What made you go WTF today?

[littlelolligagged]

Yeah, you get treated far worse.

[GGT]

Improper use of the plural form.
This address gets one government funded safelink wireless phone. I have a family plan of 5 phones that, thanks to my worthless sister, I pay for myself; but I do get 12% off because I work for the government.
Following the application guidelines, Brandy shouldn't be burdened with having to manage a phone payment.

What? You get a 12% discount because you're a county librarian?

And one subsidy is per address, so you add your "worthless sister" to your gummint discounted plan, while your live-in partner can get another gummint plan? No fucking wonder we're broke.

Well, excuse me if I harp on you for posting about buying new video games and taking family Disney vacations, okay?

[Aimless]

Yeah, you get treated far worse.

No wonder you hate the poor barristas

[littlelolligagged]

Things are different in NYC where you have 8 million other potential customers who aren't going to care unless you're a serial asshole. In fact, Seinfeld had an episode exactly about people in Manhattan continuing to show up to buy soup from someone who was a serial asshole. Guess what? He has an actual shop. His infamous rules are even up on the website.

I suppose.

[GGT]

If you can't be polite no matter what, you probably shouldn't be working in the service industry.

I actually have worked as a waitress, and there is no way in hell "talking back" to a customer like that would have ever been tolerated.

You also can't just take an order for "eggs". Asking how they're to be prepared isn't talking back, you know.

[Aimless]

And one subsidy is per address, so you add your "worthless sister" to your gummint discounted plan, while your live-in partner can get another gummint plan? No fucking wonder we're broke.

It wouldn't be a big problem if you didn't have to pay to receive texts as well. Cellphones are awesome, but damn me the US sucks at them

You also can't just take an order for "eggs". Asking how they're to be prepared isn't talking back, you know.

I WANT MY EGGS!!! EGGS!!! EEEEGGGSSS!!! Asshole

[Ominous Gamer]

What? You get a 12% discount because you're a county librarian?

And one subsidy is per address, so you add your "worthless sister" to your gummint discounted plan, while your live-in partner can get another gummint plan? No fucking wonder we're broke.

Well, excuse me if I harp on you for posting about buying new video games and taking family Disney vacations, okay?

You're making to many jumps to form your conclusions.
Many, I dare risk to say most, companies offer discounts to their employees for using a certain wireless provider. This doesn't come out of the company's fund. If anything it increases advertising and revenue for the wireless carrier. My county has agreements with Tmobile and AT&T. Thus I get a 12% discount for working for the county.

Your second sentence doesn't make any sense. All 5 of my phones are on a family plan, the entire point of a family plan is to spread the phones across your family Its totally unrelated to the safelink wireless program.

[GGT]

Its for Brandy, but I cover her with my own plan. So Brent uses Brandy's government phone.

...the PAYG government funded phone that Brent has through Safelink does not deduct airtime credit until the message is opened....

Over here, most providers have a huge gap in the abilities of PAYG or prepaid phones compared to contract phones.

I could just as easily give Brent one of my phones and let Brandy drain the government minutes dry. She qualifies either way, no restrictions on which member of the hosuehold uses the phone, only that its 1 phone per address.

Just trying to figure out this PAYG and Safelink, and what you mean by government funded phones.

If your employer is the gummint, that means you work for tax payers. Just like shareholders can tell their board they don't like VIPs using corporate jets or writing off certain perks like Country Club memberships, you don't think tax payers might say this cell phone subsidy is possibly being abused....by people like you?

[Ominous Gamer]

PAYG stands for pay as you go, thats how Safelink phones are preloaded. They give you a set number of minutes, or air time at the beginning of each month, you use those air time units to pay as you use the service. This is different from prepaid phones, in the sense that prepaid phones have you pay a set figure each day that you use any part of their service.
The government phone is the safelink phone, which is a PAYG service.

I work for other tax payers just as much as I work for myself. The fact that Brandy qualifies for the safelink program has no connection to my job, or the fact that I have a seperate phone plan with a different company.

[GGT]

I have a pay-as-you-go cell phone (Tracfone) but the minutes used aren't counted monthly, since I bought a 6 month package. ie if I don't buy more minutes after 6 months, I lose the phone # and have to buy another 'registration fee' in addition to air time. Still really cheap, though, compared to other big name provider packages.

I'm still not understanding why Brandy needs a subsidy for her phone. Put another way, why does your sister use your tax-payer discount plan instead of Brandy?

[Ominous Gamer]

tax-payer discount plan

Someone else please tell me they understand how business discounts work

[littlelolligagged]

If you get a raise that's taking advantage of the tax-payers, too.

That's okay, the taxpayers used to pay for me to fly all over the world.

[GGT]

Someone else please tell me they understand how business discounts work

I'm asking why Brandy needs a subsidy for her phone, when you already get a state employee discount on your primary phone for 5 people?

I'm not asking why your county tried to get a discount for their employees. (That's a thread for a different day about bargaining powers from large groups.)

[RandBlade]

If you can't be polite no matter what, you probably shouldn't be working in the service industry.

She was. She was polite to the point of being "offensive".

The 'customer' yelled at her unreasonably and her reaction ... to follow company guidelines and repeat the question her business asked her to ask. I'd have no objection to having her in my company.

I actually have worked as a waitress, and there is no way in hell "talking back" to a customer like that would have ever been tolerated.

If your company tolerated people being yelled at then more shame you. Doesn't mean everyone does. If there's one thing I won't accept its people swearing or otherwise abusing my colleagues, they don't deserve that. Shame your manager didn't think the same apparently.

[RandBlade]

For 9 months after returning to the UK, when I was 17-18 after finishing school but before starting uni I was living in a small town and worked on the checkout of that towns only shop, a 'Co-Op Late Shop' and between 5-10pm I was the only person normally on the till. I served bottles of alcohol etc to all the local townsfolk. I hadn't grown up in that town, getting the job before even moving there but after a month or two I got to know everyone.

One day a local drunk (regular customer) came in to get his bottle of whisky as normal as well as a few apples. I (following company policy) offered him his receipt as he walked out and he blew up at me screaming that he didn't want his receipt, that it was a waste of paper etc, etc, etc ... now the store's till automatically printed them and I was under instructions to always offer it if someone went to walk out without. He screamed at me for a minute or two and I was gobsmacked and stunned at the time. After venting for a moment or two he lobbed his apples he'd just bought at me. I was just able to avoid the apples and was still in shock until the next woman in the queue asked if I was OK and I went back to work as normal. After that I served him again a few days later, I waited deliberately for him to move a few steps away before calling out loudly with all the politeness and sweetness I could force into my voice: "excuse me sir, here's your receipt". If looks could kill ... but it was totally worth it and everyone there laughed and applauded that response after he left . Previously I had just asked if they wanted a receipt just out of habit because I was told to, that man I always made sure to because he threw apples at me ... and I challenge anyone to say it was the wrong reaction.

[Catgrrl]

To be fair, I used to get a 15% discount when SunCom was around, for being a city employee. I wouldn't have even known if it wasn't for hte fact that I happened to go in with my uniform on once. I don't think the city itself bargains for this; I think it is the business itself trying to entice/keep certain customers. Government employees have a steady paycheck, and are likely to actually pay their bills, so they give an incentive to get you to stay, or even maybe upgrade your plan.
Hubby gets a discount too because of his company; I don't know if there was a "bargaining" situation there. Again I think it is because it is a large corporation, so they are just trying to bring in more customers by offering discounts, then hoping said employee would go back and tell his coworkers, maybe getting more customers that way.

That has nothing to do with government subsidized phones though. I certainly hope there is no one that really does need a phone, on a wait list because a kid is playing on a cell phone.

[GGT]

Yeah, I'm not questioning business giving discounts, or even government employees using them........I just want to know how/why Brandy (or her son) can qualify for a "government phone" when OG can obviously afford to provide that for them. If there's a subsidy for that, it seems meant for truly cash-strapped people who couldn't keep in touch with their young children any other way.

[Catgrrl]

Because they aren't married, hence she can take advantage of as many programs as she wishes.

There used to be rules regarding people who are living together, especially if they have a child in common, but I guess that isn't the case anymore. But I'm guessing they only claim the other two kids in that instance. If she were to try and use the youngest for welfare, it would be fraud since she live with the father of the child. Well, it least it used to be in my state. So everything is legal.

[Timbuk2]

Thieves use breasts to distract victim

Police in France are looking for two attractive female thieves who bared their breasts at a man at a cashpoint to distract him before stealing his money.

The women in their 20s exposed themselves to the victim as he punched his pin code into an ATM machine in Paris.
As he stared at one, the other then withdrew 300 euros from his account before the pair fled with the money.

The incident was captured on CCTV at the cash machine on Paris’s Left Bank, but the women could not be identified, a French police spokesman said.
“We would advise anyone withdrawing cash from a machine to focus on what they are doing and not allow themselves to be distracted, however attractive the view,” the spokesman added.

See, when the French do something, they do it with such panache.

[Dattu]

This image:


I just realized that that is the Scientology building I walk by everyday going to classes in Austin.

[Nogling]

Just got a friend request from someone on Facebook that I haven't talked to in years......and her nickname is also Lolli......had a brief moment of "how the hell did lolli from the CC find my full name?!?!?!?! And who is our "mutual friend"?!?!?!?"

[Aimless]

http://forum.malazanempire.com/index...howtopic=19399


Looks like "no" still means "yes"

[Aimless]

Interesting counterpoint: http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/dai...nd_jezebel.php

[littlelolligagged]

Federal agents are seeking to hire Ebonics translators to help interpret wiretapped conversations involving targets of undercover drug investigations.

Drug Enforcement Administration Special Agent Michael Sanders said the agency recently sent memos asking companies that provide it translation services to help it find nine translators in the Southeast who are fluent in Ebonics.

Ebonics, which is also known as African American Vernacular English, has been described by the man who coined the term as the combination of English vocabulary with African language structure.

Sanders says he's not certain whether it's the first time the agency has sought to hire Ebonics experts, but that some DEA divisions have agents who help translate it.

[Ominous Gamer]

can't really blame them...

[littlelolligagged]

In Doraville, this is what the federal stimulus looks like: Wet cement, poured to build a sidewalk along Central Avenue near the Doraville MARTA station. It's a project paid for with 160,000 federal dollars.

And to Tom Hart, a former Doraville city council member, the project is a civic punch line.

"What is the point of putting a sidewalk in, if the entire sidewalk is lined with a telephone pole right in the center?" Hart asks, gesturing at telephone poles that poke out of the middle of the gleaming new sidewalk.
"I mean, it's not (Americans with Disabilities Act) compatible. It's hardly pedestrian compatible. Like if two people -- if you and I were walking down here side by side, you'd have to wait for one person to get past the pole, then the other person to get past the pole," said Hart.

An aide to Doraville's mayor, Luke Howe, says there's an explanation. The city couldn't afford to move the telephone poles. Nor did it have time to widen the sidewalk onto the adjacent private property -- lest the stimulus money disappear. So the poles and the sidewalk stayed put.

"So we didn't have any choice but to go through the poles," said Howe.

Doraville officials say the problem is fixable though. As soon as the federal stimulus money is spent, they say they can remove a portion of the curb they just built -- and rebuild the sidewalk around the poles.

Tom Hart says that only adds to the civic punch line.

"They got some stimulus money. And as the guy told me, 'well, if we did it wrong, we'll tear it out and do it over again. We've got plenty of stimulus money.'" Hart doesn't identify the city official who told him that.

Howe says the fix-up is no big deal. "We'll have to knock out that curb. But we'll just swing it out and it's something that should only take a day."

Doraville officials say the sidewalk and the federal funding make sense. The design, and the obstructive poles, are an unimportant and temporary hiccup, they say.

photo of the brilliant sidewalk

[Hazir]

There are plans to build a high-rise on the location of the Hotel Pennsylvania in NYC. That means yet another piece of history lost and in my eyes a big mess up of the NYC skyline.

[RandBlade]

Let alone the fact its stupid, the fact that a sidewalk costs $160k seems to be half the problem to me too

[oldmunchkin]

Nogling...Nice to see you!

Ok, As to the poor bitch in the coffee shop...I think I can speak with a little authority here! I have worked in the service industries longer than most here have been alive! p The customer is ALWAYS right! I don't fucking care how loud she yells or whatever...she is ALWAYS right! At least that's what those of us who started out in the late 70's were taught!

[Flixy]

Fuck that, if a customer is rude that's his own problem. Swearing at/ insulting/ shouting at staff is a reason to get kicked out, if you ask me. At least it was when I was a bartender. Feel free to take your business to a competitor, we don't want people like that anyway. Plus, they scare away other customers.