God, 40 days is long when you count every one.  Back into Facebook on Sunday.

On Wall Street “Reap’n’Weep, and people “Just doing their jobs,” and the Apple iPad keyboard.

Wall Street Theft

If you have a 401k, perhaps you’ve noticed that it drops significantly every 7-9 years — as much as 40%.  I call this “The Harvesting.”  Twice bitten, third time shy, my advice is have cash on the sidelines.  If every penny of your 401K is invested, all you can do is watch share prices fall. Or worse —sell your assets! No, with cash on the side you buy in at the bottom and the loss comes back quicker.

It’s how the Billionaires do it, except on a huge scale. They sell at the peak to cause the market to tumble, then buy back in at the bottom.

How many ways can they invent to make money off of us?

Customer Service

I spent an hour on the phone with Spectrum.  One lady tried to up-sell me to a more expensive cable package after I told her my sole purpose for calling was to lower my bill.

After I finally arranged to “cut the cord”and pay a single flat fee for Internet only, she says, “Oh, I can’t make that change for you.  I have to hand you off to Solutions.

Guess what? Solutions is another lady attempting to change my mind and up-sell me, in spite of my repeated requests that she please simply complete the transaction quoted to me by the first lady.  She could not, without asking me questions about how my family intends to use the internet.

“I’m going to use the internet as the Internet.  Now cancel my cable and give me the Internet package I asked for.”

”Our system doesn’t allow me to put “Internet” in as a reason for internet.”

”Then just put in anything you like to move through your script.” I should have told her I intend to stream porn nonstop, but only fetish porn involving customer service representatives.  But what I really said was, “Can you please get your supervisor.”

Ten minutes later the Supervisor comes on and completes my order with no questions asked.

“Tell me,” I say, “why couldn’t she have done that same thing?”

“Because she’s required by her job description to do that, and if she had done what you asked she would have lost her job.”  Now, it’s bad enough that Spectrum is telling me that they make it THE JOB DESCRIPTION to disregard customer requests, but to have the Supervisor come on line to effectively shame me for nearly costing her employee her job?

You’ve heard a friend say it: “C’mon, man, don’t take it out on the counter clerk… they’re just doing their job.”

What kind of a fecking corporate hostage situation are we in?  I see the supervisor putting a headlock on the rep, gun to her temple… “You don’t want her to die, do you?  No, I didn’t think so.  So take our shit and don’t make this poor girl suffer.”

The company is abusing employees AND customers, and have set up a system and a narrative that prevents either abused party from doing much of anything.

The same is true in the tip economy:  employees get paid dirt by their employer, and a national attitude springs up saying, “don’t take it out on the server…tip big.” Then you find out the companies are stealing tips from the servers.

We have got to stop being complicit and find a way to hold companies accountable.

Apple Keyboard

Late breaking edit:  The visual touch keyboard in an iPad is a nightmare for typos — especially for people with fat fingers and/or visual correction.  I apologize for the initial shoddy appearance of this post.  I have subsequently edited on a “real” keyboard.