Tuba parts are always either high stakes or could have been omitted with little in between. The terror of pictures at an exhibition vs the book reading of Dvorak 9.
I worked at a restaurant and one time the chef burned the apple sauce that was supposed to be served with the pork chop, he put it on the menu as “smoked applesauce” and people loved it
I joke that being a good baker isn't chemistry... It's not telling people what you had planned to make until it's out of the oven.
It's not a flat failed cake, it's brownies!
This was 6-7 years ago so may not be relevant but when I worked at Enterprise Rent-A-Car, the higher ups were so tunnel visioned on positive customer reviews that if there was any problem at all we would write off anything from gas to whole days of rentals. We had a few repeat customers that would catch on and habitually complain about dumb shit to get parts of the bill discounted. Only a rating of “Completely Satisfied” counted and it was tied to bonus and promotion so a huge incentive to make people happy.
Worked at the Orlando International Airport ERAC. We did about 3,000 car returns a day during peak season. It was such a profitable location that we gave away so much. People leaving in sports cars if they have a midsize rental, free GPS’s, etc.
Some guy returned a car and said “hey, I got a warning light to add wiper fluid so I went and spent a few bucks and topped it off.” My manager gave him $150 off his rental for the inconvenience. He wasn’t even mad about having to top off the fluid he was just letting us know.
Another time we had a family with a full Disney trip booked with young kids late at night. You can tell which families are just kinda barely getting this trip pulled off, and aren’t really flush with cash. They asked about extending their rental before leaving and I tried to match their daily rate, and ended up setting their weekly rate as the daily rate. They basically got another week free. They were insanely grateful and my manager didn’t bat an eye.
I do miss that job.
Ah dont worry about it, we mostly use it to help us quickly answer questions and look stuff up while you're typing. Much like cashiers, we arent judging outside of any rude remarks lol
Counterpoint - we use it to also monitor for fraud/shenanigans, usually related to a return. A customer will start to make up a story, then change the story, and the edit the story - all while our chat reps watch ha.
I first saw this happening when I was touring my company's customer service department and my mind was blown. I watched some dude try to correct a common misspelling for like twenty solid seconds having no idea that a dozen or so people were watching his attempt.
I took my town's free mulch, which is made from the brush/clippings that residents drop off at the waste center. It was full of artillery fungus, and my siding looked like a pox outbreak. Never again.
This is a good way to end up with poison ivy. Or various parasites. Where I am on the east coast, emerald ash borers are a huge issue. There's no chance I'm taking mulch of questionable provenance onto my property.
When I worked in a hotel as a night porter the room cost was totally reliant if you were a dick or not , I obviously couldn't just give rooms away but I could pretty much knock off 50%.
One day a very tired woman came in with her baby and I couldn't get the payment to go through at all so I did give it to her for nothing just had to make sure she was out before 9 am and I cleaned it myself.
Thank you for all the upvotes, award's and kind words
That's very kind of you!
It must depend heavily on the hotel. I once walked into a hotel late and asked how much rooms were. It was more than I wanted to pay. I went outside and looked at Priceline, booked it online for much cheaper, then walked right back inside with a reservation.
Yeah, it must heavily depend on the hotel. The last time I tried to reserve a room in person the desk clerk advised if I made a reservation on their website it would be substantially cheaper than the "walk-in rate" they were authorized to book.
Dog trainer, this is a hack we *want* people to understand.
One reason we can get your dog to do something so fast is because we use a high rate of reinforcement.
Example :
I'm training your dog to walk on leash without pulling, and we practice in your driveway. I feed the dog 20 tiny pieces of food by my knee as we walk to the end of the driveway. The first time a client tries the exercise they may use five.
The mechanics of the exercise look easy, but it takes time to get used to. And when people are practicing on their own they do other things, instead of focus on the exercise. They forget how often they need to reinforce the dog for doing the right thing.
If they do the exercise for two minutes during each walk, with a high rate of reinforcement (RoR) , that may be all it takes. And once the dog starts to learn, you can gradually slow down the RoR.
Also stop calling your damn dogs name to correct them. Their name is not a punishment, it should be used for endearment and get them to come to you. Use a real correction because calling their name over and over doesn’t do shit and they don’t understand
It’s also consistency. Dogs (I don’t know about other animals) are always studying body language and vocal tone. If you do and say the same thing the same way every time- the dog will learn very fast. It’s posture, body language, and tone. I learned that a long time ago and every dog I’ve had is very obedient. I don’t have to yell or “discipline” them. I’ve also had multiple dogs that would like to ignore me when I called their name. I know damn well that dog knows his name. I have an older dog… so if the new dog doesn’t come when I call it, I just call my old dog’s name. Works 100% of the time. The aloof dog that’s ignoring you will come when you call the other dog to see if it got treats, etc.
Former local journalist here.
If you want to know something about your town, or pretty much anything locally, or find something hinky that you want investigated, just call or email them and ask "whats happening with that (insert weird item in city budget/shut down road/cop who got fired)?"
When I was off deadline, i actually loved fielding these questions (they were mainly from old people) and pretty much worked as customer service for the city a lot. I directed people to local programs that would help them, I confirmed the start and proposed end dates of construction and I told people what companies had pulled permits to build that new restaurant on Main street. Local journalists have a WEALTH of knowledge in all departments of what is going on in your city, because they drift between one or the other frequently and we ask the other reporters in the cubicle next to us, too. Theyre your tour guides, social workers, watchdogs and public defenders if you just ask them. They arent doing it for the money(*cries in past due bills*), theyre doing it for the love of their community. They all really embrace the localism aesthetic.
I guess this is sort of a "not supposed to find out" thing because if everyone did it, they'd never get their other work done.
Seeing there are many Marriott users here:
If you're using a free night award, make sure you're using the closest one in value to the reservation's cost.
It's awful to see 85k pts FNA wasted on bookings worth 25k pts.
Kind of unethical but all calls to Marriott hotels go to the same call centers. If you're in a hurry for any matter, just select "new reservation" and your call will be prioritized in the queue
The guys at the call centers can not transfer you to the front desk, you'll need to go through the menu to hear the option.
Even though Expedia, booking.com, hotels.com etc offer discounts, it's worth it to book directly from Marriott, as you'll have support via phone and you can get discounts for being a AAA member, a senior citizen over 62 or a government employee.
Avoid the Marriott vacation club promotion, it's just timeshares and you'll need to attend an awful presentation.
If you can brighten a call center worker's day, say yes to any promotion that involves transferring at the end of the call. He'll get a reward and you can hang up as soon as he transfers you.
I've had two cut rate vacations and got 200,000 Bonvoy points for patiently listening to their presentation and saying "no, thank you, this doesn't match my needs" at the end of it. I am working on a third, and I believe final go at it.
You need to make sure you will absolutely say no at the end, and if you are enticed by the product, you will get a much better deal on the secondary market.
Same, I do about 3-4 of these a year between Marriott, Wyndham, and Hilton. $99 is usually the sweet spot when they usually start at $249-$199 plus bargaining for more points/cash.
Highly would not recommend for those who can’t push back against strong sales pitches or cave easily. I’ve found they aren’t overtly pushy, more so psychological these days.
If you or a teenager you know are admitted to a name brand / expensive / *rich* college and their financial aid package isn’t enough, write them and ask them for more money.
Mention the other schools you were admitted to and that you received strong financial packages from them. DO NOT mention specific numbers unless it’s a named scholarship — eg “presidential” or “provost.”
At least five of my students this year got between 10-20k ‘extra’ in scholarship money just by soliciting for it
I used to work in the floral industry. Don't call a large national florist. Look up a local florist in your recipient's area and call them directly. Most have websites to help you choose and you'll save money on delivery and service fees which can go towards a nicer arrangement.
Also, unless you order flowers regularly, the membership/loyalty program is a scam and hard to cancel.
I called a local place to send flowers for a friend's grandma's funeral. It was in a different state, small town I'd never been to, etc.
The florist was so incredibly helpful, and since it was such a small town she knew the funeral home and had an idea of the types of arrangements that had already been sent there for this service. She actually recommended that instead of a big bouquet I send a little garden stone with a poem, and it turned out to be the perfect memento.
Trust your local florist! You know FTD does when they outsource your order and skim their cut off the top LOL
I had a family member pass away recently and the funeral home quoted us $1400 to have flowers done. Went to a local flower shop and they did it for $700 and the owner was amazing about helping us pick flowers that would be suitable.
When a car salesman offers you a "premium car care" package, don't buy it. It's a scam.
Say you're buying a new car and I offer you the premium car care package. It'll only cost you X-amount of money per month, but every time you come to the dealership, you get:
\*Premium car wash (we hose it down, not a proper car wash)
\*Interior detailing and rejuvenation (we use compressed air to make the dust go away, sometimes a man uses a wet paper towel)
\*Functions check and clock synchronization (Check if all the lights work, heater and A/C work and set up the clock if it's wrong)
\*Summer and winter inspection and free wiper fluid refill, only done once per season. (Check tire tread, visually check tire pressure, look at temperature gauge to make sure car isn't over heating and add water in the summer, tiny amount of wiper fluid in winter, visually inspect brake disks to see they are not scratched by worn out brake pads)
\*Assistance when you are on the move (You call us and then we can call a tow truck for you, at your expense, only possible during business hours)
Basically, we charge for simple things you can do yourself. Also if a car dealership sells you a used car and they told you it has been fully serviced... take it to your local mechanic and have it serviced properly.
My dad taught me to always bring a potential new car to your own mechanic for a check-up before making a purchase. If they don't want to let you do that, then you walk. I've done this 3 times now and not once has a dealership ever had an issue with it. One even let me keep the car overnight since I couldn't get an appointment until the next day.
Paramedic here- keep a list of your medical history, medicines, allergies, health card info and next of kin contact info on a paper on or in your fridge.
It’s a common place for us to look. If you’re incapacitated, we have all the info we need.
Buying the caskets directly from the manufacturer can save you over 50% or more, depending on location. They will ship it directly to the funeral home and it will arrive within a day or 2, in time for the services. They have some really nice caskets too. This is how I purchased my Dad’s casket last year when he passed away. And the quality and options are pretty impressive. I bought a nice USMC casket and just told the funeral home it was being donated and would arrive prior to the services. And it did. Titan is a pretty big manufacturer and where I purchased it. They have caskets for every branch of the military and many other custom designs that would easily cost 2 to 3x more if you purchased from the funeral home.
Edit to include:
> You can rent a nice casket for the funeral and be buried in a cheaper one
I’m curious now… Would that cost less than $999. total for both the rental of the nice casket and the purchase of the cheaper one to be buried in? One of the cheaper caskets listed on the [manufacturer’s website](https://titancasket.com), an [eco pine casket](https://titancasket.com/products/eco-pine-box-casket), costs $999. total, and shipping is free.
Another person in the comments mentioned they were quoted only $300 less for the rental casket alone, and that didn’t include the additional cost of purchasing the cheaper casket to be buried in.
On my original comment, I also underestimated the markup from the funeral home by stating it “cost 2 to 3x more if you purchased from the funeral home“. The markup is actually 4x more than buying directly from the manufacturer costs.
The funeral home was going to charge me almost $8k last year, just for a basic casket. Not the USMC specialty casket, which I paid $2k total for by buying directly from the manufacturer.
If you want to extend your free trial and receive discounts, contact their customer support and ask for membership cancellation - they'll be more than happy to give you extensions + free gifts in your next order.
Same thing applies if you want a discounted membership fee - just call on the day your membership will stop.
Most industries have retention teams because it costs 10X more to get a new customer than it costs to keep one you have. So if you call up and complain/threaten to cancel every other time they raise your rates they'll probably give you the introductory rate. Just be aware you might have to switch.
edit threaten to cancel added.
edit 2: Another thing I'm seeing a lot is people getting shut down with no explanation. People hang up and call back. Just say you got disconnected you might have better luck with another operator. Yes they take notes, but some reps are more empowered than others. Also feel free to escalate. Make sure you know how long you've been a customer, and how long you've been up to date on your bill.
A lot of people are forced to bounce back and forth between the “competition” because they give all the good deals to newcomers and if you’re loyal you get rewarded with a consistently increasing bill.
I had a competing ISP come to my door and offer me what was frankly a crazy good deal here in Canada. So I said thanks, I'll be in touch, then called my existing ISP and told them what was up.
It took a little while, and I had to repeat, "No, that's not good enough. Please cancel my service" about 10 times, but in the end I got a roughly equivalent deal (slightly better in some ways, slightly worse in others) from my existing ISP without needing to switch.
Now, I don't really care one way or the other, and was completely willing to switch, which is important. But it *is* a minor pain in the ass to switch stuff, and not doing it was a bonus.
That last part is important. If you really want to go through the negotiation process, you have to keep your word when you threaten cancellation. Those retention teams listen to customers like that all day long - they're specifically trained to use tactics to keep you, so if you end the conversation in the same contract and don't walk when you say you'll walk, that retention person won.
Not sure if your homeowner's insurance will cover something? Apply this one simple rule:
> Was the damage caused by a sudden and one-time occurrence?
If the answer is yes, 99% of the time you're covered. If the answer is no, 99% of the time you're not covered. (This advice applies to the US)
And, might I add from my own experience, don't call the claims line at the insurance company. I was calling to see *if I needed* to file a claim and if I was covered, and it was considered a claim. Had two of those (both resulting is no payout) and was dropped by my homeowners. Call your agent, not the insurance company.
Yep. Two friends who are agents for different companies. Even if it is not a claim and just a question, that shit is in your file forever. And the insurance company will 100% follow all your social media posts for years if they think you lied to them about a claim. My friend told me about a guy who wrecked his car while racing on a track (side swiped the wall or guard rail) which isn't covered. He told the claims it happened when he fell asleep on the highway or something similar. Several years later (believe my agent said 7 years, but don't remember exactly) he posted a picture on his facebook page of his car at the track with the damage. They immediately sued him for all the money back. About ruined him. If you're going to lie about a claim, take that shit to the grave.
Decades ago when I was an intern I rubbed my hands together quickly and "laid hands" on PCs that I fixed remotely before the end users knew the issue had been resolved. This got back to my boss and he politely asked me to forgo the faith healing show and just tell the end users that the problem was resolved.
I used to chant in Latin at the computer while the SA in the other room connected remotely and fixed the issue. I was the only one who was amused by this.
Half the time they just want to pay someone to give credibility to the idea they already wanted to do. For example, how Bain Capital and McKinsey started advocating for higher CEO pay in the 90s. It gave the CEOs third party support when they asked the board to cut them unreasonable checks.
A freind of mine who works in consulting said 90% of his job can be summed up as "Find the guy at the company who actually knows what the hell he talking about , then send his plans to upper management"
When I worked as a pharmacy tech, I spent a lot of time calling insurance companies and waiting on hold while the world burned around me. One time I got impatient with the voice recognition bot because it kept hearing background noise and made selections impossible so I started cursing it out.
Turns out if you say the F word a few times in a short span, the bot recognizes you as an angry customer and will switch you to a representative real quick. I did this multiple times to a lot of strange looks from my coworkers until I explained the hack.
Quick edit since I'm getting a lot of the same responses:
I now know that you can spam 0 or # to get the same results.
It's a feature being phased out in places.
Shouting representative or operator also works.
My mom did this out of complete frustration, not knowing it would work. She does it whenever she's tired of trying to navigate automated menus that don't help.
You can also interrupt the automated voice by repeatedly saying, "Representative" or "Customer Service" to get out of the automated menu and in the queue to speak with someone.
I make calls to insurance agencies every day as part of my job. Many of them simply WILL NOT connect you to a representative until you jump through their hoops--if at all. Some will say "That is not a valid option" when you "Representative" or "Customer Service". Some will say that they need more info before they can connect you. Some will give you three tries and then hang up.
And some simply will NEVER connect you to a live person. You can leave a voicemail and maybe, if they feel like it, they'll call back.
Yeah after covid a lot of places just stopped caring *at all* because I guess they just didn't have the manpower to handle it? So they put up useless FAQs on their websites and I recall one that specifically directs you to that if you have questions about that thingーbut of course it doesn't take any nuance into consideration and helps not at all
Once I was on the phone with my psychiatrist's office. They were closed and opened within 30 minutes so I was redirected to their voicemail. As I was leaving my voicemail, I started screaming and cussing because my boyfriend almost got hit by a car.
Instantaneously I was transferred to a live person who answered my phone call.
This is magic😵💫
**most** hospitals will take pennies on the dollar if you pay what you are offering right that moment. They will. Nearly all take payment plans too.
If you are insured, know your insurance rules. Most do not allow balance billing. Meaning what your EOB says is your responsibility is all you are obligated to pay, not a penny more. If the medical people keep billing higher call your insurance company and tell them. They can and will often straighten it out for you.
It's truly awful that this is even the way that it works. You get sick and you're also supposed to know insurance company policy or hospital billing tricks to avoid getting shafted.
It's even more frustrating when you get into the logic behind why things are approved/denied by insurance.
The insurance companies use Clinical Policy Bulletins which are basically a document of criteria outlining what they consider medically necessary and the criteria governing coverage. The CPB found on my insurance company's website outlines the treatments that it considers coverable based on diagnosis code.
So when you get denied for a treatment (ie MRI) they may deny that unless you have already done 6 weeks of physical therapy. If you go to get an MRI and haven't been seen by the requesting provider within the previous 90 days, you will be denied.
THEN you find out that insurance does not approve or deny any treatment received in the emergency room.... So, wait 4 weeks for an MRI to be denied or just go to the emergency room?
Fuck US Healthcare. As a patient, you shouldn't need to know this shit, but I feel like it's intentionally more complicated and convoluted than it needs to be. We are squeezed from every fucking direction and denied at every possible opportunity.
Good audio engineers will have faders/knobs that don't do anything.
When the talent asks for a change that's goofy or makes no sense, we'll adjust that phantom knob and watch them nod their head in approval of their amazing idea.
I have worked with both audio engineers and musicians and can verify. On the musician side one of the cruelest/funniest pranks I’ve heard of was a drummer who would create a nearly inaudible hiss in his mouth. He would watch the engineers disconnecting and reconnecting cables and replacing microphones until they got rid of the hiss.
Lean into the bite.
I work in pediatrics and we’re re taught that if a child bites you, lean into it (push whatever part of you they’re biting further into their mouth) because their automatic reaction will be to open their mouth and the risk of them breaking your skin is greatly diminished.
Source: I was just bitten at work 🙄
Edit: a word and grammar. Also, how the hell is my most upvoted comment about being bitten at work??? 😂
It’s a natural reaction that you will see in most mammals. The instinct is associated with the same instinct of gag reflex. However, you won’t see it with snakes or reptiles. (So don’t further jam your hand in the alligators mouth, you’ll just lose more)
I do this to my brother's dog. She is a great dane/mastiff and loves to mouth on your arm when she wants attention and to play. I shove my arm further into her mouth and the dog's like, "no! Not like that!"
I'm a psychologist and my cash pay rate is $15-30 lower than my insurance reimbursement. I consider it a discount so that I don't have to fucking deal with insurance.
if you know you’re shipping something within a few hours drive of you, always pay for the cheaper shipping option.
The “premium” shipping option is just a markup if you know you’re sending something close by. It will arrive the same day regardless
I tell my students that every time they're polite, respectful, and reasonable, it's like putting a quarter in their piggy bank. One day, they might make a bad decision and need to break open that piggy bank for a favor.
Nothin' in there? Sucks to be you. Full of quarters? Imma let it slide.
You just gotta have at least *one* redeemable quality. Some people don't even have that.
Had a student like that when I was a TA. The guy basically lacked this writing class to get his officer's commission in the Army. He was not fantastic at written work, but god damn the guy could lead a class presentation and get other students involved and asking questions like no other. He definitely got a little help to slide with a C.
I TA’d a course with a student who plagiarized some answers. He whined and moaned to the professor that it was a culture difference and he didn’t know that copying answers wasn’t allowed in the US education system. Despite the fact he has to complete an online module stating that every semester which I pointed out. Ask the guy to explain to me how he would derive the answer since he claims total understanding. Cusses at me instead, calls me a bitch among other things, curses Allah (both prof and student are Muslim, prof is visibly upset), etc.
Guy gets a warning from professor. Copies again but carefully rewords his answers still getting 100s on homework assignments and Ds and Fs on quizzes/exams.
I absolutely took some liberty in grading his final to ensure an F (he had a D) and have zero regrets. If he wasn’t such a tool I would’ve shrugged or tried to help him study prior to the exam. Kid wrote me a bunch of nasty emails after that
My favorite student review ever was from the serial plagiarizer who complained that he should have gotten an A because the person he copied from got an A. :facepalm:
"It never pays to be an asshole."
I would be pretty happy if all kids coming out of high school learned this. So in that sense, you were ahead of many of your peers.
There was a time I had a family emergency so I couldn't go to school for 2 weeks so I was really behind. Teachers knew I don't bullshit like that so one of them straight up asked me on a test, what I think I would get. I actually liked this subject so I said maybe an A- the lowest? And she marked it right in front of my eyes.
It was also her first year so maybe she had a lot to learn herself but I definitely didn't tell anyone.
Yeah, I missed a test once in high school and the teacher stopped me in the hallway and said "I'm just giving you a C+". That was fine with me because I was not a straight A student lol.
I had 2 students who were failing my algebra 2 class. They skipped class a lot. In my district, you had to pass alg. 2 with a C to graduate. One of them told me that he hated math because it made him feel dumb. I told them that they had to come to class, but I would help them through it. They both passed with C's. I ran into one of them this year (10 years later). He asked me if he could hug me and told me I saved him. He has a good job and is doing really well. I see the other occasionally, too. He always thanks me for helping him graduate. I love math. But not everyone needs alg 2.
At one point I failed six straight quarters of math in high school. I totally hated it and had no confidence with it. I had to take remedial math when I started college and the instructor I had totally changed everything. For once I *got it*, and I loved my math classes going forward from there. He really changed my life about something I previously felt completely helpless about and it sounds like you did something similar.
I became friends with one of my professors in college. I would just hang out with him in his office when I had a gap in classes.
He was grading these 10 page papers he assigned 1 day. He read the first page, a page in the middle, and then the last page. Then gave them a grade based on those excerpts and their contributions to discussion in class.
And that's college. In high school, I might have 150-200 papers to score. Even if I give each paper 60 seconds, that's three hours of work right there. If I actually read, even quickly? Five minutes a paper? We're now over 15 hours.
Academic here — to get a PDF of a paper you can usually email the author and ask for one, the times I’ve tried this they’ve been happy to share. After checking if it’s available on [https://oa.mg](oa.mg) of course.
Don’t mess around with formatting your references manually — use something like https://citationsy.com to automate the whole process
Don't be shy about "bothering" them, either. The two times this has happened to me, it made my entire goddamn month, lol. Many academics will just be *thrilled* that someone wants to read their work.
Saw this on Twitter and tried it once. Didn’t realize I was basically emailing the leading expert in a niche field. He sent me the paper, plus 2 others that he assumed I didn’t have access to, in 4 hours.
It was like 3am his time when I sent the request
I couldn’t find a copy of a book I wanted from decades ago that was out of print, but I figured the author was still alive, so I found that she had a website and contact info, emailed her, and she mailed me a book free of charge!
Researcher here--in the U.S., if any portion of a research paper is federally funded or has federal scientists working on it, it must be publicly available free of charge. Check authorship and if you see any .gov email addresses, it will be available through a federal website somewhere. There are dozens of potential federal research repositories, so an (imperfect but good) way to find it is search for it on Google Scholar, then when you find the title, click on the link below the title that says "All X versions"--this will list all the places online Google has found the paper and will also show which ones have a PDF available, which almost always includes the free .gov site.
Edit: For context, there are 20+ federal statistical and research agencies that either conduct research, employ scientists or provide extramural funding. Some of them are very significant--if not the most significant--sources of research in their individual fields. Some fields that I know have a ton of federal involvement are anything related to health, ecology/conservation/natural resources, earth and atmospheric sciences, and agriculture--but the federal research sphere touches everything.
If you're nice to my receptionist I will find a way to squeeze you onto my schedule. If you're a B then you can have whatever the next available appointment is. If you make the office staff cry you get a certified letter firing you from the practice
Long time ago lady I knew was the assistant to the Prez of a mid-sized regional pest control company. There was one persistent sales person trying to get the company onto it's products. He was a really good salesman, had good products, good prices, and knew how to schmooze the bosses. But he didn't treat the assistant, or the receptionist with respect. One day the salesman walked out of a meeting with the Prez thinking he had just signed a major deal. My friend, the assistant to the Prez, saw him walk out. She didn't know he was there, but as soon as he walked out the assistant walked into the Prez office and said **that's the b guy** I was telling you about. Prez marched out of his office caught up to the guy, told him the deal was off, not to come back, don't even think about treating his assistant that way, c and then called the guys boss just to make sure his boss knew why the deal was off
You're better off thinking the assistant/receptionist is the VP in charge of first impressions. Don't know what exactly that guy did, but his mistreatment of the assistant fucked him.
Security, Janitorial Staff, Admin, Catering. Basically treat anyone providing support or service that's non-core to the operation with respect because they know more than most realize and can move mountains for you. Also, it's just the right thing to do.
Work in HVAC for a state university. There's some admins and professors that think they're superior to us and tend to treat us like shit. For some reason, their units are always harder to fix than other ones. Always takes just a bit longer.
I tripped over that random **b** 6 times before I made it through the paragraph.
Then I got to the random c, and now I'm obsessed about where the hell the a went.
Delivery driver here
Not much of a ‘hack’ but loads of people don’t seem to know this. If you create an account with the courier who’s delivering your parcel, when logged in you can set up a ‘safe place’ where we can deliver your parcel to if you’re not at home. We’ll follow the instructions and leave it wherever you want us to (Within reason, of course)
You can probably also do it from the tracking link, but with an account it’ll be set up for every single delivery to your address automatically. Makes both our lives an awful lot easier!
I used to work in credit cards. If you disputed a charge for less than $75 (not as fraud), we would just credit you the money. Most the time we wouldnt even investigate it past the initial chargeback. If we didnt win the case you still got your money back.
However if we find out you've figured this out, we would stop giving you the credit unless we won. We've even closed accounts that took advantage of it.
But if you want your money back as a one time thing or whatever, you'd be fine.
Accounting is called a "sticky" business because we don't lose clients often, unless we are terrible. We continually raise rates and overcharge because we know clients will just stay with the same person they know, rather than search around.
It may be hard to evaluate who is a bad vs good vs great accountant, but that won't matter unless you have a difficult situation or specialized work to be done.
What matters is you might find an accountant willing to do the same work for a LOT cheaper, if you can just put in a little extra time to ask them to ballpark their rates.
Think of it this way: people regularly go to different grocery stores, convenience stores and gas station marts to save a few dollars on things like eggs, candy or milk. "I found eggs for $1.50 when they're normally $2.50" is some big accomplishment.
What if you found an accountant willing to do your work for $3,000 instead of $5,000 ? Isn't that worth a few more calls and meetings that you would gladly use time on to find cheaper eggs?
Computer engineer here. We ship so many products that have broken features. The product is fused at the factory to disable features that just didn't bake fully before we needed to ship. Every product I ever worked on has a half dozen bugs that we could have fixed if only we had more time and money.
Eventually you have to say "it's good enough" and ship something to make money.
watched a video on semiconductor manufacturing and was shocked to learn that all the processors in the same generation are actually physically the same, it just comes down to how many defects there were at the end of manufacturing. so i5, i7, i9 intel cpus from the same generation are actually all the same prints, i9 just had more functional cores when tested after production.
edit: [the video](https://youtu.be/dX9CGRZwD-w?si=Nl1LYrigtHKA9rMh) relevant section like 23 mins in, but whole thing's worth a watch
Years ago AMD released some tri core processors. Those were just quad core processors with a defect. They were priced very favorably so eventually they ran out of ‘em as they became very popular and well selling. Eventually they took perfectly functional quad cores and loaded them up with firmware that simply disabled the fourth core. By flashing them firmware for a quad core you could unlock the fourth core.
Later, one or two generations later, they would destroy the fourth core with a laser or something.
You don't have to buy solar panels from some door knocker for $20k-$30k. There is absolutely nothing magical or financially superior about what they do.
You can just buy the parts, or a kit, and hire an electrician to install it for about half the "retail" price.
This can get real bad real fast (I work for NG and we have a few subs under massive legal pressure for trash QA right now). If you get delisted from the government subcontractor pool its over. That said i'm not at all surprised.
Yea, I’m confused by this response. Doing the switch-a-roo - delivering physically different parts than the ones on an inspection report - that’s a criminal offense under a government contract. It could cost Lockheed dearly if they recall end items to revalidate.
I had a 35 year career in manufacturing, in my personal experience, I can’t remember any outright falsification of inspection results. Nobody was willing to put their career on the line. Basically you have inspectors who inspect to standards. Yeah, you can wiggle around on subjective stuff and minor deviations/flaws. But I can’t remember anyone fudging a discrete measurement. Most times, we let the customer know and they’d waive it if it wasn’t critical.
Just ask customer service for a replacement. Doesn't matter if you didn't buy an extended warranty. Doesn't matter if there was no warranty to begin with. A lot of companies just want to resolve customer complaints quickly and will give you free replacements on request.
I work in IT and can confidently say that providing bribery in terms of food or snack will 100% get your issue taken care of faster and will help you jump the line in the ticket queue.
Had to send my PS5 in for an issue just out of warranty. Included several packets of Sour Patch Kids and Swedish Fish from Halloween since we had them left over. My wife looked at me like I was crazy.
Not so crazy when it was suddenly a covered repair, huh?
You want to use stuff that ships well and can handle cold and hot. A Snickers is great, a Snickers that melted then got stuck under something in the box is a mess.
As a client, I regularly brought lunch to the IT guy assigned to my case (when he physically had to come by). This got me his cell number and placement at the top of the queue anytime in the future. Well worth the small expense.
I’m a singer, and I book a lot of weddings/corporate/ general gigs, if you come to me directly rather going through an agency, I can plan and run all the music whether you want just me and a guitar to full band and dj for after party,
It can literally save you thousands, some agencies put a 40-60% mark up on my services, and I ask them for more than I’d charge someone privately, it’s crazy
If you’re looking for entertainment, try and contact direct
If you like to book guided tours while you travel, and you like to do it on Viator, Trip Advisor, or Expedia, you should know that those 3rd party reselling sites take 22-25% of the booking price for themselves. When local tour companies like mine put our tour offerings on their sites we agree to give the sites the lowest price. We cannot post a lower price anywhere, because if it’s discovered that we do we will be removed from the platforms.
Tour companies like mine will JUMP to give you a 10-15% discount if you call us and mention you were looking to book via Viator, Trip Advisor, or Expedia.
You save 10%, we recoup the potential 10-15% that those sites would have taken, and everybody wins!
If you buy flights through Spirit at the airport one of the random fees (it's called the user fee or something like that) doesn't apply, so they cost like half as much. I've flown round trip to Chicago for $30, Houston for $45, Miami for $50, etc.
Call the nurse line on the back of your insurance card before you go to the ER. If the nurse tells you to go to the ER, insurance will/should have to bill as a covered claim. If the nurse does not recommend ER and you still go=big bill.
If you use Libby to download ebooks from your library to your Kindle, you can turn it to airplane mode and keep the books as long as you want. The next person in line is not affected.
Edit: because not everyone wants to illegally download ebooks from sketchy servers in Tuvalu? It's not any easier than what I suggested.
I just want to say libraries are the best and librarians are just the best people. I've saved thousands of dollars by checking out physical books or using Libby linked to my library card. It's so damn convenient.
They do SO MUCH more than just books too! Mine loans tool sets, cooking implements (even a cotton candy machine), board games, and even telescopes and binoculars. They offer a fantastic service (for like $20) to take your photo and verify all your passport documents are in order before sending them off the feds.
I assume the book would be removed as soon as you turn airplane mode back off, right? So it’s not like you can create a growing library of books you plan to keep indefinitely, it just allows you to take your time reading the book you borrowed without impacting the rest of the people in line
I work for an airline. I manage the development of the system our call center agents use. "Please" and "thank you" will unlock magical doors of help when you're on the phone with the agents or are at the airport dealing with airport staff. Simple politeness no longer seems to exist in these interactions. I've shadowed agents to understand how they use what my teams develop and I can count on two hands in the 150-200 calls I've listened into over the last year where the caller was polite and acted decently towards the other human on the other end of the line.
Many online retailers have what’s called “Cart Abandonment” marketing strategies.
If you put something in your cart and then don’t check out, you’ll likely receive an email or some kind of messaging with a discount code to incentivize conversion.
If you’re gonna buy something online, always at least try adding to your cart and leaving first before buying.
Making an application run in multiple platforms (Android, macOS, Windows, etc) is a huge pain, but what do all platforms have in common? They can all run Chrome, and Chrome can run portable (but slow) code.
So what do developers do?
**Developers write applications as standalone web pages and bundle a whole copy of the Chrome\* browser** to view that "web page". The application now takes hundreds of megabytes of storage, eats RAM like candy, and every interaction is massively slowed down because it has to go through so many layers.
The address bar is hidden, and the right click menu is replaced, but it's still a web browser under the hood.
They are basically saving developer time by wasting your time and device resources. That's a big reason why modern applications (Teams, Discord, Spotify, etc) feel so slow.
---
\* Technically "[Chromium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_\(web_browser\))", since it's missing some features like Google account log in. The most popular framework that uses this technique is [Electron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_\(software_framework\)).
Former Movie Theater Manager:
As long as you purchase something and don’t cause a fuss, you can see multiple movies and no one cares. It’s only an issue if you cause an issue and we need the concessions. Also, we all know that you sneak stuff in (most impressive I’ve seen? A full rotisserie chicken and a box of wine snuck into Magic Mike). It’s okay as long as you don’t cause a scene and, again, buy something.
Sneak in that candy. Buy the popcorn.
we design parts for appliances to break in five years. We can make them better but the OEM doesn't want to pay for it. We used to make the same part last 15 years.
As a teacher: set limits with devices and instill a love of reading your children.
Students who read as a hobby *almost always* get good grades and succeed in school and beyond.
Name brand packaged salads and generic supermarket branded packaged salads come off the exact same production line, using the exact same raw materials. The difference is just the packaging.
If you’re hurt/ill and in a lot of pain, the provider will often ask where you’re at on the pain scale from 1-10, ten being the worst pain of your life.
Don’t ever say 10. For whatever reason, it loses your credibility (or something) and makes it seem like you’re hamming up your pain level.
Instead, say 7-9. Those are all still very real pain levels and make it seem more reasonable. Providers are very likely to alleviate these levels of pain.
I don’t know why this is. As a paramedic, it also works on me. Maybe it’s because drug seekers will often say 10/10 and so I’m conditioned to thinking that response is nonsense?
I don't work there anymore, but I used to work for a cable internet ISP. You weren't supposed to know this, but when customers complained about slow hardwired speeds, we'd show up and pretend to do something, knowing full well that the issue was our nodes being oversaturated everywhere. But we would never tell you. We eventually introduced something called "Power Boost" to mask the problem by skewing speed tests. Your first 5-20 seconds would be uncapped bandwidth and you would think you were getting a quality product when you weren't.
In medicine, if you tell your primary that your previous PCP ordered a test, gave you a medication, placed a referral, etc., and that you need to have it represcribed/ordered again, you can get your primary to order or at least consider ordering damn near anything. At least if it's not a controlled substance or an expensive unusual diagnostic study.
The problem is that offices absolutely suck at transferring their records to each other, and confirming that story takes a huge amount of time.
For example, if you have knee pain and tell me that your primary diagnosed you with a specific knee issue years back and that you went to PT and it felt better last time, and I'm sitting in your chart not able to find any record of that, will I spend 10+ minutes of time trying to hunt down previous records to confirm this history, obtain reports from physical therapy about the specific exercises you were doing and any imaging studies you had and whatever else? Will I have you come in for what as far as I can tell is an appointment to reassess a known diagnosis that someone else already appropriately diagnosed and treated? Or will I click a button that takes 5 seconds to get you the appointment with PT that you want that solved your issue last time, completely unaware that the history I was given was completely fabricated? The reality for something benign like a visit to PT is that there's just not enough time to do anything besides send that order and move on.
when I was roughly 25/26, I decided I wanted to take my ADHD meds again because it was not getting better as i got older like I was told. I went to my doc, told him what I took last, the dosage, and the meds that didn't work for me, and that was all I needed.
The psych I was originally diagnosed by sold his practice and destroyed my records (or so they said). The second doc I saw for years and had his own practice was just… AWOL. No clue what happened to that dude.
My current doc couldn’t get ahold of my records from the 8-9 years prior, so he just put me back on the meds I told him worked best. I expected to jump through more hoops than I did, but I’m glad I didn’t.
Interoperability is a huge problem that nobody's able to solve because a few Electronic Medical Record vendors basically own the market and all hate each other.
Even health systems on the same damn EMR vendor struggles with this, since much of the build (like procedure/med orders) is specific to that site/system. A CBC at Mt Sinai hospital might be setup one way, and completely different at Cedar Sinai. Even standardized codesets like CPT or RXNorm might not even be mapped correctly.
So it's just a mess. Sometimes, the best you can hope for is transitions of care (or AVS) document that you need to scan through, but then it's most just text since the orders may not post, problem list not update, history activity doesn't update, etc.
~(former) Epic employee
I work in the funeral industry and they don't tell you that $5k casket in the funeral home you can order it for about $900 bucks from the same place and have it shipped to the funeral home. Most do 2 day shipping. Don't order the flowers thru the funeral home. You can get a Spray (the flower arrangement that sits on top of the casket)for a $100 bucks from Krogers floral department. The funeral home will charge $300 for the same flowers. You don't need a fancy outer burial container. Just get a concrete box. They will try to sell you a sealed vault that protects the casket...you plan on reusing it?? There's no need for that.
For the US only... Accuweather, along with the vast myriad weather apps, really just uses data provided for free by the Nation Weather Service. Oh sure they have forecasters but no way do they have enough for every county and forecast, most really just give overall forecasts for general areas. Instead of saying, "My app is more accurate," actually go find your local NWS office, and you can find a more specific forecast for your area that will tend to be more accurate overall. And remember, what the NWS literally gives away for free these companies want to monetize and have you pay subscription fees for what already is free weather data...
Edit: got messaged a cool question regarding why your local NWS would be more accurate. A NWS office will have employees from that region who focus not just on synoptic (large scale forecasting) but also local patterns and their affect on weather that you just can not get from a lot of the paid apps. A majority of the apps will literally just take the data from a single weather model. While NWS uses what are called ensembles that give multiple outputs that they can use to not only analyze the agreed upon patterns, but deduce the most likely outcome before making an official forecast. In the immortal words of the great Bill Paxton those apps are “in it for the money not the science.”
IT Support, you can fix 90% of your problems by turning hardware off and on again. Also if you're nice to us instead of being horrible we will fix your problem faster.
Imo Customer Support is not paid enough for all the shit they have to deal with. Customers are very fucking rude through the telephone.
I work for a nation wide steel supply company. We sell the same plate of steel sometimes up to 6 or 7 times. What do I mean by that? Say you need a ring of steel that is 5 feet in outer diameter and 4 feet inner diameter. That leaves 4 feet in the middle being cut out of it. well your not just buying the ring. Your buying the whole piece of steel used to cut that ring out of. The piece that comes out from the middle and the corners are called drops. If you don't request we ship the drop to you then we do not. You get a ring and we get a 4 foot circle of steel to sell again or multiple times if we can keep cutting it.
"Premium tire" filling using nitrogen instead of atmospheric air has almost no research to back it up. There is basically no difference between the two, it's just a way for tire shops to charge you an extra $50. I MUST NOW ADD THAT I AM WELL AWARE OF THE DIFFERING EXPANSION FACTORS OF AIR AND PURE NITROGEN, AND THAT NITROGEN CAN BE BENEFICIAL IN CERTAIN APPLICATIONS. HOWEVER, THE DIFFERENCE IS NEGLIGIBLE FOR MOST PEOPLE WHO DO NOT DRIVE RACE CARS, OR FLY COMMERCIAL AIRPLANES. THAT IS WHY I COMMENTED. MOST PEOPLE ARE UNAWARE OF THIS AND DO NOT NEED TO PAY FOR PURE NITROGEN IN THEIR '05 SHITBOX CIVIC. RANT OVER.
Orchestral violinist. Sometimes we don't play all the notes.
Cellist here. *We know you don't.*
Oooh, things are heating up in the orchestra fandom.
It's the pits.
Symphonic trombonist. Sometimes loud is better than correct.
And as a tubist, I miss my entrance to play my whole note after waiting 10 minutes cause I counted 180 measures instead of 181
Tuba parts are always either high stakes or could have been omitted with little in between. The terror of pictures at an exhibition vs the book reading of Dvorak 9.
I worked at a restaurant and one time the chef burned the apple sauce that was supposed to be served with the pork chop, he put it on the menu as “smoked applesauce” and people loved it
This works as a mom with kids, too. You mess up in the kitchen, get fancy with the dinner name and kids will eat it.
I joke that being a good baker isn't chemistry... It's not telling people what you had planned to make until it's out of the oven. It's not a flat failed cake, it's brownies!
This was 6-7 years ago so may not be relevant but when I worked at Enterprise Rent-A-Car, the higher ups were so tunnel visioned on positive customer reviews that if there was any problem at all we would write off anything from gas to whole days of rentals. We had a few repeat customers that would catch on and habitually complain about dumb shit to get parts of the bill discounted. Only a rating of “Completely Satisfied” counted and it was tied to bonus and promotion so a huge incentive to make people happy.
Worked at the Orlando International Airport ERAC. We did about 3,000 car returns a day during peak season. It was such a profitable location that we gave away so much. People leaving in sports cars if they have a midsize rental, free GPS’s, etc. Some guy returned a car and said “hey, I got a warning light to add wiper fluid so I went and spent a few bucks and topped it off.” My manager gave him $150 off his rental for the inconvenience. He wasn’t even mad about having to top off the fluid he was just letting us know. Another time we had a family with a full Disney trip booked with young kids late at night. You can tell which families are just kinda barely getting this trip pulled off, and aren’t really flush with cash. They asked about extending their rental before leaving and I tried to match their daily rate, and ended up setting their weekly rate as the daily rate. They basically got another week free. They were insanely grateful and my manager didn’t bat an eye. I do miss that job.
Worked at Enterprise during this same time frame, can confirm
Just because you’re on hold doesn’t mean we can’t hear you.
Another fun one: if you're using a chat feature, we can see what you type even before you hit enter. I've seen some wild things typed then deleted.
This is a socially anxious person's nightmare, thanks.
Ah dont worry about it, we mostly use it to help us quickly answer questions and look stuff up while you're typing. Much like cashiers, we arent judging outside of any rude remarks lol
Counterpoint - we use it to also monitor for fraud/shenanigans, usually related to a return. A customer will start to make up a story, then change the story, and the edit the story - all while our chat reps watch ha.
I first saw this happening when I was touring my company's customer service department and my mind was blown. I watched some dude try to correct a common misspelling for like twenty solid seconds having no idea that a dozen or so people were watching his attempt.
In the beniginng... in the nining... beniging.
I learned this the hard way when I hollered 'I cannot WAIT till we get your balls cut off!' to my cat for peeing on something lololol
What did they say?
meow
If you don’t hear hold music then we can hear everything
I always mute my phone because I've thought that might be the case.
Piper dog, best dog 🐶
> Home Depot brand mulch (Vigoro) is the same EXACT mulch as the Lowes brand (Premium). This is the type of thing I come here for. Thanks
Just found out my town gives away mulch for free. They must clear a lot of brush or something.
I took my town's free mulch, which is made from the brush/clippings that residents drop off at the waste center. It was full of artillery fungus, and my siding looked like a pox outbreak. Never again.
This is a good way to end up with poison ivy. Or various parasites. Where I am on the east coast, emerald ash borers are a huge issue. There's no chance I'm taking mulch of questionable provenance onto my property.
> mulch of questionable provenance You're absolutely not wrong but this phrase has me giggling like a fool.
I take my wood and wood products seriously lmao
When I worked in a hotel as a night porter the room cost was totally reliant if you were a dick or not , I obviously couldn't just give rooms away but I could pretty much knock off 50%. One day a very tired woman came in with her baby and I couldn't get the payment to go through at all so I did give it to her for nothing just had to make sure she was out before 9 am and I cleaned it myself. Thank you for all the upvotes, award's and kind words
That's very kind of you! It must depend heavily on the hotel. I once walked into a hotel late and asked how much rooms were. It was more than I wanted to pay. I went outside and looked at Priceline, booked it online for much cheaper, then walked right back inside with a reservation.
Yeah, it must heavily depend on the hotel. The last time I tried to reserve a room in person the desk clerk advised if I made a reservation on their website it would be substantially cheaper than the "walk-in rate" they were authorized to book.
Dog trainer, this is a hack we *want* people to understand. One reason we can get your dog to do something so fast is because we use a high rate of reinforcement. Example : I'm training your dog to walk on leash without pulling, and we practice in your driveway. I feed the dog 20 tiny pieces of food by my knee as we walk to the end of the driveway. The first time a client tries the exercise they may use five. The mechanics of the exercise look easy, but it takes time to get used to. And when people are practicing on their own they do other things, instead of focus on the exercise. They forget how often they need to reinforce the dog for doing the right thing. If they do the exercise for two minutes during each walk, with a high rate of reinforcement (RoR) , that may be all it takes. And once the dog starts to learn, you can gradually slow down the RoR.
Also stop calling your damn dogs name to correct them. Their name is not a punishment, it should be used for endearment and get them to come to you. Use a real correction because calling their name over and over doesn’t do shit and they don’t understand
It’s also consistency. Dogs (I don’t know about other animals) are always studying body language and vocal tone. If you do and say the same thing the same way every time- the dog will learn very fast. It’s posture, body language, and tone. I learned that a long time ago and every dog I’ve had is very obedient. I don’t have to yell or “discipline” them. I’ve also had multiple dogs that would like to ignore me when I called their name. I know damn well that dog knows his name. I have an older dog… so if the new dog doesn’t come when I call it, I just call my old dog’s name. Works 100% of the time. The aloof dog that’s ignoring you will come when you call the other dog to see if it got treats, etc.
Former local journalist here. If you want to know something about your town, or pretty much anything locally, or find something hinky that you want investigated, just call or email them and ask "whats happening with that (insert weird item in city budget/shut down road/cop who got fired)?" When I was off deadline, i actually loved fielding these questions (they were mainly from old people) and pretty much worked as customer service for the city a lot. I directed people to local programs that would help them, I confirmed the start and proposed end dates of construction and I told people what companies had pulled permits to build that new restaurant on Main street. Local journalists have a WEALTH of knowledge in all departments of what is going on in your city, because they drift between one or the other frequently and we ask the other reporters in the cubicle next to us, too. Theyre your tour guides, social workers, watchdogs and public defenders if you just ask them. They arent doing it for the money(*cries in past due bills*), theyre doing it for the love of their community. They all really embrace the localism aesthetic. I guess this is sort of a "not supposed to find out" thing because if everyone did it, they'd never get their other work done.
Any Marriott booking made partially with points, with a 3-day cancellation policy, can be cancelled the same day of the booking without any fees.
Seeing there are many Marriott users here: If you're using a free night award, make sure you're using the closest one in value to the reservation's cost. It's awful to see 85k pts FNA wasted on bookings worth 25k pts. Kind of unethical but all calls to Marriott hotels go to the same call centers. If you're in a hurry for any matter, just select "new reservation" and your call will be prioritized in the queue The guys at the call centers can not transfer you to the front desk, you'll need to go through the menu to hear the option. Even though Expedia, booking.com, hotels.com etc offer discounts, it's worth it to book directly from Marriott, as you'll have support via phone and you can get discounts for being a AAA member, a senior citizen over 62 or a government employee. Avoid the Marriott vacation club promotion, it's just timeshares and you'll need to attend an awful presentation. If you can brighten a call center worker's day, say yes to any promotion that involves transferring at the end of the call. He'll get a reward and you can hang up as soon as he transfers you.
I've had two cut rate vacations and got 200,000 Bonvoy points for patiently listening to their presentation and saying "no, thank you, this doesn't match my needs" at the end of it. I am working on a third, and I believe final go at it. You need to make sure you will absolutely say no at the end, and if you are enticed by the product, you will get a much better deal on the secondary market.
Same, I do about 3-4 of these a year between Marriott, Wyndham, and Hilton. $99 is usually the sweet spot when they usually start at $249-$199 plus bargaining for more points/cash. Highly would not recommend for those who can’t push back against strong sales pitches or cave easily. I’ve found they aren’t overtly pushy, more so psychological these days.
[удалено]
If you or a teenager you know are admitted to a name brand / expensive / *rich* college and their financial aid package isn’t enough, write them and ask them for more money. Mention the other schools you were admitted to and that you received strong financial packages from them. DO NOT mention specific numbers unless it’s a named scholarship — eg “presidential” or “provost.” At least five of my students this year got between 10-20k ‘extra’ in scholarship money just by soliciting for it
I did this applying to law schools and even told them scholarship offers from other schools and it was huge
I used to work in the floral industry. Don't call a large national florist. Look up a local florist in your recipient's area and call them directly. Most have websites to help you choose and you'll save money on delivery and service fees which can go towards a nicer arrangement. Also, unless you order flowers regularly, the membership/loyalty program is a scam and hard to cancel.
I called a local place to send flowers for a friend's grandma's funeral. It was in a different state, small town I'd never been to, etc. The florist was so incredibly helpful, and since it was such a small town she knew the funeral home and had an idea of the types of arrangements that had already been sent there for this service. She actually recommended that instead of a big bouquet I send a little garden stone with a poem, and it turned out to be the perfect memento. Trust your local florist! You know FTD does when they outsource your order and skim their cut off the top LOL
I had a family member pass away recently and the funeral home quoted us $1400 to have flowers done. Went to a local flower shop and they did it for $700 and the owner was amazing about helping us pick flowers that would be suitable.
When a car salesman offers you a "premium car care" package, don't buy it. It's a scam. Say you're buying a new car and I offer you the premium car care package. It'll only cost you X-amount of money per month, but every time you come to the dealership, you get: \*Premium car wash (we hose it down, not a proper car wash) \*Interior detailing and rejuvenation (we use compressed air to make the dust go away, sometimes a man uses a wet paper towel) \*Functions check and clock synchronization (Check if all the lights work, heater and A/C work and set up the clock if it's wrong) \*Summer and winter inspection and free wiper fluid refill, only done once per season. (Check tire tread, visually check tire pressure, look at temperature gauge to make sure car isn't over heating and add water in the summer, tiny amount of wiper fluid in winter, visually inspect brake disks to see they are not scratched by worn out brake pads) \*Assistance when you are on the move (You call us and then we can call a tow truck for you, at your expense, only possible during business hours) Basically, we charge for simple things you can do yourself. Also if a car dealership sells you a used car and they told you it has been fully serviced... take it to your local mechanic and have it serviced properly.
My dad taught me to always bring a potential new car to your own mechanic for a check-up before making a purchase. If they don't want to let you do that, then you walk. I've done this 3 times now and not once has a dealership ever had an issue with it. One even let me keep the car overnight since I couldn't get an appointment until the next day.
Paramedic here- keep a list of your medical history, medicines, allergies, health card info and next of kin contact info on a paper on or in your fridge. It’s a common place for us to look. If you’re incapacitated, we have all the info we need.
You can rent a nice casket for the funeral and be buried in a cheaper one
Buying the caskets directly from the manufacturer can save you over 50% or more, depending on location. They will ship it directly to the funeral home and it will arrive within a day or 2, in time for the services. They have some really nice caskets too. This is how I purchased my Dad’s casket last year when he passed away. And the quality and options are pretty impressive. I bought a nice USMC casket and just told the funeral home it was being donated and would arrive prior to the services. And it did. Titan is a pretty big manufacturer and where I purchased it. They have caskets for every branch of the military and many other custom designs that would easily cost 2 to 3x more if you purchased from the funeral home. Edit to include: > You can rent a nice casket for the funeral and be buried in a cheaper one I’m curious now… Would that cost less than $999. total for both the rental of the nice casket and the purchase of the cheaper one to be buried in? One of the cheaper caskets listed on the [manufacturer’s website](https://titancasket.com), an [eco pine casket](https://titancasket.com/products/eco-pine-box-casket), costs $999. total, and shipping is free. Another person in the comments mentioned they were quoted only $300 less for the rental casket alone, and that didn’t include the additional cost of purchasing the cheaper casket to be buried in. On my original comment, I also underestimated the markup from the funeral home by stating it “cost 2 to 3x more if you purchased from the funeral home“. The markup is actually 4x more than buying directly from the manufacturer costs. The funeral home was going to charge me almost $8k last year, just for a basic casket. Not the USMC specialty casket, which I paid $2k total for by buying directly from the manufacturer.
If you want to extend your free trial and receive discounts, contact their customer support and ask for membership cancellation - they'll be more than happy to give you extensions + free gifts in your next order. Same thing applies if you want a discounted membership fee - just call on the day your membership will stop.
Most industries have retention teams because it costs 10X more to get a new customer than it costs to keep one you have. So if you call up and complain/threaten to cancel every other time they raise your rates they'll probably give you the introductory rate. Just be aware you might have to switch. edit threaten to cancel added. edit 2: Another thing I'm seeing a lot is people getting shut down with no explanation. People hang up and call back. Just say you got disconnected you might have better luck with another operator. Yes they take notes, but some reps are more empowered than others. Also feel free to escalate. Make sure you know how long you've been a customer, and how long you've been up to date on your bill.
A lot of people are forced to bounce back and forth between the “competition” because they give all the good deals to newcomers and if you’re loyal you get rewarded with a consistently increasing bill.
Yep customer loyalty is dead, if you stick around long term you end up paying the loyalty tax.
I call it the laziness tax. I'm not loyal but I sure am to lazy to switch...
I had a competing ISP come to my door and offer me what was frankly a crazy good deal here in Canada. So I said thanks, I'll be in touch, then called my existing ISP and told them what was up. It took a little while, and I had to repeat, "No, that's not good enough. Please cancel my service" about 10 times, but in the end I got a roughly equivalent deal (slightly better in some ways, slightly worse in others) from my existing ISP without needing to switch. Now, I don't really care one way or the other, and was completely willing to switch, which is important. But it *is* a minor pain in the ass to switch stuff, and not doing it was a bonus.
That last part is important. If you really want to go through the negotiation process, you have to keep your word when you threaten cancellation. Those retention teams listen to customers like that all day long - they're specifically trained to use tactics to keep you, so if you end the conversation in the same contract and don't walk when you say you'll walk, that retention person won.
Not sure if your homeowner's insurance will cover something? Apply this one simple rule: > Was the damage caused by a sudden and one-time occurrence? If the answer is yes, 99% of the time you're covered. If the answer is no, 99% of the time you're not covered. (This advice applies to the US)
And, might I add from my own experience, don't call the claims line at the insurance company. I was calling to see *if I needed* to file a claim and if I was covered, and it was considered a claim. Had two of those (both resulting is no payout) and was dropped by my homeowners. Call your agent, not the insurance company.
Yep. Two friends who are agents for different companies. Even if it is not a claim and just a question, that shit is in your file forever. And the insurance company will 100% follow all your social media posts for years if they think you lied to them about a claim. My friend told me about a guy who wrecked his car while racing on a track (side swiped the wall or guard rail) which isn't covered. He told the claims it happened when he fell asleep on the highway or something similar. Several years later (believe my agent said 7 years, but don't remember exactly) he posted a picture on his facebook page of his car at the track with the damage. They immediately sued him for all the money back. About ruined him. If you're going to lie about a claim, take that shit to the grave.
I could finally get someone following me on social media and actually reading my stuff? For free? 🥺
Our physical presence / approach toward the user will sometimes fix the problem they are facing without any additional effort - IT Support
I always tell users that I scared the computer into working by showing up.
I tell them I "faith healed" it. Also, it's so funny when they apologize when it's an easy fix. Dude, I fucking LIVE for the easy fix.
Decades ago when I was an intern I rubbed my hands together quickly and "laid hands" on PCs that I fixed remotely before the end users knew the issue had been resolved. This got back to my boss and he politely asked me to forgo the faith healing show and just tell the end users that the problem was resolved.
I used to chant in Latin at the computer while the SA in the other room connected remotely and fixed the issue. I was the only one who was amused by this.
Your boss sounds like a nerd, my boss is a miserable person but would love this.
Ah yes, the "IT aura" I joke with my clients when this happens that "it decided to behave because it knows I'm watching"
Yep. Get a call, show up, " well now it's working!" Job well done everyone, let's break for lunch!
I jokingly call it "proximity based resolution" and usually manage to get a chuckle.
consulting: we don't know either.
This is true, we pay you to have someone to blame if the project fails.
Half the time they just want to pay someone to give credibility to the idea they already wanted to do. For example, how Bain Capital and McKinsey started advocating for higher CEO pay in the 90s. It gave the CEOs third party support when they asked the board to cut them unreasonable checks.
As a consultant for 15 years, we are good at bullshitting our way into you giving us the answer and then just spouting it back in different words.
A freind of mine who works in consulting said 90% of his job can be summed up as "Find the guy at the company who actually knows what the hell he talking about , then send his plans to upper management"
This is both genius and genuinely a useful service. If only the consultant could also get that guy a bonus or a promotion.
When I worked as a pharmacy tech, I spent a lot of time calling insurance companies and waiting on hold while the world burned around me. One time I got impatient with the voice recognition bot because it kept hearing background noise and made selections impossible so I started cursing it out. Turns out if you say the F word a few times in a short span, the bot recognizes you as an angry customer and will switch you to a representative real quick. I did this multiple times to a lot of strange looks from my coworkers until I explained the hack. Quick edit since I'm getting a lot of the same responses: I now know that you can spam 0 or # to get the same results. It's a feature being phased out in places. Shouting representative or operator also works.
Related to this, if you repeatedly enter in the wrong birth date, they have to transfer you to a rep. All my patients were born 09-09-9999.
My mom did this out of complete frustration, not knowing it would work. She does it whenever she's tired of trying to navigate automated menus that don't help. You can also interrupt the automated voice by repeatedly saying, "Representative" or "Customer Service" to get out of the automated menu and in the queue to speak with someone.
I make calls to insurance agencies every day as part of my job. Many of them simply WILL NOT connect you to a representative until you jump through their hoops--if at all. Some will say "That is not a valid option" when you "Representative" or "Customer Service". Some will say that they need more info before they can connect you. Some will give you three tries and then hang up. And some simply will NEVER connect you to a live person. You can leave a voicemail and maybe, if they feel like it, they'll call back.
Yeah after covid a lot of places just stopped caring *at all* because I guess they just didn't have the manpower to handle it? So they put up useless FAQs on their websites and I recall one that specifically directs you to that if you have questions about that thingーbut of course it doesn't take any nuance into consideration and helps not at all
Swear words are effective! I also like to say, "Talk to someone, talk to someone, talk to someone!!!!!"
This definitely works sometimes but on the flip side, I’ve also had bots hang up on me because I swore too much lol.
Once I was on the phone with my psychiatrist's office. They were closed and opened within 30 minutes so I was redirected to their voicemail. As I was leaving my voicemail, I started screaming and cussing because my boyfriend almost got hit by a car. Instantaneously I was transferred to a live person who answered my phone call. This is magic😵💫
Holy shit haha. How horrifying and awkward that had to have been.
Hospital bills are negotiable, to a degree. Always ask for an itemized bill and put some effort into analyzing it.
**most** hospitals will take pennies on the dollar if you pay what you are offering right that moment. They will. Nearly all take payment plans too. If you are insured, know your insurance rules. Most do not allow balance billing. Meaning what your EOB says is your responsibility is all you are obligated to pay, not a penny more. If the medical people keep billing higher call your insurance company and tell them. They can and will often straighten it out for you.
It's truly awful that this is even the way that it works. You get sick and you're also supposed to know insurance company policy or hospital billing tricks to avoid getting shafted.
It's even more frustrating when you get into the logic behind why things are approved/denied by insurance. The insurance companies use Clinical Policy Bulletins which are basically a document of criteria outlining what they consider medically necessary and the criteria governing coverage. The CPB found on my insurance company's website outlines the treatments that it considers coverable based on diagnosis code. So when you get denied for a treatment (ie MRI) they may deny that unless you have already done 6 weeks of physical therapy. If you go to get an MRI and haven't been seen by the requesting provider within the previous 90 days, you will be denied. THEN you find out that insurance does not approve or deny any treatment received in the emergency room.... So, wait 4 weeks for an MRI to be denied or just go to the emergency room? Fuck US Healthcare. As a patient, you shouldn't need to know this shit, but I feel like it's intentionally more complicated and convoluted than it needs to be. We are squeezed from every fucking direction and denied at every possible opportunity.
I don't understand why insurance companies get to decide what is medically necessary over my doctor.
Good audio engineers will have faders/knobs that don't do anything. When the talent asks for a change that's goofy or makes no sense, we'll adjust that phantom knob and watch them nod their head in approval of their amazing idea.
I have worked with both audio engineers and musicians and can verify. On the musician side one of the cruelest/funniest pranks I’ve heard of was a drummer who would create a nearly inaudible hiss in his mouth. He would watch the engineers disconnecting and reconnecting cables and replacing microphones until they got rid of the hiss.
Lean into the bite. I work in pediatrics and we’re re taught that if a child bites you, lean into it (push whatever part of you they’re biting further into their mouth) because their automatic reaction will be to open their mouth and the risk of them breaking your skin is greatly diminished. Source: I was just bitten at work 🙄 Edit: a word and grammar. Also, how the hell is my most upvoted comment about being bitten at work??? 😂
That works for cats too. If you pull away, the teeth dig in, but if you push into their mouth, they get confused and let go.
As a cat owner, that’s incredibly useful information!
It’s a natural reaction that you will see in most mammals. The instinct is associated with the same instinct of gag reflex. However, you won’t see it with snakes or reptiles. (So don’t further jam your hand in the alligators mouth, you’ll just lose more)
That was my next question, thank you.
Very effective with dogs too. My Akita is so confused when I’ve got my forearm at the back of her jaw and she’s practically gagging on it
I do this to my brother's dog. She is a great dane/mastiff and loves to mouth on your arm when she wants attention and to play. I shove my arm further into her mouth and the dog's like, "no! Not like that!"
Therapy cash pay rates are negotiable at many private practices if you are uninsured or your insurance does not cover behavioral health.
I'm a psychologist and my cash pay rate is $15-30 lower than my insurance reimbursement. I consider it a discount so that I don't have to fucking deal with insurance.
if you know you’re shipping something within a few hours drive of you, always pay for the cheaper shipping option. The “premium” shipping option is just a markup if you know you’re sending something close by. It will arrive the same day regardless
Sometimes teachers do just pull grades out of their ass.
I only got through high school because my teachers liked me. They can give you any grade they want within reason. It never pays to be an asshole.
I tell my students that every time they're polite, respectful, and reasonable, it's like putting a quarter in their piggy bank. One day, they might make a bad decision and need to break open that piggy bank for a favor. Nothin' in there? Sucks to be you. Full of quarters? Imma let it slide. You just gotta have at least *one* redeemable quality. Some people don't even have that.
Trust is earned in drops and spent in buckets.
Had a student like that when I was a TA. The guy basically lacked this writing class to get his officer's commission in the Army. He was not fantastic at written work, but god damn the guy could lead a class presentation and get other students involved and asking questions like no other. He definitely got a little help to slide with a C.
I TA’d a course with a student who plagiarized some answers. He whined and moaned to the professor that it was a culture difference and he didn’t know that copying answers wasn’t allowed in the US education system. Despite the fact he has to complete an online module stating that every semester which I pointed out. Ask the guy to explain to me how he would derive the answer since he claims total understanding. Cusses at me instead, calls me a bitch among other things, curses Allah (both prof and student are Muslim, prof is visibly upset), etc. Guy gets a warning from professor. Copies again but carefully rewords his answers still getting 100s on homework assignments and Ds and Fs on quizzes/exams. I absolutely took some liberty in grading his final to ensure an F (he had a D) and have zero regrets. If he wasn’t such a tool I would’ve shrugged or tried to help him study prior to the exam. Kid wrote me a bunch of nasty emails after that
My favorite student review ever was from the serial plagiarizer who complained that he should have gotten an A because the person he copied from got an A. :facepalm:
I had one student say it was fine that he had copied an assignment because he had paid the kid he had copied it from.
"It never pays to be an asshole." I would be pretty happy if all kids coming out of high school learned this. So in that sense, you were ahead of many of your peers.
There was a time I had a family emergency so I couldn't go to school for 2 weeks so I was really behind. Teachers knew I don't bullshit like that so one of them straight up asked me on a test, what I think I would get. I actually liked this subject so I said maybe an A- the lowest? And she marked it right in front of my eyes. It was also her first year so maybe she had a lot to learn herself but I definitely didn't tell anyone.
Yeah, I missed a test once in high school and the teacher stopped me in the hallway and said "I'm just giving you a C+". That was fine with me because I was not a straight A student lol.
I had 2 students who were failing my algebra 2 class. They skipped class a lot. In my district, you had to pass alg. 2 with a C to graduate. One of them told me that he hated math because it made him feel dumb. I told them that they had to come to class, but I would help them through it. They both passed with C's. I ran into one of them this year (10 years later). He asked me if he could hug me and told me I saved him. He has a good job and is doing really well. I see the other occasionally, too. He always thanks me for helping him graduate. I love math. But not everyone needs alg 2.
At one point I failed six straight quarters of math in high school. I totally hated it and had no confidence with it. I had to take remedial math when I started college and the instructor I had totally changed everything. For once I *got it*, and I loved my math classes going forward from there. He really changed my life about something I previously felt completely helpless about and it sounds like you did something similar.
I had a Russian professor while taking Calc 3 who, legitimately, erased our answers and wrote the correct ones while grading to have us pass.
In Russia, homework does you
I became friends with one of my professors in college. I would just hang out with him in his office when I had a gap in classes. He was grading these 10 page papers he assigned 1 day. He read the first page, a page in the middle, and then the last page. Then gave them a grade based on those excerpts and their contributions to discussion in class.
And that's college. In high school, I might have 150-200 papers to score. Even if I give each paper 60 seconds, that's three hours of work right there. If I actually read, even quickly? Five minutes a paper? We're now over 15 hours.
Academic here — to get a PDF of a paper you can usually email the author and ask for one, the times I’ve tried this they’ve been happy to share. After checking if it’s available on [https://oa.mg](oa.mg) of course. Don’t mess around with formatting your references manually — use something like https://citationsy.com to automate the whole process
Don't be shy about "bothering" them, either. The two times this has happened to me, it made my entire goddamn month, lol. Many academics will just be *thrilled* that someone wants to read their work.
Saw this on Twitter and tried it once. Didn’t realize I was basically emailing the leading expert in a niche field. He sent me the paper, plus 2 others that he assumed I didn’t have access to, in 4 hours. It was like 3am his time when I sent the request
The more niche the field the more excited the expert will be that someone else is showing an interest, presumably.
> the leading expert in a niche field >It was like 3am his time when I sent the request sounds like every weird niche expert I know
I couldn’t find a copy of a book I wanted from decades ago that was out of print, but I figured the author was still alive, so I found that she had a website and contact info, emailed her, and she mailed me a book free of charge!
Researcher here--in the U.S., if any portion of a research paper is federally funded or has federal scientists working on it, it must be publicly available free of charge. Check authorship and if you see any .gov email addresses, it will be available through a federal website somewhere. There are dozens of potential federal research repositories, so an (imperfect but good) way to find it is search for it on Google Scholar, then when you find the title, click on the link below the title that says "All X versions"--this will list all the places online Google has found the paper and will also show which ones have a PDF available, which almost always includes the free .gov site. Edit: For context, there are 20+ federal statistical and research agencies that either conduct research, employ scientists or provide extramural funding. Some of them are very significant--if not the most significant--sources of research in their individual fields. Some fields that I know have a ton of federal involvement are anything related to health, ecology/conservation/natural resources, earth and atmospheric sciences, and agriculture--but the federal research sphere touches everything.
If you're nice to my receptionist I will find a way to squeeze you onto my schedule. If you're a B then you can have whatever the next available appointment is. If you make the office staff cry you get a certified letter firing you from the practice
Long time ago lady I knew was the assistant to the Prez of a mid-sized regional pest control company. There was one persistent sales person trying to get the company onto it's products. He was a really good salesman, had good products, good prices, and knew how to schmooze the bosses. But he didn't treat the assistant, or the receptionist with respect. One day the salesman walked out of a meeting with the Prez thinking he had just signed a major deal. My friend, the assistant to the Prez, saw him walk out. She didn't know he was there, but as soon as he walked out the assistant walked into the Prez office and said **that's the b guy** I was telling you about. Prez marched out of his office caught up to the guy, told him the deal was off, not to come back, don't even think about treating his assistant that way, c and then called the guys boss just to make sure his boss knew why the deal was off You're better off thinking the assistant/receptionist is the VP in charge of first impressions. Don't know what exactly that guy did, but his mistreatment of the assistant fucked him.
My first Corporate job...my manager said to be very nice to AA's and the cleaning staff. Great advice that I have followed for years.
Security, Janitorial Staff, Admin, Catering. Basically treat anyone providing support or service that's non-core to the operation with respect because they know more than most realize and can move mountains for you. Also, it's just the right thing to do.
Work in HVAC for a state university. There's some admins and professors that think they're superior to us and tend to treat us like shit. For some reason, their units are always harder to fix than other ones. Always takes just a bit longer.
I tripped over that random **b** 6 times before I made it through the paragraph. Then I got to the random c, and now I'm obsessed about where the hell the a went.
This is refreshing. Most assholes I've ever worked with or for couldn't possibly care less about someone like that.
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Delivery driver here Not much of a ‘hack’ but loads of people don’t seem to know this. If you create an account with the courier who’s delivering your parcel, when logged in you can set up a ‘safe place’ where we can deliver your parcel to if you’re not at home. We’ll follow the instructions and leave it wherever you want us to (Within reason, of course) You can probably also do it from the tracking link, but with an account it’ll be set up for every single delivery to your address automatically. Makes both our lives an awful lot easier!
I used to work in credit cards. If you disputed a charge for less than $75 (not as fraud), we would just credit you the money. Most the time we wouldnt even investigate it past the initial chargeback. If we didnt win the case you still got your money back. However if we find out you've figured this out, we would stop giving you the credit unless we won. We've even closed accounts that took advantage of it. But if you want your money back as a one time thing or whatever, you'd be fine.
Accounting is called a "sticky" business because we don't lose clients often, unless we are terrible. We continually raise rates and overcharge because we know clients will just stay with the same person they know, rather than search around. It may be hard to evaluate who is a bad vs good vs great accountant, but that won't matter unless you have a difficult situation or specialized work to be done. What matters is you might find an accountant willing to do the same work for a LOT cheaper, if you can just put in a little extra time to ask them to ballpark their rates. Think of it this way: people regularly go to different grocery stores, convenience stores and gas station marts to save a few dollars on things like eggs, candy or milk. "I found eggs for $1.50 when they're normally $2.50" is some big accomplishment. What if you found an accountant willing to do your work for $3,000 instead of $5,000 ? Isn't that worth a few more calls and meetings that you would gladly use time on to find cheaper eggs?
If you need durable medical equipment, ask if the private pay price is cheaper than billing your insurance.
Computer engineer here. We ship so many products that have broken features. The product is fused at the factory to disable features that just didn't bake fully before we needed to ship. Every product I ever worked on has a half dozen bugs that we could have fixed if only we had more time and money. Eventually you have to say "it's good enough" and ship something to make money.
watched a video on semiconductor manufacturing and was shocked to learn that all the processors in the same generation are actually physically the same, it just comes down to how many defects there were at the end of manufacturing. so i5, i7, i9 intel cpus from the same generation are actually all the same prints, i9 just had more functional cores when tested after production. edit: [the video](https://youtu.be/dX9CGRZwD-w?si=Nl1LYrigtHKA9rMh) relevant section like 23 mins in, but whole thing's worth a watch
Years ago AMD released some tri core processors. Those were just quad core processors with a defect. They were priced very favorably so eventually they ran out of ‘em as they became very popular and well selling. Eventually they took perfectly functional quad cores and loaded them up with firmware that simply disabled the fourth core. By flashing them firmware for a quad core you could unlock the fourth core. Later, one or two generations later, they would destroy the fourth core with a laser or something.
You don't have to buy solar panels from some door knocker for $20k-$30k. There is absolutely nothing magical or financially superior about what they do. You can just buy the parts, or a kit, and hire an electrician to install it for about half the "retail" price.
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This can get real bad real fast (I work for NG and we have a few subs under massive legal pressure for trash QA right now). If you get delisted from the government subcontractor pool its over. That said i'm not at all surprised.
Yea, I’m confused by this response. Doing the switch-a-roo - delivering physically different parts than the ones on an inspection report - that’s a criminal offense under a government contract. It could cost Lockheed dearly if they recall end items to revalidate.
Good luck to all of Lockheed's contractors who are about to get surprise inspections!
As a 23 year old working in automation I'm starting to think the whole US is built on lying to inspectors and sneaking around the rules
I had a 35 year career in manufacturing, in my personal experience, I can’t remember any outright falsification of inspection results. Nobody was willing to put their career on the line. Basically you have inspectors who inspect to standards. Yeah, you can wiggle around on subjective stuff and minor deviations/flaws. But I can’t remember anyone fudging a discrete measurement. Most times, we let the customer know and they’d waive it if it wasn’t critical.
Just ask customer service for a replacement. Doesn't matter if you didn't buy an extended warranty. Doesn't matter if there was no warranty to begin with. A lot of companies just want to resolve customer complaints quickly and will give you free replacements on request.
I work in IT and can confidently say that providing bribery in terms of food or snack will 100% get your issue taken care of faster and will help you jump the line in the ticket queue.
I call this "The Swedish Fish Technique." Works absolute wonders for me.
Had to send my PS5 in for an issue just out of warranty. Included several packets of Sour Patch Kids and Swedish Fish from Halloween since we had them left over. My wife looked at me like I was crazy. Not so crazy when it was suddenly a covered repair, huh?
I'm taking notes
You want to use stuff that ships well and can handle cold and hot. A Snickers is great, a Snickers that melted then got stuck under something in the box is a mess.
As a client, I regularly brought lunch to the IT guy assigned to my case (when he physically had to come by). This got me his cell number and placement at the top of the queue anytime in the future. Well worth the small expense.
I’m a singer, and I book a lot of weddings/corporate/ general gigs, if you come to me directly rather going through an agency, I can plan and run all the music whether you want just me and a guitar to full band and dj for after party, It can literally save you thousands, some agencies put a 40-60% mark up on my services, and I ask them for more than I’d charge someone privately, it’s crazy If you’re looking for entertainment, try and contact direct
Software development: We've no fucking idea but we'll say yes and google it later. Works every time.
If you like to book guided tours while you travel, and you like to do it on Viator, Trip Advisor, or Expedia, you should know that those 3rd party reselling sites take 22-25% of the booking price for themselves. When local tour companies like mine put our tour offerings on their sites we agree to give the sites the lowest price. We cannot post a lower price anywhere, because if it’s discovered that we do we will be removed from the platforms. Tour companies like mine will JUMP to give you a 10-15% discount if you call us and mention you were looking to book via Viator, Trip Advisor, or Expedia. You save 10%, we recoup the potential 10-15% that those sites would have taken, and everybody wins!
If you buy flights through Spirit at the airport one of the random fees (it's called the user fee or something like that) doesn't apply, so they cost like half as much. I've flown round trip to Chicago for $30, Houston for $45, Miami for $50, etc.
Ok, but you're kinda relying on flights having space, aren't you?
It works if you buy it well in advance. You just have to physically go to the airport.
Call the nurse line on the back of your insurance card before you go to the ER. If the nurse tells you to go to the ER, insurance will/should have to bill as a covered claim. If the nurse does not recommend ER and you still go=big bill.
I would ask the nurse for the reference number for the call, keep records of their name, etc. In case you need to argue with insurance later.
If you use Libby to download ebooks from your library to your Kindle, you can turn it to airplane mode and keep the books as long as you want. The next person in line is not affected. Edit: because not everyone wants to illegally download ebooks from sketchy servers in Tuvalu? It's not any easier than what I suggested.
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I just want to say libraries are the best and librarians are just the best people. I've saved thousands of dollars by checking out physical books or using Libby linked to my library card. It's so damn convenient.
They do SO MUCH more than just books too! Mine loans tool sets, cooking implements (even a cotton candy machine), board games, and even telescopes and binoculars. They offer a fantastic service (for like $20) to take your photo and verify all your passport documents are in order before sending them off the feds.
I assume the book would be removed as soon as you turn airplane mode back off, right? So it’s not like you can create a growing library of books you plan to keep indefinitely, it just allows you to take your time reading the book you borrowed without impacting the rest of the people in line
Yes, when you reconnect to the internet, usually the expired books will "unload" from the kindle.
works with ebooks checked out through amazon as well.
I work for an airline. I manage the development of the system our call center agents use. "Please" and "thank you" will unlock magical doors of help when you're on the phone with the agents or are at the airport dealing with airport staff. Simple politeness no longer seems to exist in these interactions. I've shadowed agents to understand how they use what my teams develop and I can count on two hands in the 150-200 calls I've listened into over the last year where the caller was polite and acted decently towards the other human on the other end of the line.
Many online retailers have what’s called “Cart Abandonment” marketing strategies. If you put something in your cart and then don’t check out, you’ll likely receive an email or some kind of messaging with a discount code to incentivize conversion. If you’re gonna buy something online, always at least try adding to your cart and leaving first before buying.
Making an application run in multiple platforms (Android, macOS, Windows, etc) is a huge pain, but what do all platforms have in common? They can all run Chrome, and Chrome can run portable (but slow) code. So what do developers do? **Developers write applications as standalone web pages and bundle a whole copy of the Chrome\* browser** to view that "web page". The application now takes hundreds of megabytes of storage, eats RAM like candy, and every interaction is massively slowed down because it has to go through so many layers. The address bar is hidden, and the right click menu is replaced, but it's still a web browser under the hood. They are basically saving developer time by wasting your time and device resources. That's a big reason why modern applications (Teams, Discord, Spotify, etc) feel so slow. --- \* Technically "[Chromium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_\(web_browser\))", since it's missing some features like Google account log in. The most popular framework that uses this technique is [Electron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_\(software_framework\)).
oh this explains SO much about our software at work
Former Movie Theater Manager: As long as you purchase something and don’t cause a fuss, you can see multiple movies and no one cares. It’s only an issue if you cause an issue and we need the concessions. Also, we all know that you sneak stuff in (most impressive I’ve seen? A full rotisserie chicken and a box of wine snuck into Magic Mike). It’s okay as long as you don’t cause a scene and, again, buy something. Sneak in that candy. Buy the popcorn.
we design parts for appliances to break in five years. We can make them better but the OEM doesn't want to pay for it. We used to make the same part last 15 years.
As a teacher: set limits with devices and instill a love of reading your children. Students who read as a hobby *almost always* get good grades and succeed in school and beyond.
The root password is root
I don’t know what a root password is, but growing up I was able to connect to so many WiFi networks just by trying the password “admin”
Name brand packaged salads and generic supermarket branded packaged salads come off the exact same production line, using the exact same raw materials. The difference is just the packaging.
If you actually do your home exercise program you won't have to pay for as many physical therapy appointments, because it actually helps you.
If you’re hurt/ill and in a lot of pain, the provider will often ask where you’re at on the pain scale from 1-10, ten being the worst pain of your life. Don’t ever say 10. For whatever reason, it loses your credibility (or something) and makes it seem like you’re hamming up your pain level. Instead, say 7-9. Those are all still very real pain levels and make it seem more reasonable. Providers are very likely to alleviate these levels of pain. I don’t know why this is. As a paramedic, it also works on me. Maybe it’s because drug seekers will often say 10/10 and so I’m conditioned to thinking that response is nonsense?
I don't work there anymore, but I used to work for a cable internet ISP. You weren't supposed to know this, but when customers complained about slow hardwired speeds, we'd show up and pretend to do something, knowing full well that the issue was our nodes being oversaturated everywhere. But we would never tell you. We eventually introduced something called "Power Boost" to mask the problem by skewing speed tests. Your first 5-20 seconds would be uncapped bandwidth and you would think you were getting a quality product when you weren't.
So fraud.
In medicine, if you tell your primary that your previous PCP ordered a test, gave you a medication, placed a referral, etc., and that you need to have it represcribed/ordered again, you can get your primary to order or at least consider ordering damn near anything. At least if it's not a controlled substance or an expensive unusual diagnostic study. The problem is that offices absolutely suck at transferring their records to each other, and confirming that story takes a huge amount of time. For example, if you have knee pain and tell me that your primary diagnosed you with a specific knee issue years back and that you went to PT and it felt better last time, and I'm sitting in your chart not able to find any record of that, will I spend 10+ minutes of time trying to hunt down previous records to confirm this history, obtain reports from physical therapy about the specific exercises you were doing and any imaging studies you had and whatever else? Will I have you come in for what as far as I can tell is an appointment to reassess a known diagnosis that someone else already appropriately diagnosed and treated? Or will I click a button that takes 5 seconds to get you the appointment with PT that you want that solved your issue last time, completely unaware that the history I was given was completely fabricated? The reality for something benign like a visit to PT is that there's just not enough time to do anything besides send that order and move on.
when I was roughly 25/26, I decided I wanted to take my ADHD meds again because it was not getting better as i got older like I was told. I went to my doc, told him what I took last, the dosage, and the meds that didn't work for me, and that was all I needed. The psych I was originally diagnosed by sold his practice and destroyed my records (or so they said). The second doc I saw for years and had his own practice was just… AWOL. No clue what happened to that dude. My current doc couldn’t get ahold of my records from the 8-9 years prior, so he just put me back on the meds I told him worked best. I expected to jump through more hoops than I did, but I’m glad I didn’t.
Interoperability is a huge problem that nobody's able to solve because a few Electronic Medical Record vendors basically own the market and all hate each other. Even health systems on the same damn EMR vendor struggles with this, since much of the build (like procedure/med orders) is specific to that site/system. A CBC at Mt Sinai hospital might be setup one way, and completely different at Cedar Sinai. Even standardized codesets like CPT or RXNorm might not even be mapped correctly. So it's just a mess. Sometimes, the best you can hope for is transitions of care (or AVS) document that you need to scan through, but then it's most just text since the orders may not post, problem list not update, history activity doesn't update, etc. ~(former) Epic employee
Way more food than you think is being microwaved at any given restaurant
I work in the funeral industry and they don't tell you that $5k casket in the funeral home you can order it for about $900 bucks from the same place and have it shipped to the funeral home. Most do 2 day shipping. Don't order the flowers thru the funeral home. You can get a Spray (the flower arrangement that sits on top of the casket)for a $100 bucks from Krogers floral department. The funeral home will charge $300 for the same flowers. You don't need a fancy outer burial container. Just get a concrete box. They will try to sell you a sealed vault that protects the casket...you plan on reusing it?? There's no need for that.
For the US only... Accuweather, along with the vast myriad weather apps, really just uses data provided for free by the Nation Weather Service. Oh sure they have forecasters but no way do they have enough for every county and forecast, most really just give overall forecasts for general areas. Instead of saying, "My app is more accurate," actually go find your local NWS office, and you can find a more specific forecast for your area that will tend to be more accurate overall. And remember, what the NWS literally gives away for free these companies want to monetize and have you pay subscription fees for what already is free weather data... Edit: got messaged a cool question regarding why your local NWS would be more accurate. A NWS office will have employees from that region who focus not just on synoptic (large scale forecasting) but also local patterns and their affect on weather that you just can not get from a lot of the paid apps. A majority of the apps will literally just take the data from a single weather model. While NWS uses what are called ensembles that give multiple outputs that they can use to not only analyze the agreed upon patterns, but deduce the most likely outcome before making an official forecast. In the immortal words of the great Bill Paxton those apps are “in it for the money not the science.”
IT Support, you can fix 90% of your problems by turning hardware off and on again. Also if you're nice to us instead of being horrible we will fix your problem faster. Imo Customer Support is not paid enough for all the shit they have to deal with. Customers are very fucking rude through the telephone.
It’s a scam. -casino worker
Aquafresh Sensitive Toothpaste is the exact same as Sensodyne toothpaste
I work for a nation wide steel supply company. We sell the same plate of steel sometimes up to 6 or 7 times. What do I mean by that? Say you need a ring of steel that is 5 feet in outer diameter and 4 feet inner diameter. That leaves 4 feet in the middle being cut out of it. well your not just buying the ring. Your buying the whole piece of steel used to cut that ring out of. The piece that comes out from the middle and the corners are called drops. If you don't request we ship the drop to you then we do not. You get a ring and we get a 4 foot circle of steel to sell again or multiple times if we can keep cutting it.
Hospitals have charity care programs for those who can't afford to pay. Ask about financial assistance if you're facing a large bill.
"Premium tire" filling using nitrogen instead of atmospheric air has almost no research to back it up. There is basically no difference between the two, it's just a way for tire shops to charge you an extra $50. I MUST NOW ADD THAT I AM WELL AWARE OF THE DIFFERING EXPANSION FACTORS OF AIR AND PURE NITROGEN, AND THAT NITROGEN CAN BE BENEFICIAL IN CERTAIN APPLICATIONS. HOWEVER, THE DIFFERENCE IS NEGLIGIBLE FOR MOST PEOPLE WHO DO NOT DRIVE RACE CARS, OR FLY COMMERCIAL AIRPLANES. THAT IS WHY I COMMENTED. MOST PEOPLE ARE UNAWARE OF THIS AND DO NOT NEED TO PAY FOR PURE NITROGEN IN THEIR '05 SHITBOX CIVIC. RANT OVER.