adventures in human capitalism

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

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quoms:

American currency pet peeves power ranking

3. The fact that pennies still, somehow, exist in 2019

2b. Nickels are easily mistaken for quarters, a result of American currency designers’ longstanding embrace of the idea that money looking different is somehow a deficiency

2a. All bills same size and color (cf. 2b)

1. A dime is incredibly small in comparison to a penny (in fact it is nearly the smallest coin I have ever handled, second only to a Georgian 1 tetri coin worth 0.36¢) yet worth ten times as much! Who the fuck allowed this! On what Earth!!!

 

ponteh2dhh1ksdiwesph2tres:

bad post, no mention of dollar bills

 

rustingbridges:

I’m actually going to disagree with on almost all of these points

  1. small coins are, actually, good, because they minimize the burden of carrying around all these random chunks of metal. this is the actual reason nickels are bad.

2a. color okay, but bills being different sizes is just displeasing. I get that blind people like to know how much money they have but they just fit together so nicely!

2b. this has never happened to me

  1. just because I’m able to tolerate the government putting xenoestrogens in my water supply doesn’t mean I’m gonna let them start rounding up prices to the nearest nickel. it’s bad enough that none of the “99¢” pizza shops give you a penny. $3.99 for a gyro my ass, it’s $4. anyway I’m not gonna tolerate a world where we have 96¢ pizza places. just no

 

brin-bellway:

Who said anything about rounding *up* to the next nickel? I was just talking last week [link] about exploiting round-to-the-*closest*-nickel laws to get 52c items for 50c.

(Our bills are all the same size, but different colours and marked with Braille-like dots.)

 

rustingbridges:

Exactly: the rounding will introduce an element I have to care about and track, or else be exploited for a percentage or two by people who care more or have enough volume for the marginal cents to matter.

I am not in favor of increasing transaction costs.

 

brin-bellway:

(see also this other branch)

True, although there are very few cases in which someone worried about every last percent would be paying cash at all [link]. Even most employee-discounted fast food costs enough to be cheaper with a credit card: only the *very* cheapest items are worth even *considering* paying cash for.

(Maybe somewhat more cases in a place like NYC, with more street vendors? Vendors are *starting* to take credit cards now that there are card readers that use smartphones as their infrastructure connection [link], but there are still many who haven’t done that yet. And come to think of it there’s those Chinese restaurants that give you a 10% discount for paying cash, but that would be big enough to wash out other considerations and make it worthwhile to pay cash *regardless* of whether it’s rounded in your favour or not.)

Payment optimisation is a fun game, but I get not wanting to penalise people who hate playing it: the rest of us can always get it out of our system by becoming player merchants in MMOs and stuff like that.

—

From a seller’s point of view, it’s tricky to ensure that round-to-the-closest-nickel comes out in your favour, although that might be from being a franchise (prices set by people many levels above the actual store owners). As of yesterday evening, we’d *lost* 15 cents that day on cash rounding two of which went to me. That’s an unusually large number: on most evenings that I see the figure it’s a couple of cents in one direction or the other.

 

rustingbridges:

Even most employee-discounted fast food costs enough to be cheaper with a credit card: only the very cheapest items are worth even considering paying cash for.

If there’s no fee, at what point is it worth considering? You still get your 2-3% edge by paying card if that’s what you’re after.

Firstly there’s tons of cash only food places, and the additional heap of stores and bars with high card minimums, so it’s not like you can be cash free without really limiting your options.

Secondly, I personally often prefer to make small transactions by cash. Sure, I lose a few cents, but it’s often faster. Credit card fraud also, while not costing you any money if you catch it, does cost time in catching it. Also being able to just walk out of a restaurant and not have to wait for the check to go round is often worth it imo.

It’s not about getting the absolute biggest edge, necessarily. I just don’t want to give up something more in exchange for nothing.

>>If there’s no fee, at what point is it worth considering?<<

Since the maximum savings from using cash is 2c, with a 0.5%-cashback card the threshold beneath which cash is worth considering is $4. I recently obtained a 1% card, so the threshold is now $2.

(2% cards are either not worth the fees or straight-up unavailable to someone who, as an individual, makes maybe $10k/year and spends maybe $2k. (That’s not to say that I’m saving 80% of my income: most household purchases are simply made by other household members, and in some cases I am financially backing them. If your parents are going to the grocery store and you chip in some money for it, that doesn’t get put on your card and doesn’t count towards making a high-tier card useful enough to you to be worth the annual fee. My commute has by far the fewest stores along its route of anyone in my household, so I’m rarely the most efficient choice of buyer.))

—

As for cash-only places, like I said I think I tend to encounter those less, not living in a big city. (Though I certainly do keep enough cash on hand for them, since I encounter them *occasionally* and also want to be prepared for the possibility of a card reader breaking.)

And anyway, if cash is the *only* option (or if you’re paying cash because you find it more convenient) then you don’t need to expend effort on tracking the “is this rounding up or down” variable, since it doesn’t affect your decision either way. (Unless you were willing to buy the thing for X but not X+$0.02, which doesn’t seem like it would come up much. Or I suppose if you’re trying to prepare exact change in advance, but in that case hidden sales tax is a bigger problem.)

Tags:

#reply via reblog #long post #adventures in human capitalism #fun with loopholes

~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

{{previous post in sequence}}

quoms:

American currency pet peeves power ranking

3. The fact that pennies still, somehow, exist in 2019

2b. Nickels are easily mistaken for quarters, a result of American currency designers’ longstanding embrace of the idea that money looking different is somehow a deficiency

2a. All bills same size and color (cf. 2b)

1. A dime is incredibly small in comparison to a penny (in fact it is nearly the smallest coin I have ever handled, second only to a Georgian 1 tetri coin worth 0.36¢) yet worth ten times as much! Who the fuck allowed this! On what Earth!!!

 

ponteh2dhh1ksdiwesph2tres:

bad post, no mention of dollar bills

 

rustingbridges:

I’m actually going to disagree with on almost all of these points

  1. small coins are, actually, good, because they minimize the burden of carrying around all these random chunks of metal. this is the actual reason nickels are bad.

2a. color okay, but bills being different sizes is just displeasing. I get that blind people like to know how much money they have but they just fit together so nicely!

2b. this has never happened to me

  1. just because I’m able to tolerate the government putting xenoestrogens in my water supply doesn’t mean I’m gonna let them start rounding up prices to the nearest nickel. it’s bad enough that none of the “99¢” pizza shops give you a penny. $3.99 for a gyro my ass, it’s $4. anyway I’m not gonna tolerate a world where we have 96¢ pizza places. just no

 

brin-bellway:

Who said anything about rounding *up* to the next nickel? I was just talking last week [link] about exploiting round-to-the-*closest*-nickel laws to get 52c items for 50c.

(Our bills are all the same size, but different colours and marked with Braille-like dots.)

 

rustingbridges:

Exactly: the rounding will introduce an element I have to care about and track, or else be exploited for a percentage or two by people who care more or have enough volume for the marginal cents to matter.

I am not in favor of increasing transaction costs.

(see also this other branch)

True, although there are very few cases in which someone worried about every last percent would be paying cash at all [link]. Even most employee-discounted fast food costs enough to be cheaper with a credit card: only the *very* cheapest items are worth even *considering* paying cash for.

(Maybe somewhat more cases in a place like NYC, with more street vendors? Vendors are *starting* to take credit cards now that there are card readers that use smartphones as their infrastructure connection [link], but there are still many who haven’t done that yet. And come to think of it there’s those Chinese restaurants that give you a 10% discount for paying cash, but that would be big enough to wash out other considerations and make it worthwhile to pay cash *regardless* of whether it’s rounded in your favour or not.)

Payment optimisation is a fun game, but I get not wanting to penalise people who hate playing it: the rest of us can always get it out of our system by becoming player merchants in MMOs and stuff like that.

—

From a seller’s point of view, it’s tricky to ensure that round-to-the-closest-nickel comes out in your favour, although that might be from being a franchise (prices set by people many levels above the actual store owners). As of yesterday evening, we’d *lost* 15 cents that day on cash rounding two of which went to me. That’s an unusually large number: on most evenings that I see the figure it’s a couple of cents in one direction or the other.

Tags:

#adventures in human capitalism #(deliberately echoes a video-game tag!) #home of the brave #our home and cherished land #in which Brin has a job #reply via reblog

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~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

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gasmaskaesthetic:

Boss has been at the [out of state] office since last Friday, which means that they’re printing the physical checks for our weekly AP run there. And….this is really silly, but I do miss doing that part. Printing, folding, envelope stuffing. It’s an easy, pleasant, meditative task that mentally marks the end of my week.

Silly because accounts payable is definitely the most basic and data-entry-oriented part of my job, but dammit, I like having the harder stuff punctuated with pleasingly tactile admin work!

I did a lot of secretarial stuff in high school. I was very good at it, I liked it, and I got a lot of praise for it. It’s a bit nostalgic.

 

shieldfoss:

America really is a whole other country

 

argumate:

I love doing payroll, I love the way you just have to [ presses button marked “payroll” and the machine automatically transfers the appropriate amounts electronically and emails out payslips and notifies the tax office ]

 

shieldfoss:

“Oh you guys have to press a button?”

 

shacklesburst:

Usually you do, because that way you can be sure stuff like reimbursable expenses for the month (if they were filed already) are in the system and you have the ability to delay pushing the button for a few hours if there are some last-minute changes to be made (not ideal, but happens).

Having a button also makes to possible to gather around one desk every month as a team and chant “press the button, press the button” at whomever is responsible for that action currently. And then go for drinks or smth.

 

gasmaskaesthetic:

This post wasn’t about payroll but yes

Current job is more involved than some systems I’ve seen because the accounting module sucks and was clearly just pasted on top of an otherwise mostly-functional industry-specific ERP.

Takes me 1-3 hours.

 

brin-bellway:

This is a very weird conversation to me, because among my meatspace social group the ones who get paid electronically are like “it’s a nightmare, they won’t let me log in to see my pay statements, I’m just supposed to trust that they sent me the right amount, it took me two months of complaining and escalating to superiors to even get a *tax form* out of them (and then my taxes were late)”, and the ones who get paper are like “yeah, it’s fine, it was a bit annoying at first having to go to the bank every fortnight but then I learned how to use mobile cheque deposit”.

(I know that you guys are taking the perspective of the one sending out the payments rather than the one receiving them, but still.)

 

gasmaskaesthetic:

Current company issues physical paystubs as backup for the direct deposit amount, and my side business uses QuickBooks payroll, which lets you log in to see your paycheck.

Even when I worked for the state, I got a physical pay stub.

And the job after that had an (admittedly painful to use) portal that you could log in to to see your statements.

 

brin-bellway:

I think with the most recent tale of woe (two days ago, friend who works for a mid-tier Canadian grocery chain), in *theory* she was supposed to be able to log in to see her pay statements, but the portal wouldn’t accept her login credentials and nobody would fix it.

(It may be worth noting that out of the dozens of jobs various friends have had over the twelve years I’ve been here, *very* few even *tried* to obey labour laws. I think that at the moment, I’m the only person I know IRL (not counting coworkers, of course) who actually gets meal breaks.)

 

cromulentenough:

The solution to employers making it difficult to get pay statements is not…keep on using physical cheques in the year of our lord 2019.

 

gasmaskaesthetic:

You tagged it #wtf America but I think @brin-bellway is canadian

 

cromulentenough:

Huh. Interesting. I didn’t know Canada still used cheques like that. Ive heard a Canadian talking about how they never carry cash and just use their card everywhere, which I can’t get away with even in London so I thought Canada would be even further along than us with that kinda stuff.

 

brin-bellway:

Yep, I’m in Canada, and as such so are my meatspace social groups.

—

I’m not so sure that “widespread use of electronic paycheques” and “being able to make all consumer purchases with a card” are sufficiently similar things that any society with one can be assumed to have the other.

—

Whether you can get away with not carrying cash here depends on your lifestyle and risk tolerance. I work in fast food, and every once in a while the card-reader part of the system will break or glitch, and usually at least two people per outage will have to leave because without a card reader they can’t pay. A while back someone had her credit card declined and didn’t have anything else on her, and ended up abandoning the food we’d already made. (The assistant manager told me I might as well keep it, and I brought it home and fed it to Mom. (It was not a food I personally like.))

((Although to be fair, I think part of the problem in that last case was that she was embarrassed by the decline and fled. She was holding a smartphone in her other hand, and given twenty seconds to think over the options we might have been able to arrange some smartphone-mediated payment method. It would have been worth a shot, at least.))

—

We don’t have pennies here anymore and instead round cash (and only cash) transactions to the nearest 5c, which (perhaps unintentionally) actually gives you an *incentive* to use cash in some edge cases. Like, if you buy something that’s 52c and give them two quarters, you’ve gotten almost a 4% discount, better than what you’d get from credit-card cashback. I often pay cash when buying from my own workplace for this reason.

(before you ask “since when does *anything* these days cost only 52c”: the employee discount is quite large, and some of our items are quite small)

—

Note that while I routinely *receive* cheques (just got one today, in fact), I literally never *write* them. I don’t even own any.

I won a small scholarship a while ago and they wanted a void cheque in order to send me the money (it was *not* the kind where the money goes directly to the school), and I went to the bank and asked about it. The teller told me that a: cheques are extremely expensive for the lower-tier account that I have (like $50 a pack, I think she said?), and b: there’s no need for a void cheque to literally be a cheque these days, here, have a pre-authorized debit form. (The scholarship people accepted it, and so did the bank I later opened a savings account with that wanted to see a cheque in order to do cross-bank account linking.)

 

cromulentenough:

Ah ok, ‘occasionally receive cheques but never write them’ is closer to my experience too, although I don’t know anyone who gets paid for their job by cheque.

I also got a cheque for a scholarship type thing so it is still around very occasionally here.

(see also this other branch)

Tags:

#conversational aglets #adventures in human capitalism #our home and cherished land #adventures in University Land #in which Brin has a job #long post #this probably deserves some other warning tag but I am not sure what

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

rustingbridges:

ponteh2dhh1ksdiwesph2tres:

quoms:

American currency pet peeves power ranking

3. The fact that pennies still, somehow, exist in 2019

2b. Nickels are easily mistaken for quarters, a result of American currency designers’ longstanding embrace of the idea that money looking different is somehow a deficiency

2a. All bills same size and color (cf. 2b)

1. A dime is incredibly small in comparison to a penny (in fact it is nearly the smallest coin I have ever handled, second only to a Georgian 1 tetri coin worth 0.36¢) yet worth ten times as much! Who the fuck allowed this! On what Earth!!!

bad post, no mention of dollar bills

I’m actually going to disagree with on almost all of these points

  1. small coins are, actually, good, because they minimize the burden of carrying around all these random chunks of metal. this is the actual reason nickels are bad.

2a. color okay, but bills being different sizes is just displeasing. I get that blind people like to know how much money they have but they just fit together so nicely!

2b. this has never happened to me

  1. just because I’m able to tolerate the government putting xenoestrogens in my water supply doesn’t mean I’m gonna let them start rounding up prices to the nearest nickel. it’s bad enough that none of the “99¢” pizza shops give you a penny. $3.99 for a gyro my ass, it’s $4. anyway I’m not gonna tolerate a world where we have 96¢ pizza places. just no

Who said anything about rounding *up* to the next nickel? I was just talking last week [link] about exploiting round-to-the-*closest*-nickel laws to get 52c items for 50c.

(Our bills are all the same size, but different colours and marked with Braille-like dots.)

Tags:

#reply via reblog #adventures in human capitalism #home of the brave #our home and cherished land #discourse cw? #(also we have quarters) #((they have moose on them)) #((sometimes poppies with actual red colouring))

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~ Brin ~ 3 Comments

{{previous post in sequence}}

gasmaskaesthetic:

Boss has been at the [out of state] office since last Friday, which means that they’re printing the physical checks for our weekly AP run there. And….this is really silly, but I do miss doing that part. Printing, folding, envelope stuffing. It’s an easy, pleasant, meditative task that mentally marks the end of my week.

Silly because accounts payable is definitely the most basic and data-entry-oriented part of my job, but dammit, I like having the harder stuff punctuated with pleasingly tactile admin work!

I did a lot of secretarial stuff in high school. I was very good at it, I liked it, and I got a lot of praise for it. It’s a bit nostalgic.

 

shieldfoss:

America really is a whole other country

 

argumate:

I love doing payroll, I love the way you just have to [ presses button marked “payroll” and the machine automatically transfers the appropriate amounts electronically and emails out payslips and notifies the tax office ]

 

shieldfoss:

“Oh you guys have to press a button?”

 

shacklesburst:

Usually you do, because that way you can be sure stuff like reimbursable expenses for the month (if they were filed already) are in the system and you have the ability to delay pushing the button for a few hours if there are some last-minute changes to be made (not ideal, but happens).

Having a button also makes to possible to gather around one desk every month as a team and chant “press the button, press the button” at whomever is responsible for that action currently. And then go for drinks or smth.

 

gasmaskaesthetic:

This post wasn’t about payroll but yes

Current job is more involved than some systems I’ve seen because the accounting module sucks and was clearly just pasted on top of an otherwise mostly-functional industry-specific ERP.

Takes me 1-3 hours.

 

brin-bellway:

This is a very weird conversation to me, because among my meatspace social group the ones who get paid electronically are like “it’s a nightmare, they won’t let me log in to see my pay statements, I’m just supposed to trust that they sent me the right amount, it took me two months of complaining and escalating to superiors to even get a *tax form* out of them (and then my taxes were late)”, and the ones who get paper are like “yeah, it’s fine, it was a bit annoying at first having to go to the bank every fortnight but then I learned how to use mobile cheque deposit”.

(I know that you guys are taking the perspective of the one sending out the payments rather than the one receiving them, but still.)

 

gasmaskaesthetic:

Current company issues physical paystubs as backup for the direct deposit amount, and my side business uses QuickBooks payroll, which lets you log in to see your paycheck.

Even when I worked for the state, I got a physical pay stub.

And the job after that had an (admittedly painful to use) portal that you could log in to to see your statements.

 

brin-bellway:

I think with the most recent tale of woe (two days ago, friend who works for a mid-tier Canadian grocery chain), in *theory* she was supposed to be able to log in to see her pay statements, but the portal wouldn’t accept her login credentials and nobody would fix it.

(It may be worth noting that out of the dozens of jobs various friends have had over the twelve years I’ve been here, *very* few even *tried* to obey labour laws. I think that at the moment, I’m the only person I know IRL (not counting coworkers, of course) who actually gets meal breaks.)

 

cromulentenough:

The solution to employers making it difficult to get pay statements is not…keep on using physical cheques in the year of our lord 2019.

 

gasmaskaesthetic:

You tagged it #wtf America but I think @brin-bellway is canadian

 

cromulentenough:

Huh. Interesting. I didn’t know Canada still used cheques like that. Ive heard a Canadian talking about how they never carry cash and just use their card everywhere, which I can’t get away with even in London so I thought Canada would be even further along than us with that kinda stuff.

Yep, I’m in Canada, and as such so are my meatspace social groups.

—

I’m not so sure that “widespread use of electronic paycheques” and “being able to make all consumer purchases with a card” are sufficiently similar things that any society with one can be assumed to have the other.

—

Whether you can get away with not carrying cash here depends on your lifestyle and risk tolerance. I work in fast food, and every once in a while the card-reader part of the system will break or glitch, and usually at least two people per outage will have to leave because without a card reader they can’t pay. A while back someone had her credit card declined and didn’t have anything else on her, and ended up abandoning the food we’d already made. (The assistant manager told me I might as well keep it, and I brought it home and fed it to Mom. (It was not a food I personally like.))

((Although to be fair, I think part of the problem in that last case was that she was embarrassed by the decline and fled. She was holding a smartphone in her other hand, and given twenty seconds to think over the options we might have been able to arrange some smartphone-mediated payment method. It would have been worth a shot, at least.))

—

We don’t have pennies here anymore and instead round cash (and only cash) transactions to the nearest 5c, which (perhaps unintentionally) actually gives you an *incentive* to use cash in some edge cases. Like, if you buy something that’s 52c and give them two quarters, you’ve gotten almost a 4% discount, better than what you’d get from credit-card cashback. I often pay cash when buying from my own workplace for this reason.

(before you ask “since when does *anything* these days cost only 52c”: the employee discount is quite large, and some of our items are quite small)

—

Note that while I routinely *receive* cheques (just got one today, in fact), I literally never *write* them. I don’t even own any.

I won a small scholarship a while ago and they wanted a void cheque in order to send me the money (it was *not* the kind where the money goes directly to the school), and I went to the bank and asked about it. The teller told me that a: cheques are extremely expensive for the lower-tier account that I have (like $50 a pack, I think she said?), and b: there’s no need for a void cheque to literally be a cheque these days, here, have a pre-authorized debit form. (The scholarship people accepted it, and so did the bank I later opened a savings account with that wanted to see a cheque in order to do cross-bank account linking.)

Tags:

#long post #reply via reblog #our home and cherished land #adventures in human capitalism #in which Brin has a job #this probably deserves some other warning tag but I am not sure what #adventures in University Land

{{next post in sequence}}

~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

{{previous post in sequence}}

gasmaskaesthetic:

Boss has been at the [out of state] office since last Friday, which means that they’re printing the physical checks for our weekly AP run there. And….this is really silly, but I do miss doing that part. Printing, folding, envelope stuffing. It’s an easy, pleasant, meditative task that mentally marks the end of my week.

Silly because accounts payable is definitely the most basic and data-entry-oriented part of my job, but dammit, I like having the harder stuff punctuated with pleasingly tactile admin work!

I did a lot of secretarial stuff in high school. I was very good at it, I liked it, and I got a lot of praise for it. It’s a bit nostalgic.

 

shieldfoss:

America really is a whole other country

 

argumate:

I love doing payroll, I love the way you just have to [ presses button marked “payroll” and the machine automatically transfers the appropriate amounts electronically and emails out payslips and notifies the tax office ]

 

shieldfoss:

“Oh you guys have to press a button?”

 

shacklesburst:

Usually you do, because that way you can be sure stuff like reimbursable expenses for the month (if they were filed already) are in the system and you have the ability to delay pushing the button for a few hours if there are some last-minute changes to be made (not ideal, but happens).

Having a button also makes to possible to gather around one desk every month as a team and chant “press the button, press the button” at whomever is responsible for that action currently. And then go for drinks or smth.

 

gasmaskaesthetic:

This post wasn’t about payroll but yes

Current job is more involved than some systems I’ve seen because the accounting module sucks and was clearly just pasted on top of an otherwise mostly-functional industry-specific ERP.

Takes me 1-3 hours.

 

brin-bellway:

This is a very weird conversation to me, because among my meatspace social group the ones who get paid electronically are like “it’s a nightmare, they won’t let me log in to see my pay statements, I’m just supposed to trust that they sent me the right amount, it took me two months of complaining and escalating to superiors to even get a *tax form* out of them (and then my taxes were late)”, and the ones who get paper are like “yeah, it’s fine, it was a bit annoying at first having to go to the bank every fortnight but then I learned how to use mobile cheque deposit”.

(I know that you guys are taking the perspective of the one sending out the payments rather than the one receiving them, but still.)

 

gasmaskaesthetic:

Current company issues physical paystubs as backup for the direct deposit amount, and my side business uses QuickBooks payroll, which lets you log in to see your paycheck.

Even when I worked for the state, I got a physical pay stub.

And the job after that had an (admittedly painful to use) portal that you could log in to to see your statements.

I think with the most recent tale of woe (two days ago, friend who works for a mid-tier Canadian grocery chain), in *theory* she was supposed to be able to log in to see her pay statements, but the portal wouldn’t accept her login credentials and nobody would fix it.

(It may be worth noting that out of the dozens of jobs various friends have had over the twelve years I’ve been here, *very* few even *tried* to obey labour laws. I think that at the moment, I’m the only person I know IRL (not counting coworkers, of course) who actually gets meal breaks.)

Tags:

#adventures in human capitalism #reply via reblog #in which Brin has a job #this probably deserves some other warning tag but I am not sure what

{{next post in sequence}}

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

gasmaskaesthetic:

Boss has been at the [out of state] office since last Friday, which means that they’re printing the physical checks for our weekly AP run there. And….this is really silly, but I do miss doing that part. Printing, folding, envelope stuffing. It’s an easy, pleasant, meditative task that mentally marks the end of my week.

Silly because accounts payable is definitely the most basic and data-entry-oriented part of my job, but dammit, I like having the harder stuff punctuated with pleasingly tactile admin work!

I did a lot of secretarial stuff in high school. I was very good at it, I liked it, and I got a lot of praise for it. It’s a bit nostalgic.

 

shieldfoss:

America really is a whole other country

 

argumate:

I love doing payroll, I love the way you just have to [ presses button marked “payroll” and the machine automatically transfers the appropriate amounts electronically and emails out payslips and notifies the tax office ]

 

shieldfoss:

“Oh you guys have to press a button?”

 

shacklesburst:

Usually you do, because that way you can be sure stuff like reimbursable expenses for the month (if they were filed already) are in the system and you have the ability to delay pushing the button for a few hours if there are some last-minute changes to be made (not ideal, but happens).

Having a button also makes to possible to gather around one desk every month as a team and chant “press the button, press the button” at whomever is responsible for that action currently. And then go for drinks or smth.

 

gasmaskaesthetic:

This post wasn’t about payroll but yes

Current job is more involved than some systems I’ve seen because the accounting module sucks and was clearly just pasted on top of an otherwise mostly-functional industry-specific ERP.

Takes me 1-3 hours.

This is a very weird conversation to me, because among my meatspace social group the ones who get paid electronically are like “it’s a nightmare, they won’t let me log in to see my pay statements, I’m just supposed to trust that they sent me the right amount, it took me two months of complaining and escalating to superiors to even get a *tax form* out of them (and then my taxes were late)”, and the ones who get paper are like “yeah, it’s fine, it was a bit annoying at first having to go to the bank every fortnight but then I learned how to use mobile cheque deposit”.

(I know that you guys are taking the perspective of the one sending out the payments rather than the one receiving them, but still.)

Tags:

#reply via reblog #adventures in human capitalism #in which Brin has a job #(ftr I’m one of the paper ones)

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~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

rustingbridges:

two things I learned today:

1) there’s a youtube video in which George RR martin shares his opinions on new york pizza

and

2) said opinions are thoroughly peasant-tier

Given one of our previous discussions [link], my first thought was that a peasant-tier opinion on this is “the best pizza is the kind you get for free by showing up to NYC tech meetups and pretending to care about The Cloud”. I *suspect* that’s not actually what you meant, though.

Tags:

#reply via reblog #food #adventures in human capitalism

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

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no-chill-at-all:

 

ablackgirldaydreaming:

Yea

 

tittytaytay:

same

 

ms-splendiferous:

load up the playlist and spend the days writing and…praying

 

cheshiretiffy:

Let’s see…. 6 months of quiet and beautiful scenery to earn more money than anyone in the history of my family has ever seen?

Gee…

 

justice-turtle:

is food delivered? do I have access to my meds? can I bring friends? is there cell phone service in emergencies (eg I fall off a scenic cliff)? are there any social opportunities in meatspace or am I just in solitary for six months? what sort of library does the house have? can I leave to go shopping, or do I have to order shit like shampoo and craft supplies delivered too? are my living expenses coming out of the million dollars, who’s paying for them?

*always gets tied up in the logistics of that sort of thing* (also people go literally crazy without human contact for extended periods)

 

brin-bellway:

Everything JT said (except I’m not on meds). Additionally, you said no internet and TV. Does that mean I can have a computer as long as it has no internet access? If so, how much preparation time do I have to stock this computer with entertainment supplies? (Can I use external hard drives for more space?) Does non-streaming video count as TV? If videos still count as TV even when locally stored, is that all videos, or just videos that have also aired on television networks? (I’m pretty okay with no video at all for six months, but I’m asking anyway on principle.)

And JT, why limit cell phone service to emergencies? Limit data service to emergencies, sure, but technically nobody said anything about not being able to call people. (I’m less sure about texting, since as we learned recently texting is, for most practical purposes, the same thing as email.)

Also, 1 million what?

 

justice-turtle:

Well, I was figuring non-emergency phone service would probably be landline, in keeping with the last-century feel of the challenge. There’d have to be something of the sort if we were supposed to stay in or near the house and couldn’t use the internet to order food/shampoo/etc. (If we had a car and were allowed to go into town for shopping, social meetups, etc, a phone might be less necessary, although since I’m always googling the hours of places, a phone and up-to-date phone book would probably still be needed to *set up* meetups, shopping, etc.)

And yeah, 1 million what? If it was buttons, rupees, or pieces of landscaping gravel, it might not be nearly as valuable as it sounds if we assume dollars; if it was British pounds, gold ingots, or tons of weapons-grade uranium, then assuming the ability to convert it to a usable local currency, it could be considerably more valuable.

A computer with no internet access would probably be allowed – at least, I bet a lot of the people talking about writing are thinking in those terms (I sure as hell ain’t writing longhand for six months) – and would be hella useful for writing, or indeed transcribing if I downloaded all current episodes of the podcast ahead of time; my guess would be that all video counts as “TV” and is therefore disallowed.

It’d be more work than sucking a dick for a billion dollars or getting shot in the leg for ten million, apropos of other similar “challenges”, but if living expenses are paid it could be a nice change. ^_^

 

stealthbaguette:

OBVIOUSLY YOU’LL BE REWARDED ONE MILLION INTERNETS AS YOU’VE BEEN DEPRIVED OF THE INTERNETS WHILE IN THERE.

Tags:

#(May 2016) #conversational aglets #fun with loopholes #(stumbled across this one today)

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

tidy-tidings:

missouri-nationalist:

Marriage is good and weddings are great but I hate modern wedding culture. You don’t need to bankrupt yourself to have a nice wedding. Stop supporting the wedding industry, stop buying outrageously priced engagement rings, stop spending 10k on a dress you’ll only ever wear once.

Coming from a professional event planner – weddings are egregiously expensive because companies openly raise prices at the word “wedding.” 

Pro Tip – Never drop the word wedding while planning if you don’t need to. Most things can be for “an event you’re planning.” This obviously doesn’t include things like the venue, DJ (who needs specific wedding songs), and the wedding dress company if you’re going that route versus just buying a dress.

For my wedding I got “discounted” cupcakes, flowers, decor, bridesmaids dresses, groomsman attire, and invitations. I did this by either searching for things that aren’t marketed for weddings or not telling the companies I was working with it was for a wedding. Because honestly, most of the time they don’t need to know why you’re ordering.

These companies target people planning their weddings and markup everything the second “wedding” is said. And it’s said often because people assume the services change exponentially for weddings. They absolutely do not. 

The best example are the cupcakes I had for my wedding. I used a designer cupcake store in town instead of spending $1000 on a wedding cake. If you place a large order of cupcakes with a cake tree for display – it costs about $150 for 100 (which is what I did). When you order their “wedding” package – the price raised to a $700 base for 100 cupcakes. The only other perk includes a “tasting.” Forget that. Our tasting was buying a few cupcakes in flavors we thought we’d like and picked three. It cost maybe $20. 

What these companies do is scummy and targets people who don’t have information about the event industry.

I will yell it from the rooftops until people realize there’s a better way.

Tags:

#PSA #adventures in human capitalism