Thank you for the vocabulary.

try being a person of color in a coffee shop or hotel lobby. Maybe you heard about some difficulties for a pair of young men had in a Philadelphia Starbucks?

As a POC I have never been kicked out of a library or a Starbucks and I'm from the south. Situations happen, but that doesn't mean it happens everywhere. Sometimes I wonder why when you look at me all you see is a helpless POC, it's very demoralizing and trivializes us.

Thank you for the realism without any snark.

'layed off' means different things in the US versus Europe.

In the US, an employer may 'lay off' as much staff as they want and then hire new people into those positions.

In France, for example, a 'lay off' must close the position and not hire a new body into that role for 12-24 months.

This may be difficult to prove, but the laws exist.

Wow, I actually really like the French policy. It would make employers actually distinguish between a temp position and a full hire up front. Too many small businesses try to optimistically hire in good times, only to suddenly realize a few months later that they would collapse under the new payroll when business is normal.

Yes, and I've been "laid off" before after having compensation discussions with management. The employer dodges a lot of liability they would have if they fired me after asking for a pay raise. But for me the end result was I still lost my job.

I like the 12-24 month waiting period as it would help reduce lay off abuse.

America is known for practicing social darwinism as though it were a positive thing.

I remember an "ask a conservative" thread on reddit a while ago. What I found remarkable was that a lot of discussions that were ostensibly about "small government" or "promotion of conservative values", when challanged by a few counter-questions, shifted pretty quickly to population control along the lines of "if the poor get too much welfare they'll just have more kids".

Admittedly, this was reddit, so apologies if I'm misrepresenting real-life conservatives here, but that thread got me thinking that a lot of the political discussion might, at the root, actually be about social darwinism.

Yes you most definitely are misrepresenting the conservatives. None of it has to do with family values or anything other than the lack of understand on the left as to why your employer should not be forced to pay for everything you do or want to do.

you have found a trifecta of reasoning. What a brilliant idea!

My first job in the '80s was doing RFI/RFP shotgunning for a mom & pop (my mom & pop) defense consulting firm out of the GSA register. We would essentially cold-respond to everything in our domain. From that experience I learned that there were some genuine requests with no fix in.

There definitely are! However if it's an established contract (most of my experience) or a big contract, the odds of it going to an unknown entity are slim to none. But it's certainly possible to break into it as a small unknown firm, you just have to start by picking up the scraps.

This is really interesting and I would be very keen to hear more about it, like a blog post or something. I bet a lot of other people would be interested too.

Interesting. My experience is all commercial, not government. Pleased to hear there was some good behavior (at least in defense in the '80s!)

amex platinum offers rewards that easily pay back the cost if you travel. 2 cards, $450 ($300 + $150) $15 uber/month/card $200 in airline fees Automatic hotel and car rental upgrades more...

I visited Stockholm this summer, it was 100% card acceptance, and 25% cash acceptance.

I used to work for Cogent Communications, this was common practice in customer service. Comstat scores are 100% gamed.

The Global Director of customer service has his managers change ticket parameters for two weeks around ticket closure so that only 'happy' customers get review emails.