Insurance company covering fillings, but not the glue that bonds the filling to the tooth. then the same insurance company covering endodointics but not if performed by an endodontist. Correspondence between counsel solved those ones.
Different insurance company covering long term disability but then denying coverage for a fellow who had a massive stroke and was permanently confined as a near veg to a long term care facility. Insurance company lost at court.
I saw one this very weekend.
So I’m at a Dollar store on Saturday with my Dad, and we’re searching for miniature screwdrivers.
We find 'em, and we go up to the checkout. About two people in front of us, there’s a woman buying a graham cracker pie crust, a quart of motor oil, and what looked like a plastic plate.
The strange woman behind the counter puts the plate in one bag, and the oil & pie crust in the next one. The other woman asks for another bag, because she doesn’t want the oil in with the pie crust.
The woman behind the counter asks for the bag with the plate back, so she can put the pie crust in it. When the other woman refuses, she says that she can’t have a third plastic bag because they’re “too expensive”.
This at a place that, by my estimation, had roughly $150 worth of do-rags, $300 or more worth of calling cards, and burglar bars (!) on all windows, in a strip-mall in SW Houston. It was the ONLY place in the entire mall with burglar bars.
When we got outside, I commented to my dad that the money they’d have saved by not installing the stupid-ass burglar bars would have bought a lot of plastic bags.
Is that House of Pizza, DD? I ate there a time or two. Only time I’d seen diced pepperoni on a pizza.
There is an independent tire dealer about three blocks from my house. I’d always traded there since I moved to the neighborhood because they were handily close and their prices weren’t much different than the chain places dotting the area. Seven years with two cars most of the time so they knew me.
When I was on a trip Desert Roomie struck something and ruined the right front tire. She called me about what to do. “Go to the guys down the street,” I said. “They’ll sell you a used tire for twenty-five bucks.” So I get back a couple days later and check things out. On the right front is a 175-14 70 instead of a 165-14 70 like the other three. I take the car to them and point out they mounted a tire with a larger diameter on the drive axle–not good. “Don’t bother demounting and putting on a 165 series; just swap them front and rear.” They did so, and then the boss wrote up an invoice for $10 – to remedy their mistake.
I smiled, pulled ten bucks out of my wallet, and drove away, to never set foot in the place again. Two months later I bought a set of four tires for $270 at the chain down the street. Lessee, $10 pure profit once vs. whatever the markup is on $270 plus any future patronage . . .
Thanks for the explanation. I should’ve figured that out. Oh well, another example of not fitting in :rolleyes:
I worked for a fax-email-voicemail company. Some highlights included:
-When our corporate takeover was complete, we were all “encouraged” to either dress up really nice (it’s a call center) or else we could use Company Logo Wear. The CLW could, of course, only be bought at the company store, which charged $35 for a polo shirt in 2000. After we all refused, that rule was dropped.
-We were all not given raises for almost 2 years, because we didn’t make enough profit (read: they’re trying to spin us off). When we all got our raises, we got from 1-4%. Raises before that were 2-5%. After that raise, we waited a whole year to compete for our 2-5%.
-Our health insurance was switched to what would affectionately be termed the “Baby Raping, Kitten Beating” plan. Our co-pays went up 150%, our premiums went up over 50%, and there was no longer any “experimental treatments” like infertility or acupuncture. Or yearly physicals. Or medications like allergy or birth control that wasn’t purchased though the web pharmacy.
-They saved money by turning off the parking lot lights at 10pm. The overnight shift didn’t start until 11, and the 2nd shift got out at 12. There are 4 lights. 6 including the 2 in the reception area.
-Old company meetings? Open bar at the restaurant across the street. New company meetings? In the break room, during work hours, and not everyone can attend.
We still had the money to pay for the crappy FISH training and then a few years later (when there were no raises) for the Who cut the cheese workshops. Oh, and the 3rd prez in 2 years at least told us straight that he didn’t like us, nor NJ.
The VoIP company was different. We got little knick-knacks all the time, and dinner every day. Best of all, they provided vegetarian options and a variety. Treated us like shit on the floor, but in the break room, we were people.
See, this drives me nuts. If you don’t tell them why you’re no longer patronizing their business, you’re not making any impact!
my nomination for the lamest way to raise money by a business
What do I win?
Damn you! You beat me to it! I totally should have thought of this.
I’m with the teacher posters.
I started out in teaching. It took several years to wise up to the joke it was and leave.
Examples
No lamps or anything that plugs in (as another teacher has posted). I was once told to unplug the battery charger (mine) charging batteries (mine) so that I could use in school equipment.
‘new’ computers with no floppy drives (no hard drives back then). There was no way for the students to save their work. Thankfully, a local businessman found out and loaned us one plug in drive, in which the students had to move around. It still was a godsend.
no textbooks for computer science. Yup…no textbooks.
The lightbulb in the overhead projector went out in the third week. I was told that I would have to wait a year for the next budget to get one. I thought they were joking (naive me)…until I found out they were serious.
I taught math…I had to form an agreement with my students that a * stood for a negative sign…not a -. The reason was that the chalkboard was so old and scratched/grooved that the students and I routinely would mistake them for a negative sign. Weirdly enough, I ofund out that using the * HELPED the students more than hurt because they understood that it was just a symbol better (I guess)
The same bulletin board…a large part of it actually fell off and crashed on the floor. Still no replacement. he bulletin board was due to be replaced in 10 years. Yup…it never was replaced.
The shattered remnants? After a few days, I realized that it wasn’t going to be cleaned up unless I did it.
On of the teachers found out her kids qualified for free school lunches (not even reduced…FREE)…because she made so little (full time, at school for 8 years). The community and administration were embarassed by this. Their solution? If she insisted on getting a free lunch for her kids…she would be fired.
A local car dealer refused to sell a car to a teacher. Reason? Because they didn’t make enough to qualify for a loan. This caused a little stir. Solution? He made a special excemption for teachers. (nice – giving loans to people that can’t afford it). He confided in me that his arm was twisted by the local community).
The deductable (DEDUCTABLE!) for health insurance was $5000. I kid you not. My uncle sold health insurance and insisted that I had to have it wrong, that no such policy exists. I brough him the info. He did some research and found out it was true…he couldn’t believe it. He said that the deductable and other restrictions pretty much made the policy worthless. He also researched the price and it came up to about $4.87 a month (IIRC).
The school was charging $87 per month to the teachers for the above insurance. As I was leaving the job, I informed the other teachers and the administration that this was probably illegal. I heard from a friend next year (who was still there) that the school ‘graciously’ allowed the health insurance costs to the teachers to $4.87 per month (IIRC).
Onto college teaching:
ehhh…it was bad…but not as bad as the above…
I had a millionaire boss who kept all the pencils in his office. You had to show him your 1-inch stub pencil before he’d give you another one.
Does mumble things under his breath about people taking his stapler? 
I worked at a chinese restaurant that served hot tea with every table,the boss demanded we put the undrank tea back in the urn.I quit.
I worked at a Dairy Queen for a year when I was in high school. Two particularly parsimonious things stand out:
– When you used the soft-serve machine to make someone’s ice-cream cone, you’d have to drain a small amount of melted soft-serve that was in the nozzle. That was drained into a paper drink cup kept right next to the machine. The manager told us to keep an eye on that cup of melted slush, and when it got up to a certain level and a customer ordered a shake, use that slush to make the shake.
– The DQ closed at 9, and we were expected to stay after closing and clean up the place. Nothing wrong with that, except we weren’t paid for any hours after 9. Sometimes we’d be there until 10 or 11 cleaning. We were all kids and too intimidated to complain. Finally at a staff meeting, one of the braver employees asked why we weren’t paid for the post-9 p.m. work. The manager gave us an embarrassed smile and said he was “thinking” about changing that (but he never did).
I’m 99% positive that’s illegal. If he makes you clock out, you leave.
The pencil hoarding makes sense to me.
I have two pens and one pencil from my work in front of me right now. I have at least half a dozen in my car and one in my coat pocket.
I’d chain the damned things to your desk.
Definitely illegal, but also endemic in fast food. Management figures the minimum wage drones are too scared of losing their jobs to complain, despite the presence of the giant, federally mandated poster that lays out all the rules about wages and hours.
Plus the workers are usually teenagers who probably don’t know enough to speak up. When Ivyboy was working at Subway, the manager called up and asked if they were busy. When Ivyboy told him no, the manager told him to clock out but to stick around so he could clock back in if it got busy.
Reminds me of something similar back when my sister worked a Domino’s in the mid-eighties. She had to go in at a certain time but if they weren’t busy yet, she had to hang around, unpaid, until they were. Then she could clock in. For that and other reasons, she quickly found another job.
They’re going nuts about the lights again at my workplace. Some people in my department were working last Friday, even though it was a holiday. Apparently, the owner of the company saw some lights left on in the building after everyone else had left. My boss has had two managers come and have lengthy talks with her about the importance of turning lights off and how to turn the lights off–even though the lights were not left on in our area! I think that more money was wasted on the overly long lectures (especially if they lectured others in the same manner) than was wasted accidentally leaving the lights on in the first place!
I see you work for LAUSD too.