Lousy Offices, Great Investments

Bill Barker (TMF Lazarus) writes about Peter's Principle No. 7:

The extravagance of any corporate office is directly proportional to management's reluctance to reward shareholders.

Looking it up, I see that Principle is from Peter Lynch's book Beating The Street which discusses 20 Golden Rules as well as 21 Principles

Golden West (I owned this stock back in the 1990s - looking at the chart now, I should have held on to it!) came to mine when I (re)read the above principle. Looking it up, I see it was actually mentioned in a different chapter of that same book (chapter 11).

At Golden West Financial in California, a champion of productive penny-pinching and the lowest-cost operator in the S&L business, the role of the receptionist was taken over by an old-fashioned black telephone and a sign that said, "Pick up."