Inverse Paradigm

I got off work early tonight and stopped by IHOP for an hour. I needed to do some planning since I am going to be getting quite a bit busier for some time to come. This particular location is pretty dead on Mondays. So I may make that a weekly spot after I finish my Monday shifts. I need to find out if they have WIFI.

20 years ago I worked for a beeper company and we had Federal Government agencies as customers. Their bills were constantly aging past 30 days. We joked about sending the IRS to outside collections but decided against it. Well the policy of not paying for services on time has finally come around. The FBI wiretapping has been cut off by the phone company for non-payment. Call it a lack of patriotism on my part but I have absolutely no sympathy. If they’re going to be an example for the rest of us they need to at least keep the freaking lights on.

If you read in the paper that yesterday CEO So and So of Thus and Such, Inc. said this or that, you should have bought or sold that stock or bond the day before yesterday. The problem is that predicting the market is tricky and sometimes when a stock drops you’re better off buying more than sitting around wishing you had sold it before it took a dive. Instead of despairing, just tell yourself, through gritted teeth, “more for me,” as you write that check.

Pick One.

I know there are a lot of supposedly hip parents who think they can be one of the gang with their child and his or her friends. Well you can do that to a certain extent. But there will come a time when you are going to need your child’s respect and obedience not his friendship. And if you have abdicated one in favor of the other, expect the two of you to be taken aback by the reaction. It’s one of those situations where no one should be surprised. Unfortunately that doesn’t happen often. If you find yourself thinking of the parent/child relationship as a clerical formality, like some puffball job title in a bureaucracy, and you tend to view the kid as your best friend, you need to find some new friends. It’s inappropriate. It’s no different from the boss who goes out drinking with her subordinates and then wonders why they’re taking 90min. lunches and writing down an hour. I’m telling you this because it’s what I have observed in my lifetime. I don’t have children. While I don’t have experience dealing with the rigors of that life I have seen parents dealing with the aftermath of those “friendships.” However I have been in front-line management as a lead and I have had subordinates that I tried to stay on friendshippy terms with and that caused problems as time wore on.

I was talking with a friend who works for the USPS. It seems they are feeling a loss in business like many other sectors. They’re not taking in as much mail. They’re not shipping or delivering as many packages. As a result when people leave they aren’t replaced. This is causing increases in overtime on the existing staff. Off the top of my head I’d say they’re going to have to come up with new ways to market themselves to the public. Maybe setting up more smaller contract stores, which are USPS as far as shipping and receiving but are privately owned. I go to the one near my neighborhood instead of the main station which is not farther away but has denser traffic.

I’m studying money.

Most kids come out of high school ill-prepared for life and that includes me. We had a class called MoCE, Mathematics of Consumer Economics. I had an extra elective and I wanted to take that course. The counselor tried to get me to take something else. She said I was “too smart” for it since I was taking 2nd year algebra at the time. I argued that while I could plot a curve for y=x² it didn’t mean I could balance a checkbook. She saw my reasoning and let me sign up for it. The math was pretty easy and I got an A but I was there more for the concepts than anything. There were a lot of kids who were not on the engineering math track in the class who didn’t do as well. So I understood why the counselor said what she said.

That class covered a lot, but still didn’t teach me several key things that I needed to know and now at 44 I am engaged in some catch-up learning. It’s not my parents’ fault for not teaching me. They were brought up and trained in what we can call the Employment World View. The problem with that philosophy is that it doesn’t promote prosperity in the true sense. If you don’t believe me, just look at the debt statistics. I am not trying to contrast it with unemployment. That’s never a good idea. Well let me qualify that. Having no income is never a good idea. But there are ways of making a living without being employed. What I am working to do is shift my thinking to the Ownership World View. By that I mean having my own business and having money work for me. It’s a concept I am learning from Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money–That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not! by Robert Kiyosaki. I have many more books to read. What I have learned so far is that whatever is not making you money is costing you money. That especially goes for things people pour money into and think are “assets” like houses and cars. I’ll be posting more about these topics as I learn things and apply them. What I am doing right now is increasing my income and savings, trying to use credit less and get out of debt. It cannot be done overnight. But we don’t get where we are overnight either.

I don’t know how many times I have heard the phrase “dragged to a meeting.” I’ve even said it myself. It seems that the fault of the employer is that they took you away from something you were being paid to do to pay you to do something else. But the way this is conveyed is as if the employer is refusing to pay you not just for the time in the meeting but for the whole day. Granted time in meetings is time away from your workstation and depending on how long the meeting is, it could end up with you having to stay over or having work left over to the next day., Neither of these two are much fun. Personally I’d rather leave work over if it is an option versus staying past the end of my shift. If you’re in a salaried situation you may not have a choice. I have noticed people seem more productive after a meeting. Not because they are rejuvenated by what was said. More because they want to catch up so they can leave on time.

I just sold something off one of my Amazon listings. I had to do some digging to find it so I can ship it out.

Never rent to anyone who does not own a plunger. If they’re calling you the first time the commode backs up and didn’t think to go to the store and pay $3 for the damn thing, they’re high maintenance and are only going to be trouble in the months to come.

The only exception is people who are physically incapable of using the plunger or due to some temporary physical condition should not exert themselves much.

In the immortal words of Britney, oops we did it again…