Henry Blodget, the former stock analyst who kicks himself every day for still being a Yahoo shareholder, notes that Yahoo spent $37 million on advisory fees in the third quarter. What did it get? A botched Microsoft buyout; a search deal with Google that's getting a rough reception by antitrust cops in Washington, D.C.; and Carl Icahn on its board — a man Jerry Yang and company called a technological nincompoop on Yahoo's own homepage. In other words, nothing — save for cutting its operating income by more than a third. That $37 million did, however, result in one concrete cost-saving initiative.Bain Consulting, the firm that's working on Yahoo's cost-cutting plans, has come up with what a Yahoo finance-department insider calls its "first major breakthrough":

A very detailed project plan to communicate to employees a very slight increase to the food costs in the cafeteria. Duh! We spent how much money for these consultants to put together a project plan to break the news to employees. Grocery stores just raise the prices so they don't need to overcommunicate and waste so much time and money on this.

You heard it here first, folks: Yahoo is wringing its hands over how to jack up prices in the cafeteria. Why not just shuttle employees over to the Google campus and have them sneak into the cafes there? (Photo by AP)