James Sinegal Quotes

It doesn't do much good to have a quality image, whether it's with the facility or whether it's with the merchandise, if you don't have real quality people taking care of your customers.

We've always been in favor of improved wages for workers. When you have a strong middle class, they want to buy more stuff at Costco.

When employees are happy, they are your very best ambassadors.

I think the biggest single thing that causes difficulty in the business world is the short-term view. We become obsessed with it. But it forces bad decisions.

Our attitude is that if you hire good people and pay them a fair wage, then good things will happen for the company.

Obscene salaries send the wrong message through a company.

You destroy the initiative of the working people if they don't feel they have a fighting chance to be a part of the American Dream.

If we take care of the business and keep our eye on the goal line, the stock price will take care of itself.

You just can't get too focused on worrying about what's going to happen in the next quarter. You have to worry about where the business is headed long-term.

Paying good wages is not in opposition to good productivity.

You have to worry about where the business is headed long-term.

You take an educated gamble. If you don't occasionally make a mistake, you're not doing your job.

Obscene salaries send the wrong message through a company. The message is that all brilliance emanates from the top; that the worker on the floor of the store or the factory is insignificant.

If you've got to work for the rest of your life, you'd better do something you'll enjoy.

You don't have a very motivated working class, it starts to affect the dynamics of the economy. If workers are disenchanted and disenfranchised, productivity losses will go along with that.

Paying your employees well is not only the right thing to do but it makes for good business.

It doesn't do Costco any good if nobody can afford to buy anything.

I think that most of the people running companies today are motivated and pay is a small portion of the motivation.

I say at our management conferences that the amount Wal-Mart grows in just one year is the equivalent of Costco's size.

In the final analysis, you get what you pay for.

When you hire good people, and you provide good jobs and good wages and a career, good things are going to happen.

Technology helps us become more efficient and productive but our business still has a lot of art as opposed to strictly science.

If somehow a proclamation were made that C.E.O.'s could only make a maximum of $300,000 a year, you would not have any shortage of very qualified men and women seeking the jobs.