not work. Bailing out banks, bailing out GM. Putting cash in consumer pockets is the answer. Whether from tax cuts, or welfare payments, or making bombs, or building roads.
So far, the bailout, mostly to banks and to GE (yes, GE is the great welfare queen, not GM) is estimated at 10-12 Trillion dollars. 12 Trillion divided by 300 Million people, is 12000 billion divided by .3 billion, gives $40,000 for every man woman and child in America. So the Federal Reserve, payed off the gambling debts of US and foreign banks. They could have instead given every man, woman, and child $40,000 which would have certainly “stimulated” the economy, and reduced household debt levels.
We have a government committed to bailing out the big guys. Does not matter who you elect. Little guys are for extracting taxes from, not for saving.
Tommy Boy :
August 29th, 2009 at 11:23 pm
>>2) Had the company been liquidated, it would have been nothing less than a death blow to the economy. And where would all those laid-off workers, cut-off retirees, and out-of-work dealership employees be making their living from? That’s right, they’d be living of your tax dollars.
That’s the official line, but it’s bull.
GM certainly would have come out of CH. 11 in far better shape than it’s in now. FIrst of all, a bankruptcy judge would have imposed realistic (instead of symbolic) concessions on the UAW. The main purpose of the government bailout was to prevent that.
Tommy – it’s the “official line” because it’s the truth. The “old GM” was – wait for it – $176 BILLION in debt. That’s $176 BILLION. There was no way out of that hole. But even if they were, with tens of billions in losses they were taking, and the credit markets being what they are, who was going to give them debtor-in-possession financing?
Without government aid, they’d have gone straight down the tubes in BK. Adios. That’s the reality.
I agree with you that there is a fair amount of resentment about tax money having to be used to bail GM out – I resent it too – but if GM had gone down the tubes, our economy would have likely done the same. It’d have been a total disaster for the country.
And the “unions made no concessions” line is just not correct. The problem wasn’t that GM workers made too much per hour – it was, in fact, very close to what non-union autoworkers make – but the pension and health care benefit packages. BK enabled GM to get out from under those. They should be running a LOT leaner now.
Sometimes you can’t stand on principle – you have to hold your nose and hope for the best. I firmly believe that’s the case here.
Let’s judge them on their product and not some ideological principles, shall we? After all, trashing them makes it more likely that taxpayers lose out; it’s counterproductive.
Mike Kelley :
August 30th, 2009 at 12:03 am
Congress has passed “Stimulus”-type bills during every recession, but this doesn’t mean that the higher government spending helps the economy start growing again. More likely, the recession ends on its own when demand perks up.
All due respect, that’s not the question when it comes to THIS recession. This particular downturn has been so severe that without massive government aid, we’d literally have no banking industry, no mortgage industry, no insurance industry, and no automotive industry.
Things would be radically worse now if not for the moves Obama made.
There was a great line in one of my favorite shows, “Battlestar Galactica,” in which the outgoing president tells the incoming president that he’s so focused on living his principles that he often is blind to the smart move.
I understand the ideological opposition to what has happened with GM, but here’s the bottom line: for them to recover and get us our freakin’ money back, they need to make and sell cars, and constant bellyaching about “government motors” isn’t going to help them do that.
Let’s do the smart thing and stop bellyaching about what happened.
“How can people with Ivy League MBAs be so completely inept?”
MBAs need to drink the kool-aid the professor is pouring or they don’t get their degree. Unfortunately for the most part the prof has never had a real job in his or her life, had to produce or take responsibility, and by merit of his salary ever have to get by on less tha $100k a year. So when the real world collides with what they were taught the MBAs a totally lost.
How can people with Ivy League MBAs be so completely inept?
A lot of the senior managers within GM have engineering backgrounds. It frankly misses the point to focus on what or where they were educated.
Much of the problem is cultural, matched with size. These companies were once enormously successful, so they developed arrogant internal cultures that resisted change or influence from the outside. Instead of having a healthy fear of the competition, they derided their rivals and pretended that they didn’t matter.
Companies with that much share and scale often end up adopting aggressive Not Invented Here mentalities at the top. The only ways to climb in such organizations are to either shut up or buy in. Therefore, the culture perpetuates itself, while their massive size feeds the frog-in-boiling-water problem — the companies are so large that those who are deep within them can’t see the problems, as the problems take decades to do their damage.
This is particularly bad with cars because of the costs, product cycles and brand equity at risk. For example, if you worked at a consumer products company and developed a failed line of shampoo, the costs would be lower, the failure would be dealt with more decisively, and the customers would not likely be terribly upset with the parent company to the point that they abandon it altogether. You could then wipe out that shampoo and develop a new one in a short time.
Not so with cars. Developing a lousy car results in years lost, hundreds of millons of dollars pissed away, and if it’s bad enough, could create tremendous damage to the brand, hurting most or all of the other cars being offered. That bad car will then take several more years and another several hundred million dollars to replace, at which point you’ll be stuck with fixing the damage.
The shampoo problem might cycle out in a year or so, and won’t cost that much in terms of total revenue. Getting the bad taste of a bad car out of the mouths of the public can take years, if not decades, and will cost a fortune.
In other words, mistakes made in the car industry are much larger, yet simultaneously harder for the participants to see. No education could possibly fix that. The entire mentality needs to be rebuilt.
FreedMike :2) Had the company been liquidated, it would have been nothing less than a death blow to the economy. And where would all those laid-off workers, cut-off retirees, and out-of-work dealership employees be making their living from? That’s right, they’d be living of your tax dollars.
Living off my tax dollars, eh? Just like now? Really, I think you’re being too melodramatic. GM was NOT the US economy, and if it (along with that retched company, Chrysler) deserved to die. It would have been bad in the short run, but the US economy would not have “died” and we’d be better off w/o them. BTW, are you connected to the industry?
>>And the “unions made no concessions” line is just not correct. The problem wasn’t that GM workers made too much per hour – it was, in fact, very close to what non-union autoworkers make – but the pension and health care benefit packages. BK enabled GM to get out from under those. They should be running a LOT leaner now.
The healthcare and pensions are part of UAW workers total compensation, not just their hourly wages.
Also, they still have those pensions and healthcare packages – the only change is that, thanks to the hapless taxpayers of this country, those are no longer on GM’s books. Hardly a concession by the UAW.
>>I understand the ideological opposition to what has happened with GM, but here’s the bottom line: for them to recover and get us our freakin’ money back, they need to make and sell cars, and constant bellyaching about “government motors” isn’t going to help them do that.
Our odds the taxpayers getting our money back is about as good as that of the British taxpayers (still) awaiting their money back from British Leyland.
Now that the government is into GM, it’ll keep pumping money into it (such as the UAW VEBA bailout in the Obamacare bill). So for U;S. taxpayers, the concern is not getting our money back from GM, but helping it to die sooner so that it’ll stop feeding off of us.
As stated before, GM / Chrysler is not the economy – they’re not even all of the U.S. auto industry (that is now concentrated in the Southeast).
Austrian economist Schumpter wrote of “creative destruction” – free market capitalism would have been better served had they been allowed to restructure in a non-rigged Ch. 11 or, if necessary, failed. All we’ve done is taken taxpayer money to insulate poor management and a greedy, prehistoric union from the consequences of their actions.
Pass the joint.
Much of the problem is cultural, matched with size.
Thank you, PCH101, for a dose of level-headed analysis. It’s easy to turn these issues into sound bites…and easy to fall into the delusion of thinking that one smart person at the top could instantly transform a huge, entrenched corporate culture.
From a market-share POV, the big problem I see is that GM just doesn’t have enough persuasive new products coming at the volume end of things. Based on early reviews, the Cruze is a keeping-up product, not the leapfrog car it needs to be. Early word on the Beat/Spark puts it in the same category, and the spy shots of Viva prototypes are none too encouraging. Chevy will be carrying 70% of GM’s volume, so these cars need to be solid hits for the company to pick up share.
The most intriguing new product in the pipeline is the Orlando, but it’s in a modest-selling (for now) segment. The new Equinox is promising, and word from the preview crowds is the the Malibu restyle is very sharp looking. But that’s not much of a foundation to build on.
Susan Docherty-the modern day equivalent of Lynn Meyers-the GM “lifer” who was rewarded with a position/title she had no idea what to do with.
Every time I read one of her quotes in the press, I think back to the lyrics of the 90’s group, “Garbage” and their song, “Stupid Girl”.
If Ron Zarella and his cronies were still at the “new” GM, her future would be unlimited!