Ryan Posted June 4, 2017 Share Posted June 4, 2017 I ran over a poor opossum only a mile from home after driving 70 miles at 2 AM in pea soup fog from my friend's house that just moved. Missed a bunch of dead and live animals on the way. RIP Marsupial-san. Stupid deer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sabremike Posted June 5, 2017 Share Posted June 5, 2017 While walking down the street to get Chinese take out my earbuds fell out of my pocket. I found them in the middle of the street but someone had already run them over. Time to visit Five Below. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NikoBaltimore Posted June 6, 2017 Share Posted June 6, 2017 18 hours ago, sabremike said: While walking down the street to get Chinese take out my earbuds fell out of my pocket. I found them in the middle of the street but someone had already run them over. Time to visit Five Below. Could be worse, could have been the $200 ones that were ran over. I'm weird with earbuds since they were notorious for always falling out of my ears. With the right style it's doable now and the most I'd pay is $15. I normally go to Five Below for aux cables so I can play podcasts in the car. Cheap and they tend to crap out after a few months, but it gets the job done. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bustronaut Posted June 6, 2017 Share Posted June 6, 2017 95% of earbuds priced below $20 are made by the same company, so just buy the cheapest one pair you can that work with your ears. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ryan Posted June 6, 2017 Share Posted June 6, 2017 Every single pair ever falls out of my ears, so I have to use regular over the ear style headphones. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tabe Posted June 7, 2017 Share Posted June 7, 2017 8 hours ago, Ryan said: Every single pair ever falls out of my ears, so I have to use regular over the ear style headphones. That's why I wear the kind that hook onto your ears instead of just buds. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ryan Posted June 7, 2017 Share Posted June 7, 2017 That seems logical. There's no room for logic! That or I just prefer over the ear ones anyway. Blocking out the world as I sob alone in a closet in the dark. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Sweetser Posted June 7, 2017 Share Posted June 7, 2017 There is a close-to-zero, but still greater-than-zero, chance that I end up moving to New York City before the year is up. *gulp* Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OSJ Posted June 7, 2017 Share Posted June 7, 2017 1 hour ago, Michael Sweetser said: There is a close-to-zero, but still greater-than-zero, chance that I end up moving to New York City before the year is up. *gulp* Holy shit dude, I hope it means a big bag of money, as expensive as the PNW is (so much so that I moved to NM), New York City is just fucking ridiculous. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blitzkrieg Posted June 7, 2017 Share Posted June 7, 2017 Do people actually work in workplaces where discussing how much everyone earns is a good and acceptable thing? I probably should know better, since I work with passive aggressive women, but they recently switched us from commission to hourly so they gave us our average from last year. When they did so they told us that hourly salary were capped at a certain point but my average hourly was greater than the cap so I basically created a loophole. So for three weeks one of my co-workers has been saying that they modified our average hourly to fit them under the cap and half asking, half stating that I must be getting the max. So I finally just started that wasn't the case because my average hourly was higher and that I was being paid accordingly. The result was a half hour breakdown on my co-worker part and having to do damage control on my part to prevent her from storming into HR and demanding an eight cent raise (difference between her rate and the max rate) by citing my rate since I really didn't want potential blowback from telling it. And sadly this is probably the co-worker that would take this the best. So I always read articles that talk about it being a good thing to discuss salaries in a workplace, are these simply theoretical workplaces or do they actually exist? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cristobal Posted June 7, 2017 Author Share Posted June 7, 2017 While I won't get too into the pros and cons, the idea is that it's a good thing to have wages publicly available from the beginning as that encourages transparency and fairness rather than the adversarial "I want as much money as I can demand" vs "I want to pay you as little as I can get away with" process. What you are describing is...not that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blitzkrieg Posted June 8, 2017 Share Posted June 8, 2017 1 hour ago, Cristobal said: What you are describing is...not that. I suppose that is true. To take things back to a more productive topic, I never had to worry about losing earbuds because I was too busy snagging and snapping the cord on things. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kevin Wilson Posted June 8, 2017 Share Posted June 8, 2017 I've never found it to be a good idea to discuss wages in the workplace with co-workers, its up to the company to make that public or use a set scale that everyone knows. I had one job for example that everyone (per job title of course) made the same amount, we all knew it, but then we all made bonuses based off monthly numbers and those bonuses were up to us to discuss. When I was 19 I got re-hired at Taco Bell while home that summer for college, it was my same old boss so she gave me an hourly wage that was even more than the shift manager was making since she knew I was a dependable and good worker. She looked me in the eye and said "and don't you say a word about it" since if I had, it would have created chaos. So obviously I kept it to myself. Another story, my dad taught me this when I was young since he had a similar issue. He got a raise at work, which put him as making more than his best friend, who worked at the same place. My dad was naturally excited about it and told his best friend, but then the best friend stormed into the boss's office and demanded the same amount since he had been working there longer. The friend ended up quitting because he felt "disrespected." So yea, my rule is I never ever discuss my wages with any co-worker, even if they ask. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chaos Posted June 8, 2017 Share Posted June 8, 2017 3 hours ago, Kevin Wilson said: I've never found it to be a good idea to discuss wages in the workplace with co-workers, its up to the company to make that public or use a set scale that everyone knows. I had one job for example that everyone (per job title of course) made the same amount, we all knew it, but then we all made bonuses based off monthly numbers and those bonuses were up to us to discuss. When I was 19 I got re-hired at Taco Bell while home that summer for college, it was my same old boss so she gave me an hourly wage that was even more than the shift manager was making since she knew I was a dependable and good worker. She looked me in the eye and said "and don't you say a word about it" since if I had, it would have created chaos. So obviously I kept it to myself. Another story, my dad taught me this when I was young since he had a similar issue. He got a raise at work, which put him as making more than his best friend, who worked at the same place. My dad was naturally excited about it and told his best friend, but then the best friend stormed into the boss's office and demanded the same amount since he had been working there longer. The friend ended up quitting because he felt "disrespected." So yea, my rule is I never ever discuss my wages with any co-worker, even if they ask. A lot of corporate policies also implement a rule that discussing salaries can be a terminable offense unless it's within the context of your own with your supervisor. I don't talk about money too often at work because I'm a big believer in controlling your own circumstances. We live too much in a time period where you hear too often "well, so and so gets this or makes this," and that gets into unnecessary pettiness from time to time. I think in business, as long as you don't sense the politics are slanted against you from getting past a certain ceiling, you have to believe that work ethic and merit will rule the day for you. The cream always rises to the top mentality. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cristobal Posted June 8, 2017 Author Share Posted June 8, 2017 33 minutes ago, Chaos said: A lot of corporate policies also implement a rule that discussing salaries can be a terminable offense unless it's within the context of your own with your supervisor. Hopefully not since 2014, since that was when the NLRB confirmed that firing workers for discussing pay violates rules protecting speech intended to support collective bargaining, and made it illegal. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chaos Posted June 8, 2017 Share Posted June 8, 2017 1 hour ago, Cristobal said: Hopefully not since 2014, since that was when the NLRB confirmed that firing workers for discussing pay violates rules protecting speech intended to support collective bargaining, and made it illegal. I've had the same job for 9 years, so I was going off my knowledge from my retail days and having to sit through some of those terrible corporate training/orientation videos. Plus, I'm guessing that would depend on if the profession is unionized or if it's in a right to work state, so I'm sure mileage will vary. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OSJ Posted June 8, 2017 Share Posted June 8, 2017 There's a couple of different ways of looking at this, I'm coming at it from the standpoint of not drawing a salary per se since my mid-twenties. I spent most of my adult life in commission-based, performance-driven situations (aka "feast or famine"), because I wanted as much control of my own destiny as possible. My longest-term employer was the Construction Information division of McGraw-Hill, with the exception of commission-based personnel everything was "pay grade" and all you had to do was look in the employee manual to see what the range of a specific position paid (the amount of difference was pretty small within a grade, I can't imagine anyone getting too worked up about making 7 cents an hour less than a colleague who has been doing the same thing five years longer). So, it was announced every year what the new comp plan for sales reps was to be and I don't recall anyone having hard feelings about the open-end earning potential. As the whole thing was based on growing a specific geographic territory, the odds were well-stacked against huge earning increases. I had a unique position in that I could sell any product in any territory since my whole gig was telephone-based and I never (well, twice) left the office to call on a client. The Powers that Be had no idea that a guy in Seattle on the telephone could outsell outside reps with company cars and T & E expense accounts. ;-) Anyway, what I earned was often bragged about by our Regional Manager, which did cause problems because they weren't able to replicate what I did in other regions... But all in all, a huge company where earnings were pretty transparent. My last employer, (may he burn in Hell for ripping me off $28K in commissions), was a whole different story, it was all about pay what you think you can get away with. When I interviewed, he started outlining a bunch of ridiculous plans that were pretty much designed to have me dig a really deep hole that there would be no getting out of. Talking to my prospective colleagues, it seemed like everyone had a different, supposedly "special" deal that they weren't supposed to discuss (yeah, ask a bunch of commission salespeople to not talk about what they make and see what that gets you). Anyway, I just told the guy that a salary of anything less than $60K would be an insult, but here's what I want. Give me a $2000 advance per month for three months as a draw against a flat 20% commission. If I'm not in the green after 90 days, than this whole thing was a mistake on both our parts, fair enough? He agreed and then wanted to renegotiate when I made my first placement after two weeks and earned $23K. The tension in that office was always so thick that you could cut it with a knife as this "renegotiating" crap seemed to come up whenever he thought someone would be fool enough to take a low guarantee over the high risk / high reward scenario. This last was enough for me to decide at 52 that I was never going to work for anyone else ever again unless it was completely on my terms, so now I make a lot less than $100K a year, but I live in a small town in NM where you can live like royalty for about a third of that, (well, maybe 1/2 that, the months that are closer to the 1/2 are a damn sight more comfortable than the ones on the low side). ;-) Yeah, I think there's a lot to be said for total transparency in salaries, maybe leaving signing bonuses, referral fees and stuff like that confidential as circumstances change. For about two years my job between these two paid out referral fees for anyone that stuck longer than 90 days, salaried employee got you $500, commission-based got you a grand, VP-level got you $5K and (I think it was 1000 shares of stock). I did collect on one $500 fee for a friend that they hired for customer service who quit after four months... However, they discontinued the program just about the time they decided that they needed to split Product/Tech into two VP positions. Yeah, the guy that used to be our Regional Tech Officer at McGraw-Hill who I mentioned was hired as VP of Technology, but no $5K for me, damn it. ;-( He barely made it six months, a classic study in screwing up a well-functioning dept. by changing from a transparent salary situation to a hush-hush, everyone gets paid differently even though you're all basically doing the same stuff. Not a smart way to run an IT department from what I observed, it went from a bunch of guys that worked well together and hung out after hours together to a sort of creepy place where no one really talked to anyone unless they had to. So, yes to total transparency, if you don't like what you're getting paid, jump on in to the shark pool of commission base, it's not for everyone, but it beat the hell out of the grind of knowing that no matter how well you did your job, you weren't going to get paid a fucking dime more than the bozo who was barely hanging on to his job. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tabe Posted June 9, 2017 Share Posted June 9, 2017 12 hours ago, Chaos said: Plus, I'm guessing that would depend on if the profession is unionized or if it's in a right to work state, so I'm sure mileage will vary. It's not. It's a federal rule and applies to basically everything. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ryan Posted June 9, 2017 Share Posted June 9, 2017 Everyone should have to sit through Wal-Mart's anti-Union videos at least once. They're heartwarming and endearing on a level equivalent to some of their store brand food. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AxB Posted June 9, 2017 Share Posted June 9, 2017 Hung Parliament, then. Theresa May feels stupid. Ha ha. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NikoBaltimore Posted June 9, 2017 Share Posted June 9, 2017 3 hours ago, AxB said: Hung Parliament, then. Theresa May feels stupid. Ha ha. The stuff she was promising was downright scary. I'm sure things are crazy enough over there without her controlling the internet and forgoing civil rights to ensure she does what she wants. I'm hoping she doesn't try a new government and calls it quits, nobody deserves a wheat-field-running dingbat like her. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Fowler Posted June 10, 2017 Share Posted June 10, 2017 So her calling for an election three years early wasn't the best plan then? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AxB Posted June 10, 2017 Share Posted June 10, 2017 Well, the right wing tabloids over here have appointed themselves 'the voice of the people', and they really loved her. So she must have assumed that the British people loved her as well. But in campaigning, she came across as robotic and misanthropic, whereas the Socialist Demon Corbyn came across as a likeable, sociable person. And the attempt to call him friend to terrorists didn't work, because bringing up the 80s doesn't sell well (he was attempting to negotiate a peaceful settlement with the IRA at the height of the troubles. He was also famously photographed getting arrested for protesting against Apartheid in 1984, when Prime minister Thatcher considered Nelson Mandela to be a terrorist. That plays surprisingly well with young people today. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StretchMediatedHypertrophy Posted June 10, 2017 Share Posted June 10, 2017 British Electorate: See you in 2018 for Boris Johnson vs Jeremy Corbyn! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cristobal Posted June 11, 2017 Author Share Posted June 11, 2017 The skeeziest-looking ice cream truck I've ever seen just drove by playing Christmas music. WTF just happened? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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