A routine nighttime cleaning at the Chivas Brothers bottling plant turned into an expensive mistake that may cost workers their jobs.

Employees reportedly poured 18,000 liters, or about 4,755 gallons, of scotch into the sewer system in Dumbarton, Scotland. "It was like someone turned on a tap and it just ran straight down the plughole," one insider told The Sun.

Chivas Brothers makes the Chivas Regal and Ballantine's brand and employs about 600 workers at the site.

It all took place during a normal equipment cleaning during the night shift. The workers were supposed to drain the cleaning water, but they flushed out the good stuff instead -- about $750,000 dollars' worth. Even worse, no one noticed the flub until 11 a.m. 

Stan Druckenmiller, the former chief strategist for billionaire George Soros, is known for having one of the best long-term track records in the hedge fund industry. 

Now, the normally publicity-shy investor is hoping to create another legacy: helping to avoid a financial disaster for the country's younger generations. Druckenmiller says the mushrooming costs of providing benefits to aging baby boomers and older generations will bankrupt the country's youth.

"I am not against seniors. What I am against is current seniors stealing from future seniors," Druckenmiller, 59, told Bloomberg News. Forbes estimates that Druckenmiller, a boomer himself, has an estimated net worth of $2.7 billion. 

Unsustainable spending will create a financial crisis much worse than the 2008 meltdown, he said, calling it a "much, much bigger storm that's about to hit."

 

If the idea of inhaling tobacco products isn't bad enough for many consumers, now comes news that some smokers' products include a kitty litter ingredient. 

The reason: by weighing down the products with a clay used in kitty-waste products, the cigarettes are actually classified as heavier "big cigars," reports Bloomberg. With that label, tobacco companies are avoiding a 2,653% jump in a federal excise tax.

The savings to the tobacco companies -- which means less revenue for the U.S. government -- may have totaled as much as $1.1 billion from April 2009 to September 2011, the story notes. 

So what exactly is the kitty litter ingredient? Cheyenne International, a private company that specializes in cigars that look like cigarettes, makes a filter packed with a granular clay substance, which Bloomberg identified as sepiolite.

 

You could have grandstand seats for this year's Triple Crown and Breeder's Cup races and still not see as much horse as what's passing through Europe's food supply right now.

First Burger King (BKW) found traces of horse DNA in its British Whoppers. Then Wal-Mart (WMT) subsidiary Asda was forced to pull jars of beef bolognese off its shelves after discovering they contained horse meat. It was also found in Nestlé (NSRGY) pasta products. Then in Ikea's meatballs and sausages.

Now you can add Yum Brands' (YUM) Taco Bell to the mix. Britain's Food Standards agency spotted trace amounts of horse meat in Taco Bell's ground beef used throughout the U.K., according to The BBC. Taco Bell issued a statement saying it's conducting tests on its own, but it has pulled back all its stock of beef from the European plant that supplied the tainted batch.

If other U.K.-based beef-selling chains and supermarkets aren't conducting similar internal testing, now would be a fine time to consider it.

 

Andrew Mason, the 32-year-old CEO that Groupon (GRPN) fired Thursday, isn't leaving with a golden parachute. His parachute is made of toilet paper and toothpicks.

According to Mason's employment agreement with the company he co-founded, Groupon will only pay his salary for six months after he leaves. That sounds great until you see what he was making: $756.72 a year.

So Mason will be taking home half of that, or $378.36.

How did Mason land on that salary? Who knows? The company isn't saying. He asked for a pay cut in 2011 from the $180,000 he was making previously.

And now, fresh from what had to have been a nightmare helming a struggling company like Groupon, Mason has enough to do any of the following: 

Fired Groupon (GRPN) Chief Executive Andrew Mason has set the bar high in one regard: how to leave a job with style. 

Mason sent a memo to his former employees that explained his departure in a charming, humorous way. "I've decided that I'd like to spend more time with my family. Just kidding -- I was fired today. If you're wondering why... you haven't been paying attention," he wrote in the letter. 

He also added that he's planning on taking time to lose some weight at a "good fat camp," and he accepted responsibility for Groupon's problems, which my colleague Kim Peterson detailed here.

While most of us don't handle rejection in such an honest way, others in corporate America have also made saying good-bye an art form, from lowly hotel workers to other chief executives. 

 

Best Buy (BBY) shares rose this morning in early trading before turning flat after the consumer electronics retailer posted better-than-expected​ quarterly results. The report indicates that the turnaround begun by CEO Hubert Joly has gained momentum even as founder Richard Schulze failed to take the company private.

The Richfield, Minn.-based electronics retailer reported a net loss of $409 million, or $1.21 per share, compared with a year-ago loss of $1.81 billion, or $5.17 per share. Revenue rose 0.2% to $16.71 billion. Excluding one-time items, profit was $1.64 per share, beating the $1.54 average forecast of Wall Street. Best Buy's sales were better than the $16.34 billion consensus forecast.

Under Joly, Best Buy has slashed inventory levels and increased employee training as competition from rivals such as Amazon.com (AMZN) continues to intensify. 

Corporate road warriors are bracing themselves for the arrival of the spring business-travel season. But this year could be an especially trying time for many veteran travelers looking for deals and perks.

Several big airlines recently downgraded their frequent-flier programs, and now it appears some major hotels chains are following suit.

BizJournals.com's Joe Brancatelli reports at least five major hotel corporations have devalued their frequent-guest programs. "And the cuts aren't trivial," he says. "The value of many of our hotel points stashes have taken a significant blow."

Here's the breakdown: