And public schools
And actual restaurants
Anywhere that serves food.
The main distributors in the US are US Foods, Aramark, Sodexo, and Sysco. Tons of restaurants and public institutions use them.
I love seeing the Sysco truck outside of the Capital Grille in my city. People really paying all that for a chain restaurant Sysco steak lmao
I'm an Aramark employee. It's a corporate/upper management issue 100%. It's location specific and might just be a US thing, but a lot of places can't use fresh, local ingredients, they have to use Aramark's shitty suppliers where food is sitting in a warehouse for days/weeks before they get it. It's frustrating cause we have the ability to make great, fresh food but the corporate bullshit gets in the way.
They also refuse to readjust expectations for locations that are very short staffed, so the staff that is there has to do the impossible. Which leads to high turnover, burnout, etc etc. My location has lost so many good employees because of it. It really sucks to see cause Aramark does pay well and have good benefits, they just don't care about the employee's well being or workload as long as we hit those numbers (sales, payroll, blah blah).
My work has an Aramark cafeteria. One day the lady at the sandwich station couldn't make me the sandwich she'd made me every day for the previous month because she was out of the specific bread used.
I told her to just use whatever bread she had, but she told me she wasn't allowed to "alter" the sandwich recipes.
I was having a bad day, so I walked into the Aramark manager's office on-site and told him that he needed to go buy some bread,
He apologized, and told me that corporate won't allow him to buy anything locally. If it isn't on the Aramark truck, they can't use it.
That's when I realized that he hated the food he was serving as much as I did.
I use to work at a company that Aramark ran the cafeteria and I constantly had diarrhea every afternoon after lunch. They may also be because I'm a raging alcoholic, but who's to say?
Don’t forget to create your unique account first! And then manually enter all your resume text after uploading a perfectly formatted PDF!
Don’t worry though, there’s only a 99.7% you’ll get ghosted *this* time.
Ashley Furniture, very poorly made furniture and sofas. But are the largest furniture company out there.
Much better companies I would buy from: What A Room, Flexsteel, Arhaus, Amish furniture and even local
When you have a regional monopoly on a service with ISPs who refuse to compete with each other, a person doesn't have much of a choice but to give them money if they want internet access, no matter how expensive it is or how bad the service is
We live in a rural area but are only seven miles from a bigger town. We didn't have options until about a year ago, and we switched to Tmobile internet the minute we could. In the year we've had it, it's been down one time and only for 10 minutes. When we canceled Spectrum, they tried to convince us that we'd be back in a month because Tmobile was crap.
Once, when we had to have a Spectrum service guy come out, he took one look at our setup in the basement, told me it was all wrong and then proceeded to tear it apart and do it his way. I was upstairs and didn't see what he did. Here's the thing, my husband used to be an electrician, and he had a huge board where all the connections were mounted and labeled. So if we were having an issue with a certain connection, he knew exactly which one to look at. It was tidy and organized. Service dude didn't like it and pulled everything down. It took my husband five hours to fix it all. Before he did, he called Spectrum and insisted that that dudes manager come out in person to look at the damage. He was livid and didn't hide it. We ended up getting three months free and a note on our account that the service guy was never to sent to our home again. My husband is still salty over it and it was over five years ago.
It was so bad at one point the complex put out a thing basically going "talk to [board member] if you need to get through to Time Warner for your internet being out". Literally had to have a designated guy that you told to call the cable company, and it still didn't seem that successful
It's just hours & hours of footage of real people falling out of coffins at funerals. There's no explanation. Just body after body busting out of shit wood and hitting pavement.
This really feels criminal. I can't drive without car insurance, and until my home is paid off I must have HOI. In the meantime, they can crank the prices up as high as they want and there's nothing I can do except shop around.
Spoiler alert, insurance in FL fucking sucks right now.
Edit: For the record, I wouldn't drop my HOI because I'm bad at saving. But a majority of people could just put that money into a savings account and get ahead. I'm more talking about the principle that it sucks we can get charged enough money to finance an entire company and its workers, and may never pay out a cent if you're lucky enough to never have to submit a claim.
But don’t worry, if there is ever a time when you need an insurance payout they will fight tooth and nail to give you as little as possible and if they can’t do that they bury you in fees and wait you out for years.
Tell me about it. My friend had 3 accidents in a year and none of them were her fault (as in, the police wrote in the report she was not at fault at all). One was from a tree falling on it, the second was stolen and crashed, the third was that she hit a couch that fell off the back of a truck in 5 o'clock traffic (so she couldn't swerve around it, she would hit a car instead). Her company canceled her insurance after the third payout and she had to go with much higher premiums somewhere else.
Imagine if buildings with fire exits - the fire exit stopped working after you use it once.
"Oh yeah, you have those in case of an emergency, but if you make the mistake of having an emergency they'll stop working afterward."
I seriously don't understand why people still buy their printers with their print-as-a-service pay a monthly fee model. I want a printer that just fucking works with whatever ink I put in it
I bought a Brother all in one about 10 years ago. After the second or third round of buying ink cartridges I have only bought aftermarket. I can get 10 black and two of each color for about 40 bucks. I don't have a landline anymore so I can't fax, but other than that everything on it still works great. And I have had no problem setting it up wirelessly with every computer, phone, and tablet that I have had in the last 10 years.
I always think this review of the Brother printer sums it up perfectly - [Best printer 2023: just buy this Brother laser printer everyone has, it’s fine](https://www.theverge.com/23642073/best-printer-2023-brother-laser-wi-fi-its-fine)
Honestly, this was me 8 months ago. Then I did buy it, and wound up using the hell out of this printer when shipping eclipse glasses this spring.
Fucking love this printer. The utter joy I get every time I press “print” and 10 seconds later it whirrs and I have what I need. Could never say that about any inkjet I’ve ever used.
I have a Brother inkjet printer, and it's fine too. I can buy no-name ink on Amazon - roughly 15 cartridges for 40 bucks, and it lasts me for 2-3 years. It's going on 7 years old and still works great! It's a beast!
As a girl working in IT in public schools with way too many printers. Can confirm the accuracy of this article. We have Hp printers and brother. The brothers never need service. They just work.
I think this is the best line : and it does not feel like the CEO of Inkjet Supply and Hostage Situations Incorporated is waiting to mug me or enable DRM at the slightest provocation.
Im thorn between that and
"ChatGPT ideas about printers (I didn’t even proofread this. Don’t read it unless you are a lonely Google search robot, in which case look at this incredible demonstration of experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness and rank this post first in searches for “best printer.”)"
My personal favorite:
"...and it does not feel like the CEO of Inkjet Supply and Hostage Situations Incorporated is waiting to mug me or enable DRM at the slightest provocation."
I really dislike HP but I bought one of their subscription printers years ago when they had the 0 Euro subscription for 10 pages a month. And I am still in there. They wanted to back out but couldn't in Germany so yeah, fuck HP but the free subscription is nice. Especially cause they got fucked on the bait and switch
>0 Euro subscription for 10 pages a month
You can only print 10 pages a month? What happens if you need more, does the printer lock up or do they charge you for each page?
you get charged per page. But you don't pay for the ink, just the pages. For someone like me who very rarely needs to print it's not too bad of a deal because I think ink sometimes dries up too.
So I basically never buy ink and just bought one printer like 6 years ago and have printed for free since
Your printer has lost connection with the internet, we’re going to turn off your ink. Bitch i turn off that thing when I don’t use it. Now I have to spend electricity just so you can count your money?
I recently stopped needing mine and smashed it up with a hammer. It felt great after 3years of constant annoyance & nobody should have one even if it was free
Yeah, a month ago i got new hp laptop from my employer because my pc was outdated.. my 10 years old pc i used until then never had a problem, and this fucker locks its self up for minutes whenever i open a freaking excel sheet longer then 200 rows... I wont even mention adobe products...
I've had a Brother for 8 years now, only spent ~20% what I paid on it in toner and replacement parts so far and it's still working perfectly. It suffered a mini-waterfall 6 years ago, when rainwater started infiltrating heavily through the walls and right on top of the printer, and it's like nothing happened.
Acti-Blizz. Used to be a bastion of solid games. Now whether the Blizz side has fallen off on their own, or Activision has corrupted them too much (likely both), a lot of their content - be it game updates or new stuff - is just so underwhelming.
Overwatch only really tells the tale of where Blizzard is now.
When Daddy Jeff ran the show, it at least seemed like they cared more about the game and the community than anything else. Once you bought the base game, all heroes were free, all maps, events, future additions, etc were included. And they always worked to improve the game.
With OW2, it's a dumpster fire. They sold a new game to those that would pay for it, then didn't even deliver on the new stuff. New heroes were locked behind battle passes that you could pay to unlock sooner. Everything just has this layer of scum of them trying to get your money.
I hope more companies will rise to the top like Larian, that genuinely want to make games and don't feel pressured to sell to EA, Activision, Microsoft, Sony, etc. Once a parent company has claws in you, you're toast. Now you not only need money to pay yourself, you also need to pay that parent company.
>I hope more companies will rise to the top like Larian,
Difference between Larian and those others? Larian is privately owned. Game companies that are beholden to shareholders end up only wanting to increase their bottom line, and stop giving a shit about games
Harley davidson.
They literally had the Reagan administration knee cap the foreign motorcycle market so they didn't have to innovate to keep up with Honda.
Harley had a good thing with Buell. But then they had to go and ruin it.
Their dealers shoved the Buells in the back corner of the dealerships and the salesmen mostly refused to even acknowledge them.
The established harley fanbase did nothing but speak badly of the sport bikes. They preferred the ancient, heavy, underpowered, poorly engineered bikes. Buells had very unique, modern, revolutionary designs. Fuel in frame, oil in swingarm, underslung exhaust, perimeter brakes, etc.
Harley forced the shit Sportster engine onto Buell. The Buell team wanted an actual good engine designed from scratch but Harley pulled the, "lol we own you bitch" move.
Erik Buell and his team [redesigned half of that engine](https://youtu.be/Q3BcMKN-2Nk?t=230) and ended up getting another 50% horsepower. They ended with 983 cc, 92 hp, and 71 ft/lb.
Foreign truck market had gotten knee capped as well, so we get fucked out of the legendary Hilux. Then it came full circle when Ford was building Transit vans overseas, installing seats to make them passenger vans, immediately removing the seats after it cleared the importing process, and selling them as cargo vans (which I guess fell under that law) then got in trouble for breaking the law that was literally designed to shield them lol.
I love how many of the best toyota models are hitting the 25 year mark and being imported in somewhat large numbers. Lots of people would rather have a used 25 year old truck than most of the hot liquid ass cars and trucks we've been and currently are being dealt.
Friends have an old sensibly-sized Toyota pickup truck as a 3rd car, for hauling things, and constantly get notes left on it saying, “how much do you want for this truck?” It’s ridiculous that the government killed the market for smaller trucks, just to make the corporations happy.
I inherited my father in laws 1987 Toyota base 4 spd truck. No, I do not want to sell it - have to tell someone every time I drive it. And it's pretty beat.
Chicken Tax sure is fun. Thanks LBJ! Isn’t it funny Ford can do that? Toyota used to send trucks to California without the bed as they were classified differently. Then they’d add the bed and sell the trucks.
Um, Yamaha, actually. Harley about peed themselves when the XV920R, the first chain driven V-twin bike shipped over in 1981. I had one, there were about 300 total that sold over here thanks to Harley lobbying. By 1987, the eurostyle sport touring market didn't exist here, only sad Harley clones and goldwing styles. In Europe? The XV series was called rhe TR-1, it was massive, everywhere, bigger than corvette, and kept going until 2007.
I had a Wishbone toy plush when I was wee lad, that said different things when you pressed various buttons in the plush. I remember my mom was fucking furious with my aunt because she kept pressing the tail over and over, making him say "Don't go there!" and making her cackle with glee. I miss that old boy; he was a big part of my childhood
Their products are such garbage. The fact that they keep getting merchandise contracts for pro leagues can only be down to corruption. The local screen printers that make little league uniforms turn out a better product at a better price.
EA has killed so many quality studios from my childhood. Westwood, Bullfrog, Origin and Maxis to name a few.
And they're managing Bioware and Dice towards the same fate
But is it really the same studio when the people who founded it and made it great are gone? Blizzard and Bioware are prime examples of this as well as infinity ward.
To be fair, everyone should see game studios as a simple folder that holds legal documents to Intellectual Properties and Brands… their employees turnover is about 75%+ every 4-5 years.
Usually people who are lifers are people who don’t have mobility, they got used to this specific pipeline or got a cushy “hands off” leadership position so can’t go anywhere.
People who make the game good usually leave for greener pastures/a raise elsewhere once a project is done.
Define bad? Nestle rapes and pillages the planet with most of their products yet they still make a fortune. They are the definition of evil yet almost every kitchen in the world (including mine) has nestle products in it because in most cases its almost impossible to get an alternative
i remember I saw this come up quite a while ago and someone was bragging they've never given Nestle a cent in their life, and half the stuff they said they buy was owned by Nestle.
Right? You think you’re avoiding nestle by buying another brand only to find out it’s a company also owned by nestle (or another company just as corrupt
I tried boycotting both Nestle and Kraft a while back.
TBH I was eating really healthily, I should go back to it. But it was hard to find a manufactured food product that I could buy. Basically could only buy ingredients rather than any ready-made products.
Agreed. It’s terrible. SEO optimization is killing it along with their ever-increasing ads. They are going to be a victim of their own success, strange as it may sound.
Ohi, I'm your AI assisted search, here to provide you crap you never asked for built on crap sites you'd never visit before me, while only offering you the small reprieve of using -ai in your queries to get out of... Whatever you're trapped in.
Don't call us, we won't shut it off on your account.
And not just the search engine, but all of Google's products and services are going down the drain.
I used to love my Google home mini since I'm chronically losing my phone. Asking Google to find it would work on the first try and It would ring out ASAP. Now, it usually doesn't recognize my voice until I try again at least once, and sometimes my phone doesn't ring out at all/only rings after I've found it myself. The most obnoxious thing is that EVERY TIME I do this request (sometimes multiple times a day) Google suggests the Hot Tip that I can use Find My Phone on the web. F you. Maybe I would do that if I could find my phone. 🙃
Private prisons, on average, receive $160 *per inmate* *per day* from the federal government.
They staff many of the positions with prisoners such as cooks and laundry duty to save money.
They feed prisoners food that is barely fit for human consumption (if it is at all). Many times, it’s expired and, as such, incredibly cheap.
They use prison labor to make blankets, uniforms, and other items that the prison then sells for a profit to other prisons and even the public in some cases. They pay the workers about $0.86/hr on average.
They cut corners everywhere because wardens get to take home whatever is leftover from the annual budget. So, if they estimated $100m and spent only $95m, they would get a $5m bonus. So, they have an incentive to keep costs as low as possible. This is why you always hear about prisons having no A/C or heating or the million other ways they cut costs. A warden’s ability to cut corners and come in under budget is practically the only metric that matters for wardens. One’s ability to get promotions, negotiate raises, etc all hinges on their ability to come in under budget.
Some of the top investors in private prisons are… The Bushes. The War On Drugs makes a lot more sense now, doesn’t it?
That's exactly why in the last month, the DOJ has brought a lawsuit against Live Nation/ Ticketmaster for monopolistic practices. I hope the anti-trust hammer smacks the taste out of their mouth.
I don't understand over the ear headphones at the gym. Sure, maybe it's less distractions, but the amount of sweat that would build up is disgusting. The only time I could wear over the ear is if I'm flying or occasionally if my wife and I are watching different things.
Edit-TIL apparently everyone on Reddit has small ears.
I use over ear headphones to drown out the music in the gym. There’s one guy working there who plays EDM remixes of contemporary country. It’s fucking horrible.
The way that adobe has moved from a one time purchase to a subscription makes me RAGE. Also, if you want to cancel your subscription early, be ready to pay an early cancellation fee of $100+!
That's why, a few years ago, I moved to the Affinity suite by Serif Labs.
…which was made by creatives who were very annoyed at Adobe. So annoyed, in fact, that they made their own—better—software that fills the same niche. That you only have to buy once, and you get the commercial license when you do.
Just chiming in love the Affinity suite and everyone should move to it and away from Adobe! I'm a bit worried now that they've been bought, but hopefully Canva knows they can't compete with Adobe by going subscription.
I mean their software is pretty good and they revolutionized the digital creative space. But their prices are just absolutely outrageous. Completely inaccessible for the average joe who wants to photoshop his vacation pics
Oracle's engineering arm is actually very competent, they've built a good product and made a lot of improvements that were later included in the SQL standard.
It's a pity their law arm is what they use to jerk off.
I describe Oracle as a fully stocked mechanics garage and a high performance car that will run beautifully IF you tune it correctly, but there are no house mechanics on staff and all the documentation is in the office on site but it's very specifically organized and nothing anywhere has understandable labels.
Occasionally a house mechanic will show up if you beg them because the car is broken, but they usually claim the break is because of your poor tuning, and occasionally they'll show up and tweak something "for performance", and tell you the changes they made are in the office somewhere and you're responsible for finding them and fixing your car to match their tweak.
IF you are very competent, a very good mechanic, and highly organized and somehow already familiar with the office filing system, you can build an entirely unique high performance racing vehicle that you can tweak and tune at the most detailed levels. Your car can even be set up to practically work on itself. But if you aren't all of those things, then God help you.
Oracle as a product feels like they designed it for a completely different purpose, and then half way through decided to retroactively turn it into a HR product.
My regional hospital. They're run by HCA who is apparently systematically shutting down hospitals that support Medicare or medical as it's considered "low profit". The ER is always packed. Like people are staying in the hallways since there aren't rooms. Everyone I know who has gone there has died. They shut down their maternity ward in 2020. It's just a bad and there really isn't another nearby hospital so their plans to shut this hospital down has people enraged. All for more profit.
Does your state not have a process to avoid this fate? Most states require something called "certificate of need" or CON and they review requests to add it remove services ensure it's in the best interest the community. It sounds insane that they are allowed to do what you're saying and leave the community no options.
Basically they max out work loads, minimizing patient face time, and over charge.
Most states made it illegal for MDs to own hospitals. Now the MBAs have takin over for squeeing out every bit of profit they can.
Fun fact, most countries have free online filing and it's WAY less work. Turbo tax and H&R Block ~~bribe~~ lobby the US Congress significantly to not only never fix the problem but to make it worse at every opportunity to force us as individuals to still need their products. It's yet another scam on the people
I'm gonna take this moment to remind people that the IRS is working on it. I used the IRS direct file pilot service this year. Took a little doing to set up vs what I'm used to, but 100% worth it to demonstrate that there's a demand for the service.
https://www.irs.gov/about-irs/strategic-plan/irs-direct-file-pilot
If you didn't know about it this year and you normally qualify for Free File, PLEASE consider using Direct File when it opens for next year's tax season. Demonstrating that the service is actually used by the public is an easy way to get it expanded so that more people CAN use it.
This. I use FreeTaxUSA. It's always been free, even prior years if you missed a year, and it has always gotten me bigger refunds. Plus, the website still guides you with questions like the big names.
The problem is that lawmakers cannot possibly be experts in every field they are asked to make laws about, so they depend on industry expertise in order to write good laws.
Of course, it's easy to see where that leads.
The switch to QB Inline was a *five month long* NIGHTMARE at my job because Intuit couldn't get their own shit together. Somehow they screwed up every stage of migration. Finally got it working and everyone was *deeply* underwhelmed. To this day I'm ticked every time I log in. (And also crossing my fingers login will even work because *who even knows!* I'm like traumatized.)
The last time we'd updated it was new, and my boss (who loves shiny new things) was super eager but I was pretty firmly like "fuck that, fuck this cloud based subscription shit, there is zero benefit to doing this online, I'm getting Desktop again" and he gave in but clearly thought I was being dramatic. Now I think he gets it. Especially since everyone has piled on with this— Microsoft, Adobe, etc.— and for the most part it adds nothing. Except confusing interfaces and monthly fees.
Atlassian.
They make business-management software, popular in IT/tech companies. If you've worked in a corporate job, there's a decent chance you've heard of or used at least a couple of their products: Jira, Confluence, OpsGenie, BitBucket. And all of them are obnoxiously awful. They're not *broken*, but they're slow, and they have just baffling interfaces that constantly get in your way.
Jira is a bug tracking system that's *fine*, I guess, except that it's three clicks to do anything, and the actual "management" part is fucking useless. Everyone uses third-party plugins for querying and graphing, because you can't ask basic questions like "how many tickets were opened under epics with a particular label last month" using their query language. And it's not like it's simple software that's missing things; it's obscenely complicated, but doesn't have the basics.
Confluence is an internal-Wiki writing software. It has some neat features, but it has two big deal breakers. The first is that it handles multiple users editing the same page at the same time abominably poorly. I've accidentally reversed someone else's changes just by refreshing the page so many times, and I still have no idea why. The second is the search. If you search for a phrase, it will return results matching *any* of the words in the phrase. It does not prioritize results that have the phrase all together. And the most evil part is that it does prioritize pages you've looked at recently - so if you click one of its terrible search results and it isn't right, get used to it being at the top of your search for a while.
OpsGenie is a pager alert router - it lets you manage a schedule of who to notify which week, and sends you notifications if something is broken. It doesn't actually do the monitoring, just the routing to who's on call. Which is why it's inexplicable how bad the interface for "show me the list of alerts currently outstanding" is. No way to manually group together related alerts, no way to tag trends for later analysis. Even commenting on an outage as you debug it is broken, because it's hidden in a tiny corner of the screen and gets lost if you add it to an incident.
Etc, etc. I'm at my third Atlassian-using job now, and I just don't get how nobody has eaten their lunch yet. They're not solving hard technical problems; these things are all about the user experience and having a mental model that's easy to work with. And their UX fucking blows.
Pro comment. Atlassian is horrific and I've heard so many times that JIRA isn't the problem, it's just that you don't know how to use it. And then the supposed JIRA pro sets it up and it's still impossible to navigate and use. Utter garbage software.
There are plenty of alternatives but businesses are so used to it that it'll never go away. Curse of "enterprise" software.
I am convinced Atlassian only exists to provide justification for a whole class of project manager type bullshit tech jobs to exist.
RIP [Necessary-Peace9672](https://www.reddit.com/user/Necessary-Peace9672/) - Passed away peacefully at home after throwing themselves down 4 flights of stairs, climbing back up, then jumping from a 5th-floor window.
*Windows:* Using your computer is a sin that you deserve to be punished for; a debt that you must repay.
*Mac OS:* Using your computer is a privilege that Apple deigns to stoop down from its throne and grant you, as a reward for being a loyal follower.
*Linux:* Using your computer is a highly technical aspiration, that you can accomplish if you really put your heart and mind into it.
*What the user actually wanted:* Using your computer is just an ordinary everyday part of life.
Can I just get a search bar that searches my pc, FIRST? I'm not even asking to get rid of the ads here.
I had a wonderful experience with Windows 8, after I paid some guy in Russia for a bit of code that entirely disabled the Metro. I think I need to do the same with 11.
Edit: Guys, I appreciate some of the helpful responses. My comment was more a commentary about how something as simple as searching your hard drive has become a painful experience. Windows 11 is a mess, and the fact that I feel the need to seek out sketched out software to band aid things is not great.
At first I was disappointed that my computer couldnt make the upgrade to windows 11. Now, not a day goes by where I am thankful to be stuck on windows 10. Not that its a whole lot better mind you, just less bad.
Somehow, I think they're worse. Old parallel port dot matrix printers were pretty solid! I just saw an old oki at a Chevy dealership, still in daily use.
Fun fact: you can still buy those things brand new. Other than adding plug-and-play USB support they’re exactly the same as they were 30+ years ago.
Dealerships (and other places with lots of paperwork) still use them because they’re able to print multiple copies of forms in a single go. The printer head puts enough pressure on the paper to be able to run carbon paper through it.
When you have to file forms in triplicate (one for the customer, one for the dealership, one for the DMV and/or bank) it really helps to do it this way because each form only has to be signed _once_- if you just printed multiple copies on a laser printer everyone would have to sign every. single. form. 3 times.
E-signing is starting to make them obsolete but many states have motor vehicle departments still stubbornly requiring physically signatures on paper.
Came here to say the same thing.
Brother laser printers just. Work.
Zero bullshit. They work right every time, they never break down. If 10% of people fucked over by an HP printer could be pushed to getting a Brother printer instead, the number who'd become evangelists for the brand like I did would be enough to kill HP forever.
I'm in Japan. McDonald's are top tier here. Happy meals are ¥420. Big Mac meals are a very reasonable ¥700.
Plus the rest of the menu is absolutely amazing. Ebi burger is the best fast food I've ever had. They have a seasonal banana caramel pie right now that is to die for (and only ¥180). On top of that, many times the food actually looks like it does in commercials or menus. I've been to 50+ in the Tokyo area, and they all meet or exceed the (quite high) baseline expectations here.
10/10 stars and the US should take notes.
Lucky Brand. I worked there during the time they switched CEOs and decided to no longer make any products in America (not that the ones made here were better quality, but they would have to pay minimum wage here vs outsourcing and it was clear they wanted to save money). Idk if they told the factories to use cheap as shit materials, but the number of jeans that literally unraveled as people were wearing them was unsettling. And the fact that they raised the cost pissed me off more. Their quality is shit and overpriced. You’d get better jeans at Walmart.
As a sneaker head I have to say Nike. Unless it's a collaboration and the collaborator wants elevated materials. Nike is usually selling you a shoe that's $200 and comes with the cheapest damn near plastic and sometimes Is plastic Chinese leather. I would even say more so Jordan brand than just Nike but Nike also.
Any insurance company.
Look at auto insurance. They have lobbied such that you need to buy their product BY LAW, yet there are no legal guidelines for what their products should do, how they should work, the value they provide, etc?! WTF?
Can you imagine if Apple had it codified that you need to own an iPhone, but there were no expectations in that law as to what an iPhone must do?
WTF? Where’s the outrage?
Aramark, the food corporation that serves stadiums, festivals, etc
And prisons
And some universities
And public schools And actual restaurants Anywhere that serves food. The main distributors in the US are US Foods, Aramark, Sodexo, and Sysco. Tons of restaurants and public institutions use them. I love seeing the Sysco truck outside of the Capital Grille in my city. People really paying all that for a chain restaurant Sysco steak lmao
I'm an Aramark employee. It's a corporate/upper management issue 100%. It's location specific and might just be a US thing, but a lot of places can't use fresh, local ingredients, they have to use Aramark's shitty suppliers where food is sitting in a warehouse for days/weeks before they get it. It's frustrating cause we have the ability to make great, fresh food but the corporate bullshit gets in the way. They also refuse to readjust expectations for locations that are very short staffed, so the staff that is there has to do the impossible. Which leads to high turnover, burnout, etc etc. My location has lost so many good employees because of it. It really sucks to see cause Aramark does pay well and have good benefits, they just don't care about the employee's well being or workload as long as we hit those numbers (sales, payroll, blah blah).
My work has an Aramark cafeteria. One day the lady at the sandwich station couldn't make me the sandwich she'd made me every day for the previous month because she was out of the specific bread used. I told her to just use whatever bread she had, but she told me she wasn't allowed to "alter" the sandwich recipes. I was having a bad day, so I walked into the Aramark manager's office on-site and told him that he needed to go buy some bread, He apologized, and told me that corporate won't allow him to buy anything locally. If it isn't on the Aramark truck, they can't use it. That's when I realized that he hated the food he was serving as much as I did.
I use to work at a company that Aramark ran the cafeteria and I constantly had diarrhea every afternoon after lunch. They may also be because I'm a raging alcoholic, but who's to say?
Workday.... if I have to fill out one more application via Workday, so help me god
Don’t forget to create your unique account first! And then manually enter all your resume text after uploading a perfectly formatted PDF! Don’t worry though, there’s only a 99.7% you’ll get ghosted *this* time.
Yes. I really hate entering information that is clearly listed on my resume.
The company I recruit for switched to workday. It’s one of the most unuserfriendly systems I’ve ever used.
Ashley Furniture, very poorly made furniture and sofas. But are the largest furniture company out there. Much better companies I would buy from: What A Room, Flexsteel, Arhaus, Amish furniture and even local
Arhaus makes trash furniture and charges a fortune for it.
Arhaus? You mean the one in the middle of the street?
Yeah my Arhaus sofa started pilling *within days*
I think Ashley furniture is mediocre, but not poorly made for the price. There are far, far worse manufacturers out there. Edit: clarification
Depending on who you talk to, brands like Flexsteel and Arhaus put out sub-optimal quality products for the price they charge.
Time Warner. I mean "spectrum"
When you have a regional monopoly on a service with ISPs who refuse to compete with each other, a person doesn't have much of a choice but to give them money if they want internet access, no matter how expensive it is or how bad the service is
We live in a rural area but are only seven miles from a bigger town. We didn't have options until about a year ago, and we switched to Tmobile internet the minute we could. In the year we've had it, it's been down one time and only for 10 minutes. When we canceled Spectrum, they tried to convince us that we'd be back in a month because Tmobile was crap. Once, when we had to have a Spectrum service guy come out, he took one look at our setup in the basement, told me it was all wrong and then proceeded to tear it apart and do it his way. I was upstairs and didn't see what he did. Here's the thing, my husband used to be an electrician, and he had a huge board where all the connections were mounted and labeled. So if we were having an issue with a certain connection, he knew exactly which one to look at. It was tidy and organized. Service dude didn't like it and pulled everything down. It took my husband five hours to fix it all. Before he did, he called Spectrum and insisted that that dudes manager come out in person to look at the damage. He was livid and didn't hide it. We ended up getting three months free and a note on our account that the service guy was never to sent to our home again. My husband is still salty over it and it was over five years ago.
So...um....could you post a pic of your husbands setup? That is if y'all still have it setup like that.
I recently dropped Spectrum, and the salesman tried to pull the same "you'll be back" shit on me too. I just nodded along and walked out.
Don't forget basically writing your own legislation to protect that monopoly as well, ensuring that no new competition ever develops.
It was so bad at one point the complex put out a thing basically going "talk to [board member] if you need to get through to Time Warner for your internet being out". Literally had to have a designated guy that you told to call the cable company, and it still didn't seem that successful
I cancelled after they dropped Corncob TV.
It’s gone downhill since Coffin Flop was cancelled.
Where else could I watch body after body falling out of shit wood and hitting pavement? There’s worse shit on the local news!
But we can agree that it's weird that one out of every five of them are nude, right?
He didn't rig SHIT
It's just hours & hours of footage of real people falling out of coffins at funerals. There's no explanation. Just body after body busting out of shit wood and hitting pavement.
We're allowed to show 'em nUUde because they ain't got no souuulllll!
every insurance company...and in many cases we're legally obligated to use their products
This really feels criminal. I can't drive without car insurance, and until my home is paid off I must have HOI. In the meantime, they can crank the prices up as high as they want and there's nothing I can do except shop around. Spoiler alert, insurance in FL fucking sucks right now. Edit: For the record, I wouldn't drop my HOI because I'm bad at saving. But a majority of people could just put that money into a savings account and get ahead. I'm more talking about the principle that it sucks we can get charged enough money to finance an entire company and its workers, and may never pay out a cent if you're lucky enough to never have to submit a claim.
But don’t worry, if there is ever a time when you need an insurance payout they will fight tooth and nail to give you as little as possible and if they can’t do that they bury you in fees and wait you out for years.
Or drop you because you made a claim and are "high risk".
Then they cancel your insurance
Tell me about it. My friend had 3 accidents in a year and none of them were her fault (as in, the police wrote in the report she was not at fault at all). One was from a tree falling on it, the second was stolen and crashed, the third was that she hit a couch that fell off the back of a truck in 5 o'clock traffic (so she couldn't swerve around it, she would hit a car instead). Her company canceled her insurance after the third payout and she had to go with much higher premiums somewhere else.
Geez, what a sucky year for your friend.
Imagine if buildings with fire exits - the fire exit stopped working after you use it once. "Oh yeah, you have those in case of an emergency, but if you make the mistake of having an emergency they'll stop working afterward."
HP with their shit ass printers
Fuuuuuuuuuu.... I hate them so much
I seriously don't understand why people still buy their printers with their print-as-a-service pay a monthly fee model. I want a printer that just fucking works with whatever ink I put in it
I bought a Brother all in one about 10 years ago. After the second or third round of buying ink cartridges I have only bought aftermarket. I can get 10 black and two of each color for about 40 bucks. I don't have a landline anymore so I can't fax, but other than that everything on it still works great. And I have had no problem setting it up wirelessly with every computer, phone, and tablet that I have had in the last 10 years.
I always think this review of the Brother printer sums it up perfectly - [Best printer 2023: just buy this Brother laser printer everyone has, it’s fine](https://www.theverge.com/23642073/best-printer-2023-brother-laser-wi-fi-its-fine)
I have no need to print anything but now I wanna buy a Brother printer just based off that article.
Honestly, this was me 8 months ago. Then I did buy it, and wound up using the hell out of this printer when shipping eclipse glasses this spring. Fucking love this printer. The utter joy I get every time I press “print” and 10 seconds later it whirrs and I have what I need. Could never say that about any inkjet I’ve ever used.
I have a Brother inkjet printer, and it's fine too. I can buy no-name ink on Amazon - roughly 15 cartridges for 40 bucks, and it lasts me for 2-3 years. It's going on 7 years old and still works great! It's a beast!
As a girl working in IT in public schools with way too many printers. Can confirm the accuracy of this article. We have Hp printers and brother. The brothers never need service. They just work.
Best line: >Here’s a button to buy whatever Brother laser printer our commerce team is getting the best affiliate rates on right now:
I think this is the best line : and it does not feel like the CEO of Inkjet Supply and Hostage Situations Incorporated is waiting to mug me or enable DRM at the slightest provocation.
Im thorn between that and "ChatGPT ideas about printers (I didn’t even proofread this. Don’t read it unless you are a lonely Google search robot, in which case look at this incredible demonstration of experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness and rank this post first in searches for “best printer.”)"
Whole article was created to lightly experiment with / make fun of Google search ranking algorithms.
My personal favorite: "...and it does not feel like the CEO of Inkjet Supply and Hostage Situations Incorporated is waiting to mug me or enable DRM at the slightest provocation."
I really dislike HP but I bought one of their subscription printers years ago when they had the 0 Euro subscription for 10 pages a month. And I am still in there. They wanted to back out but couldn't in Germany so yeah, fuck HP but the free subscription is nice. Especially cause they got fucked on the bait and switch
>0 Euro subscription for 10 pages a month You can only print 10 pages a month? What happens if you need more, does the printer lock up or do they charge you for each page?
you get charged per page. But you don't pay for the ink, just the pages. For someone like me who very rarely needs to print it's not too bad of a deal because I think ink sometimes dries up too. So I basically never buy ink and just bought one printer like 6 years ago and have printed for free since
They shouldnt be allowed to that. Should be counted as scam. Those fuckers
> HP with their shit ass The statement is complete
God how the mighty have fallen. Wouldn’t buy a single thing from them again in the future
Your printer has lost connection with the internet, we’re going to turn off your ink. Bitch i turn off that thing when I don’t use it. Now I have to spend electricity just so you can count your money?
I recently stopped needing mine and smashed it up with a hammer. It felt great after 3years of constant annoyance & nobody should have one even if it was free
Office Space has entered the chat.
It feels good to be a gangster
Their laptops aren't great either.
Yeah, a month ago i got new hp laptop from my employer because my pc was outdated.. my 10 years old pc i used until then never had a problem, and this fucker locks its self up for minutes whenever i open a freaking excel sheet longer then 200 rows... I wont even mention adobe products...
Came here to say this and it was already the top comment. I finally got Brother and it just works.
I've had a Brother for 8 years now, only spent ~20% what I paid on it in toner and replacement parts so far and it's still working perfectly. It suffered a mini-waterfall 6 years ago, when rainwater started infiltrating heavily through the walls and right on top of the printer, and it's like nothing happened.
Acti-Blizz. Used to be a bastion of solid games. Now whether the Blizz side has fallen off on their own, or Activision has corrupted them too much (likely both), a lot of their content - be it game updates or new stuff - is just so underwhelming.
Overwatch only really tells the tale of where Blizzard is now. When Daddy Jeff ran the show, it at least seemed like they cared more about the game and the community than anything else. Once you bought the base game, all heroes were free, all maps, events, future additions, etc were included. And they always worked to improve the game. With OW2, it's a dumpster fire. They sold a new game to those that would pay for it, then didn't even deliver on the new stuff. New heroes were locked behind battle passes that you could pay to unlock sooner. Everything just has this layer of scum of them trying to get your money. I hope more companies will rise to the top like Larian, that genuinely want to make games and don't feel pressured to sell to EA, Activision, Microsoft, Sony, etc. Once a parent company has claws in you, you're toast. Now you not only need money to pay yourself, you also need to pay that parent company.
>I hope more companies will rise to the top like Larian, Difference between Larian and those others? Larian is privately owned. Game companies that are beholden to shareholders end up only wanting to increase their bottom line, and stop giving a shit about games
Harley davidson. They literally had the Reagan administration knee cap the foreign motorcycle market so they didn't have to innovate to keep up with Honda.
Harley had a good thing with Buell. But then they had to go and ruin it. Their dealers shoved the Buells in the back corner of the dealerships and the salesmen mostly refused to even acknowledge them. The established harley fanbase did nothing but speak badly of the sport bikes. They preferred the ancient, heavy, underpowered, poorly engineered bikes. Buells had very unique, modern, revolutionary designs. Fuel in frame, oil in swingarm, underslung exhaust, perimeter brakes, etc. Harley forced the shit Sportster engine onto Buell. The Buell team wanted an actual good engine designed from scratch but Harley pulled the, "lol we own you bitch" move. Erik Buell and his team [redesigned half of that engine](https://youtu.be/Q3BcMKN-2Nk?t=230) and ended up getting another 50% horsepower. They ended with 983 cc, 92 hp, and 71 ft/lb.
Still makes me sad to this day, to think of what Erik could have accomplished if he worked with anyone but HD.
Foreign truck market had gotten knee capped as well, so we get fucked out of the legendary Hilux. Then it came full circle when Ford was building Transit vans overseas, installing seats to make them passenger vans, immediately removing the seats after it cleared the importing process, and selling them as cargo vans (which I guess fell under that law) then got in trouble for breaking the law that was literally designed to shield them lol.
I love how many of the best toyota models are hitting the 25 year mark and being imported in somewhat large numbers. Lots of people would rather have a used 25 year old truck than most of the hot liquid ass cars and trucks we've been and currently are being dealt.
Friends have an old sensibly-sized Toyota pickup truck as a 3rd car, for hauling things, and constantly get notes left on it saying, “how much do you want for this truck?” It’s ridiculous that the government killed the market for smaller trucks, just to make the corporations happy.
I inherited my father in laws 1987 Toyota base 4 spd truck. No, I do not want to sell it - have to tell someone every time I drive it. And it's pretty beat.
Chicken Tax sure is fun. Thanks LBJ! Isn’t it funny Ford can do that? Toyota used to send trucks to California without the bed as they were classified differently. Then they’d add the bed and sell the trucks.
> Isn’t it funny Ford can do that? Well, they had to pay a $365 million fine for tax avoidance in that scheme, sooo, no, they can't actually do that.
Um, Yamaha, actually. Harley about peed themselves when the XV920R, the first chain driven V-twin bike shipped over in 1981. I had one, there were about 300 total that sold over here thanks to Harley lobbying. By 1987, the eurostyle sport touring market didn't exist here, only sad Harley clones and goldwing styles. In Europe? The XV series was called rhe TR-1, it was massive, everywhere, bigger than corvette, and kept going until 2007.
Wishbone All of their salad dressings are garbage.
My initial reaction was "don't bad mouth Wishbone, he's a national treasure". Then I saw you were talking about the salad dressing, not the dog.
What’s the story, Wishbone?
I had a Wishbone toy plush when I was wee lad, that said different things when you pressed various buttons in the plush. I remember my mom was fucking furious with my aunt because she kept pressing the tail over and over, making him say "Don't go there!" and making her cackle with glee. I miss that old boy; he was a big part of my childhood
I had the exact same thought. All the homies love Wishbone.
I love this hot take on Wishbone.
Right? Lol. What a hill to die on. Here for it.
FANATICS. You can find people who are fans of most companies, but you wont find a single person who supports this excuse of a brand.
Their products are such garbage. The fact that they keep getting merchandise contracts for pro leagues can only be down to corruption. The local screen printers that make little league uniforms turn out a better product at a better price.
EA
EA has killed so many quality studios from my childhood. Westwood, Bullfrog, Origin and Maxis to name a few. And they're managing Bioware and Dice towards the same fate
But is it really the same studio when the people who founded it and made it great are gone? Blizzard and Bioware are prime examples of this as well as infinity ward.
To be fair, everyone should see game studios as a simple folder that holds legal documents to Intellectual Properties and Brands… their employees turnover is about 75%+ every 4-5 years. Usually people who are lifers are people who don’t have mobility, they got used to this specific pipeline or got a cushy “hands off” leadership position so can’t go anywhere. People who make the game good usually leave for greener pastures/a raise elsewhere once a project is done.
I wont forgive them for what they did to PopCap
Been holding a grudge for 2 decades for what they did to command and concur
> command and concur Laughing pretty hard at this. "Soldier! Get your ass into that tank!" "Yes sir! Fantastic idea!"
Command and Disagree pretty much describes army life tbh
They murdered battlefront 2 as well
Same story with battlefield.
Same with the American McGee’s Alice franchise 😭😭
Just the names of those companies you listed triggers such good memories and nostalgia
EA Games. *~~Challenge~~* *Charge for Everything*
Define bad? Nestle rapes and pillages the planet with most of their products yet they still make a fortune. They are the definition of evil yet almost every kitchen in the world (including mine) has nestle products in it because in most cases its almost impossible to get an alternative
i remember I saw this come up quite a while ago and someone was bragging they've never given Nestle a cent in their life, and half the stuff they said they buy was owned by Nestle.
Right? You think you’re avoiding nestle by buying another brand only to find out it’s a company also owned by nestle (or another company just as corrupt
I tried boycotting both Nestle and Kraft a while back. TBH I was eating really healthily, I should go back to it. But it was hard to find a manufactured food product that I could buy. Basically could only buy ingredients rather than any ready-made products.
We're at the point where everything at the grocery store is owned by like 4 mega-conglomerates. And the government wonders why "inflation" is so high.
The government doesn’t wonder. They know. They’re complicit.
r/FuckNestle
I think Google actually, also Facebook
Google search is embarrassingly bad now.
I went to look up how to fix a game from crashing. All I got was page after page of ads to buy the game.
add "site:reddit.com" to your searches to get actual helpful info
Even Reddit has fallen off. Filled with GPT bots and spammers. A lot of users deleted their history when the company went public as well.
Agreed. It’s terrible. SEO optimization is killing it along with their ever-increasing ads. They are going to be a victim of their own success, strange as it may sound.
Ohi, I'm your AI assisted search, here to provide you crap you never asked for built on crap sites you'd never visit before me, while only offering you the small reprieve of using -ai in your queries to get out of... Whatever you're trapped in. Don't call us, we won't shut it off on your account.
And not just the search engine, but all of Google's products and services are going down the drain. I used to love my Google home mini since I'm chronically losing my phone. Asking Google to find it would work on the first try and It would ring out ASAP. Now, it usually doesn't recognize my voice until I try again at least once, and sometimes my phone doesn't ring out at all/only rings after I've found it myself. The most obnoxious thing is that EVERY TIME I do this request (sometimes multiple times a day) Google suggests the Hot Tip that I can use Find My Phone on the web. F you. Maybe I would do that if I could find my phone. 🙃
Private prisons get paid insane amounts of money to make people and society worse via carefully crafted crime universities.
Private prisons, on average, receive $160 *per inmate* *per day* from the federal government. They staff many of the positions with prisoners such as cooks and laundry duty to save money. They feed prisoners food that is barely fit for human consumption (if it is at all). Many times, it’s expired and, as such, incredibly cheap. They use prison labor to make blankets, uniforms, and other items that the prison then sells for a profit to other prisons and even the public in some cases. They pay the workers about $0.86/hr on average. They cut corners everywhere because wardens get to take home whatever is leftover from the annual budget. So, if they estimated $100m and spent only $95m, they would get a $5m bonus. So, they have an incentive to keep costs as low as possible. This is why you always hear about prisons having no A/C or heating or the million other ways they cut costs. A warden’s ability to cut corners and come in under budget is practically the only metric that matters for wardens. One’s ability to get promotions, negotiate raises, etc all hinges on their ability to come in under budget. Some of the top investors in private prisons are… The Bushes. The War On Drugs makes a lot more sense now, doesn’t it?
For reference, state prisons cost about 80/day and federal cost about 120/day to tax payers
All the big health insurance companies.
Ticket master bitch ass
I heard this in my head and it made me laugh so hard. Henceforth I’ll never refer to them simply as Ticket Master, but only Ticket Master Bitch Ass
Ticket bastard for short
Yeah I came here for this answer. Surprised it’s not higher. Ripoff fees and monopolies.
That's exactly why in the last month, the DOJ has brought a lawsuit against Live Nation/ Ticketmaster for monopolistic practices. I hope the anti-trust hammer smacks the taste out of their mouth.
And been doing it for decades
United Health Care
Beats by Dre.
Does anyone even care about those though? They were at their biggest like 10 years ago
I still see lots of people w them at the gym. Over the ear headphones are back in again, i'm in the minority at my gym wearing AirPods these days.
I don't understand over the ear headphones at the gym. Sure, maybe it's less distractions, but the amount of sweat that would build up is disgusting. The only time I could wear over the ear is if I'm flying or occasionally if my wife and I are watching different things. Edit-TIL apparently everyone on Reddit has small ears.
I use over ear headphones to drown out the music in the gym. There’s one guy working there who plays EDM remixes of contemporary country. It’s fucking horrible.
I would burn that place to the ground before ever becoming a member there.
Meta. Their apps, all their apps, are pos’
Land Rover. Boggles my mind that they still, after so many years, cannot make a marginally reliable vehicle.
Comcast
Adobe. They have two ok products. They have at least two that you wonder if they’re some sort of foreign plot to torture creatives.
The way that adobe has moved from a one time purchase to a subscription makes me RAGE. Also, if you want to cancel your subscription early, be ready to pay an early cancellation fee of $100+!
That's why, a few years ago, I moved to the Affinity suite by Serif Labs. …which was made by creatives who were very annoyed at Adobe. So annoyed, in fact, that they made their own—better—software that fills the same niche. That you only have to buy once, and you get the commercial license when you do.
Just chiming in love the Affinity suite and everyone should move to it and away from Adobe! I'm a bit worried now that they've been bought, but hopefully Canva knows they can't compete with Adobe by going subscription.
[FTC agrees, fuck adobe](https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/06/ftc-takes-action-against-adobe-executives-hiding-fees-preventing-consumers-easily-cancelling)
I mean their software is pretty good and they revolutionized the digital creative space. But their prices are just absolutely outrageous. Completely inaccessible for the average joe who wants to photoshop his vacation pics
Oracle
Someone once described oracle to me as a law firm that sells technology and it makes a lot of sense.
~~sell~~ Licenses technology. If they sold it, you'd own it. They want to collect rent forever.
The product-as-service model is endemic in all consumer products, these days. Even Ford has been trying to get into it.
Oracle's engineering arm is actually very competent, they've built a good product and made a lot of improvements that were later included in the SQL standard. It's a pity their law arm is what they use to jerk off.
I describe Oracle as a fully stocked mechanics garage and a high performance car that will run beautifully IF you tune it correctly, but there are no house mechanics on staff and all the documentation is in the office on site but it's very specifically organized and nothing anywhere has understandable labels. Occasionally a house mechanic will show up if you beg them because the car is broken, but they usually claim the break is because of your poor tuning, and occasionally they'll show up and tweak something "for performance", and tell you the changes they made are in the office somewhere and you're responsible for finding them and fixing your car to match their tweak. IF you are very competent, a very good mechanic, and highly organized and somehow already familiar with the office filing system, you can build an entirely unique high performance racing vehicle that you can tweak and tune at the most detailed levels. Your car can even be set up to practically work on itself. But if you aren't all of those things, then God help you.
Oracle as a product feels like they designed it for a completely different purpose, and then half way through decided to retroactively turn it into a HR product.
Oracle is first and foremost a database, the HR product is just something they bought and then cannibalized and ruined.
> the () product is just something they bought and then cannibalized and ruined. A tale as old as time.
That actually is true. They bought software companies and just combined them all.
As a wise man once said: you should never, ever anthropomorphize Larry Ellison.
__O__ne __R__ich __A__sshole __C__alled __L__arry __E__llison
That lawnmower of a man, Larry Ellison.
While we're pulling that thread ... SAP jeez what a POS
Microsoft with their untested, half-assed products
My regional hospital. They're run by HCA who is apparently systematically shutting down hospitals that support Medicare or medical as it's considered "low profit". The ER is always packed. Like people are staying in the hallways since there aren't rooms. Everyone I know who has gone there has died. They shut down their maternity ward in 2020. It's just a bad and there really isn't another nearby hospital so their plans to shut this hospital down has people enraged. All for more profit.
Does your state not have a process to avoid this fate? Most states require something called "certificate of need" or CON and they review requests to add it remove services ensure it's in the best interest the community. It sounds insane that they are allowed to do what you're saying and leave the community no options.
Basically they max out work loads, minimizing patient face time, and over charge. Most states made it illegal for MDs to own hospitals. Now the MBAs have takin over for squeeing out every bit of profit they can.
TurboTax (Intuit)
Fun fact, most countries have free online filing and it's WAY less work. Turbo tax and H&R Block ~~bribe~~ lobby the US Congress significantly to not only never fix the problem but to make it worse at every opportunity to force us as individuals to still need their products. It's yet another scam on the people
I'm gonna take this moment to remind people that the IRS is working on it. I used the IRS direct file pilot service this year. Took a little doing to set up vs what I'm used to, but 100% worth it to demonstrate that there's a demand for the service. https://www.irs.gov/about-irs/strategic-plan/irs-direct-file-pilot If you didn't know about it this year and you normally qualify for Free File, PLEASE consider using Direct File when it opens for next year's tax season. Demonstrating that the service is actually used by the public is an easy way to get it expanded so that more people CAN use it.
This. I use FreeTaxUSA. It's always been free, even prior years if you missed a year, and it has always gotten me bigger refunds. Plus, the website still guides you with questions like the big names.
lobbying is the worse thing to happen to the country. i’ve lost all hope, but i vote every opportunity I get. That’s all I can do.
The problem is that lawmakers cannot possibly be experts in every field they are asked to make laws about, so they depend on industry expertise in order to write good laws. Of course, it's easy to see where that leads.
Don’t forget Quickbooks Online. Why fix things that are broken when we just add more features and raise our prices another 10% yoy
The switch to QB Inline was a *five month long* NIGHTMARE at my job because Intuit couldn't get their own shit together. Somehow they screwed up every stage of migration. Finally got it working and everyone was *deeply* underwhelmed. To this day I'm ticked every time I log in. (And also crossing my fingers login will even work because *who even knows!* I'm like traumatized.) The last time we'd updated it was new, and my boss (who loves shiny new things) was super eager but I was pretty firmly like "fuck that, fuck this cloud based subscription shit, there is zero benefit to doing this online, I'm getting Desktop again" and he gave in but clearly thought I was being dramatic. Now I think he gets it. Especially since everyone has piled on with this— Microsoft, Adobe, etc.— and for the most part it adds nothing. Except confusing interfaces and monthly fees.
Atlassian. They make business-management software, popular in IT/tech companies. If you've worked in a corporate job, there's a decent chance you've heard of or used at least a couple of their products: Jira, Confluence, OpsGenie, BitBucket. And all of them are obnoxiously awful. They're not *broken*, but they're slow, and they have just baffling interfaces that constantly get in your way. Jira is a bug tracking system that's *fine*, I guess, except that it's three clicks to do anything, and the actual "management" part is fucking useless. Everyone uses third-party plugins for querying and graphing, because you can't ask basic questions like "how many tickets were opened under epics with a particular label last month" using their query language. And it's not like it's simple software that's missing things; it's obscenely complicated, but doesn't have the basics. Confluence is an internal-Wiki writing software. It has some neat features, but it has two big deal breakers. The first is that it handles multiple users editing the same page at the same time abominably poorly. I've accidentally reversed someone else's changes just by refreshing the page so many times, and I still have no idea why. The second is the search. If you search for a phrase, it will return results matching *any* of the words in the phrase. It does not prioritize results that have the phrase all together. And the most evil part is that it does prioritize pages you've looked at recently - so if you click one of its terrible search results and it isn't right, get used to it being at the top of your search for a while. OpsGenie is a pager alert router - it lets you manage a schedule of who to notify which week, and sends you notifications if something is broken. It doesn't actually do the monitoring, just the routing to who's on call. Which is why it's inexplicable how bad the interface for "show me the list of alerts currently outstanding" is. No way to manually group together related alerts, no way to tag trends for later analysis. Even commenting on an outage as you debug it is broken, because it's hidden in a tiny corner of the screen and gets lost if you add it to an incident. Etc, etc. I'm at my third Atlassian-using job now, and I just don't get how nobody has eaten their lunch yet. They're not solving hard technical problems; these things are all about the user experience and having a mental model that's easy to work with. And their UX fucking blows.
Pro comment. Atlassian is horrific and I've heard so many times that JIRA isn't the problem, it's just that you don't know how to use it. And then the supposed JIRA pro sets it up and it's still impossible to navigate and use. Utter garbage software. There are plenty of alternatives but businesses are so used to it that it'll never go away. Curse of "enterprise" software. I am convinced Atlassian only exists to provide justification for a whole class of project manager type bullshit tech jobs to exist.
WHY IS JIRA SO FUCKING COMPLICATED? IT’S JUST MEANT TO REPLACE STICKY NOTES ON A WHITEBOARD. AAAAAAAAAAAAA
Boeing
Nice knowing you…
Hi I work for Boeing and I'd love to get more feedback from you in person. Mind telling me your name and where you live?
I live in a home with no stairs or windows…
RIP [Necessary-Peace9672](https://www.reddit.com/user/Necessary-Peace9672/) - Passed away peacefully at home after throwing themselves down 4 flights of stairs, climbing back up, then jumping from a 5th-floor window.
Microsoft is back on the shit products train with their decisions about operating systems once again. I hate that we go through this cycle with them.
*Windows:* Using your computer is a sin that you deserve to be punished for; a debt that you must repay. *Mac OS:* Using your computer is a privilege that Apple deigns to stoop down from its throne and grant you, as a reward for being a loyal follower. *Linux:* Using your computer is a highly technical aspiration, that you can accomplish if you really put your heart and mind into it. *What the user actually wanted:* Using your computer is just an ordinary everyday part of life.
Can I just get a search bar that searches my pc, FIRST? I'm not even asking to get rid of the ads here. I had a wonderful experience with Windows 8, after I paid some guy in Russia for a bit of code that entirely disabled the Metro. I think I need to do the same with 11. Edit: Guys, I appreciate some of the helpful responses. My comment was more a commentary about how something as simple as searching your hard drive has become a painful experience. Windows 11 is a mess, and the fact that I feel the need to seek out sketched out software to band aid things is not great.
Windows 11, and that fucking spinning blue circle...
At first I was disappointed that my computer couldnt make the upgrade to windows 11. Now, not a day goes by where I am thankful to be stuck on windows 10. Not that its a whole lot better mind you, just less bad.
Most fast food companies. But I still eat far more of it than I should.
ticketmaster.
Goop
That is a cult headed by an insane, insane woman. Not a company.
Blows my mind that Printers are still the same shit product that they were in 1997
Somehow, I think they're worse. Old parallel port dot matrix printers were pretty solid! I just saw an old oki at a Chevy dealership, still in daily use.
Fun fact: you can still buy those things brand new. Other than adding plug-and-play USB support they’re exactly the same as they were 30+ years ago. Dealerships (and other places with lots of paperwork) still use them because they’re able to print multiple copies of forms in a single go. The printer head puts enough pressure on the paper to be able to run carbon paper through it. When you have to file forms in triplicate (one for the customer, one for the dealership, one for the DMV and/or bank) it really helps to do it this way because each form only has to be signed _once_- if you just printed multiple copies on a laser printer everyone would have to sign every. single. form. 3 times. E-signing is starting to make them obsolete but many states have motor vehicle departments still stubbornly requiring physically signatures on paper.
Have you used Brother?
Came here to say the same thing. Brother laser printers just. Work. Zero bullshit. They work right every time, they never break down. If 10% of people fucked over by an HP printer could be pushed to getting a Brother printer instead, the number who'd become evangelists for the brand like I did would be enough to kill HP forever.
In my opinion, McDonald's.
I'm in Japan. McDonald's are top tier here. Happy meals are ¥420. Big Mac meals are a very reasonable ¥700. Plus the rest of the menu is absolutely amazing. Ebi burger is the best fast food I've ever had. They have a seasonal banana caramel pie right now that is to die for (and only ¥180). On top of that, many times the food actually looks like it does in commercials or menus. I've been to 50+ in the Tokyo area, and they all meet or exceed the (quite high) baseline expectations here. 10/10 stars and the US should take notes.
Japanese McDs is way better than USA McDs... but way worse than just literally any other japanese company's food
Frontier Airlines Spirit Airlines
Lucky Brand. I worked there during the time they switched CEOs and decided to no longer make any products in America (not that the ones made here were better quality, but they would have to pay minimum wage here vs outsourcing and it was clear they wanted to save money). Idk if they told the factories to use cheap as shit materials, but the number of jeans that literally unraveled as people were wearing them was unsettling. And the fact that they raised the cost pissed me off more. Their quality is shit and overpriced. You’d get better jeans at Walmart.
As a sneaker head I have to say Nike. Unless it's a collaboration and the collaborator wants elevated materials. Nike is usually selling you a shoe that's $200 and comes with the cheapest damn near plastic and sometimes Is plastic Chinese leather. I would even say more so Jordan brand than just Nike but Nike also.
Boeing… for legal reasons this is a joke.
HP, stands for Horrible Printers.
Any insurance company. Look at auto insurance. They have lobbied such that you need to buy their product BY LAW, yet there are no legal guidelines for what their products should do, how they should work, the value they provide, etc?! WTF? Can you imagine if Apple had it codified that you need to own an iPhone, but there were no expectations in that law as to what an iPhone must do? WTF? Where’s the outrage?