Don't Talk About Money, because You're Probably Getting Screwed

Anyone who has ever worked has likely run afoul of the "Don't talk about money" rule. Nearly every place that hires people has a rule like this. Ostensibly it's to not make people jealous that others make more than they do, and that is theoretically a sound idea. Unfortunately, when two people who do the same job, same title and everything, discuss pay, they may discover that one of them gets paid more for the same job.

It's possible that one may have got raises over time due to performance. The case I'm thinking of does not have that excuse. When the company someone works for outright does not give pay raises, and two people with the same position make different amounts, the question becomes: Why?

If nobody gets raises, there's no reason for multiple pay levels without differing titles. A pay scale usually has a ziggurat structure, with a store manager at the top. Below that you have the assistant manager, any subsequent managers such as department managers, then supervisors or key-holders, and regular employees at the bottom. But when supervisor one gets paid $10.75/hour and supervisor two gets $11.50/hour, one must wonder why that is. It makes even less sense when supervisor one became a supervisor before supervisor two.

This brings me back to the "don't talk about money" rule. The only way people can find out if they're being paid differently for the same job is to ask each other. If you ask each other and you find out you're being paid less than your co-worker, you aren't supposed to be able to bring this up because you shouldn't know how much other people get paid, and theoretically you can get in trouble. But why? Why do you get in trouble for asking, or being told, how much a co-worker gets paid? 

I would welcome any ideas, but the only option I can think of is it helps companies not have to pay people more. When I was hired at one of my previous workplaces (previous because it's not like everyone's current employer doesn't read all their online stuff, right?) I was hired at $8.50/hour, which I only got because I worked in the state of Illinois, where minimum wage is $8.25. A few months later I transferred to a store in Indiana because it was closer to home and I couldn't really afford all that fuel to get to and from the Illinois store, plus with only one car it would be in no way convenient for my wife and I to have to commute to two different places. When I got to the new store I was still paid my $8.50/hour while some of my co-workers were paid only $8/hour. If they had known about my wages being higher despite not outranking them and doing the same work, they would not have been happy. They might have asked for raises. And I would have supported them, because even my $8.50/hour didn't cover all my expenses.

I left that company for another employer, also not the one I am currently with. I took a pay cut to work there but it was even more close to home and less stressful, so I thought it balanced. My pay cut brought me to $8/hour, while many of my new co-workers were still only making $7.50/hour. Some of them had been with the company for two to three years, and were really beginning to feel the impossibility of coping with such low pay. One of them asked me my wages, and, feeling no need to keep secrets, I told them my wages and why it was higher than I thought others' might be (working in another state previously). What exactly happened after that, I do not know, but I do know the employee in question did receive a pay raise. Why was this such a hassle for the company? The company is a multi-million dollar corporation with locations around the country. Would an extra half dollar per hour for tens of thousands of employees put such a dent in their profits that they would have to close down stores, raise prices, or even fold altogether?

The obvious answer is of course no. No company currently operating in such ways cannot afford to pay its workers such a small amount more. This is part of why the President's push to raise the minimum wage to $10.10/hour is so simple. It is such a small amount that no company that is already succeeding cannot afford it. It is also not enough to life off of, but that is a separate discussion. The nature of capitalism causes most companies to fight against paying their workers more in nearly every circumstance, for no other reason than that it would lower profits from astronomically high to merely ludicrously high.

You'll forgive me if I don't weep for the shareholders.

To Boris, regarding the rich

Boris Johnson is not the least controversial mayor London has seen. Hell, he's not even close to the most controversial mayor currently sitting (Rob Ford, Rahm Emanuel and Michael Bloomberg spring hastily to mind) but something he said recently made me do a proper double take. Boris said that the wealthy are a put upon minority, "like the homeless or Irish Travellers".

What?!

Aside from the tactlessness of the statement, it's at its heart untrue. Last time I checked, rich people don't sit on the street asking people for a few coins. In fact, I do believe rich people live indoors, with heat, air conditioning, fridges, and big soft beds. And lasts I checked, rich people don't have to move about the country to find work, living in campsites all the while, with people refusing to do business with them because of superstition and racism. In fact, when rich people have children of a different complexion to them, nobody says a word. Travellers, of course, are assumed to have stolen the child from its bed. 

Now of course rich people have bad things said about them. That's undeniable. I've said some of them. It's only natural when the world's economy crashes into the sea and begins taking on water, affecting everyone except the people who were in the pilot's seat. The difference is, if rich people don't like something said about them, they can do something about it. 

If I am called a bad person in public, or things I've done which have harmed people are called to light, my only recourse is to say, "nope," and hope people listen. Rich people in the other hand can write columns in national newspapers, go on TV and radio, and even hire other people to do these things for them. So I have a proposal for Boris, as well as any billionaire who wants to take it on:

Send me £10,000, and I will write a glowing mini-bio of you. I'll publish it here, as well as shopping it around to any publication you want to have it. Regardless of how I may feel about you personally, professionally, or grammatically, I will write nothing but high praise. By the time I am finished, people might not think you're Jesus, but they might believe you're related. 

Hopefully this will help to mend the feelings of the put-upon minority that is the Wall Street and City mega-rich. 

Been awhile.

I need to write, and so here we are again. 

THOR review

This summer is going to be expensive.

I usually can count on that based on it being summer, or based on having to drive ... anywhere, but this is especially true of 2011. Why?

Marvel bloody comics.

Ever since I was a kid, I really liked Marvel stories, especially their superheroes. I don't know if it was because they were located in real places, better written than any given Superman story, hadn't been run into the ground by half a dozen bad TV shows and two good ones like DC, or because Wolverine was a badass and Spider-man was a smartass. The fact remains, I loved Marvel. While I always held a spot in my heart for Batman, being the least lame DC hero, Marvel's always been better to me.

Well this summer should be a Marvel Fangasm. We have THOR, CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER, and X-MEN: FIRST CLASS. There are other nerd-originating movies coming out, but those are for another time, when I fully decide if I want to move into the groundbreaking and original realm of movie critiques. THOR and CAPTAIN AMERICA are both lead-ins to the upcoming THE AVENGERS movie, which has been in the works since IRON MAN. I'm not familiar with either one of those comic books, really, having been more of an X-Men fan, followed by not-much-of-a-comic-book-reader. So I can't compare, but I'm more of a judge-movies-as-movies person.

THOR came out at the beginning of May, which means I waited two weeks to see it. I heard plenty of criticism of it early after its release, but I'm fairly sure I don't give a monkey's about that. Frankly, THOR does a good job of telling a Thor semi-origin story and linking it to the upcoming AVENGERS film.

How should I do this? Hmm, why not a list. I know I like to jump right to the part I care about when I read reviews, so why the heck not?

• Odin One-Eye: Sir Anthony Hopkins. I'd be an idiot to say Hopkins did a bad job with something. If he's not been good in a role, I haven't seen it. I wasn't really expecting the understated approach from a bloody Norse God, but given that he had to be conveniently in the Odinsleep for most of the movie, it worked. Nonetheless, I want to see BRIAN BLESSED play Odin Allfather at some point. The epic ... it burns.
• Loki Lie-Smith: Tom Hiddleston. I have never heard of this actor before, but he has worked with Director Kenneth Branagh a few times, and after his masterful approach to Loki, I can see why. Hiddleston made me feel like Loki believed the lies he told, which is sort of crucial when you're pretending to be someone lying to someone else. In the beginning, he also convinced me that he was Thor's younger brother, stuck in the shadows their whole lives. This was told to us, naturally, but Hiddleston's performance drove it home.
• Some Mortal Chick (Jane): Natalie Portman. I haven't had a complaint about Natalie Portman's acting since Star Wars, and I'm happy to see that trend continuing. Having heard her laugh at the Oscars, I'm sure she drew on her inner awkard girl for so many early scenes with Thor. Also, I was very glad to not see her as a damsel in distress, because it's 2011, people.
• Stan Lee's Cameo: Yeah, it's there. It's goofy. It doesn't distract too much from the film, and nobody mistakes him for Hefner. Really, Tony? 
• Effects: What can I say about effects anymore? They're CGI but really good? Come on, you have to be a really low budget flick to not have good CGI anymore. They give away good CGI work in boxes of cereal. I did think to myself that as they were preparing to use the Bifröst, they should've shot that practically, with a bunch of Tesla coils. Maybe that's just because I like Tesla coils.
• Direction: Kenneth Branagh, you are very good. I would say you're awesome, but you really annoyed me with all those 30 degree camera angles you used throughout the movie. I'm okay with using that now and then, but sparingly, please; preferably when something screwed up has just happened, or someone woke up from being hit on the head. In this movie, none of the slanted scenes were those situations, and it actually got noticeable.

But of course, the real test is the eponymous Thor. Played by Chris Hemsworth, which I keep wanting to type as Heimdall, Thor is completely believable as a character and as a spoiled brat of a stormgod. He has surprisingly good chemistry with Portman and you could almost believe they fall in love, despite knowing each other for two days in typical Hollywood fashion. By the way, can we do something about that? Maybe have people who haven't just run each other over with their cars fall in love? An actual basis for a love story? I know, it's a superhero movie, that isn't the point. I'm just throwing it out there.


I won't go into the problems that hardcore comic book geeks will have. This is in part because it's pointless to bother with addressing such things, and also because I don't know what they are. Again, I know almost nothing about the Marvel source material. So is THOR the best movie I've seen this year? Probably not. Is it a great precursor to what I hope will be a firestorm of kickassness that is THE AVENGERS? Oh yeah.

Guilt by association: Why I support the "ID Everyone for Liquor" law

Hah, as always, I lied when I said "I'll be updating more often."

As a cashier in an Indiana supermarket that sells alcohol, I am reasonably aware of the current state of Indiana liquor laws. The basics include: 

• No sales between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m.
• No sales on Sundays
• You can only buy 2 24-packs (or equivalent) of beer, three giant jugs (or equivalent) of wine, and no limit on hard liquor.
• Every person wishing to buy alcohol must show photo ID unless Amish (photo-exempt ID for the horse-and-buggy crowd).

Now obviously, these laws are all kind of stupid. The one that isn't completely stupid has a very large stupid loophole. However the only one anyone bitches about is the one that is always in effect, no matter the time and no matter how much alcohol you want: the ID law.

The law was passed to prevent underage people attempting to buy alcohol at places with lax store rules. A lot of places had rules where if you looked like you were under 40 you got carded, but apparently enough got through that they decided to make it so everyone gets carded. 

Naturally, the people who are most pissed off are the super-old. I've been complained to about that law more than I ever thought I would. Seriously, assholes, I get paid $7.80 per hour. If I could do that without the extra effort and time of carding everyone with a mini-bottle of wine, I would. I am not the person to complain to about this. Or anything.

Since the new year, old people have taken up saying, "I thought they changed that law!" It takes an experienced mind to analyse this particular bit of bullshit, and I've had more than enough time (six seconds) to do it. What they mean to say is, "I read in a newspaper once that someone proposed changing the law because they were rich or powerful and were mildly inconvenienced by it and couldn't get past it with, 'do you know who I am?!' so they proposed changing the law." This is a far fucking cry from "changed that law".


Now, someone did propose changing that law. One state rep from my area said he was carded when all he wanted was change for a dollar in a liquor store. In the interest of being absolutely clear, I will not mince words:


That's not true. This man is lying or an idiot. Which one? Doesn't matter, the result is the same.

If you need change for a dollar, you go into the first store you see. If it's a liquor store, you think, "Eh, what's the next store?" and go to that. Furthermore, since I've been a child, the law has been everyone gets IDed upon entering a liquor store, and if they're under 21 they can't enter at all.


But I digress. The last news story that turns up in a Google search for "indiana repeal liquor id" is from 19 Feb, and it's about liquor store owners largely opposing the repeal. Before that, it's 4 Feb, a story about the House passing the bill. The Senate hasn't done shit about it. 


But all this information is irrelevant, because at my store, we have to ID everyone regardless of state law. I am really desperate to just blurt out "nope, wrong" when they mention the law changing. I'm starting to enjoy carding people, just because they don't like getting out their IDs. And upon reading the "liquor store owners oppose repeal" story and learning that under-21s have mostly stopped trying to buy alcohol, I'm way more in favour of this law than nearly any other.

First category: generally useless

Hah, as always, I lied when I said "tomorrow."

Anyway, the first category of twats is ... GENERAL USELESSNESS

The rules for this category are simple: the nominees cannot be professional in their uselessness, and they should not affect people apart from as a data point. For example, a movie critic saying Toy Story 3 was a bad movie would be a professional, and I would be obliged to disqualify the lying sack of shit. However, random internet people saying Toy Story 3 was a bad movie would not be professional, and would therefore qualify for this award. So without further ado, the nominees!

1. People who watch the Jersey Shore. These people are responsible not for me acknowledging the existence of these kind of useless bastards with spray tans, bad hairdos, bad clothes, no brains, and more diseases than a research lab. I knew, if only in the back of my mind, that they existed. However, now I can pick them out of a lineup, and that is just unacceptable. These people should be buried in the shittiest area of their Shore hometown. And I don't mean "bury" like a euphemism for "out of sight, out of mind." I mean "buried," like in the fucking ground. However, I blame the enablers more, because ... well, I used to be able to ignore them.
2. The person who sold their Penny Arcade stuff in some sort of shit-ass protest of this comic. Yes, rape is horrible. Yes, you should be against rape. But if you're offended at any mention of it, this comic has never been for you. Mazel tov on donating the proceeds of the auction to charity, but the eBay page (which is down, as the auction ended sometime in October or something) reeked of self-importance and enjoyment of offence. Trust me, that's something I know about - I have a tendency to hang on to something that pisses me off, because it's very good as a motivational tool. Under no circumstances, however, do I claim it gives me the high moral ground. Usually, it just makes me act like a twat.
3. People protesting governments' displeasure with Julian Assange and Wikileaks. Now, many people may disagree with me on this, and I may even disagree with myself sometimes on this. But overall, leaking the horrible things governments discuss amongst themselves to the public is a good thing. I am in favour of transparency, except when ... well, except when I'm not. It's difficult. But for the most part, current governments seem to be made up of horrible people doing horrible things, ordering other less horrible people to carry out horrible things, and not-necessarily-horrible people experiencing horrible things. The only thing these governments have stopping them getting collectively castrated is the fact they're doing this all in secret. Naturally, governments are going to be incredibly incensed they got caught with their dick in the cookie jar, and since we already know from the cables they wanted to stay secret that they're evil and corrupt, they're going to use their power to punish those who caught them with their dicks in the cookie jar. Protesting that doesn't do shit. Taking down Visa and MasterCard, that did a little bit. But guess what, guys? Those assholes are still in charge, and they're still fucking those snickerdoodles.
4. Anyone who likes Justin Beiber who is older than eleven. I have a niece who likes Justin Beiber, because she is seven. I have not made much of an effort to correct this horrible behaviour, because again, she is seven. I liked some pretty shit-awful things, people and music when I was that age. However, once you get to the point where you can get into the average summer blockbuster (technically that would be 13 in the US, but nobody cares about two years and they'll see it on video anyway), you should be able to discern utter shit from cool. There is of course another level, which you reach when you achieve full sentience in your late teens, where you realise the stuff you thought was cool at 12 was really shit, and the stuff you thought was shit then, was even more shit. I'm not concerned with that third level of shitdom, because some adults haven't even reached the middle level. I wonder if they still brush their Barbie doll's hair at the office.

ADDENDUM: Just to make something clear, the Justin Beiber fan nomination also counts for any Twilight fan beyond puberty. In fact, you could use the whole thing as is, only removing the bit about my niece.

AND THE WINNER IS:

Justin Beiber fans of a certain age. Really, all the others were kind of weak contenders, but I still wanted to bitch them out. Jersey Shore fans are nonexistent in my actual life, I disagree with the ex-Penny Arcade fan but I understand, and people will always pointlessly protest things that governments do, to little effect. People will always also like shitty teen pop music, but the day I stop fighting that is the day I cultivate a comb-over.

Golden Cock - Twat of the Year

I've been watching a lot of Top Gear lately, and they have a tradition at the end of the calendar year to award the presenter who's given a spectacular example of stupidity throughout the year with the prestigious Golden Cock award. Naturally, I think this is a fantastic idea for the rest of the world, even if I probably shouldn't use the same name.

So in an effort to get myself writing again (did anyone notice I wasn't aside from me?) I'm going to spend the next few days, and possibly well into January, picking LESTAQ Magazine's Twat of the Year (on that note, Mark Zuckerberg is disqualified, although sometime soon he ought to get a lifetime achievement award).

Obvious nominees include people I don't like, but I'll make every effort to include people whom I otherwise like but made a complete twat of themselves in the interest of fairness. This way, I won't spend the next several years awarding the thing to Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and The Collective Employee Base Of (Insert Telecom Company Here).

Tomorrow, the first nominees and why!

How to get a letter to the editor published

Seeing as today is the British general election, and we'll likely find out which arsehole is going to occupy 10 Downing St for the next five years, and it likely won't be the arsehole I support, I've decided to write about something else.

Out of a sense of habit or devotion, I'm not sure which, I continue reading my hometown newspaper, the Evansville Courier and Press, despite no longer living there. For a while it was because I was expected to keep abreast of Evansville news for a class, but in honesty I would've kept reading without that reason. My favourite section when I read the hard copy, and it continues to amuse me greatly, is the letters to the editor.

Now, in the United States, and especially in local papers, there is a formula for getting a letter to the editor published. First, you choose a recent topic. This seems obvious, so I'll not linger. The next step is to take an absurd position on it. If you cannot convincingly write on an absurd position, feel free to "express amazement" at the absurd position of another letter writer. If you are holding an absurd position, be sure to take that to its extreme. If you take it to its illogical extreme, so much the better.

Let's work with an example, shall we? Lately there have been a lot of letters about health care reform. First, we must establish the facts: Health care reform will require, in 2014, that all Americans purchase health insurance or be covered through their work plan. It also eliminates the preexisting condition's legality. This does not a good letter make.

If you want to write on the health care reform issue, you must use one or two of the following words: Socialism, government takeover, Obama, tyranny, unconstitutional, Obamacare, taxpayer, Big Brother. Don't use them all! Remember, you have a 250-word limit! If you use them all you'll go well over that. Next, be sure to use a slippery slope argument in addition to buzzwords. You can use other logical fallacies as well, but "slippery slope" is the easiest one.

DO NOT FACT CHECK YOUR WORK.

Once you feel you have sufficiently expressed your natural paranoia about whatever it is that Rush told you, add the information the newspaper requires of you and send in your letter. If you send it in early enough in the day, it may get included in next morning's edition. They love cranks.

Credit where it's due

It's finals week, and probably the last one I'll take part in for a few decades. Needless to say, I'm very happy about that. Or rather, I was, until I was walking out of my class last night and talking to one of my group members.

My group member, whom I shall call Em, and I were rejoicing in the fact that we got the damn thing done, did a pretty good job if we say it ourselves, and survived the whole thing without major medical trauma. This is something I've done every time I've had a group project, and I'm very sure others have as well. As we turned a corner on campus, Em said, "And thank God, I forgot to thank him!"

Now, personally, I'm annoyed by that one. I mean, I did a lot of work on this project. M did a massive amount of work on this project. Jay, our other group member, did some work. But dammit, God didn't do shit. God didn't show up for one meeting or contribute a single idea by email. God didn't get his blood drawn, didn't do camera work, photos, video editing, writing and editing, interviews, or legwork. God, as far as I can tell, sat around like a lazy bastard eating grapes and enjoying the weather.

Not only that, but I don't even remember the class where God was added as a member of our group. I was under the impression that our group had three people in it. I'm not bothered by a group of four, but I would've liked the fourth bugger to contribute something to the project, because it wasn't fucking easy.

Maybe I misunderstood, and God wasn't a group member. Maybe he's Em's copy editor. If that's the case, then okay. But I'll be really pissed off if that lazy sod gets full credit without doing any real work.

Author's Note: I realise this is a vast misinterpretation of Em's statement. Nevertheless, I maintain that God had nothing to do with getting this project done and done well. Nowhere did we require supernatural assistance, because all we got done was due to hard work, skill, and perseverance; in short, us.

Vote Liberal Democrat

Despite my strong feeling that nobody who reads this blog has voting rights in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and despite that the people who do read this blog are few and very far between, I spent my time at work thinking about why I support the Liberal Democrats in the upcoming British General Election.

Then I got home and saw the Guardian have beat me to it.

So read this. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/30/the-liberal-moment-has-come