That’s cool, and I’d love to see it. “wage” means hourly payment for time worked. Anything else is a benefit or whatever - but not wage. Wage theft is not getting paid wages due.

Vacation time is not the same as hourly wage.

I don’t think we really disagree here. You’re focusing on what people are. I’m focusing on how they see themselves. They’re not necessarily the same things.

Doesn’t mean you don’t call yourself middle class, because at least you’re not homeless. At the very least, “lower-middle class”

20-something years ago PBS had an excellent documentary called “People Like Us: Social Class in America” to show, well, social class in America. If you can find it, or at least clips of it, I’d recommend it. There was one cutscene with a bunch of people being asked which class they see themselves as, and pretty much everyone felt they were “middle class” - but you could tell by the way they presented themselves (clothes, jewelry, etc) that they were all over the place.

Pretty much everyone calls themselves middle class. Outside of the extremes one would expect, there will always be richer and poorer people among you, meaning you’re in the “middle” - whether you’re struggling to make rent or debating whether or not to go to the vacation home this weekend.

Use it or lose it is very common, even in (US) government employment.

How is “collateral in major purchases” and “secure billions in loans” supposed to be any different?

If everything is running on renewables, cool. Until then, there’s still the opportunity cost.

I live near Aurora. One of those city councilperson’s background is in owning a restaurant of all things. Totes an expert in international gang activity.

I love how new Teams doesn’t even have a contacts list for chat anymore, it’s just your most recent chats. And if you search for someone, any recent group chats with that person show up first so you may still have to scroll to find that person’s chat. Oh, and we store documents on Teams so if I want to switch between looking through the document repository and chat I still have to do a whole bunch of clicks between the two.

I don’t fault them for when my project manager tags @everyone on the group chat with an important message saying “good morning and happy Monday” though. I wish I were kidding.

Hard bread with hard ingredients (like meat chunks or salami), soft bread with soft ingredients (like egg salad). I’d call a burger medium soft, and ciabatta is too hard for that

That’s a false choice if I ever heard one. Surely reasonably-paced increases in productivity could spawn job creation in other areas? And while modern-day capitalism is not exactly encouraging this, maybe we can take advantage of less manpower needed to make society function by having less time working (with a similar quality of life) for all? If there were only so many employment hours available, there are ways of distributing that other than raising the unemployment rate or artificially lowering it.

I usually consider myself frugal, but try to get decent quality (a major part of the difference between frugal and cheap) and occasionally I splurge. Yesterday I bought 4 shirts. They came from a medium-high end store (Dillard’s, for those who have one nearby and know what I’m talking about). This is the time of year when lighter summer shirts are getting marked down. I’ve needed some more of them for a bit but waited for this moment.

Also, I’m a sucker for fancy cheeses and desserts from our Kroger variant. But it’s rare that I buy something that isn’t on manager’s special.

I browse Facebook Marketplace all the time for stuff.

Sometimes I want something and dream about it, and it takes an excellent sale to get me to actually buy it. Like the shades I got for my house last year (50% off at Home Depot)

I also brought a brand new car in 2022 when the market was bonkers. Not the fanciest car in the world (Chevy Bolt EUV) but it was a hell of a value, gas prices were going nuts with Russia having invaded Ukraine, and my 2005 Ford Focus wasn’t going to last forever (still serving my wife’s cousin’s stepdaughter well though)

I’ve also gotten furniture and stuff over the years. Maybe I’ll smile at the idea of a sale, but realistically so many things are “on sale” more often than not (even if that sale rotates between 25% off and BOGO half off)

I once saw a meme saying that being a Midwesterner means that if someone compliments something you bought, you need to explain that it was a good deal. That resonates with me.

Anyway, I’m procrastinating my nightly chores before bed. Thanks, but I need to work on that 🙂

The average person has approximately one boob and one testicle

($93k vs $9300 for those who prefer USD)

This was the same company that refused to ship to Rhode Island, suggesting you had their product shipped to a friend on “the mainland” who could then forward it

Thank you for being direct and not at all cryptic about what I’m missing here

It doesn’t make sense to ensure handicapped spots are available? Ok…

They seem to build out the number of handicapped spots for the peak crowd amount, which makes sense. If I’m at Home Depot and it’s 8PM, and there are maybe a dozen cars in the lot I could maybe see making a few spots handicap only during certain times?

The flip side is that it’s only a few more steps for me. I’ll survive

Tobias, you blowhard!