Did I strike a nerve, granny?
(ps, I’m probably older than you are, so I get to make fun of old fo’ks)
I think that is what self-checkout stations are for. I once fed over 8 bucks in change into a machine – but at least it was at 11 p.m. and there was no waiting for the slot.
I’m 44. 
I do keep it to well under a dollar of change (usually just want to get rid of pennies but keep coins that vending machines will take) and do try to keep things moving quickly if there’s someone in line behind me. If there isn’t a line, I don’t hurry quite as much to get out of the way.
The local Sainsbury’s has self checkouts with a hopper you can just pour your change into and it sorts it for you, so you don’t have to plug coins in one at a time. A boon to those shopping with the contents of their change jars…
Coinstar operates machines in many grocery stores in the US, but they charge 10.9% for the privilege.
Except if you take your money as a gift card. This is how I finance meals at Chili’s.
Me: So-and-so is creating a table in X database and wants to remove the rights of everyone else to make changes to it. I don’t see it’s possible for him to make this change, unless I’m missing something.
Co-worker: Well if we change the structure/rules so that people only have the rights to change their own tables on this temporary database.
Me: No, we’re not doing that. We’re not changing the rules for this one guy.
Co-worker: But if we were to change the rules so that blah blah blah
Me: No, we’re not doing that. I’m asking a simple question. Is there a way he can do this directly?
Co-worker: Well, we could change the rules…
Me: :smack: NO. Not happening. So without changing the rules that affect 40 people, he can’t do this, right?
Co-worker: We could change the rules to blah blah blah.
Me: :mad: So no then. Thanks. (turn and walk away)
So, how hard did you slap him upside his head?
Or, alternatively, “Am I speaking in tongues here? Did I slip out of English?”
So, we have a critical legacy application that does not run on WIndows 7 (believe me, we’ve tried; the application is no longer supported by the vendor at all.) We also have a corporate directive to be off of all WIndows XP machines by the end of the year, because Windows XP is not (apparently) PCI compliant.
Do we have a plan? Not really. We had a plan that might have achieved that end some time in mid-late 2015, but the resources for that plan keep getting pulled off to do other projects to make the local executives look good - i.e. bring in a fraction more revenue. So now the timeline even to achieve the original plan is shot to hell.
Are we going to make the corporate deadline? No way in hell.
Do I care? Not a sausage.
So I guess this isn’t much of a gripe, because it doesn’t really affect me that much. It’s just that I hate working for people for whom I have no respect.
Roddy
I’m not sure if that’s an option on the machines here; I’ve avoided them entirely because of the percentage they take, so I haven’t noticed. I’d rather plug 2p and 5p coins into the self checkout one by one and get my full money’s worth, heh. But if there are gift cards available, that might be worthwhile if one had a lot of loose change to sort out. I’m the kind who likes sorting out change, though, so mine would end up in little baggies and go to the bank anyway if I had that much. 
Seem to have got off the topic of workplace griping, heh. Um, let’s see. Feeling somewhat overwhelmed at times, but still reassured regularly by my line manager that I’m going a heckuva job and she’d glad I’m there. Funder wants lots of detailed information about what my volunteers are doing and when and how and to whom, that I didn’t make a point of collecting at first, so I’ll have to make sure they do that from now on and gather whatever information I can about deeds done thus far.
I have to keep reminding myself that this is the initial pilot stage of the project and if I don’t know everything right off the bat, it’s par for the course. There is, after all, a learning curve, and they chose a person with gardening experience over a person with project coordination experience precisely because they could supply help with the latter but not the former.
I’m learning a lot and starting to tie up some loose ends and hopefully things will even out soon. But I still go in every day with a nagging fear in the pit of my stomach that I am forgetting something really important or otherwise royally screwing something up. So far I’ve only had one client actually yell at me and quit the project in a huff, though, so that’s encouraging.
It’s not, I looked into it last year 
Yeah, that’s what Parkhead just said.
We have a guy like that. Let’s call him Joe (because that’s his name).
I’ve been known to interrupt Joe’s prevaricating with “Umm, there’s a Yes Or No question on the table.”
*“Well, we could do it this way. Or, possibly, that way…”
*“Joe. Yes. Or. No.”
*“Let me give you some background on the two approaches …”
*" :mad: So no then. Thanks." (turn and walk away)
As one of my co-workers put it: “Joe has an utter inability to go binary.”
As a reasonable, intelligent, normal human being, it frustrates us to see stupidity on the hoof. This situation would bother me somewhat, simply because it’s dumb and short-sighted and I don’t care for dumb and short-sighted.
Agreed. When I say I “don’t care” I mean in the fundamental, life-at-stake sort of way. I will be retired by the time this becomes a real issue, and it will be someone else’s problem (unless they decide to hire me back as a consultant at my new astronomical hourly rate).
I feel sorry for the friends I will be leaving behind in this situation. But they are young enough to jump ship and find other jobs, and if they aren’t choosing to do so, I can’t feel too sorry for them.
Roddy
Isn’t that a great feeling? On my next birthday*, I can officially retire any time I want.
(I won’t for a while… but, hey, I could!)
So there are a lot of problems that I’ll point out, but with the attitude “You should do something about this, or it’ll come back to bite us in the butt… a year after I’m outta here. Oh, wait, did I say ‘us’? I meant ‘you’!”
*Oh, and my next birthday is tomorrow.
Congrats digs!!! I loved the shorttimers countdown I’ve done in jobs, but to know that you never have to work again if you don’t want to.
That must be such an awesome feeling.
Temping doesn’t have a lot of perks, but that’s one of them - you have that feeling at every assignment - “Having a big crisis that’s going to blow up in your faces in three months? Good thing I’ll be gone by then!” 
Happy Birthday, Digs!
Happy Birthday, Digs!
I spent most of the last two weeks working on a project that is not my primary responsibility because a) the tools were poorly designed, but more importantly b) people were sending in their contributions past the Due Date. I stayed late last night, finishing up some interim deliverable on this project, not able to do critical preparation for another project.
Three people sent in corrections to last night, after I left. For inclusion in a report to a CXO this morning.
I reminded everyone, including my boss, of my availability for this project, and promised I would get right on it. After I finish my primary project. The emails are already rolling in. I almost hope I get in trouble, so I can explain to the CXO why the report wasn’t current.
And you quite possible have, but I doubt you will make a mistake as significant as failing to plan the retirement of a critical software application. Congratulations on this position, and gardening is better preparation for project management that you might realize.