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.

I think the point is, it would be nice to know which books are being put back up (seems like a pretty basic thing if you’re going to make a post like this) but OP made it about as hard as possible to see any but 1-2

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 for me, the buyer to decide. A pickup truck is also the incorrect product for me, because I don’t want one. Someone else may not want a black car. We don’t want stickers or badging on our cars. Others may want a black pickup truck and doesn’t really care if it has a sticker on the back for whatever reason. All that is totally fine - it’s our choice to buy something or not.

But it’s certainly not vandalism for the dealer to do that to their own car any more than it is for me to put an “I love puppies” bumper sticker on my car and then sell it a week later.

If they do it after you pay for the car, sure. Before you give them any money, it’s their car to do as they see fit.

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 🙂

($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

Tobias, you blowhard!

Ahhh ok. I speak American. Good reason to find another country I guess.

This is a rule about English I absolutely despise and generally refuse to follow (makes me twitch as a programmer), but shouldn’t the punctuation (the comma you added) go inside the quotes?

Oh please let that be a reason accidentally spit out by one of those plagiarism machines some day

My dad thought it was silly for me to replace my gas powered motor with an automatic throttle control that doesn’t really work with an electric one, but having no knowledge or desire to rebuild a carburetor (like him), I think I made the right move.