1 in 5 cheated, god damn. (yes I know 19 is a little less, but CLOSE ENOUGH)
Client: "Hey, we translated this text ourselves but we'd like to hire you guys, the professional translators, to check it over and fix any mistakes."
Us: "This is clearly a Google translated document."
Client: "No no, we translated it ourselves. We have an internal machine translation system, which we might have used as a reference, but this is a translation we did, trust us."
Us: "We can just plug the source text into Google and check. The translations are clearly identical."
Client: "Can you fix it anyway? Also, since this was a human translation and not a machine translation, you're only going to charge us the amount for editing a human translation right?"
Us:
Us: "This is clearly a Google translated document."
Client: "No no, we translated it ourselves. We have an internal machine translation system, which we might have used as a reference, but this is a translation we did, trust us."
Us: "We can just plug the source text into Google and check. The translations are clearly identical."
Client: "Can you fix it anyway? Also, since this was a human translation and not a machine translation, you're only going to charge us the amount for editing a human translation right?"
Us:
This goes well with the 19/100 cheating posts from last week
Dave
Staff member
The worst part about being a day sleeper is you can't be mad at people for reaching out during normal people's hours. Unless, for example, you've already told the fine salespeople at H&H Kia in Omaha that you work overnights and they call anyway. And text. And send an email. Went to sleep at 10 am. Alarm set for 5:30. Have to keep my ringer on because my wife and son are at work and I want to be able to be gotten ahold of in an emergency. So the car dealership woke me up at 1 pm. I went to the bathroom and saw a note from the wife about something I had to call her for. Now I'm up. I'll probably nap for a few hours later but if you REALLY want me to buy a car from you, you should probably listen when I talk to you.
Put your phone on do not disturb. Make your wife and son "favorite" contacts. they'll ring thru even if DnD is on. But perhaps test it before you rely on it.
Dave
Staff member
Did not know that was a thing. Need to try that out. Thanks for the idea!
Or do what I did for a while before DnD was a thing: Make a custom ringtone of empty silence. Set it as your default.
Then go into your contact list and give all the people you actually want to talk to their own custom ringtone (one that actually makes noise).
--Patrick
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I think i still have a silence file on my Dropbox from those days
From the Philip Glass "best of" album?
GasBandit
Staff member
OH good, once again, you've unlocked A WHOLE NEW trauma for me. A hope you're keeping score.
GasBandit
Staff member
The really funny part is that the original scene in Koyaanisqatsi isn't any less WTF-ey.
This is breaking my brain.
WHY DOES HE HAVE HANDS!?
I just...it doesn't...but why would it...who does this...
I'm broke. This broke me.
I always fucking mix them up
I can never cook for you, I will kill you with spice on accident.
I just killed him with a Red Hot Goldfish. The snack that smiled back through your tears lol.
Dave
Staff member
I'm always surprised at how big of a fucking scam Ticketmaster is. And you HAVE to use them. Every band, every venue. My wife wanted to see Duran Duran. Tickets went on sale at 10 am. I was online & ready. It put me into a "waiting room" and said there were 2500 people in front of me. For a 10 ticket sale for an 80's band in Omaha. Yeah I don't fucking think so. Then the message came across it was sold out. I immediately went to reseller sites. Guess what? PLENTY of tickets starting at $HOLYFUCK (that's American dollars.)
I fucking hate them so much. I thought congress was trying to break up the monopoly. Guess Ticketmaster had more money for lobbyists than consumers do.
I fucking hate them so much. I thought congress was trying to break up the monopoly. Guess Ticketmaster had more money for lobbyists than consumers do.
And while in Europe anti-monopoly laws are....slightly better enforced (though they're still far from brilliant and lobbying is still the biggest power in town), we're really noticing that more and more artists and companies are simply being told that if they want to tour in Europe, they have to use Ticketmaster too; it's a global deal or no deal. Meaning those venues that work with one of the competitors are slowly being frozen out for all the biggest (American) names.
I saw them back in 84 when they were BIG, for $20. So $60 bucks now?
Dave
Staff member
$60? Hell ticket price for GA was $75. Now they are reselling (of course) for $600+
We live in a mostly working-class Hispanic neighborhood. The wife and I do fine, but you can spot the telltale signs of poverty on our street. It's common to see four or five cars parked in driveways, indicating that maybe 20 people live in a house. It's also not uncommon to see dogs running loose. The neighbors are mostly all right and we've learned to live with it. Over the past year, the arrival of a whole different kind of poverty has made our neighbors look obscenely wealthy by comparison. The area just outside the neighborhood is starting to resemble Tijuana.
What I've noticed is that as soon as you close to the business districts, you'll find a lot of panhandlers. I don't mean the typical "spare some change, sir?" kind of begging. This is too organized. You'll see them holding a poster board with some clearly stock photos of someone in a hospital bed. They'll say they're raising money for their abuelita who has cancer, and they'll send their kids to different ends of the street so they can cover more ground. Sometimes they'll have a baby strapped to their back. They're likely indigenous, and in much of Latin America the stereotype of a poor person is an indigenous person (copper skin, short, and they barely speak Spanish).
I've lived in the Third World and I know Third World begging when I see it. The attached infants are meant to garner sympathy. That way people keep giving the beggars money and the cops won't remove them. I don't buy into that "we're being invaded" argument at all, and I abhor the people who cynically use the border crisis as a political tool, but I certainly understand why this is a pressing issue. It's hard to feel confident about the direction the US is in when you see abject poverty around you.
What I've noticed is that as soon as you close to the business districts, you'll find a lot of panhandlers. I don't mean the typical "spare some change, sir?" kind of begging. This is too organized. You'll see them holding a poster board with some clearly stock photos of someone in a hospital bed. They'll say they're raising money for their abuelita who has cancer, and they'll send their kids to different ends of the street so they can cover more ground. Sometimes they'll have a baby strapped to their back. They're likely indigenous, and in much of Latin America the stereotype of a poor person is an indigenous person (copper skin, short, and they barely speak Spanish).
I've lived in the Third World and I know Third World begging when I see it. The attached infants are meant to garner sympathy. That way people keep giving the beggars money and the cops won't remove them. I don't buy into that "we're being invaded" argument at all, and I abhor the people who cynically use the border crisis as a political tool, but I certainly understand why this is a pressing issue. It's hard to feel confident about the direction the US is in when you see abject poverty around you.
Client: "Hello, we have this translation we did ourselves, and we would like you to check over the English translation. Since we don't want to pay very much, we will only pay you to proofread the correctness of the English, there's no need for you to check whether the translation is actually an accurate representation of the information in the Chinese source text."
Me: "Sure, we can do that."
SEVERAL DAYS LATER
Client: "Hey, we found a bunch of errors in the translation you edited, you fixed the English writing but there are a bunch of places where the English doesn't match what the Chinese is saying."
Me: "Yes, that's what you paid for and that's what we delivered."
Client: "We don't care, fix it now."
Me: "I hate everyone and everything."
Me: "Sure, we can do that."
SEVERAL DAYS LATER
Client: "Hey, we found a bunch of errors in the translation you edited, you fixed the English writing but there are a bunch of places where the English doesn't match what the Chinese is saying."
Me: "Yes, that's what you paid for and that's what we delivered."
Client: "We don't care, fix it now."
Me: "I hate everyone and everything."
GasBandit
Staff member
My girlfriend is getting really burned out because her boss is useless. The boss likes to brag about how she was "so good" that they had to hire 3 people to replace her when she left her previous job, but now whenever any of her subordinates asks her for literally any information, she says "I don't know, you figure it out." I'm having a hard time figuring out exactly what she contributes at all.
"Did they really need 3 people to replace you, or did they need 3 people to unfuck the cluster you left? Because if you're that good, why are you such dead weight now?" - me, meeting her in my imagination
"Did they really need 3 people to replace you, or did they need 3 people to unfuck the cluster you left? Because if you're that good, why are you such dead weight now?" - me, meeting her in my imagination
GasBandit
Staff member
After three successive visits, the Home Depot has failed to install my new dishwasher. I'd say "fuck it, I'll do it myself" but I paid for them to deliver, install, and haul away, and dammit I'm gonna make sure they do. At this point they're probably losing money on all this.
The first trip, they found that the position of my dishwasher made the 6 foot drain hose too short to reach my sink drain (there's a 90 degree bend around a cabinet to figure in, and the drain attachment is pointing away from the most convenient side, so the pipe needs to basically be 7+ feet to not have a big kink in it). So the installer (who is really just a delivery driver and not a plumber, and is actually a completely different company that Home Depot contracts out) tells me I need to get a 12 foot drain hose and reschedule them to come out. What, you don't have a 12 foot on your truck? No, as I said, he's not actually an installer or a plumber, he's a delivery driver that the corporate suits think can be told to just turn a wrench, so naturally he doesn't have any supplies or equipment on his truck other than the other 9 appliances he's expected to deliver today.
So I call to reschedule the install, first, and the HD rep on the phone says "make sure you show the installer the receipt that says you bought this at the home depot or they can't use it." Fine, whatever.
I go to home depot and tell the guy in Appliances that I need a 12 foot drain hose, and he's astonished, like I just asked for a car that takes up 2 lanes or something. But he doesn't have anything so we go down to the plumbing aisle, and talk to the guy that works that aisle, and he says "we don't sell 12 foot drain hoses, all we have are these universal 6 foot ones." Well, the one I have is 6 foot and it's not long enough says your delivery installer driver guy. "Well that's ok, you can get this one, and you see, it can just snap together with the one you got to make a 12 foot, then you hose clamp it to make sure, and you're all good.
That doesn't sound right to me, but I'm not a plumber, and who am I to argue with the guy that should be the subject matter expert, right?
So 3 days later, the rescheduled delivery installer (different guy) gets there and looks and says "who told you to do this? You can't hose clamp a hose to another hose, it'll leak!" and I was all THAT'S WHAT I THOUGHT TOO BUT HE SOUNDED SO CONFIDENT.. so this guy tells me "well, you can use two hoses but you have to put like 2 inches of 3/4" copper pipe between them to hose clamp to."
No, I do not have a few inches of copper pipe just lying around. So I have to reschedule installation. AGAIN.
I call the appliance line, and the guy who answers says "What do you mean they told you we don't sell 12 foot drain pipes, of course we sell 12 foot drain pipes" and I'm like "Well, you and my local Home Depot obviously need to get on the same page." But at any rate, he reschedules me for another installer visit, and I go to home depot and spend 15 bucks on a couple feet of copper 3/4" tube (because that's the shortest you can buy). At least I manage to get the teenager working that aisle to figure out how to cut it into a 3 inch length for me, which was more of an ordeal than it should have been.
And that brings us to today, installer visit number 3. Again, different driver/installer/delivery guy. He takes one look at the setup and says "I'm not allowed to do this kind of work, we have to schedule you for the plumber."
WHAT. Why didn't the FIRST guy, or the SECOND guy, bring that up?
"I don't know, they should have."
So they put me in the ticket queue for the home depot plumber, who they tell me should be calling me this afternoon to schedule HIS visit.
I'm never buying anything from the Home Depot ever again, if I can help it. I didn't even want to buy this dishwasher there, but they had it for like $50 less expensive than Lowe's and it's the dishwasher the GF wants. This is like a $1200 dishwasher marked down to $800. I felt icky already about compromising on my scruples to save $50 and I'm starting to feel like this is all karmic punishment for giving HD money. Welp, never doing that again, lesson learned, universe.
The first trip, they found that the position of my dishwasher made the 6 foot drain hose too short to reach my sink drain (there's a 90 degree bend around a cabinet to figure in, and the drain attachment is pointing away from the most convenient side, so the pipe needs to basically be 7+ feet to not have a big kink in it). So the installer (who is really just a delivery driver and not a plumber, and is actually a completely different company that Home Depot contracts out) tells me I need to get a 12 foot drain hose and reschedule them to come out. What, you don't have a 12 foot on your truck? No, as I said, he's not actually an installer or a plumber, he's a delivery driver that the corporate suits think can be told to just turn a wrench, so naturally he doesn't have any supplies or equipment on his truck other than the other 9 appliances he's expected to deliver today.
So I call to reschedule the install, first, and the HD rep on the phone says "make sure you show the installer the receipt that says you bought this at the home depot or they can't use it." Fine, whatever.
I go to home depot and tell the guy in Appliances that I need a 12 foot drain hose, and he's astonished, like I just asked for a car that takes up 2 lanes or something. But he doesn't have anything so we go down to the plumbing aisle, and talk to the guy that works that aisle, and he says "we don't sell 12 foot drain hoses, all we have are these universal 6 foot ones." Well, the one I have is 6 foot and it's not long enough says your delivery installer driver guy. "Well that's ok, you can get this one, and you see, it can just snap together with the one you got to make a 12 foot, then you hose clamp it to make sure, and you're all good.
That doesn't sound right to me, but I'm not a plumber, and who am I to argue with the guy that should be the subject matter expert, right?
So 3 days later, the rescheduled delivery installer (different guy) gets there and looks and says "who told you to do this? You can't hose clamp a hose to another hose, it'll leak!" and I was all THAT'S WHAT I THOUGHT TOO BUT HE SOUNDED SO CONFIDENT.. so this guy tells me "well, you can use two hoses but you have to put like 2 inches of 3/4" copper pipe between them to hose clamp to."
No, I do not have a few inches of copper pipe just lying around. So I have to reschedule installation. AGAIN.
I call the appliance line, and the guy who answers says "What do you mean they told you we don't sell 12 foot drain pipes, of course we sell 12 foot drain pipes" and I'm like "Well, you and my local Home Depot obviously need to get on the same page." But at any rate, he reschedules me for another installer visit, and I go to home depot and spend 15 bucks on a couple feet of copper 3/4" tube (because that's the shortest you can buy). At least I manage to get the teenager working that aisle to figure out how to cut it into a 3 inch length for me, which was more of an ordeal than it should have been.
And that brings us to today, installer visit number 3. Again, different driver/installer/delivery guy. He takes one look at the setup and says "I'm not allowed to do this kind of work, we have to schedule you for the plumber."
WHAT. Why didn't the FIRST guy, or the SECOND guy, bring that up?
"I don't know, they should have."
So they put me in the ticket queue for the home depot plumber, who they tell me should be calling me this afternoon to schedule HIS visit.
I'm never buying anything from the Home Depot ever again, if I can help it. I didn't even want to buy this dishwasher there, but they had it for like $50 less expensive than Lowe's and it's the dishwasher the GF wants. This is like a $1200 dishwasher marked down to $800. I felt icky already about compromising on my scruples to save $50 and I'm starting to feel like this is all karmic punishment for giving HD money. Welp, never doing that again, lesson learned, universe.