I believe the phrase “a body” means a person in the quote. It has the same meaning in the passage “if a body meets a body coming through the rye”.
I tried that. They were all too busy whitewashing my fence.
…and the man wins the thread.
Ah, but someday I’ll be in a job interview, up against a genius for the perfect job. And the interviewer will call in the CEO and the entire board, and tell me “We just can’t decide. So we’re thinking we’ll make our decision based on which candidate has the best grasp of comics. Well, that and the most cynical, rapier-like wit”. And I’ll sit back, prop my feet on the boardroom table, and say “I’ll need an office with a window and a 401k…”
He didn’t really expand upon the joke from the quoted post, so in any thread championship contest the quoted post will go ahead of this one.
Just read on Freakonomics a few days ago that there is “some evidence” that people value their free time at about 1/3 of their actual wage. This makes intuitive sense to me but I would guess people often value their free time even less than that, in that people who make $20/hr would have no problem spending an hour of free time to save $4 or $5.
spoilsport
Do you have any examples? Based on the number of people in my neighborhood that pay people to mow their grass, I suspect a lot of people actually value their time at more than 1/3rd. Of course, if the people are using the time they save to go to a gym and use the treadmill, then they are other issues.
Why does an office need a 401k?
What is a ridiculous amount to pay someone to mow your lawn? I pay $90 a month for someone to mow my lawn and it probably saves me four-six hours a month. Seems like a bargain to me.
What’s interesting is that I bet if you told someone who goes five minutes out of their way to save a $1.25 on gas, that you will give them $1.25 to drive you someplace five minutes away they would probably tell you to keep your money.
Note that mowing lawns also requires capital expenditures over and above the mower’s time (e.g. a lawnmower and fuel).
And I’m betting that you probably make less than $45 an hour, so you are in fact valuing your free time at more than 1/3 of your wages.
Based on my experience that works out to 2 to 3 dollars each time I mow the grass. Paying someone to do it costs 20 dollars and up. Of course, I could save more by replacing the gas mower with a reel mower.
I had one boss that claimed he saved time by riding his bicycle to work, since he combined exercise with commuting. I asked how his $2,000 carbon fiber bicycle figured into this, since a steel frame would provide him with more exercise over the same distance.
After taxes, you are probably right, but not by much. (I live in California, so our wages are on the high end, as is the cost of insurance, gas, housing, etc).
I don’t quite get your point. Even if a steel-frame bicycle (or for that matter, underinflated tires) would give the boss a better workout than his high-efficiency fancy carbon fiber bike, he could still be perfectly correct that combining his exercise regimen with his commute worked out to be a net time-saver for him.
E.g., if his daily commute would be a half-hour by car but an hour by bicycle, and if driving to work meant that he would spend an hour daily on a different exercise program, then clearly he’d be spending 1 hour per day on the combination of commuting and exercising if he biked to work, compared to 1.5 hours per day if he drove to work. I don’t really see how the cost or composition of his bicycle affects that calculation in any way.
Because he is paying more money to get less exercise. Since he was also bicycling on the weekend to get the exercise in that he wanted. Why buy the $2000 bike when he ended making up the time on the weekend. Carbon fiber doesn’t make sense unless it is a competition bike or a one strictly used for commuting. Of course the real reason he bought it is that carbon fiber is frigging awesome.
Well, not only is he getting both his commute and some exercise out of his bike, he’s also getting some of his entertainment. It’s hard to know how much value he puts on that, but I’m guessing that an expensive bike is more fun than a cheap one.
And of course, even if two grand is expensive for a bike, it’s an order of magnitude cheaper than the car he’d be using instead. Yeah, he probably has a car anyway, but he’s putting less mileage on it.