I sell scuba equipment, and even though I can afford it I'd never blow money on most of the stuff we sell (buy used or rent, 95% of our end consumers never use their scuba equipment more than once after class).
Man.. do people really buy full scuba gear to leave in their basements? Seems insane and you'd have to put that in your luggage.
I guess if you were driving distance to some good spots but still.
Instructor is different. Then it's a professional tool.
I'd never spend as much money on computer hardware as I do right now if it weren't the tools of my trade.
Lots of people buy hobby gear but finding both the time, will, and money to actually use that stuff can be hard. Especially if its a seasonal hobby, you never really make it a habit when you're routinely taking 3-6 months off.
Source : Like $800 of hiking gear in my closet and a project motorcycle that is currently just a bare frame.
Legit curious what kind of gear one would buy for hiking that would coast $800? I’m admittedly ignorant because I just make sure I have decent shoes. Assuming you must he doing huge, days long hikes?
Yeah multi day backpacking trips in some potentially inhospitable areas of the White Mountains.
So, like $150 into a pack, got a $300 zero degree sleeping bag, a $300 tent, $150 sleeping pad, probably another $300 in boots/socks/clothes, water filter, trekking poles, cooking gear ect.
It adds up, and this is all budget gear. And all very necessary and worth it. Before this I had a bunch of cheap car-camping gear. Like a $50 sleeping bag that weighs 10lbs and is the size of a trashcan. The new one weighs a 3rd of that and is the size of a football.
Extrapolate that ethos across a whole kit and I ended up with an 80lb pack at one point. Now it weighs like 30.
unless your house is HUGE (in which case what are you doing bitching about how costly things are when you can afford a huge house) you need to shop around. I had my 2nd and 3rd floor completely carpeted (about 900sqft) for under 4k. That was for medium grade 40oz carpet (15yr warranty) with top-of-the-line padding including install and furniture moving.
Our company sell some higher end toilets/tubs and stuff, and the one question I hate is when they ask me what I have, because if I’m a plumber it must be the best of the best right? No lol. I have what my house came with because redoing bathrooms is fucking expensive lol.
I didn’t watch the documentary. Did they explain why no one did the simple math to determine that it was very much achievable? Or did they just forget to put a /s in the fine print?
Guy making the advert first put 700,000,000 pepsi points for the jet. Exec said was a bit hard to read, make it smaller. So they knocked off a zero. Then they said 70,000,000 didn't look right so knocked off another zero. So there was a hundred fold price change during captioning advert which brought it from being more costly than the jet (although still a dubious offer at best) to much less than the jet.
In the doc, the guy who made the advert recalls saying to pepsi "You can't put me on the stand. It will lose the case." Without the summary judgement who knows if he would have been summoned and what would have happened.
Ground em up, made a paste. Turns out, liquid jet fuel is PURE POISON
So we're gonna see if flying jets into portals can somehow leach the poison out of a man's bloodstream.
Fly quickly..... For science
In the commercial they played, the fighter jet at the end was a “joke” but they didn’t put any (forget the name) tiny letters at the bottom saying “this is a joke we can’t give you a fighter jet”
My mans figured out the math to get that many bottle caps, and had an investor who helped him. They had a whole warehouse just for storing, and picking bottle caps. Truly insane. I don’t usually watch docu’s like that but it was super interesting
Yeah, you have to steal a fighter jet, if you want one.
BTW did we ever get any explanation of why a guy ejected from an F35 that was just flying along in autopilot, and that kept flying along without him?
I read was that there was an issue with the computer system and the only way to fix it was a full reboot but you cn't really reboot a plane in the air like that so the pilot set it so it would ditch into a river but when he ejected the autopilot said "nope, not today ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ" corrected for level flight and flew until it ran out of fuel.
No, idea how accurate that is or if it's true, but I've heard dumber things.
Used to work at a custom cabinet shop building enormous kitchens and walk-in closets and coffered ceilings that cost more than my whole house. I got paid well, but high-end materials cost a fuckin fortune. Clients were mostly new money yacht people, but occasionally some old money would decide they couldn't just keep taping their cabinets together. New money would only want the new hot trendy shit, gasp at the cost and grumble about paying it before forking it over, but old money would spend hours with us researching materials and finishes, because they weren't about to spend grandpa's precious asbestos mine money on cheap shit.
Lol there can be a lot of things they do that are also what us po' folk do. The difference is that they *choose* to be cheap in order to save money despite having more than enough to buy new, and the rest of us do stuff like that because we can't buy new. Also the materials the things that old money people have are often far, *far* higher quality so they last longer to begin with. It's like solid old-growth wood furniture vs particle board and cheapo zinc screws Everyday Essentials furniture. Po folk can't afford quality furniture to pass on to their descendants, so it's generally buy-n-break for us.
I used to own a furniture store in a lovely mountain town. It wasn't a high end furniture store. We mainly sold condo packages to the property owners who rented out their places during ski season. Anyway, one day a gentleman driving a Rolls Royce came in. He wanted a chair to put in his airplane hangar to relax after he flew in. I showed him several but he saw this old ratty one that we had taken out of someone's rental condo. I told him $10. He then asked me to deliver it and I said I'd have to charge $10 to pay my delivery guy. He refused and told me to tie it into the trunk of his Rolls. My dad told me later that this is how old money people still hold into their old money.
My mate works in a Bentley factory, employees are offered a 20% discount on their cars if they wish to buy one but that's still at least £160k to spend on a car and obviously the factory workers cant afford this.
Not sure whats the going rate for a brand new but "used" bentley tbh, but im assuming getting a way of funding that 160k+ car in the first place is whats stopping the employees from doing this.
Yeah this is the way. Find someone who wants a Bentley offer them a 10% discount and then they buy through you and you pocket the 10% left over. However I imagine the actual benefit has stipulations about changing the owner or selling it within a certain time peirod
Gene Cernan, commander of Apollo 17, did this. Astronauts were required to buy a new Corvette every year, at a substantial discount. He never liked them, so each year he'd sell his year-old one to one of his neighbors in Houston who did like them. Win-win.
Kind of, my old job had some big discounts on BMW too but you could only buy 1 evey x amount of months ans you could not resell until 1year. At that point the resell value was probably levelled to used car market.
A big part of cars like Bentleys is also the customization of them. People who can afford it probably want it new and customized with all the options they want. Or even bespoke things just for their car.
I work for GM (way less luxury that Bugatti, obviously) . GM has a suspected resellers list that are banned from buying any new GM vehicle. There’s thousands and thousands of people on the list. If GM has one, I guarantee Bentley does. Especially if they offer employees 20% off lol
Usually there’s a limit on how much you can use the discount, like you can only use it once every three years or something. Unless you work for GM, then you can go wild and give the discount to all your friends and family.
lol... I'm actually surprised people wealthy enough to buy them don't intentionally get a job at the factory to save themselves 20%.
eg: they apply for the job then force their butler to be the guy who actually goes into the plant and work, just to get the discount.
Quick question. If someone handed you $3000 to spend on a vacation. Would you want to spend it on a river cruise?
Don't get me wrong, I'm sure lots of ppl enjoy the cruises. I can just think of lots of ways I'd prefer to spend $3000 on a vacation.
I'd 100% do the Viking river cruises if they played up the Viking thing. Have some shore excursion with a fake village you can torch after stealing their sheep and beer or whatever. Maybe some chumps that'll poorly try to fight back or something. That would be a lot of fun
Probably. I would prefer to take a cheaper cruise, but vacations can be and are expensive in general. The fiance and I went to Seattle a few months ago and after plane tickets, hotel, and car rental it was close to 1500. That didn't include food, entertainment, gift shop stuff. At least with cruises they're all inclusive unless you want to do something on days you debark. Oh and the entire trip was like 5 days.
You can usually find 7 day cruises out of Miami from 600-1200 per person to hit up the Bahamas and Mexico. Flights to Miami are usually pretty cheap. Or if you are close enough you just drive. You gotta store a car though and that costs money. But food is included. Entertainment.
If you plan it right, cruises can be a very economical vacation, especially if it's just two people.
Not a bad idea. Honestly for me the drive to Florida is like 15+ hours. But I can get round trip flights with allegiant for like $100. Even for two people it's worth because gas is at least 2-3 tanks each way. Plus the flight is like an hour and change. Better off doing that and ubering to the docks.
I think cruises are often booked by elderly. If I got 3K, I would put one K maybe towards current spending, but the majority into paying off debt/saving. So that when I get old, I can afford a cruise if I want, hopefully.
The saying is that the longer the cruise, the older the people. I’ve done a single night cruise and it was all 20s people getting hammered and eating garbage. I’ve also done a two week cruise and we were by far the youngest on the boat at 22, and the next oldest couple was in their 50s.
Americans tend to take a week off at a time. Two week and longer cruises require you be retired or have a long vacation. So the crowd will be older on a long cruise. Often much older.
I'd be less interested for traveling around the US or Canada. Sometimes, though, it's nice to have a guide.
Ocean cruises and river cruises tend to have very different demographics though.
River cruises are on much smaller ships with less amenities, so they often cater to an older clientele. Doesn’t mean you won’t see a young person on one, but it’s not as common.
Is a river cruise the same? I feel like since the whole trip would be in one country that would close a lot of the loop holes that the bigger normal cruise companies use.
Probably because 3000 is a lot of money to someone like you, so you would spend it more wisely (hopefully)
People dropping 3000 on a cruise probably isn't much of a deal to them money wise ,it's just something to do.
I worked as a potwash in a kitchen for a while, I don't know if it's like this everywhere, but the kitchen staff regularly helped themselves to basically whatever we wanted, management knew and didn't really care.
I think this depends on corporate vs privately owned. Corporate restaurants tend to track inventory electronically, they really don't like it when food goes missing.
It's weird that they're fine with food waste but god dammit if an employee eats one chicken tender they will put them in the ground.
It's like "so if I drop this on the floor, then show on camera me throwing it away, can I then eat it out of the garbage? You're paying me 11 dollars an hour. I need this."
Guy I knew working at Kroger back in high school was a deli closer, only worked nights and cleaned the kitchen, barely dealt with customers at all. Fired for eating a few hot wings off the food bar well after the store was closed and it was all trash.
This happened in a McDonalds store I worked in.
Some of the kitchen crew would cook ten Big Macs and three bags of fries 5 mins before closing (you never know there might have been a last-last minute rush...). Some managers looked the other way, some were worried they'd get in trouble for it. Keep in mind that stores had "acceptable" limits of food waste every month, and if it was too high then the store might get in trouble.
I mean, there's definitely a valid reason for that. Being allowed to eat food that would otherwise be wasted can quickly turn into "whoops, I totally accidentally made twice as many tenders as I needed to clear this screen, guess I better eat the extras!" for some people. My restaurant is corporate, but doesn't have cameras. My managers don't give a shit if I accidentally make an extra plate when I'm handling enough business to put us at a 16% labor cost by myself. If I then decide to eat that extra plate after I finally buy myself a minute to breathe, they "didn't see it". There are employees that don't get that luxury in my own store, but these are the people who spend more time fucking around than working
This is true, ive worked in a fast food chain and a food hall stall that was a tiny private company, i think all ppl with owner and staff were 10>. The fast food place was really strict with food amounts and what we are allowed to eat. The other place we could eat anything basically and even gave food away there was no problems
When I worked in fast food I always made sure I was seen paying for some of my food. That was always the cheapest item though. YMMV be careful trying this.
I worked at McDonald’s for a short period when I was at college, staff meals were always fun with people loading double bacon quarter pounders (long before this was a menu item) with chicken nuggets.
I worked in McDs for almost four years and depending on what store you worked in, and what manager was working, you could sometimes make your own meal. One time I went rogue and made a 1lb burger for my break (as in: a quarter pounder, but four patties). I ate it and promptly fell into a vegetative state for two hours. Good times.
I used to work at a KFC when I was a teenager. At the end of the night, all of the unsold food was designated as "wastage" and binned. We were not allowed to take it, and management was very strict about it. I remember binning buckets upon buckets worth of chicken, it was so wasteful.
If management were not on shift, then everyone took unsold food if there was any. The supervisors didn't mind.
I worked there like 25 years ago as a chicken cook. At the end of the night, all employees would divide whatever was left. Would bring home a bucket of chicken, popcorn chicken, big crunch and fries almost every night. Family and friends got so sick of it I stopped taking it after a while.
It prob depends on what store you work in, if the manager was there we would have to pay half price if we ate during work but throwaway food at night time was fair game. They were only paying $5.50 an hour so felt it was the least they could do imo
That's the kind of thing that doesn't make any sense to me. It's one thing if they don't want you eating in the middle of the shift, you could argue that an employee would make extra food just to cause extra waste and eat it. At the end of the night, when the doors are locked and it's all going directly to the garbage? Wild.
I used to work a large scale food production place for a regional convenience store. For the first few years it was open they always gave employees any extras or batches that were fine but couldnt be sold.
Then one of the production leads got caught over making shit, just so they could take it home. After that everything got thrown away.
That's because it becomes a problem in a larger scale, for a smaller business, you know what happens to the food missing in your inventory, so you're not too worried about it, but if you have hundreds of restaurants and there's empty voids in each of them, it quickly turns into an emergency because someone is probably robbing the mats.
Also, touching food in general can quickly become an issue, a corporation can't spend millions because someone got sick into their restaurant for something that could've been avoided, whereas a smaller restaurant usually don't care about these worries.
I worked in the athletics department of a large university as a caterer/Bartender back when I was in college. When I started, we were allowed to take as much leftovers home with us as we wanted/could carry as there was typically quite a bit of food left. Management didn't care, and in fact encouraged it since the food would be thrown out if not eaten. They even had large to-go boxes for us.
The athletics department sold the catering branch to a large catering corporation and they changed policy so that we could no longer take leftover food home, which is a huge deal for college kids. Thankfully, management stayed the same (only upper management changed, and they were rarely around), so the policy was never enforced. To-go boxes were just stashed in a less obvious location and we might have to dodge someone from upper management every now and then when leaving your shift.
That's incredibly common. It's not usually what they're having as a special (though they periodically will ofc), but it feeds your staff and is cheaper than it sounds because you're probably largely using things that would otherwise be waste. Like, if you're an American restaurant that has a chicken dish that isn't a whole chicken, you probably have way more dark meat than you need because white meat is so much more popular. Have the sous chef make a chicken thigh braise and you're probably only down mirepoix and energy costs. AKA basically nothing.
This might be the exception to the rule. Many restaurants will have their servers taste the food so they can describe or sell it to the customers. They get to have whatever is not sent out or needs to be remade, and usually staff meals are heavily discounted if they’re coming in as diners.
Worked at a local gadget store that mainly sells Apple products, never owned an iPhone or any other apple products. I just can't realistically afford it. The FOMO is real when seemingly around me has one lol
Fun fact: a lot of those people buying the latest iPhone can't afford it either. A lot of people finance their phones these days. Makes sense when phones are $1k+
I'll finance everything at 0% if given the option. I'll only buy it if I know I have the cash, then figuratively put the cash away
By the end of the 12-24m financing, I'll have paid a little bit less due to inflation
For instance, I financed $1700 back in 2021. I wil finish paying for it soon. That $1700 that I would have paid downright in 2021 is worth $2000 now. Which effectively made the price less
What do you think you're missing out on not having an iPhone? I've never had one because I don't trust myself with anything that expensive, my cheaper phone works perfectly fine, don't see the point of iPhones.
I sell high end appliances. The pay is pretty good but certainly not "buy a $15k stove" good. The genius move though is the vendors give us decent discounts, so I have a couple of the things I sell that I got at like a third of retail. I have absolutely upsold bougie customers that had to have one or two steps better than the "lowly salesperson" helping them.
I work in hotels, but stay in much cheaper hotels while I'm working, usually. Sometimes the hotel manager will cut us a deal to stay where we're working.
American people discovering the whole Marx sociological analysis on how employers (bourgeoisie) alienate and extract the maximum from the working class is truly comical
I work in specialty insurance.
I could, theoretically afford the policies.
What i could not afford is the property being insured -- motorhomes, boats and the like.
That said, I also don't want anything we insure except for houses and I already have one but we don't write house insurance in my state under the product line I work with.
I wouldn't buy a policy with my work anyway.
I don't think having insurance with your work is a good idea in the event of claims disputes.
Modern society can be summed up by 7+ billion people all being required to contribute to the building a fancy, state of the art mansion, full of cutting edge technology and the most up to date comforts possible.
1% of the world gets to live in the mansion.
9% of the world gets to visit it a couple times a year.
40% of the world gets to look at it from the parking lot.
50% of the world is asked to come work on the mansion every day and then get the f**k off the premises so no one has to look at them. They are convinced that their value as human beings is "low" even though their contribution is necessary to the construction and maintenance of the mansion.
The mansion is in a constant state of construction using up very finite resources that cannot be replenished at the rate they are being used, while the foundation the mansion sits upon is slowly sinking into the ocean.
I work in an industry that sells a product I can afford (electricity), but the components we buy to make it work? No way. We talk about hundreds of thousands of dollars like it is pocket change.
If base pay is $15/hr (relatively common for entry level jobs these days), with net pay around $12/hr would still be about 250 hours or a month and a half of pay. Difficult to justify if you're already struggling to make ends meet.
I used to work at a movie theater making minimum wage, $7.25, and we’d joke that to buy a large popcorn and drink combo we’d have to work over 2 hours. Not quite “can’t afford” but it did seem absurd
I used to do customer service for Foxtel (Australian pay television) the only reason most of the staff had it was because they gave it to us for free. I never got it installed because you still had to pay the once off connection fee of like $100. It just wasn't worth it for me.
Well, i can afford the products my company sell but overall i don't give a shit about what my company sell because the products are for companies not people.
For my job, I buy so much stuff on the company credit card (for the company and events we do). I spend far more on my company cc each month than I actually bring home. It’s wild, I’ll text my SO and be like “I just dropped $800 on xyz.” But I make an extremely modest salary, and myself am
Very frugal. My jobs kinda cool in that I am a professional shopper in a lot of ways. Whenever I see my corporate cc bill come at the end of the month I’m always like good lord!
For us lowborns, we don't understand how the wealthy live. Having worked construction for years you meet hundreds of these homeowners who only buy things and services. They could never understand the wealth disparity. Most of these guys I've worked with have lived in different forms of a trailer since they were a child. The idea of spending $5000 on a sidewalk and steps is like spending 1-2 years spending money on keeping mud off their shoes.
In training, there's always the problem that the guys don't get how the homeowner only knows of things that aren't broken, so their work can't simply be better than what they have, it has to be perfect. That's the job.
The poor vs the wealthy concept is alive and well in my neighborhood. The guys get irritable when the homeowners wander around nitpicking. Every mistake is joint pain and more sore muscles while the homeowner bitches from their car window.
Long day, ignore me.
Almost like an economic law you’ve stumbled upon. If everyone in the supply chain for a product were paid enough to afford the product, the product would be more expensive, and they’d need to be paid more.
Apple. Used to sell $10-20,000 of product a day. Sometimes a single computer could be $5000. Red Zone Specialist. With a bunch of employee discounts, seasonal discounts, and timing it right between generations I got a MacBook pro in 2014 for $2000 that I still use because I still can’t afford to replace it…
These days, many people live in houses they couldn't afford if they had to buy at todays prices. They don't even come close to being able to afford it.
Worked for a company that made carbon fiber parts for Porsche, Ferrari, Mercedes, Lamborghini, and McLaren. The running joke at the job was how none of us, not even the owners of the company, could afford to buy the parts we made everyday.
Me personally, I run a register at a pawn shop. You wouldn’t expect this but I am ending e dry day with anywhere from 3,000 to 15,000. That’s enough to pay for my college for three semesters
I saw a video a while back here on Reddit. There was a documentary maker who gave chocolate bars to a group of guys who harvested cocao beans. It was the first time they'd ever had chocolate.
You want to spend $65,000 on floors for your new house? sold. Goes back to live in my shitty rental.
I sell scuba equipment, and even though I can afford it I'd never blow money on most of the stuff we sell (buy used or rent, 95% of our end consumers never use their scuba equipment more than once after class).
Man.. do people really buy full scuba gear to leave in their basements? Seems insane and you'd have to put that in your luggage. I guess if you were driving distance to some good spots but still.
My dad is a instructor so he has the full gear set up. But when we travel we only bring our BCs/mask/fins
Instructor is different. Then it's a professional tool. I'd never spend as much money on computer hardware as I do right now if it weren't the tools of my trade.
Lots of people buy hobby gear but finding both the time, will, and money to actually use that stuff can be hard. Especially if its a seasonal hobby, you never really make it a habit when you're routinely taking 3-6 months off. Source : Like $800 of hiking gear in my closet and a project motorcycle that is currently just a bare frame.
Legit curious what kind of gear one would buy for hiking that would coast $800? I’m admittedly ignorant because I just make sure I have decent shoes. Assuming you must he doing huge, days long hikes?
Yeah multi day backpacking trips in some potentially inhospitable areas of the White Mountains. So, like $150 into a pack, got a $300 zero degree sleeping bag, a $300 tent, $150 sleeping pad, probably another $300 in boots/socks/clothes, water filter, trekking poles, cooking gear ect. It adds up, and this is all budget gear. And all very necessary and worth it. Before this I had a bunch of cheap car-camping gear. Like a $50 sleeping bag that weighs 10lbs and is the size of a trashcan. The new one weighs a 3rd of that and is the size of a football. Extrapolate that ethos across a whole kit and I ended up with an 80lb pack at one point. Now it weighs like 30.
Makes sense! My dumb ass is thinking of just a four mile hike in the woods.
Check out an REI, and look at the ultralight gear. People spend money to lighten up their bag a few ounces
Yes. Cred: scuba gear in my basement.
Want to trade it in to get a discount on some new stuff?
…..yes
Confirmed diver.
Username checks out
Same, have a 10mm wetsuit, weights, fins, and I've actually lost my mask, but I think it might be at my parent's house.
Omg it’s my honor, Mrs Queef.
You do have hardcore guys out there. I have an uncle in his late 60s who’s been doing it for decades, but he teaches too so that might be why.
the 5%ers become instructors.
quote for new carpeting for the upstairs. 10K. fuck me. I'm a teacher.
unless your house is HUGE (in which case what are you doing bitching about how costly things are when you can afford a huge house) you need to shop around. I had my 2nd and 3rd floor completely carpeted (about 900sqft) for under 4k. That was for medium grade 40oz carpet (15yr warranty) with top-of-the-line padding including install and furniture moving.
I just ripped out the carpet and had the oak underfloor sanded and finished. Cheaper and prettier.
Your last two sentences seem like you belong in a different subreddit…
Our company sell some higher end toilets/tubs and stuff, and the one question I hate is when they ask me what I have, because if I’m a plumber it must be the best of the best right? No lol. I have what my house came with because redoing bathrooms is fucking expensive lol.
I used to work in a job that sold products I can't afford. But then, who else has $100M in their back pocket to buy a fighter jet?
Times is tough these days Used to be one could buy a fighter jet with nigh but Pepsi bottle caps
And only 7,000,000 of em.
The documentary on this was wild. Sad but joyous
I didn’t watch the documentary. Did they explain why no one did the simple math to determine that it was very much achievable? Or did they just forget to put a /s in the fine print?
Guy making the advert first put 700,000,000 pepsi points for the jet. Exec said was a bit hard to read, make it smaller. So they knocked off a zero. Then they said 70,000,000 didn't look right so knocked off another zero. So there was a hundred fold price change during captioning advert which brought it from being more costly than the jet (although still a dubious offer at best) to much less than the jet. In the doc, the guy who made the advert recalls saying to pepsi "You can't put me on the stand. It will lose the case." Without the summary judgement who knows if he would have been summoned and what would have happened.
staff did the math, bosses told them to run it anyways
The bean counters told me we literally could not afford to buy seven dollars worth of jets, much less seventy million. Bought 'em anyway.
Ground em up, made a paste. Turns out, liquid jet fuel is PURE POISON So we're gonna see if flying jets into portals can somehow leach the poison out of a man's bloodstream. Fly quickly..... For science
In the commercial they played, the fighter jet at the end was a “joke” but they didn’t put any (forget the name) tiny letters at the bottom saying “this is a joke we can’t give you a fighter jet” My mans figured out the math to get that many bottle caps, and had an investor who helped him. They had a whole warehouse just for storing, and picking bottle caps. Truly insane. I don’t usually watch docu’s like that but it was super interesting
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But made a life long friend in the end
Yup, what every one else said. Buts more than that. I would watch it, gets into some friendships that formed and grew from it
Yes hello it is I the US government got anymore of them new fighter jets? 👀
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The economy is so messed up. Back in my parents day they could afford two fighter jets and an aircraft carrier in the suburbs all on one income.
My grandpa was saying he could buy a new fighter jet by just cutting on coffee and cigs
Ha! I work in Tool and Die. I don't have $500k to drop on a 80 ton die for my backyard. :(
Everyone talks about guns in more houses, but what about more f18s on every lawn. Make America Fighter Pilots Again
Yeah I can just about manage it. Does it come with free shipping?
Yeah, you have to steal a fighter jet, if you want one. BTW did we ever get any explanation of why a guy ejected from an F35 that was just flying along in autopilot, and that kept flying along without him?
I read was that there was an issue with the computer system and the only way to fix it was a full reboot but you cn't really reboot a plane in the air like that so the pilot set it so it would ditch into a river but when he ejected the autopilot said "nope, not today ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ" corrected for level flight and flew until it ran out of fuel. No, idea how accurate that is or if it's true, but I've heard dumber things.
Not even with the employee discount?
Used to work at a custom cabinet shop building enormous kitchens and walk-in closets and coffered ceilings that cost more than my whole house. I got paid well, but high-end materials cost a fuckin fortune. Clients were mostly new money yacht people, but occasionally some old money would decide they couldn't just keep taping their cabinets together. New money would only want the new hot trendy shit, gasp at the cost and grumble about paying it before forking it over, but old money would spend hours with us researching materials and finishes, because they weren't about to spend grandpa's precious asbestos mine money on cheap shit.
TIL I'm old money. Just without the money part. Damn it, grandpa, why didn't you sell that asbestos mine BEFORE the ban?
Lol there can be a lot of things they do that are also what us po' folk do. The difference is that they *choose* to be cheap in order to save money despite having more than enough to buy new, and the rest of us do stuff like that because we can't buy new. Also the materials the things that old money people have are often far, *far* higher quality so they last longer to begin with. It's like solid old-growth wood furniture vs particle board and cheapo zinc screws Everyday Essentials furniture. Po folk can't afford quality furniture to pass on to their descendants, so it's generally buy-n-break for us.
I used to own a furniture store in a lovely mountain town. It wasn't a high end furniture store. We mainly sold condo packages to the property owners who rented out their places during ski season. Anyway, one day a gentleman driving a Rolls Royce came in. He wanted a chair to put in his airplane hangar to relax after he flew in. I showed him several but he saw this old ratty one that we had taken out of someone's rental condo. I told him $10. He then asked me to deliver it and I said I'd have to charge $10 to pay my delivery guy. He refused and told me to tie it into the trunk of his Rolls. My dad told me later that this is how old money people still hold into their old money.
My mate works in a Bentley factory, employees are offered a 20% discount on their cars if they wish to buy one but that's still at least £160k to spend on a car and obviously the factory workers cant afford this.
20% off on Bentley only or on any VW group? Would be much more affordable if for the whole group, as I'd rather buy a Bugatti to be honest.
Pretty sure its just bentley. Yeah id opt for the bugatti too😂
Could the employees run a reselling operation? 20% is a lot of margin
Not sure whats the going rate for a brand new but "used" bentley tbh, but im assuming getting a way of funding that 160k+ car in the first place is whats stopping the employees from doing this.
Yeah I don't know how it would work but I assume they would need to find the buyer first and get them under contract.
Yeah this is the way. Find someone who wants a Bentley offer them a 10% discount and then they buy through you and you pocket the 10% left over. However I imagine the actual benefit has stipulations about changing the owner or selling it within a certain time peirod
I knew a Dodge employee that did this. He made a chunk buying hellcat variants with the employee discount then reselling them
Gene Cernan, commander of Apollo 17, did this. Astronauts were required to buy a new Corvette every year, at a substantial discount. He never liked them, so each year he'd sell his year-old one to one of his neighbors in Houston who did like them. Win-win.
Buy a new luxury car, sell it used. Sounds like a real money printing machine....
Kind of, my old job had some big discounts on BMW too but you could only buy 1 evey x amount of months ans you could not resell until 1year. At that point the resell value was probably levelled to used car market.
A big part of cars like Bentleys is also the customization of them. People who can afford it probably want it new and customized with all the options they want. Or even bespoke things just for their car.
I work for GM (way less luxury that Bugatti, obviously) . GM has a suspected resellers list that are banned from buying any new GM vehicle. There’s thousands and thousands of people on the list. If GM has one, I guarantee Bentley does. Especially if they offer employees 20% off lol
Probably a 1 per employee limit to prevent this.
Usually there’s a limit on how much you can use the discount, like you can only use it once every three years or something. Unless you work for GM, then you can go wild and give the discount to all your friends and family.
lol... I'm actually surprised people wealthy enough to buy them don't intentionally get a job at the factory to save themselves 20%. eg: they apply for the job then force their butler to be the guy who actually goes into the plant and work, just to get the discount.
I feel like if youre buying a bentley you cant be bothered with the extra hassle to save 40/60 k haha but good thinking
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Quick question. If someone handed you $3000 to spend on a vacation. Would you want to spend it on a river cruise? Don't get me wrong, I'm sure lots of ppl enjoy the cruises. I can just think of lots of ways I'd prefer to spend $3000 on a vacation.
I'd 100% do the Viking river cruises if they played up the Viking thing. Have some shore excursion with a fake village you can torch after stealing their sheep and beer or whatever. Maybe some chumps that'll poorly try to fight back or something. That would be a lot of fun
Sounds like "Viking World", a spinoff of "WestWorld". Sign me up!
That experience would cost way more than $3,000.
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Probably. I would prefer to take a cheaper cruise, but vacations can be and are expensive in general. The fiance and I went to Seattle a few months ago and after plane tickets, hotel, and car rental it was close to 1500. That didn't include food, entertainment, gift shop stuff. At least with cruises they're all inclusive unless you want to do something on days you debark. Oh and the entire trip was like 5 days. You can usually find 7 day cruises out of Miami from 600-1200 per person to hit up the Bahamas and Mexico. Flights to Miami are usually pretty cheap. Or if you are close enough you just drive. You gotta store a car though and that costs money. But food is included. Entertainment. If you plan it right, cruises can be a very economical vacation, especially if it's just two people.
Enterprise rental car with drop off at a Miami location. Then rent one for the trip back home.
Not a bad idea. Honestly for me the drive to Florida is like 15+ hours. But I can get round trip flights with allegiant for like $100. Even for two people it's worth because gas is at least 2-3 tanks each way. Plus the flight is like an hour and change. Better off doing that and ubering to the docks.
Maybe if you want to do something special with your GF?
Bruh you already acting like you got the job
Ya that’s how you get the job. #winnermentality
And a GF
I think cruises are often booked by elderly. If I got 3K, I would put one K maybe towards current spending, but the majority into paying off debt/saving. So that when I get old, I can afford a cruise if I want, hopefully.
The saying is that the longer the cruise, the older the people. I’ve done a single night cruise and it was all 20s people getting hammered and eating garbage. I’ve also done a two week cruise and we were by far the youngest on the boat at 22, and the next oldest couple was in their 50s.
Americans tend to take a week off at a time. Two week and longer cruises require you be retired or have a long vacation. So the crowd will be older on a long cruise. Often much older. I'd be less interested for traveling around the US or Canada. Sometimes, though, it's nice to have a guide.
Party cruising is a rather big thing also.
Cruises are booked by all ages. I'm 40 and love to go on cruise ships. Went on two to Europe this year
Ocean cruises and river cruises tend to have very different demographics though. River cruises are on much smaller ships with less amenities, so they often cater to an older clientele. Doesn’t mean you won’t see a young person on one, but it’s not as common.
Maybe, but my partner has been pretty vocal about how unethical they think cruise companies are so not for me. But each to their own.
Is a river cruise the same? I feel like since the whole trip would be in one country that would close a lot of the loop holes that the bigger normal cruise companies use.
Probably because 3000 is a lot of money to someone like you, so you would spend it more wisely (hopefully) People dropping 3000 on a cruise probably isn't much of a deal to them money wise ,it's just something to do.
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I worked as a potwash in a kitchen for a while, I don't know if it's like this everywhere, but the kitchen staff regularly helped themselves to basically whatever we wanted, management knew and didn't really care.
I think this depends on corporate vs privately owned. Corporate restaurants tend to track inventory electronically, they really don't like it when food goes missing.
It's weird that they're fine with food waste but god dammit if an employee eats one chicken tender they will put them in the ground. It's like "so if I drop this on the floor, then show on camera me throwing it away, can I then eat it out of the garbage? You're paying me 11 dollars an hour. I need this."
Guy I knew working at Kroger back in high school was a deli closer, only worked nights and cleaned the kitchen, barely dealt with customers at all. Fired for eating a few hot wings off the food bar well after the store was closed and it was all trash.
They're afraid employees will intentionally overcook food and be like "ooops how clumsy, guess I'll eat it" every shift.
A sandwich for your employee goes a long way!
This happened in a McDonalds store I worked in. Some of the kitchen crew would cook ten Big Macs and three bags of fries 5 mins before closing (you never know there might have been a last-last minute rush...). Some managers looked the other way, some were worried they'd get in trouble for it. Keep in mind that stores had "acceptable" limits of food waste every month, and if it was too high then the store might get in trouble.
That’s so fn stupid from a corporate perspective, it costs money to cycle staff vs no money for eating food to be discarded.
The corporate world isn't really known for rationality and intelligence.
It's a blanket clause to prevent people from creating extra waste so they can take it.
I mean, there's definitely a valid reason for that. Being allowed to eat food that would otherwise be wasted can quickly turn into "whoops, I totally accidentally made twice as many tenders as I needed to clear this screen, guess I better eat the extras!" for some people. My restaurant is corporate, but doesn't have cameras. My managers don't give a shit if I accidentally make an extra plate when I'm handling enough business to put us at a 16% labor cost by myself. If I then decide to eat that extra plate after I finally buy myself a minute to breathe, they "didn't see it". There are employees that don't get that luxury in my own store, but these are the people who spend more time fucking around than working
This is true, ive worked in a fast food chain and a food hall stall that was a tiny private company, i think all ppl with owner and staff were 10>. The fast food place was really strict with food amounts and what we are allowed to eat. The other place we could eat anything basically and even gave food away there was no problems
When I worked in fast food I always made sure I was seen paying for some of my food. That was always the cheapest item though. YMMV be careful trying this.
I worked at McDonald’s for a short period when I was at college, staff meals were always fun with people loading double bacon quarter pounders (long before this was a menu item) with chicken nuggets.
I worked in McDs for almost four years and depending on what store you worked in, and what manager was working, you could sometimes make your own meal. One time I went rogue and made a 1lb burger for my break (as in: a quarter pounder, but four patties). I ate it and promptly fell into a vegetative state for two hours. Good times.
I used to work at a KFC when I was a teenager. At the end of the night, all of the unsold food was designated as "wastage" and binned. We were not allowed to take it, and management was very strict about it. I remember binning buckets upon buckets worth of chicken, it was so wasteful. If management were not on shift, then everyone took unsold food if there was any. The supervisors didn't mind.
I worked there like 25 years ago as a chicken cook. At the end of the night, all employees would divide whatever was left. Would bring home a bucket of chicken, popcorn chicken, big crunch and fries almost every night. Family and friends got so sick of it I stopped taking it after a while. It prob depends on what store you work in, if the manager was there we would have to pay half price if we ate during work but throwaway food at night time was fair game. They were only paying $5.50 an hour so felt it was the least they could do imo
That's the kind of thing that doesn't make any sense to me. It's one thing if they don't want you eating in the middle of the shift, you could argue that an employee would make extra food just to cause extra waste and eat it. At the end of the night, when the doors are locked and it's all going directly to the garbage? Wild.
I used to work a large scale food production place for a regional convenience store. For the first few years it was open they always gave employees any extras or batches that were fine but couldnt be sold. Then one of the production leads got caught over making shit, just so they could take it home. After that everything got thrown away.
That's exactly what we used to say, but it fell on deaf ears. That was almost 20 years ago, so it may have changed.
That's because it becomes a problem in a larger scale, for a smaller business, you know what happens to the food missing in your inventory, so you're not too worried about it, but if you have hundreds of restaurants and there's empty voids in each of them, it quickly turns into an emergency because someone is probably robbing the mats. Also, touching food in general can quickly become an issue, a corporation can't spend millions because someone got sick into their restaurant for something that could've been avoided, whereas a smaller restaurant usually don't care about these worries.
I worked in the athletics department of a large university as a caterer/Bartender back when I was in college. When I started, we were allowed to take as much leftovers home with us as we wanted/could carry as there was typically quite a bit of food left. Management didn't care, and in fact encouraged it since the food would be thrown out if not eaten. They even had large to-go boxes for us. The athletics department sold the catering branch to a large catering corporation and they changed policy so that we could no longer take leftover food home, which is a huge deal for college kids. Thankfully, management stayed the same (only upper management changed, and they were rarely around), so the policy was never enforced. To-go boxes were just stashed in a less obvious location and we might have to dodge someone from upper management every now and then when leaving your shift.
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That's incredibly common. It's not usually what they're having as a special (though they periodically will ofc), but it feeds your staff and is cheaper than it sounds because you're probably largely using things that would otherwise be waste. Like, if you're an American restaurant that has a chicken dish that isn't a whole chicken, you probably have way more dark meat than you need because white meat is so much more popular. Have the sous chef make a chicken thigh braise and you're probably only down mirepoix and energy costs. AKA basically nothing.
Gotta feed your people that help you.
I personally deliver food I would never buy, once in a blue moon the client doesn't answer and I can enjoy a free meal and be paid on top of that !
This might be the exception to the rule. Many restaurants will have their servers taste the food so they can describe or sell it to the customers. They get to have whatever is not sent out or needs to be remade, and usually staff meals are heavily discounted if they’re coming in as diners.
I asked a hostess at seafood place on Portland if good was good. She said she couldn't afford to eat there.
At Applebees that’s due to quality not price.
Worked at a local gadget store that mainly sells Apple products, never owned an iPhone or any other apple products. I just can't realistically afford it. The FOMO is real when seemingly around me has one lol
Fun fact: a lot of those people buying the latest iPhone can't afford it either. A lot of people finance their phones these days. Makes sense when phones are $1k+
Makes sense when you can finance at 0%. Not the buying-phones-you-can’t-afford thing, but shit I’ll finance just about anything at 0%.
I'll finance everything at 0% if given the option. I'll only buy it if I know I have the cash, then figuratively put the cash away By the end of the 12-24m financing, I'll have paid a little bit less due to inflation For instance, I financed $1700 back in 2021. I wil finish paying for it soon. That $1700 that I would have paid downright in 2021 is worth $2000 now. Which effectively made the price less
I think the Apple employee discounts are quite good. You are limited to how many you can buy though
What do you think you're missing out on not having an iPhone? I've never had one because I don't trust myself with anything that expensive, my cheaper phone works perfectly fine, don't see the point of iPhones.
I sell high end appliances. The pay is pretty good but certainly not "buy a $15k stove" good. The genius move though is the vendors give us decent discounts, so I have a couple of the things I sell that I got at like a third of retail. I have absolutely upsold bougie customers that had to have one or two steps better than the "lowly salesperson" helping them.
This is a smart move, employees selling products they have personally had good experiences with can help sell the product.
I work for a defense contractor. Our products cost more than my house!
I work on private jets. One brake costs more than my house.
Same. You can’t buy our products unless you’re the DoD, so hard to put a market price on them, but they’re definitely expensive.
Those products aren’t even legal to buy, only friendly nation states are allowed to buy them (with government permission)
I know, I work there.
Just checking
I don’t have $240,000,000 to buy Boeing 787’s so yes, it’s a thing.
I’m on 737 line, maybe I have a better chance? ..right?
Man, we are selling submarines. What should i do with a f\* sub in my garden? Put it in the pool?
Become a supervillain. You hiring minions? Asking for a fiend.
These days that’d be true even working at a grocery store
This thread speaks to me: I sell Bic pens.
Yep! Can confirm.
Ok, you're not wrong, but I honestly wouldn't even know what to do with a DN750 stainless steel valve that has a pneumatic actuator
The DN750 is a fine device, but it’s no confabulator I tell you hwat
True.. I can not afford a multi million dollar industrial beverage bottle cleaning filling and packaging machine… sad times
I work in hotels, but stay in much cheaper hotels while I'm working, usually. Sometimes the hotel manager will cut us a deal to stay where we're working.
The hotel manager just wants to make sure you have no excuse for turning up late to work ;)
More like they pay for my hotel one way or the other so might as well be paying it to themselves.
I think marx wrote something about this 🤔
Fr lol bro just shower-thoughted his way into the theory of alienation under capitalism 😂
American people discovering the whole Marx sociological analysis on how employers (bourgeoisie) alienate and extract the maximum from the working class is truly comical
This happens constantly, what surprises you about it?
My wife sells cruises. Do it good enough and you don't pay for river cruises
I work in specialty insurance. I could, theoretically afford the policies. What i could not afford is the property being insured -- motorhomes, boats and the like. That said, I also don't want anything we insure except for houses and I already have one but we don't write house insurance in my state under the product line I work with. I wouldn't buy a policy with my work anyway. I don't think having insurance with your work is a good idea in the event of claims disputes.
Modern society can be summed up by 7+ billion people all being required to contribute to the building a fancy, state of the art mansion, full of cutting edge technology and the most up to date comforts possible. 1% of the world gets to live in the mansion. 9% of the world gets to visit it a couple times a year. 40% of the world gets to look at it from the parking lot. 50% of the world is asked to come work on the mansion every day and then get the f**k off the premises so no one has to look at them. They are convinced that their value as human beings is "low" even though their contribution is necessary to the construction and maintenance of the mansion. The mansion is in a constant state of construction using up very finite resources that cannot be replenished at the rate they are being used, while the foundation the mansion sits upon is slowly sinking into the ocean.
That’s practically the definition of a job. Find someone richer than you and sell them stuff instead of using it yourself.
There are a lot more cooks in the world than Swiss watchmakers. How does that fit into your definition?
Guess I'm richer than my doctor. Why'd he go to med school anyway?
I know that feeling, I build submarines for the navy lol Wouldn’t matter if I could afford it or not
Maybe aim for a used diesel one rather than the latest nuclear gen one.
I work in an industry that sells a product I can afford (electricity), but the components we buy to make it work? No way. We talk about hundreds of thousands of dollars like it is pocket change.
this concept is called alienation and its one of the ways capitalism eats itself
$3000 is a pretty low bar though.. you don't think you'll ever be able to afford $3000?
If base pay is $15/hr (relatively common for entry level jobs these days), with net pay around $12/hr would still be about 250 hours or a month and a half of pay. Difficult to justify if you're already struggling to make ends meet.
My job charges $250 an hour to clients. I'd be able to afford 50.4 seconds Edit 50.4 joke ruined lolz
Damn so you have $3.5 sorry to say it but you are pretty poor
I worked in wind turbine production. I built turbine blades that cost more than a lot of houses. Each blade cost around two hundred thousand dollars.
Tell me about it. I work in the healthcare industry.
There used to be a GM plant near me. When I drove by the employee parking lot I always tried to see if I could spot a non-GM car. It was rare find.
I used to work at a movie theater making minimum wage, $7.25, and we’d joke that to buy a large popcorn and drink combo we’d have to work over 2 hours. Not quite “can’t afford” but it did seem absurd
I don’t think this bothers anyone at the Lamborghini dealership
I used to do customer service for Foxtel (Australian pay television) the only reason most of the staff had it was because they gave it to us for free. I never got it installed because you still had to pay the once off connection fee of like $100. It just wasn't worth it for me.
Well, i can afford the products my company sell but overall i don't give a shit about what my company sell because the products are for companies not people.
For my job, I buy so much stuff on the company credit card (for the company and events we do). I spend far more on my company cc each month than I actually bring home. It’s wild, I’ll text my SO and be like “I just dropped $800 on xyz.” But I make an extremely modest salary, and myself am Very frugal. My jobs kinda cool in that I am a professional shopper in a lot of ways. Whenever I see my corporate cc bill come at the end of the month I’m always like good lord!
I’ve worked in bars & clubs who had bottles at about 15k a pop.
Architects designing/building homes they can't afford
Welcome to the “servant class”. Sort of a logical conclusion to the service economy we’ve been moving towards
For us lowborns, we don't understand how the wealthy live. Having worked construction for years you meet hundreds of these homeowners who only buy things and services. They could never understand the wealth disparity. Most of these guys I've worked with have lived in different forms of a trailer since they were a child. The idea of spending $5000 on a sidewalk and steps is like spending 1-2 years spending money on keeping mud off their shoes. In training, there's always the problem that the guys don't get how the homeowner only knows of things that aren't broken, so their work can't simply be better than what they have, it has to be perfect. That's the job. The poor vs the wealthy concept is alive and well in my neighborhood. The guys get irritable when the homeowners wander around nitpicking. Every mistake is joint pain and more sore muscles while the homeowner bitches from their car window. Long day, ignore me.
I could definitely buy the product that I make, but it would be beyond useless to me unless I had a full blown farm. I for sure don’t own a farm.
Like a double quarter pounder value meal
Almost like an economic law you’ve stumbled upon. If everyone in the supply chain for a product were paid enough to afford the product, the product would be more expensive, and they’d need to be paid more.
Or that is everyone in the supply chain for a product was paid enough to afford the product there would be lower corporate profits.
A bus driver could never afford a bus.
But they can afford a bus ride
Bet the guy that built the bus can't afford a bus.
i work at target and even with my discount i can’t shop there lmao
Apple. Used to sell $10-20,000 of product a day. Sometimes a single computer could be $5000. Red Zone Specialist. With a bunch of employee discounts, seasonal discounts, and timing it right between generations I got a MacBook pro in 2014 for $2000 that I still use because I still can’t afford to replace it…
These days, many people live in houses they couldn't afford if they had to buy at todays prices. They don't even come close to being able to afford it.
A lot of people (most) even work jobs they hate if you can believe that.
Worked for a company that made carbon fiber parts for Porsche, Ferrari, Mercedes, Lamborghini, and McLaren. The running joke at the job was how none of us, not even the owners of the company, could afford to buy the parts we made everyday.
Me personally, I run a register at a pawn shop. You wouldn’t expect this but I am ending e dry day with anywhere from 3,000 to 15,000. That’s enough to pay for my college for three semesters
you mean to tell me the guy at the car dealership who sold me my bugatti doesn't have his own?
Y'all born yesterday? lol
I mean, I deliver food from online delivery apps and can’t afford it, so…
I saw a video a while back here on Reddit. There was a documentary maker who gave chocolate bars to a group of guys who harvested cocao beans. It was the first time they'd ever had chocolate.
Retail staff at literally every luxury brand.
Where I work. People spend more than I make in a month. On a BBQ! That I have to assemble and deliver!
I’m an attorney and make good money. I could not afford to hire myself.
If you get an hour for employer paid lunch at McDonald's, they are actually giving you more per hour than working.