Inspiring post: Hope robert_columbia doesn’t mind me borrowing from his thread title. 
Yeah, something like the above. So what kinds of “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situations and such have you run across?
There’s joining the Writers Guild of America West, which requires a certain amount of work for production companies that have agreements with them, but has strict rules that make it extremely difficult to get work at any production company that has an agreement with them.
In California, someone who gets on Medi-Cal – the state-funded medical program for indigents – is no longer allowed to go and see the doctor of his choice on a self-pay basis. The doctor is forbidden to see the patient, even if he is able to pay for the visit.
There ought to be room for someone who wants to pay for his own minor medical care – blood pressure meds, etc. – but wants state assistance as a safety net in case of something really big. But the state of California forbids this by law.
I also saw something kind of sad at a restaurant today. A guy was in line for the buffet. When he got to the cash register, the clerk told him to wait a moment, please, and went away to take care of some other item of business. During that time, the cash register’s internal clock ticked over from 4:59 to 5:00 – so the guy was charged the “dinner” rate for his meal rather than the “lunch” rate. If the clerk had logged him in immediately, he’d have gotten the better rate.
(However, he questioned this, and the manager, politely, rolled his cost back to the lunch rate.)
(This wasn’t me: it was the guy ahead of me. I’d already figured to pay the dinner rate.)
One of my favorites. (Sarcasm.)
When marriage equality came to New York State, the (then) Episcopal bishop of the diocese of New York ruled that priests in his diocese could not marry gay couples in their churches. They could bless marriages that had been solemnized civilly, but not perform the marriages themselves.
This was a very odd ruling, because he had been a strong supporter of marriage equality for some time. It was based on a fundamental error, a misreading of an action taken by the wider church. His intransigence on the issue did not endear him to many people.
What lifted the whole situation into the realm of insanity, however, was another part of his directive–which was that partnered gay clergy in the diocese (and there were quite a lot of them) had one year to marry, now that doing so was legal within the state.
So, run this by me again, chief? Gay priests in a LTR now must get married–but they can’t do it in their own church or indeed in any other within the diocese?
Do you have any idea how completely bonkers that is?
(He’s now retired. Thank you, God.)
I understand the same is true of SAG. You need at least three days of on-camera work in a union production, but it’s difficult to get a union job if you aren’t in the union.
Probably the oldest one in the world–a lot of companies won’t hire you if you don’t already have experience in their line of work.
Flyer: I’ve been advised by job-hunting mentors to ignore (very judiciously and only within limits) the “experience required” clause when applying for a job. Don’t lie about it, but apply for the job anyway, even if you don’t have the experience they demand. If you get the interview, don’t bluff, but be honest, and say, “I’m good at this sort of work, and, while I haven’t ever used XYZ before, I know I can be trained up on it very quickly.”
They’re going to have to train their new employee anyway. Even if he has ten years experience with XYZ, he won’t know how that specific company uses it. Their whole implementation is likely to be unique, and the new guy will require time to learn it.
(I have ten years experience with one major database. I figure that allows me to apply for jobs working with other databases, even if the solicitation says I must have experience with one of those others. I mention this in my cover letter, and, in fact, I’ve had some nibbles. No bites yet, though, so maybe it isn’t the best plan in the world…)
This one may have been solved by now…
I got an US SSN back in '94. Left the country in '98. In '02, my employers moved me to the US: this required getting a new SS card, the old one bearing a stamp to the tune of “student employment only”. Being a foreigner, I could not request the new SS card while out of the country, I had to be in the US. Request SS card. “It will take about three months” - say what?
You see, this SS card I had to present to my employers within two weeks of entering the US? It was going to take three months because I needed to get vetoed by the antiterrorist people before I could get it, and the people who came up with this bright idea didn’t come up with, dunnow, the budget and personnel to cover the new workload? That would have been too much to ask! Note that this wasn’t even to get a SS Number, it was for a replacement card; I fail to see how would denying a replacement SS card to someone help fight terrorism but I’m no security specialist.
That’s easy. Having a drivers license proves you are not a terrorist. And you need an SSN to apply for a drivers license, hence…
Starting on Sept 12, 2001, the first thing they did was to require drivers licenses in order to enter airports, public buildings, or other to perform other daily functions. Of course (at least at the time) there was nothing to cross-reference licenses against known terrorists, so the license itself served as proof of non-terrorist status.
I hope that clears that question up.
The accounting system at my office.
When I get a bill from DHL for something I’ve sent overseas, I have to submit it as an expense linked to the project the mailing was for. This bill gets added to the project’s balance sheet to show if it was profitable. Fine.
However, once the client has been billed for the project, the project is now “closed” and no further changes or additions can be made.
Catch-22: The only reason I ship anything via DHL is to send bills to our overseas clients, thereby closing those projects weeks before DHL will ever get a bill to me.
This happens mainly because I’m the only one in the office with overseas clients to bill. I’ve mainly had to resort to adding the bill to a different project that’s still active. After getting a runaround from the accountants, I finally (after over a year) found someone who knew the correct rule for processing this.
My son flies for <somethingsomething> airline. There is a policy/law interaction that he encounters sometimes that makes no sense. He’s not here, so I’m recounting this from memory (I might have some details mixed up).
FAA rule (I think): When one of the pilots has to leave the cockpit (ie. restroom break) a “crewmember” must occupy his seat until he returns. This is to ensure at least one other crew is in the cockpit when the door relocks (in case of medical issue with remaining pilot, door only unlocks from inside).
FAA or airline rule (not sure): Only eligible crewmembers allowed in cockpit seats. “Eligible” refers to crewmembers who haven’t reached rest/duty limits (x amount of time off in last X days), and are still legal to act as part of the crew.
How it works in real life: “Crewmember” refers to both flight and cabin crew. So when son is deadheading home on his own airline, he has ended up in the odd situation where a pilot leaves the cockpit and a flight attendant is strapped into the pilot’s seat. While he (qualified and licensed to fly that plane) sits in the jump seat behind her, because he’s already flown too many hours that day.
He thinks this is a dumb intersection of the rules, and it makes more sense to let him occupy the pilot’s seat until the duty pilot returns.
Another Catch-22 caught him recently. He started flying at a young age, and made it to the airlines quickly. Last year the stars aligned in such a way that his girlfriend was able to ride as a passenger on his flight to Denver, where they’d planned a weekend together. It was fun for her in the passenger cabin, knowing her BF was flying and listening to him drawl the PA announcements. After landing the plane and meeting GF in the terminal, he was informed by Avis that he wasn’t old enough to rent a car. (he’s 24)
Medical billing is often pretty tangled.
A while ago I had some medical symptom (I don’t remember what it was), so I called my doctor up and made an appointment for a few days later. During that few days, I got better. I called back and said that I realized that I was inside the time where I’d be charged for missing an appointment, but since there was no longer anything to examine, it seemed like I probably shouldn’t waste the doctor’s time and mine.
Person on the phone couldn’t or wouldn’t tell me:
- Whether I’d be charged the fee
- What the fee was
- How to discover that information.
After about 10 frustrating minutes on the phone, I ended with: “Ok, then I guess I’ll be there tomorrow.”
Went in, saw the doctor for about 30 seconds, said, “Yeah, it got better, but they wouldn’t let me cancel the appointment”, and he said “Well, let me know if it comes back”.
What a stupid fucking system.
At one point, airlines used to let people who arrive at the airport early take an earlier flight (if there was space). This was a win-win, since passengers could get where they were going earlier, and airlines got to move excess capacity into the future (when they might need it). After a while, most started charging for this, because they realized that people would just book the cheapest flight and show up early hoping to arrive earlier.
At one point, my wife and I had a long layover, and we went to the counter to see if it was possible to get on one of the two earlier flights going to our destination. There was plenty of space, but we’d have to pay for it. No thanks, we said, and sat down to read.
When it came time to board our flight, it was overbooked. They had to bribe six people to wait for a later flight. Dumbasses.
Some countries only have citizenship through descent(jus sanguinus) and some only have citizenship through being born in the country(jus soli) although the former is more common.
This can lead to odd situations where a child is a citizen of nowhere, and there is no way for either parent to pass on citizenship. Seen a couple of stories about this.
In World of Warcraft and Rift, you need to have high-quality gear from Heroics before you’re ready to run Heroics. You need higher-quality gear from raids before you’re deemed ready to run raids.
A friend of mine, back in college, was working as an executive assistant to pay for college. She ended up not getting her degree, got married, had a couple kids, raised them, moved out and tried to get a job as an executive assistant only to find that she’d need to get a college degree before they’d even look at her resume, which included… being an executive assistant .
Yeah that whole, ‘You need work experience to get a job,’ catch 22 is a bitch for the young ones isn’t it?
Of course then you get old and the reverse ‘Sorry you’re too qualified/experienced for this role,’ comes to bite you later on.
We can’t take you off of academic probation until you pay your tuition.
We can’t release your loan checks until you are off of academic probation.
Luckily I could get one office to call the other…
[quote=“Trinopus, post:3, topic:714793”]
In California, someone who gets on Medi-Cal – the state-funded medical program for indigents – is no longer allowed to go and see the doctor of his choice on a self-pay basis. The doctor is forbidden to see the patient, even if he is able to pay for the visit.
There ought to be room for someone who wants to pay for his own minor medical care – blood pressure meds, etc. – but wants state assistance as a safety net in case of something really big. But the state of California forbids this by law.
My girfriend is on medical and she was approved by the mdical office to see her own Dr as long as she pays. She still gets her regular healthcare through medicare. She has never had a problem with it.
You can only fly things in space if they’ve been space-qualified.
To a first-order approximation, “qualified” mean “has flown in space before.”
Meant (among other things) that we had to use $50 batteries that were essentially identical to $2 off the shelf ones–except that they had flown before.
Here’s one. In NY you need a SS card to get a driver’s lisence. If your card is unreadable you can’t use a passport to prove your identity, which you got with your SS card.
But I already had a US license. From a different state, and Penn wanted me to take 40h of lessons and pass a driving exam to give me a new one on account of being from the wrong country… but hey, it was an American driving license all right. I figured I didn’t need one from Penn that much.
You see, I also had a passport, which I had zero problems using to access public buildings, airports, etc. One of those public buildings was the Federal Building, across the street from my own job. And I had a Spanish driving license, which I used repeatedly in order to rent cars.