[Piwoslaw]

My brother-in-law's company bought a printer/scanner/copier/fax/whatever. When it arrived it turned out that it doesn't work - there's something wrong with the carriage. So they called up the manufacturer and asked whether they should return it, or will someone come around and repair. They found out that a second one will be shipped and the first one can be thrown out. So my bro-in-law gave it to his brother, who was in need of a printer. It turned out later that the carriage was jammed because someone at the factory forgot to remove a piece of styrofoam. Now both of them have printers in perfect working order.

Towards the end of communism here, in the 1980's, nation-owned companies had regulations which stated that "each vehicle in the fleet uses X liters of fuel per week", no matter how much of it is actually used. If the fuel consumption was lower than the "official" numbers, then this would mean that the driver didn't work as hard as he should have, etc. This kind of mentality promoted doing all sorts of stupid things - idling the truck all night, for example. Even worse, many drivers would suck the remaining fuel from their tanks at the end of the week to show that they indeed needed all of it. Usually, the 'surplus' fuel would end up in the tank of someone's private car, but sometimes it would just get poured into the sewer.

Oh, and then there are the "small" things, like whole office building where all computers and lights are left on 24/7.