Bad Punchline: God Gave You a Computer

We have a particular customer who comes in daily and if you get him started on something- anything- it becomes a sermon on the virtues of whatever he happens to believe in. One of the things he happens to believe in is 'oxygen therapy' (which I wrote about previously: Oxygen Therapy). He also believes that hundreds or thousands of diseases have been cured but the drug companies won't release the cures because the therapies are much more lucrative. He believes that the government is deliberately trying to make people sick and many other... interesting theories.  Lately he has taken to saying the following at the end of his sermons while tapping his temple: "God gave you a computer. You just have to use it." My jab at this to one of the other people subjected to his speech: "Unfortunately one of his daughter's gave him a computer with an internet connection. And he uses it."

Seriously? I'm not poor enough?

Allow me to explain. If you've been reading for a while you may recall that I am not a rich person. In fact, I continue to astound myself by not going broke. Yet, despite living well below the poverty line for the entirety of my adult life thus far (which is only a few years, yes, but I'm sure that if someone told you you had to live on between $10,000 and $13,000 a year for a few years you'd find it a daunting prospect) I've also managed to continue to be surprised when I find out that I'm not poor enough. The first shock was when I applied for Mainecare (the local version of Medicare) a few years ago and despite making less than two hundred dollars a week (at the time) I was denied coverage not for age restrictions (being nineteen at the time I was under the twenty-one year age limit imposed on 'people like me') but because my 'head of household' (which was myself) made too much money for me to qualify for Mainecare. I don't know how poor you have to be to qualify for Mainecare as a single person under the age of twenty-one but I think it would be hard to work at all (I was working part time for minimum wage and wasn't poor enough) and manage to qualify.

I got my second shock when I did my 2010 tax return. A few factoids before the big reveal: I had never made more than ten thousand dollars in a year before 2010. I never claimed myself as a dependent before 2010. I never lived with anyone but my parents before 2010. I never tried to balance paying rent and buying food and going to work (not to mention finding work during that tough economic time) and everything else but I managed it somehow. And in 2010 I made a whopping $10,044 for the entire year. I would like to point out that this is significantly less than, say, a Senator might get for a speaking engagement at a college graduation just for comparison. On that ten thousand dollars I paid over six hundred dollars in taxes to state and federal government. On my tax return I claimed myself as a dependent and nothing else because I don't own a house or vehicle, have any other dependents, and though I had qualified medical expenses I might have deducted (two visits to a eye doctor and a year's worth of prescription contact lenses) that I paid for out-of-pocket they didn't add up to a large enough percentage of my income to count (in fact, if I had medical expenses that were a large enough percentage of my income to qualify I wouldn't have enough money to pay them so that they would qualify). I was shocked to discover that making that extra $45 that put me over $10,000 had cost me literally hundreds of dollars in tax returns.

One of my roommates at the time, filing singly, with herself as her only dependent (she had a child but he was claimed as a dependent by his other parent) and no other deduction claims than the ones I made in that year earned a little less than ten thousand dollars and got back every bit of her tax money. Up until this point in time I had as well. In fact, one year even though I was a dependent, after filing my tax return (which I have done myself every year since I started working on my sixteenth birthday) I received not only everything I had paid in taxes back to me but also a additional 'stimulus' check of three hundred dollars courtesy of former President Bush's stimulus package. I was not impressed that even though I was living well below the poverty line for a single person (to the tune of several thousand dollars below) and had only just nudged above ten thousand dollars I still paid in hundreds of dollars I did not get back.

Last year around this time of year I heard that the government was changing tax law so that rather than the involuntary savings program it is now for a lot of poor adults and minors those same people would be receiving a 'little more in every paycheck' because they would be paying 2% less (I will admit I do not know whether they meant 2% less of their gross income or 2% less than the amount they would have otherwise paid) toward Social Security. I think at the time I thought that sounded sort of reasonable (especially as I do not believe in the Social Security system as it stands and possibly not even if it was given the massive overhaul many people think it desperately needs) since having taxes act as an involuntary savings plan for the poor is not only silly but likely it is costly to those taxpayers who foot the bill for all the bureaucracy involved. However, after having done my taxes this year I am entirely unimpressed by the '2% less' plan.

When I did my 2011 taxes I got my latest shock. I made $12,660 last year (a significant increase if you do 'percentage of increase' math but if you instead make it a percentage of, say, how much money some congress-person spent remodeling the bathroom of their office at taxpayer expense it is quite a small percentage) and paid about $1,252 between state and local taxes. After getting done doing my taxes and looking at what the website calculated that my expected tax return would be I literally thought 'there must be some mistake'. I contacted the website's help service via instant messenger and asked them to give me a reason that my expected tax return was so much less than the previous year even though I only made a little more money and paid about twice as much in total taxes. I was informed that actually in 2010 I qualified for and received a tax credit called 'Making Work Pay' which was available to anyone that had earned over $3,000 in that year and that this year the program had been discontinued in favor of the '2% less' plan. I was doubly astounded by the implications of this. Because not only did this mean that I was really only getting back $25 (no, there are not meant to be any zeroes after the numeral '5' in case you were wondering) of the $1,058 I paid the federal government in taxes but that if I hadn't qualified for the 'Making Work Pay' tax credit in 2010 I would have received hundreds of dollars less in tax returns. I don't know how much less I would have received in tax returns but according to the IRS website as a single person I was eligible for up to $400 in tax credits and the total amount I got back was less than that so... I'm sure you can do the math.

The state of Maine government, unlike the federal government, was nice enough to refund me $115 of the $195 total I paid in state income tax. The state of Maine government also nicely asked me if I would like $3 of the money they were already keeping (not additionally) to go directly toward the state's clean election fund (I would because not only am I in favor of clean elections but also because that's three dollars less money that could potentially be used on a frivolous taxpayer-funded project like remodeling someone's never-to-be-seen-by-the-public bathroom). I don't really know why the state of Maine government refunded me over half my income tax money (though I assume it must be because of my total income level) but there was no gimicky tax credit or '2% less' plan that was touted to 'stimulate' the economy involved. It was sheerly 'this is how much you paid us and this is how much we feel you deserve to get back'. I am OK with that state of Maine the only thing that would make me happier is if you allowed me to tick little boxes to let you know where I want all of the money you deign to keep to go. Yes, I'd like to check the 'education' box, the 'infrastructure' box, and the 'tourism advocacy' box but count me out for the 'administrative overhead' (ie 'potential bathroom remodeling fund') and 'welfare benefits for unwed mothers who-moved-to-the-state-just-to-get-'free'-money' boxes.

Speaking of 'where my taxes are going' I decided to look at the breakdown of what I was paying in taxes between state and local income tax as well as social security and medicare. I had never looked before because I had never particularly cared but since I was already so worked up over the fact that I wasn't poor enough to get even a significant amount (roughly 2.4% of what I paid the federal government is simply not 'significant') of the money I paid in back I wanted to know who was getting that money. To the state of Maine I paid (as I mentioned previously) $195 in income tax. To the federal government I paid $342 in income tax. I want to state now that income tax is actually the thing to which I object the least (even though that money could be spent on a cushy toilet seat for some already well-padded govermental behind) because there is the possibility (however slight) that some of that money will contribute to education or improving roads or some other worthy project. I admit, again, that I would like to be able to tell the government what kinds of things they are allowed to spend my tax money on (or even just 50% of it- I would be happy knowing that 50% of my tax money is definitely going toward education and clean elections and they can spend the other 50% on 'administrative overhead' or blowing people up if they want) but overall income tax is the least objectionable portion of the taxes I paid.

If you add up my income tax amounts you'll find they come out to $537. Now, let me remind you that I paid a total of $1,252 which means I paid less than 43% of my taxes in income taxes. If you're like me you might be wondering 'what the fuck did that other 57% go toward'? I apologize for the expletive but I swear a lot inside my head especially at things which do not seem to be rational in any way. About 15% of my taxes ($183) went toward Medicare which I am not poor enough to qualify for. I'm too poor to get my own health insurance, I obviously (obvious because if I did get a benefit like that I would get paid more than minimum wage) do not work for a company which provides it, I literally could not spend a high enough percentage of my income to deduct medical expenses from my taxes, I could very well have used that $183 toward a visit to the dentist (or an eye doctor, neurologist, or chiropractor any of whom provide a service I might have liked to purchase but could not in the last year) and yet instead I subsidized someone else's visit to the dentist. But I'm young and in relatively good health so the $183 toward Medicare is not the part that makes me the most upset. The part that makes me the most upset is that I paid  42% of my total taxes toward Social Security. In fact, I only paid $5 less toward Social Security than I did in total income taxes and if we're only talking about federal taxes Social Security ate up just over half my taxes.

I already mentioned that I don't like the Social Security system. The only good thing it's ever done for this country is make people happier about being assigned a identification number but I think we can all agree that public goodwill toward the government about something as little as that isn't worth the money. I don't think the Social Security system should have been implemented to begin with. It obviously wasn't cooked up by anyone with a basic grasp of math because the lack of sustainability in such a system is glaringly obvious after a couple quick calculations. Yes, I understand that you only get it if you pay into it but people that receive it usually (with the exception of those who die in a timely manner) get more money out of it (even considering inflation) than they ever paid into it. Most people receiving social security now are likely to receive benefits for longer than they were a part of the taxpaying workforce. The only way the Social Security system could ever be sustainable is if the taxpaying population increased exponentially forever and since that obviously is not sustainable the Social Security system cannot and should not be sustained. I don't care if we abolish it now because I'm never going to receive Social Security benefits anyway. It simply isn't going to happen. I would be more than happy to sign a special government waiver stating that I will never collect Social Security and in the event that I am incapacitated to the point that they would be forced to spend it on me the government is welcome to save the taxpayers some money and pull the plug on me. But only if that meant I wouldn't have to pay into it. In fact, the prospect of having to pay into social security my whole life (or even the next two decades of it before the amount of social security/pensions/medicare/medicaid that the government pays out becomes equal to the whole amount of taxes that everyone pays in) depresses me so much that if I had proof of the afterlife I'd break out the ol' shotgun right now and kill myself in grand irony so that not only will Social Security not get my earnings but also so that some taxpayer funded criminal investigation service has to use resources looking into the 'suspicious nature' of my death.

Even though I seriously live well below the poverty line I still managed to pay rent to live somewhere (I live in an apartment mind you and not with some caring relative), I still managed to pay for all my own food (though I could have qualified for and received food stamp benefits), I still managed to pay for electricity, I still managed to pay for my cellphone service, I still managed to pay for 'premium' cable internet, I still managed to bring my bank balance up from three digits to four in the last year, I still managed to buy people Christmas and birthday presents, and I even managed to have a little fun while remaining completely debt-free and financially-independent of my parents and the government. I managed all of that with thousands of dollars less than what is considered 'poverty'. Yet despite the fact that I made thousands of dollars less than 'poverty' I also managed to pay about 10% of my income in taxes. And despite the fact that I made thousands of dollars less than 'poverty' I am seriously not poor enough to qualify for health insurance which I could not get any other way and I'm seriously not poor enough to get back a significant portion of the taxes which I pay yet I seriously subsidized someone else's healthcare and I seriously subsidized someone else's retirement and I seriously paid money that could well go to purchase a toilet seat to cushion some bureaucratic governmental behind. Apparently I am a very serious person- but not seriously poor enough.

Bad Punchline: Easter Eggs

As I told my friend Chris yesterday: "I fulfilled some elusive unstated objective in a game I've been playing for a while and now for the first time in the game I am required to make some kind of economic decision that might have some affect on my stats for the rest of the game. What do I do? There's a 'menu' of options." To which he responded: "Okay. What is the menu?" And my reply to that: "Many investment institutions with long incomprehensible names." Which prompted him to express his confusion and wonder what game I was playing. I explained to him that I got a mysterious letter that showed up not through the mail but as if by magic informing me I now met the requirements (whatever they were) necessary to create a 401(k) though my place of employment. After a brief break so he could get lunch I told Chris that the menu options did not seem appetizing.  Then I listed them off to him: "Money Market" "Bond" "Balanced" "Large Cap" "Mid/Small Cap" "International" He agreed that they weren't appetizing. After discussing each of them I concluded that "it is better to not bother because it would be like a savings account but really irritating to get money out of" and Chris concluded that I should watch the news instead of reading books about the economy. I decided to call it even and play Skyrim instead because at least it would have better easter eggs.

Job Applications? Why bother?

I haven't decided if I am just inordinately lucky or if I have some kind of super-power but I realized when I was telling someone about my new job that not only have five out of my six jobs been great jobs but I've only ever even applied to one of them.

Jobs had:
Movie Theater
Music Theater
Amato's
Data Entry for the University of Maine
Book Store
Automotive

Job: Movie Theater
Acquired: Because my mother was working there when they needed to hire someone new and nepotism is something hicks in small towns do.
Pay: 50-75 cents above the State-mandated minimum wage.
Duties: Cleaning, selling tickets, doing concessions, changing the marquee, cash-up, inventory, answering the phone, talking to people.
Perks: Free movies, free popcorn, free fountain soda, cheap candy, ability to read while getting paid if otherwise not busy, Christmas bonus, time off if/when I needed it.
Downfalls: Customers who did not understand that it was a one-screen, customers who wanted to pay with plastic, customers who wanted to buy tickets in advance, the fact that the theater was sloped and not tiered and any soda spilled ran down hill, seven day weeks in the summer.

Job: Music Theater
Acquired: Because my friend was their regular light-person and he knew I could do lights (I used to for productions at our highschool where I learned by doing).
Pay: A dollar above state-mandated minimum wage at the time.
Duties: Lighting
Perks: Free dinner, free fountain soda, free shows, attractive actors to look at, ability to play Pyramid solataire (because it fit on the counter under the light board better than other versions) while working.
Downfalls: Lighting system occasionally overheated and flipped the breakers which made me have to quickly throw on the spot-lights, turn down the master some, and run and flip the breakers back on, I was not an official employee, I only worked when the regular person was off, and they tended to cancel shows without any warning even to me.

Job: Amato's
Acquired: I knew the manager and she agreed to hire me on the spot.
Pay: A dollar twenty-five above state mandated minimum wage starting out and was given a fifteen cent raise after three months.
Duties: Making food, prepping food, prepping vegetables, washing dishes, washing counters, prepping dough, taking things out of the freezer, lifting heavy things, sweeping, mopping, cash-up.
Perks: None. I didn't even get a discount.
Downfalls: Cameras, not allowed to eat food for free, no discount on anything, worked by myself primarily, did not get breaks because of the previous, was not allowed to sit down, was required to serve customers until nine but it took nearly an hour to close up and corporate got mad if I stayed after I was scheduled, co-workers, hot oven, cooking in a fast-paced situation, the grease that permeated everything, the cement floor, and customers.

Job: Data Entry for the University of Maine Acquired: The scientist my father had worked with on a fishing research project needed someone to turn physical logbooks into spreadsheets.
Pay: There was 1,200 dollars budgeted to pay someone to do the data entry.
Duties: Turn logbooks into spreadsheets.
Perks: Work from my own bedroom, task took a total of eight hours.
Downfalls: I couldn't keep doing it.

Job: Book Store
Acquired: By application.
Pay: State-mandated minimum wage.
Duties: Checking in books, magazines, newspapers and gift items, putting away books, magazines, newspapers and gift items, checking inventory in assigned book and magazine sections, straightening book and magazine sections, writing blog posts, making up displays and windows, helping customers find books, recommending books, checking people out, doing back-stock, some vacuuming and dusting, doing cash-up, and watching the customers.
Perks: Reading free books, discounts on store items, and talking to people who like books.
Downfalls: Dealing with customers who have no concept of reality, living with sometimes annoying coworkers, trying to figure out where to draw the line... for everything.

Job: Automotive
Acquired: Was informed of the job by a regular customer in the bookstore, told what it would involve, and was warned that the owner was very crude. I went in knowing I was capable of meeting the job requirements and confident that crude was something easy enough to deal with after living with a commercial fisherman for nineteen years.
Pay: One dollar and fifty cents above the state-mandated minimum wage.
Duties: Opening mail, using Quickbooks and spreadsheets, answering the phone, doing billing, filing, updating the website, updating the company Facebook, smiling at people.
Perks: Nice pay, relatively easy work, would make a good future work reference, have permission to read when not otherwise occupied.
Downfalls: There are no buses that go past there and I may have to actually get my license. I have yet to work here but I suspect that 'dealing with customers' is probably going to be the biggest downfall.

Those five jobs that I didn't apply for but got anyway compared to the fifteen other jobs I applied to before I was hired at the bookstore and the several other applications I sent places since then that I never even got a call back on... Well, it makes me think that filing out applications might not be worth it.

Living as Roommates

Roommate
Does (did) most of the dishes.
Takes out the trash most often.
Sweeps occasionally (pretty much all our apartment ever gets swept).
Sometimes cleans up in other ways.
Once a week (tops) he might give me a ride somewhere.
Buys toilet paper (though rarely the same quality and not often the same amount) roughly every other time we need it.
Holds responsibility for paying rent to our landlord (actually transferring the money over, I mean, I write him a check and his brother also gives him money to contribute to the rent).
Has the electric bill in his name (for which I pay him 1/3 or 1/2 depending on whether his brother is contributing or not).
Owns the television, playstation, and the majority of games and movies in our apartment.
Has (and pays for) the Netflix account we all use to watch movies and television shows as we don't have cable, satellite, or even a antenna to pick up free stations.
Has been unemployed since the beginning of march (three and a half months after we moved in and we have currently lived here for eight and a half months). Receives unemployment and foodstamps.


Me
Occasionally does dishes. Rarely forgets to at least rinse them. Often wshes/rinses dirty dishes to reuse rather than use clean ones.
Takes out the trash sometimes.
Rarely sweeps.
Sometimes cleans up in other ways.
Enjoys cooking and often makes food and shares said food.
Does not complain that eggs (frequently), spices (frequently), milk (sometimes), coffee (often), butter (frequently), peanut butter (often), and other foodstuffs (constantly) paid for and carried home myself (as I do not, after all, own/drive a car or frequently get rides from my roommate) are used/eaten by other people.
Does not complain that toothpaste and mouthwash disappear at a much more rapid rate than if I were the only one using them.
Buys toilet paper (the kind I wish we had all the time) every other time and then some that we need it.
Has the highspeed internet with which we stream Netflix movies/shows, browse the web, shoot zombies with people around the world in real time (that's all him, not me, I've never liked first-person shooters), and god only knows what else (porn, probably) in my name and pays the full amount for it because after splitting the $30 dollar charge for the first few months I decided to get $54 dollar a month internet just after roommate became unemployed and thought I would be nice and not charge him for it until he became employed again.
Bought a $210 8,000 BTU airconditioner when the weather in combination with our third-floor apartment made living unbearable and allowed the airconditioner to be installed in the living room and not my bedroom.
Covers for roommate and brother of roommate by lending gas money and other stuff between paychecks (which is sometimes not returned in full).
Has been employed for almost two solid years with the same company, makes minimum wage, and manages to keep my head above water despite working part-time.


Brother of Roommate (living with us)
Did the dishes twice just after moving in and once in the past couple days after roommate declared he didn't want to do other people's dishes any more.
Occasionally takes out the trash.
Does not sweep.
Does not clean up in other ways.
Frequently leaves dirty dishes around the apartment, does not rinse his dishes, and rather than rinsing out his glass and using the same one he used for water to hold juice and later water again uses three different ones in one day.
Reuses his towels many times and leaves the stinky things in the bathroom.
Sleeps on our couch (making it difficult to have guests) and leaves dirty clothing around living room not to mention the fact that I cannot use anything in the living room before noon (about which time I am often getting ready for work).
Has bought toilet paper once since living with us.
Never has any money (despite making around a hundred dollars a week more than I do, while my roommate gets unemployment for nearly as much money as I make not to mention foodstamps) and struggles to give roommate $200 bucks to cover some rent and electric.
Attracts emotional drama like a guy who golfs in lightening storms.


So tell me... does that add up? Because somehow it doesn't seem to come out evenly for me. That the guy who makes the most money pays the least for rent and utilities (though he does sleep on our couch, granted)? Funnily enough the months when roommate's brother was basically at our apartment constantly (and I've yet to mention that he works forty hours a week but does them consecutively and gets to sleep while there, of course so he is here a lot) except while working and to actually sleep my roommate did not complain about the dishes. Oh. And when I say "does the dishes" I mean that we have a dishwasher into which dishes are loaded, soap is added, and timer is set and that's "doing the dishes". Oh! And though our apartment has forty to sixty or more me-free hours every week I am rarely alone in it. Am I justified in feeling like I'm beating my head against the wall and wanting to kick out roomate's brother? Yes? I better be.

So... what you're saying is that you think I'm fat?

Here's a punchline I hope someday to use. When someone, someday, asks me how I get ideas for my blog I'll say: "Oh, well, you know, sometimes they just come to me or I'll be reading and I'll get an idea or sometimes someone will walk up to me and hand me an idea. Literally."

The other day I was at work in the evening and there was this guy who had been shopping and he walked up to the counter. He looked like he wanted to ask a question so I asked if I could help him. And the first thing he says to me is something like: "Are there a lot of overweight people in {city I live in}? I mean, the demographic. It's related to a business opportunity." I think I must have stared at him for several seconds. The wheels were turning in my head. At first I wondered if this was in any way related to the store that I work for and us selling things. "Uhm. I'm not sure I really know..." I temporized. "Do you have a piece of paper and a pen?" He asked me next. We do. I gave them to him in the hopes that this will cause him to buy his magazine and go away sooner rather than later.

While he wrote on the paper he spoke, making the writing go much more slowly. He sounded vaguely excited about whatever it is that he's talking about but I find it difficult to understand people who are talking in the direction of their own hands (unless their hands are between my face and the person talking). Phrases that I remember him say during the entire conversation include: "It's a meal-replacement shake. 170 calories. I did it. I'm a biker. I race bicycles. But I couldn't get rid of that fat around my belly but this did it. I know people that make 30,000 dollars a month. I make 15,000 dollars a month and I'm a pilot. It's real easy. You just have to do it and you lose weight and if you can get three other people to do it it pays for yours. After that you make money from it. And you don't have to talk to family or anything. You can tell anyone. You'll be helping them to lose weight." I also remember something about a BMW and protesting that I could not drive. I think he also invited me to call him.

I realized that he might never go away if I did not agree with him so I told him I would visit the website he had written down and check it out. Apparently satisfied he bought his magazine and finally left. Once he was gone I had time to actually digest what he said. Especially as I briefly told my coworker about him when she came back to the front of the store. And basically it boiled down to: There's a multi-level marketing opportunity to sell meal-replacement shakes. First you take the "ninety-day challenge" and then you can sell it to other people and make money from it.

I did look up the website he gave me. It's vernonSHOPS.myvi.net/challenge. This is obviously not the website for the real product but instead a generic and individualized shop just to convince you to enter your contact information so this guy can contact you and try to sell you this and probably you'll also go on a bunch of mailing lists you'll never be able to get off and telemarketers will call you and that kind of thing. Just by poking around his website it looks as though, if he is indeed making 15,000 dollars a month, he is not doing it through the website. There's extremely little traffic at all, never mind from other people. I decide to move on and from the logo I can tell that the company is called ViSalus so I punch that into Google. I don't even have to bother putting in "scam" along with it because half the websites that pop up along with the actual one contain the word scam in the title. I look at their website and the stuff that they've given away and the things they've done for people.

It appears as though ViSalus is not actually a scam but it is a multi-level marketing scheme. (About which you ought to already know my opinion and if not check out my previous post Pyramid Schemes, Multilevel Marketing, & Paying it Forward.) I wouldn't expect to make money from it and it's not a product I would use. Despite the fact that the name is "ViSalus Sciences" and they have this "scientific" information on their website about the products I also wouldn't think it would be the safest way to lose weight and I'd advise consulting with your physician if you are considering trying it. Their website makes it seem very exciting and like a sure bet kind of thing but as with all of these companies: They aren't trying to make you money; they're trying to make themselves money and if you make some for yourself while you're at it then good for you.

Having checked out the website and knowing what I now know about it I wish I could go back and have that conversation with that guy again. I have some very pressing questions for him. But the one I really want to ask and sort of wish I had (to see if it would have stopped the conversation dead in its tracks) is: "So... what you're saying is that you think I'm fat?"

Buying Books for Children

Some of my fondest childhood memories aren't just book-related but bookstore-related. The children's section in my parent's favorite bookstore had this great train track you could play with and an awesome boat-shaped sitting area you could climb all over and shelves that come up only to my waist these days. Though sadly this particular bookstore no longer exists I never came out of it without a new book. Miss Rumphius was one of my favorites. So much so that though I have no idea what became of my original copy I bought another one when I was sixteen or seventeen. When I stopped being such a little kid I not only devoured a huge portion of my father's library but I didn't come out of the bookstore without several new books every time we went. Their only real rule was that we didn't buy hardcovers because they're quite expensive (my father still never buys hardovers). The other thing was that they weren't going to buy books I wasn't going to read (and why would I want them anyway?)

My parents are not rich people by any stretch of the imagination. My mother is a school teacher and my father is a commercial fisherman. I'm the youngest of four children. But my parents understood the value of reading and education. My mother read out loud to all of us until I was eight or nine which put my oldest brother at sixteen or seventeen. She only stopped then because my second-oldest brother and I kept stealing the book from her and reading ahead. They also bought books for all of us, not just me, so it wasn't uncommon for them to spend hundreds of dollars once every month or two at the bookstore. As a result I spent most of highschool reading my books instead of paying attention but still, somehow, managed to get good grades.

So maybe I was pampered as a child and I understand that some children's books can be expensive but aside from the bargain books we carry (which are, as far as I can tell, publisher overstocks that they sell off for the cost it would take to destroy them) I could pick out dozens, hundreds of books probably, for children in our store that would cost you half the amount for one romance novel or a quarter what you might pay for a girlie magazine. Not to mention the fact that young people and young adult books (which can run to several hundred pages) often cost much less than adult books of the same binding or even quality. So I'm not quite sure why it is that when parents come into the store with their children in tow so they, the adult, can pick up a copy of Twilight or grab some truck magazine or even porn (yes, people bring their children into the bookstore for seemingly the sole purpose of buying porn) and their child asks them for a book they don't buy one.

Maybe, maybe you think your kid should get books from the library (which are free after all), or maybe you think your kid does plenty of reading in school and doesn't need you to purchase books for them. But when asked to purchase a book for their child parent's don't say: "Not today sweetie, but tomorrow we can go to the library." They don't negotiate: "How about this book about a little princess just like my little princess instead of that book?" In order to convince them they want a less expensive one. I rarely hear one say: "Maybe next time." But I often hear parents say: "No, because when we go to you're just going to ask me for a toy there and get upset because I already bought you a book." ...You actually want to buy your child more noisy toys instead of a book which might encourage them to be quiet and probably more introspective which may lead them not to whine at all? No? How about a book that encourages your child not to whine? You wouldn't even buy them one of those? What's wrong with you?

Parents will buy themselves a stack of hardcovers but deny their child a book because of expenses. Why not trade one of those hardcovers for a softcover and get your kid a book? Or they'll buy themselves porn, or on a financially if not morally worse decision, get themselves marijuana magazines and tell the children that they brought along to the store that they can't get a book. And why not? Because having a pot magazine (or pot itself) is more important to you than your child's future? And porn instead of books for children? Really? Why not buy your child a book or two and get free porn on the internet like everybody else. Maybe if you bought your kid some books they wouldn't be such a... let's say "nuisance". After all, they're the ones who are interested in reading and learning when they ask about having a book. One day when you shut that down you may shut it down forever. But maybe I know nothing about it. I don't have any children after all. I have been one, though.

I Continue to Astound Myself by Not Going Broke

I Continue to Astound Myself by Not Going Broke
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More Angry Stupid People


Please refer to Angry Stupid People if you haven't read it already before going on.


I continue to astound myself by not going broke. I find this very impressive and I'm not quite certain how I continue to manage it. I say this because I work part-time for minimum wage, pay for rent and utilities and food and internet and entertainment and still haven't yet managed to need to have a serious wake-up call (merely a minor mathematical one). I am scheduled to work between twenty (absolute minimum) and thirty-seven (maximum) hours per week. I usually actually work between twenty-two (minimum) and thirty-nine (absolute maximum) hours per week depending on how many shifts I pick up and how long we end up staying after closing each night to do cash-up. The number of hours I pick up, obviously, goes down in direct correlation to how many I am originally scheduled for. I would say though that I work an average of thirty hours a week. For minimum wage.

I make approximately eight hundred dollars in a month, more than half of which goes toward bills and a further quarter to one third to food and the rest I think maybe gets converted into oxygen through photosynthesis or something but I'm not sure about that last part. It must go somewhere. But like my poor sneakers nightly wanderings what happens to it will remain a mystery until Rick Charette writes a song about it.

At first I managed this discrepancy by sheer denial and slowly leeching away my savings. But late last spring I realized that the denial was no longer cutting it and I faced the prospect that in a few months I would probably be forced to be a sell-out and work for Wal-Mart if I couldn't find another job before then. It so happened that at that time I suggested to my friend that he could try to make money on the internet as many other people seemed to be able to do. I decided to see, just to check, if this were feasible.

I definitely do not go about this the same way as other people. From what I can tell other people mostly buy stuff in the real world and then sell it online. That's fine. Obviously works for certain folks. All the ones who wrote all those promising books, at least. But I figured that if there's a book about it there's probably thousands of dummies trying to replicate the same trick. And I didn't want to be a dummy. No one has ever considered me to be anything of the sort and I wasn't about to start ruining my image now.

So when I realized that I could take the knowledge that I had amassed earning fake money on GaiaOnline and potentially turn it into real money I decided to go for it. I found something on eBay that I figured I should be able to sell on Amazon for a decent profit margin. I bought it, it was shipped to my house, I checked it out and then listed it up on Amazon. It sold within a day or two and I shipped it to the customer and immediately bought another one. And the next time I bought two. And then a different item. And then I started to buy a dozen items at a time and by the end of the summer I had made over a thousand dollars in net profit with not a lot of work or time expended.

I not only had kept myself from needing to get a second job but I also started to build up a little savings somehow. And then my roommate decided to shut off the internet. I bought a laptop so I could use it at the Library. I started looking for another apartment. I got kicked out of my apartment. I was going to up and move to Georgia. I ended up going to Georgia but only for a week. I managed to cover the cost of the trip by cleaning my brother's (the person I was staying with in Georgia) house. I immediately moved into a new apartment (complete with deposit and first-month's rent in advance.) We had to buy stuff for the apartment. I was flat broke and working constantly and we didn't yet have internet.

We finally get internet, just after Thanksgiving. I can start selling things in the small window of online shopping time remaining before Christmas. And I do. Quite quickly. The only problem is is that I need all of that money for bills. I wont have anything left to reinvest. And my company has suddenly decided to go to bi-weekly pay-checks. And I work all of December and more seemingly endlessly with only one day off every seven days. And one night my right palm is itching fiercely at work. My coworker comments that this, according to an old wives tale, means that I'm going to come into some money. K'van calls a couple days later. I've gotten mail at my old apartment. It's a letter from a previous employer claiming that I was owed close to three hundred dollars in past wages. Reinvestment money.

Really I'd love to do even more selling online. I'm contemplating asking my oldest brother for five hundred dollars for a few months just so I can have more money to work with buying things to sell online. I could pay him back with interest like venture capitalism and still end up with more money for myself. Ideally I would like to make enough money that I can live off of it. Maybe even enough to justify writing a book.

But! That was not the whole point of this post. The point was to explain that not only do I work in retail sales in the real world I also sell things online. And everyone is an idiot on the internet. I, admittedly, have done some idiotic things online (over bid on some items on accident and such). But so do other people. I liked to read through the comments of stores I was buying from or who were competing with me in selling. And I noticed that a lot of people were angry about things which were clearly stated in the description or even title of the item as though it were the sellers fault for sending them what they actually ordered instead of what they thought they ordered. These people were angry because they were stupid.

I mention this specific example because I wanted to say that a few days before Christmas I got my first negative feedback on Amazon. The buyer gave me two out of five stars. And I'm going to quote the post they made on Amazon rather than the customer inquiry they sent to my e-mail (though the message is much the same because the initial e-mail made me feel slightly homicidal): "The item listed said it was a BLACK controller and everything, but in the comments the seller put White controller well why would you list it as BLACk if you are going to put in comments that it is actually not what it is being advertised as. It was a false sale and i feel like i have been tricked into buying something i didnt really want."
To which I responded: "For the same reason other sellers list differently-colored products: because Amazon does not have a heading for every color of product. It was not my intention to mislead anyone. I sent an item exactly the same as the heading except that it was white in color, as noted in the description. I would be more than happy to exchange the white bundle for a black one if that is the customer's desire."

Allow me to explain if it was a little convoluted. I sell both black and white of this particular controller except Amazon doesn't actually have a place specifically for the white one so I list it under the description that matches the closest. And since I also sell black ones I will put up two listings, one that specifically states that it's actually the same controller in white. She bought the listing that stated it was white so I sent her what she ordered- a white controller. This was not, however, what she thought she ordered and so she became angry.

So I responded to the feedback to set her straight (albeit in a rather cramped manner as there was a severe character limit). I almost wish I hadn't. Almost. Because two days after her feedback I got feedback from another person who had ordered from me in early december. Their comment was concise down to three words. I couldn't have stated it so elegantly myself without a great-deal of thought. They gave me five out of five stars and their words were: "Met expectations exactly."

And I think I'll end on that note: "Met expectations exactly."