Actually, I think caveat venditor is more appropriate, considering your description of paypal. Ha! Certainly a good option. I hadn't thought of that one.
However since as a seller you are a customer of eBay/PayPal I'll pedantically stand by my original statement.
And in any case, what's the big deal with using Paypal? Sure, I've heard the horror stories, but fortunately nothing like that has ever happened to me as a seller, so there ya go. Give it time and you'll experience some of the horrors first hand. The main problems with PayPal from the standpoint a seller is that their policies make it pretty easy for buyers to abuse you and PayPal is rather expensive as well. I've sold over 10,000 items on eBay and received most payments via PayPal. 99% of the time it works well even if it is overly pricey for the service provided - but PayPal's policies are heavily tilted towards favoring buyers and you should NEVER forget that.
Eventually you'll run into someone who decides they don't like something and the magic words with PayPal are "not as described" - it doesn't matter how accurately you actually did describe it since PayPal does not check or even care. Anyone can return anything, regardless of your policy on returns and get a full refund - screwing you out of the shipping price in the process. (accepting returns is usually a good policy but not in all cases) Worse, sometimes the "buyer" will ship you a box with nothing in it (keeping the item) and PayPal will give them their money back as soon as they provide "proof" of shipping. As for PayPal's seller's "protection", it's nearly worthless and PayPal puts so many stipulations in that they can basically weasel out anytime they want to. (and believe me they do)
PayPal wants to be a bank without being regulated like one. They also implement a lot of poorly thought out policies that could only be fair if they could/would inspect the merchandise - but they don't and never will. I don't have a problem with their service overall but it should be used with a strong dose of caveat emptor.
Really? Why can't it? A phone occasionally transmits so the phone network knows where it is, but most of the time the phone is just listening. Rather like a pager I suppose and you're right, most of the time it is just listening. Good point but I guess that was my point too - the phone I'm pretty sure has to occasionally notify the network that it exists and for any modern phone that is a digital signal. *Some* data is being sent even if they aren't billing for it. I'm pretty sure the amount of data is so small as to be near negligible. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. Nevertheless, I'm thinking too much along the lines of standard IMAP connection which is definitely a different animal.
Blackberries sync perfectly with Lotus Notes and Novell Groupwise, with 99% of the same feature set as Exchange. I forgot about Groupwise but you're right. That said I can't for the life of me figure out why no phone can do over the air sync with a ICAL calendar. Highly standardized and well documented, would give the phone companies lots of excuses to charge us more and would make life much easier for anyone using something other than the above mentioned software.
As for address books... sigh. I often doubt those will ever get standardized. Still, would it kill someone to write a thunderbird extension to sync address books with some of the more popular smartphones? I'd do it myself if I had the programming chops...
I used to have a Nokia - the Nokia PC Suite was kludgy but functional to sync with outlook by usb/infrared/bluetooth. If you don't use outlook I think you're SOL. Pretty much. Nokia PC Suite is better than it used to be - much better actually - but it's still not especially useful without Outlook. Heaven forbid you use something that works somewhere other than Windows - or even gmail for that matter.
Not all investment strategies involve valuations. Technical Analysis, for example, doesn't really care what the "valuation" Valuation is still involved but the technical "analyst" simply relies on someone else to do it. Think about it - stocks have to go up or down for a reason and ultimately that reason is at least loosely rooted in the profit potential of the firm. Think of TA as a layer of abstraction on valuation - it simply is outsourced to someone else.
You certainly can invest without doing any valuation (a bad idea in my opinion but that's a different discussion) but ultimately someone somewhere has to do the work of trying to figure out what the investment is worth. Technical analysis is rooted in mass psychology and trying to use statistical tools to (hopefully) find patterns in behavior. I think it works sometimes but I don't really believe it's possible to consistently make market beating results with it.
Mostly you make good points but a few nits.
By comparison, the blackberry is "push" email. There is no need to check for new messages. If your email account gets a new message, the server pushes it to your device. Unless you are sending/receiving a message, your data usage is zero. There HAS to be some data exchange so that the blackberry knows there is a message receive. Not a lot of data needs to be exchanged which I think was your point but it's not zero either. Simply cannot be.
Does your nokia/treo/ericsson sync your todo list, calendar and address book in real time with your desktop? When you can get a Blackberry to do all that with something OTHER than Outlook/Exchange or maybe Lotus Notes (Thunderbird or even Gmail at home in my case) let me know - otherwise I'm not impressed. Not really picking on Blackberry specifically here since NO device I'm aware of can do a good job with syncing to-dos, calendars and address books without either an (almost) all Microsoft or all Apple solution on the PC end. I personally use a Nokia E70 and would DEARLY love someone, anyone, to make it possible to sync my contacts and calendars with my PCs - but given the software I use on the PC end there is literally no good way to do it. A blackberry or an iPhone wouldn't solve that problem for me either. It's not like I'm using some obscure software either - all common stuff everyone here on slashdot is very familiar with. I would happily even pay for a (cross platform) solution but none exists to my knowledge and I've REALLY looked hard for one.
RIM provides full documentation and a developer kit to build your own applications. You don't have to beg apple please pretty please can I write an application and put it on my own phone. Nokia and Microsoft provide application development tools too. Nokia's S60 platform supports Java, C++ and Python development. Apple certainly has control freak issues but then they're not the only or even close to the biggest competitor for RIM. For the record Nokia has the largest smartphone market share at 65% followed by Microsoft and then RIM in a close third.
Right, because the fact that they voluntarily closed their door illustrates What exactly? Voluntarily? There was nothing voluntary about it. They lost basically all their customers and had to sell every asset worth holding the moment they were convicted. That's a death penalty in corporate terms - I'm not sure what else you were expecting. Doesn't matter that it was later overturned, the sentence was effectively already carried out. The company was dead by then.
And just like the real death penalty, if you overturn the verdict after the punishment it's too late - they're already dead.
Only in America can people still get the death penalty while corporations can't. I'm sure the former employees of Arthur Anderson will be thrilled to hear that.
The father of a classmate of mine many years ago owned a trucking company and as you might expect he occasionally got calls to deal with accidents as you might expect. One evening he gets a call that one of his trucks was stuck under a bridge that was too short for the truck to fit under. He goes to the scene and sure enough, the driver had rammed the truck nice and tightly underneath even though the bridge was clearly marked as having too little clearance for the truck to make it. When asked the driver reportedly said "I thought if I sped up I could make it."
!!!
I'm not sure if any drugs were involved but gross stupidity clearly was a contributing factor.
i was under the impression that the real problem in the u.s. is that there are laws making it difficult/impossible for railroad companies to own semi-trucks, put into place to help a fledgling trucking industry at some point, and never rescinded. I'm not personally aware of any such laws but I think the reasons the rail companies don't have dedicated trucking fleets (branded ones anyway) are economic more than anything else. Barriers to entry in trucking is FAR lower than in rail and the profit margins behave accordingly.
Rail companies do however have BIG investments in intermodal transport which usually includes trucking as well as ocean freight components. Container shipping is what drives our economy these days and the rail companies know it. The nice thing about container shipping is that there is no need to handle the freight itself directly except at the destinations which saves a lot of money; you just strap the ISO standard container to the truck/train/ship of your choice and use the most efficient transport method available.
That should not be confused with negotiation. They are simply asking your price to see if you are affordable enough to bother with in the first place. Sorry but you are mistaken; it absolutely IS a negotiation the vast majority of the time and any career adviser with a clue will tell you so. To respond to your point would you start a negotiation with someone who had unreasonable salary demands? The question about salary expectations is the START, not (necessarily) the end. If you have nothing but a high school diploma and ask for a six figure income to work at Walmart, you are being unreasonable. On the other hand if you have a PhD in mathematics and want to work on Wall Street as a quant for an investment banking firm, $150,000 is not unreasonable at all and you easily could negotiate higher. But there is a limit to how much can be offered for any job and part of HR's job is to weed out those with unrealistic expectations.
Companies have a range of salaries they are willing to pay for a given job. There are entire databases of comparable job salary ranges available to HR departments. Of course if they can pay you less they will but you have access to data yourself and can negotiate to the high end of the range if you have the qualifications and are willing to negotiate. If you just settle for any offer thrown your way, well, you get what you deserve.
Most employers could put out an ad on monster or dice and get more resumes than they know what to do with in a matter of hours. About 10% of jobs are filled through websites such as Monster. Don't take my word for it, there is plenty of data to back me up. It's one of the least effective methods of job hunting there is particularly if you have a non-traditional background for a given job. The most successful? Networking and word of mouth. Depending on who you ask between 50% and 80% of jobs are filled this way.
Furthermore there are lots of jobs where Monster is a terrible, not to mention expensive, way for companies to recruit. Yes they get bombarded with resumes, most of which are ill-qualified or bad candidates for various reasons. I know because I've recruited that way. Sometimes it works great, many times it does not. As a recruiting tool Monster and the rest are HIGHLY overrated.
People who will gladly do the job, no questions asked. If you can find those people I'd love to talk with them. No candidate I've hired has been that much of a pushover; maybe because they are smart and usually experienced people.
Unless you have a rockstar skillset or the company by the balls, you're at their mercy. As long as you believe that you'll continue to be abused. You get paid more for two reasons; 1) because you do something few others *want* to do or 2) because you do something few others *can* do. Train yourself accordingly. You don't have to be a rockstar, just someone with a skill people want and a professional approach to the job and job hunt.
What country/jurisdiction was this? Because where I am, there sure as hell do have to provide cause for termination Depends on where you live. Some places do require a cause, many do not. That said, it does not necessarily have to be a good cause though it should be if the employer does not want a lawsuit. Many states in the US have implied contract laws which makes the process of dismissal more complicated. Plus there are statutory exceptions for things like gender, race, disability and the like meaning you can't fire someone because they are female.
Yes, much more intimately than I'd like to be. (I've actually been told "We don't have to tell you why" when being terminated.) "At will" basically means "The only right you have is to quit." Yep. It is true they don't have to tell you why they are terminating you. The should if they are smart but they don't have to. Likewise you don't have to tell them why you are leaving unless you want to. That is what at-will employment is.
That might (or might not, IMHO) be true, but my bank won't negotiated with me regarding paying my mortgage if I don't have money. It absolutely is true you can negotiate the terms of your employment in many many cases. I've done it many times. When you apply for many jobs they ASK you how much salary you expect. That is a negotiation right there. Doesn't mean you'll come to an agreement but it's rare there is no flexibility. As for your mortgage, if you have a mortgage and have not saved a few months worth of "just in case" cash, then you probably have overextended yourself and I don't have a lot of sympathy. Maybe your case is different but I don't pity people who don't live within their means.
Yes. The number of companies that will hire me, however, is a non-trivially tiny portion of that number. That's no reflection on my personality or skills, that's just a fact of life. Employers can choose who to hire, employees can't choose who makes them an offer. Wow. Way to sell yourself short. Unless you have a very very narrow skill set or some unusual restriction on where or when you can work, there are a HUGE number of opportunities out there. Only limited by your skills and imagination. Having been an employer, I can tell you that employers do NOT always get good candidates. If you aren't what they are looking for, generally speaking that is your fault, not theirs. Getting hired is a sales job and the product is you. If they aren't buying what you are selling, you can modify the product (training) or modify your sales pitch but there are too many opportunities out there to claim you have no power over the situation.
Oh? So I can just arbitrarily not need a paycheck? What color is the sky on your planet? You have saved up some money right? Of course you need income but it's up to you to live within your means and give yourself the flexibility to live how you want. Yeah sometimes we all get in a tight spot. Has happened to me in the past. But as soon as circumstances allow you move on. No point in being bitter about it - only person that hurts is you.
The definition of "fair" compensation is highly subjective, and the only opinion that really matters is the employer's in that situation, because, as I've said before, they have the money. Fair does not necessarily mean favorable. If you accepted the job for what they were offering that is *by definition* fair in a liquid labor market - at least by the definition every economist I've ever met uses. Absent coercion or unusual externalities you had a meeting of the minds regarding the work to be done and the compensation to be provided. If you have an unusual skill in high demand, you will be able to command more compensation and better terms but it will be fair regardless. Perhaps you are in unusual circumstances but I doubt it and if you accepted a position you did not think was fair I'm not feeling the sympathy.
Now perhaps you ran into one or more of the assholes that occasionally invades all our lives from time to time. I do sympathize with that but it's still up to you to move on as soon as circumstances allow.
Because the employer/employee relationship isn't equitable. It boils down to "We have money, you don't. We make the rules, if you don't like them, no money for you." You are familiar with the term "at will employment"? You do realize that the terms of many/most jobs are significantly negotiable? You do realize that there are a huge number of companies out there and you can choose which one to work for? It's not nearly so unbalanced as it might appear at first glance.
The employer/employee relationship is not equitable only if you let it be that way. They need something done and are offering you compensation to do it. That's a fair trade. If the company is not offering fair compensation in reasonable working conditions then don't take the job. Yes, sometimes you'll run into some assclown running the show. Move on as soon as circumstances allow. It's a big world and life is too short to spend it working for jerks.
Ok, so under certain circumstances & organizations I agree that having others read your email regularly could be justified, but that would be like 1 out of 1000 companies at most. I'm not sure have a clue how easy and common it is for companies to get sued. Look, I'm all for reasonableness in monitoring workplace behavior but any company of any size gets sued regularly for all sorts of frivolous reasons. Seriously, there are a LOT of people out there who will lawyer up at the slightest perceived slight. I've witnessed these lawsuits firsthand.
Want to fire someone? You damn well better have thorough documentation about how they were not a good employee and were breaking company policy since it's VERY common for dismissed employees to sue for wrongful dismissal - especially minorities. But I hear you saying "at will employment". Doesn't matter, they'll sue anyway and it will cost the company a lot of time and money. Sometimes these lawsuits are justified, often they aren't but the end result is that EVERY company can and should take measures to document the behavior of their employees to protect themselves.
Doesn't mean the company has to go overboard but retaining and occasionally reading emails or filtering to protect the company is reasonable. Keeping records of phone conversations is reasonable to a point (some industries like financial services often require it by law) especially for customer facing employees. A few minutes of checking in on the family should not be a big deal in most cases. Spending any amount of time surfing for porn is a big deal. Emailing confidential company info to an unauthorized individual is a VERY big deal. Etc. There is no one size fits all answer but management absolutely can and should keep an eye on things to protect the company, the jobs of the employees and the investment of the shareholders.
What makes you think the next place will be any better? Might not be but neither I nor anyone I know works for a company *that* intrusive. Seriously, why would anyone put up with that unless your employer was the Marine Corps? I don't have a problem with companies wanting work resources to be used for work. Heck I've insisted on it in companies I owned. But there has to be a standard of reasonableness.
I always told my employees that as long as they got their work done with good quality and on time, we would get along just fine. If they abused that trust they might get a warning but only once. And you know what? It worked. I've had very little turnover and high morale and my employees really worked hard. Sending a few innocuous emails to a significant other doesn't qualify as a breach of trust. Looking at porn in the workplace would be a firing offense. It's really all about what is reasonable.
I was brought into the office one day and they presented me with the emails I'd sent to my wife during those two weeks and told me that I was wasting company time. Wow. I'm note sure whether to be impressed at your restraint or appalled. I would have walked out right that second and never looked back, consequences be damned. I'm a little touchy about not working for assholes however.
Any company that feels the need to monitor their employees that closely without a really compelling need is not going to last long. (I define compelling need as something on the order of national security, building weapons systems, guarding highly valuable financial assets, or similar activities) If they can't ask you for results and trust you to go get them, that isn't a working relationship that is going to be productive.
And I'd like to add: If we can't measure it, we don't have a valid basis to call it unfair. Nor do we have a basis to call it fair. So where does that leave us? If you can't prove it is fair but it clearly enhances performance (and these prosthetics *clearly* enhance performance) it should not be allowed. There is no way I can think of to prove that his legs do not provide an unfair advantage.
Doesn't/Didn't Bill Gates own a majority stock in Microsoft? Not for a very long time. He owned a large (20-30% if memory serves) percentage but not a controlling one. Steve Balmer owned something like 5-10% too which was enough to make him one of the 5 richest men in the world.
Does being "owned" by an individual or family with a long term view do anything to make the company any less evil? Nope. I can point out very ethical companies owned by many people, and scummy companies owned or controlled by just a few. Number of owners has little to do with ethics though having more owners might mean that there is more oversight in some cases.
I don't know of any undergraduate course called "management". Look around. A HUGE number of respected undergraduate colleges/universities have a business management degree. It's called various things but many of them have management explicitly on the diploma. I had a roommate in college as well as an employee a few years ago who had Bachelors degrees in "Management". You can question whether an undergraduate degree in management is useful (I do) but they certainly exist.
I believe the root of this problem comes from the current capitalist system where large corporations are never owned by a single person. Clearly you don't have a clue why corporations typically have multiple owners. The answer is that joint-stock corporations are formed to spread risk. Creating a business is a hugely risky endeavor. I know, I've done it several times myself. It's virtually impossible to get access to enough capital to grow to be a large company without giving up at least some equity ownership. It's also EXTREMELY rare to find an individual who can guide a company from startup all the way to a large fully mature company. The skill sets required do not overlap very much.
Furthermore you are making the incorrect assumption that most corporations are large corporations. Actually the opposite is demonstrably true. There are far more small companies, many of which are owned my a single person or small group, and small companies account for an enormous percentage of the economy.
With modern corporations, if the profits are likely to drop in the near future, you sell the shares. Bear in mind that MOST companies are not publicly traded on stock exchanges so most stock isn't going to have a ready buyer even if an owner wanted to sell.
That said, Uhh yes... and? As long as management is not buying/selling based on non-public info (that would be insider trading) why is that evil? If you accept the premise that the value of a company is the net present value of its future free cash flows and you get information that profits will drop then yes, you might sell. Or you might not. It's a GOOD thing that you have that option. Would you rather be unable to sell if you were an shareholder in Enron after you found out what they were up to?
(and if anyone reading this has to look up what net present value or future free cash flow means please don't waste your time responding - go learn some finance 101 first)
And, still worse, is that too often corporations own other corporations. Again, this is bad how? A corporation owned by another corporation is no different than a company with two divisions that make different products. Sometimes it makes sense to keep the management of the two separate so the management teams can concentrate on their respective businesses. It's just a management structure. It's smart to do that. What you are really doing is making the ridiculous claim that one person should never have a stake in more than one business.
Sure they are, and athlete can just amputate his feet and he can use them too. That's a absurd argument and it misses the point completely. No reasonable person is going to cut off their feet. Even if they did, the fact still remains that they would have to use performance enhancing technology, no different than performance enhancing drugs to compensate for their new disability.
Yet, athletes are allowed to take drugs for medical conditions. Sometimes if doing so is reasonable and demonstrably does not affect performance. It's possible to prove how much a drug affects performance. There is no (reasonable) way to evaluate how much this guys prosthetics affect his performance because you cannot separate his performance without them. Without them he can't walk. What IS absolutely clear is that they DO enhance his performance significantly. Without that separability they cannot be proven to be a fair competition device. If you can't prove it is fair it should not be allowed.
Athletes have to be VERY careful about what drugs they take. Some over the counter cold remedies will result in a positive drug test if used. In my chosen sport using an inhaler for asthma is grounds for disqualification. It's tough but it's fair.
Really? Do they all use the same shoes, clothes, and have the same training technology available to them? Within reasonable limits, yes they do have access to essentially the same technology in pretty much any sport. Even in technology heavy sports like bicycling all the competitors have access to practically the same gear if they wish to use it. And when a piece of gear is determined to be unsafe or unfair for some reason, most sporting bodies will outlaw its use.
It's not funny and it's not true. I think it's funny and it certainly was intended to be.
Further, the olympic athletes these days, especially in the US, regularly undergo strict, random screening. An associate of mine was competing for a US slot and the officials once randomly showed up with this person was teaching a class I was in to take a sample. Believe me I'm well aware. My coach in college was a two time Olympic gold medalist. Also I'm married to a pathologist who has run the sorts of labs where they do these tests. That said, the random screening is helpful but hardly foolproof. I have an MD sitting twenty feet away from me as I write this who can attest to that. There are plenty of doping methods that are presently undetectable or easily concealed. It's an arms race that the cheaters will always be a step ahead in. For example here is a letter from Victor Conte of Balco pharma fame on how athletes could use PED and evade detection.
Further, he isn't actually paying for the cost of those legs and even if he was, they would dwarf the cost of PEDs, which are relatively cheap. He may be sponsored you are right. I don't know either way. That said, a top quality doping program is reputed to cost many tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. I can provide sources for that figure if you wish. That ain't cheap no matter who you are asking.
What happens when someone is born with a birth defect which happens to enhance his capability in a competitive sport? Happens all the time and it's ok. Guys who can win the Tour De France have a cardiovascular system that is FAR superior to yours or mine. Take Michael Phelps as an example. He's 6'6" (or thereabouts), has a nearly 7' reach fingertip to fingertip, has feet so large they are basically flippers, and a top notch cardio system. I don't care how hard you work, you'll NEVER beat him in a swim meet because he is simply perfectly built for that sport. And you know what? That's ok. He won the genetic lottery and we didn't.
Using a mechanical assist to overcome a disadvantage and simply being born with an advantage are very different issues. The rules and equipment are supposed to be the same, not the outcomes.
This is hardly scientific but I've also noticed that - just looking at him - he has a higher BF% and isn't nearly as defined, muscularly - as the other athletes in that event. That's because he's spending his money on performance enhancing legs instead of performance enhancing drugs.
But using a moped is clearly enhancement. So are his prosthetic legs. Betcha he doesn't run very fast without them.
Is this really very different from a runner with a titanium rod in their leg? Would depend on the particulars but generally that is a limitation, not an advantage or enhancement.
Or with Speedo's new swimsuit that's causing controversy? So long as everyone can buy it, I don't see a problem. If they can't buy it then yes it should be banned.
What about Tiger Woods' LASIK surgery? I've had Lasik myself. No performance advantage there that cannot be had by others or other means. There are a few corner cases where vision correction would eliminate a handicap but none where it would provide an unfair advantage.
Or Floyd Landis' artifical hip? Doesn't really affect anything. He lost training and it won't make his muscles or cardio system perform any better. Plus I think the performance enhancing drugs he allegedly took probably affected his performance more anyway.
There are already many things that are currently allowed which are only different from these legs in degree, rather than kind. And that's why this guy should be able to compete. And there are many things that aren't allowed and that is why he should NOT be allowed to compete. True it has to be decided on a case-by-case basis but in the case of prosthetics, it's not a level playing field. They provide a mechanical advantage (he performs better with them than without them) not available to other athletes so they should not be allowed.
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However since as a seller you are a customer of eBay/PayPal I'll pedantically stand by my original statement.
Eventually you'll run into someone who decides they don't like something and the magic words with PayPal are "not as described" - it doesn't matter how accurately you actually did describe it since PayPal does not check or even care. Anyone can return anything, regardless of your policy on returns and get a full refund - screwing you out of the shipping price in the process. (accepting returns is usually a good policy but not in all cases) Worse, sometimes the "buyer" will ship you a box with nothing in it (keeping the item) and PayPal will give them their money back as soon as they provide "proof" of shipping. As for PayPal's seller's "protection", it's nearly worthless and PayPal puts so many stipulations in that they can basically weasel out anytime they want to. (and believe me they do)
PayPal wants to be a bank without being regulated like one. They also implement a lot of poorly thought out policies that could only be fair if they could/would inspect the merchandise - but they don't and never will. I don't have a problem with their service overall but it should be used with a strong dose of caveat emptor.
As for address books... sigh. I often doubt those will ever get standardized. Still, would it kill someone to write a thunderbird extension to sync address books with some of the more popular smartphones? I'd do it myself if I had the programming chops... I used to have a Nokia - the Nokia PC Suite was kludgy but functional to sync with outlook by usb/infrared/bluetooth. If you don't use outlook I think you're SOL. Pretty much. Nokia PC Suite is better than it used to be - much better actually - but it's still not especially useful without Outlook. Heaven forbid you use something that works somewhere other than Windows - or even gmail for that matter.
You certainly can invest without doing any valuation (a bad idea in my opinion but that's a different discussion) but ultimately someone somewhere has to do the work of trying to figure out what the investment is worth. Technical analysis is rooted in mass psychology and trying to use statistical tools to (hopefully) find patterns in behavior. I think it works sometimes but I don't really believe it's possible to consistently make market beating results with it.
And just like the real death penalty, if you overturn the verdict after the punishment it's too late - they're already dead.
The father of a classmate of mine many years ago owned a trucking company and as you might expect he occasionally got calls to deal with accidents as you might expect. One evening he gets a call that one of his trucks was stuck under a bridge that was too short for the truck to fit under. He goes to the scene and sure enough, the driver had rammed the truck nice and tightly underneath even though the bridge was clearly marked as having too little clearance for the truck to make it. When asked the driver reportedly said "I thought if I sped up I could make it."
!!!
I'm not sure if any drugs were involved but gross stupidity clearly was a contributing factor.
Rail companies do however have BIG investments in intermodal transport which usually includes trucking as well as ocean freight components. Container shipping is what drives our economy these days and the rail companies know it. The nice thing about container shipping is that there is no need to handle the freight itself directly except at the destinations which saves a lot of money; you just strap the ISO standard container to the truck/train/ship of your choice and use the most efficient transport method available.
Companies have a range of salaries they are willing to pay for a given job. There are entire databases of comparable job salary ranges available to HR departments. Of course if they can pay you less they will but you have access to data yourself and can negotiate to the high end of the range if you have the qualifications and are willing to negotiate. If you just settle for any offer thrown your way, well, you get what you deserve. Most employers could put out an ad on monster or dice and get more resumes than they know what to do with in a matter of hours. About 10% of jobs are filled through websites such as Monster. Don't take my word for it, there is plenty of data to back me up. It's one of the least effective methods of job hunting there is particularly if you have a non-traditional background for a given job. The most successful? Networking and word of mouth. Depending on who you ask between 50% and 80% of jobs are filled this way.
Furthermore there are lots of jobs where Monster is a terrible, not to mention expensive, way for companies to recruit. Yes they get bombarded with resumes, most of which are ill-qualified or bad candidates for various reasons. I know because I've recruited that way. Sometimes it works great, many times it does not. As a recruiting tool Monster and the rest are HIGHLY overrated. People who will gladly do the job, no questions asked. If you can find those people I'd love to talk with them. No candidate I've hired has been that much of a pushover; maybe because they are smart and usually experienced people. Unless you have a rockstar skillset or the company by the balls, you're at their mercy. As long as you believe that you'll continue to be abused. You get paid more for two reasons; 1) because you do something few others *want* to do or 2) because you do something few others *can* do. Train yourself accordingly. You don't have to be a rockstar, just someone with a skill people want and a professional approach to the job and job hunt.
What jackass modded the parent troll? Someone needs to learn what a troll actually is before being awarded mod points...
Now perhaps you ran into one or more of the assholes that occasionally invades all our lives from time to time. I do sympathize with that but it's still up to you to move on as soon as circumstances allow.
The employer/employee relationship is not equitable only if you let it be that way. They need something done and are offering you compensation to do it. That's a fair trade. If the company is not offering fair compensation in reasonable working conditions then don't take the job. Yes, sometimes you'll run into some assclown running the show. Move on as soon as circumstances allow. It's a big world and life is too short to spend it working for jerks.
Want to fire someone? You damn well better have thorough documentation about how they were not a good employee and were breaking company policy since it's VERY common for dismissed employees to sue for wrongful dismissal - especially minorities. But I hear you saying "at will employment". Doesn't matter, they'll sue anyway and it will cost the company a lot of time and money. Sometimes these lawsuits are justified, often they aren't but the end result is that EVERY company can and should take measures to document the behavior of their employees to protect themselves.
Doesn't mean the company has to go overboard but retaining and occasionally reading emails or filtering to protect the company is reasonable. Keeping records of phone conversations is reasonable to a point (some industries like financial services often require it by law) especially for customer facing employees. A few minutes of checking in on the family should not be a big deal in most cases. Spending any amount of time surfing for porn is a big deal. Emailing confidential company info to an unauthorized individual is a VERY big deal. Etc. There is no one size fits all answer but management absolutely can and should keep an eye on things to protect the company, the jobs of the employees and the investment of the shareholders.
I always told my employees that as long as they got their work done with good quality and on time, we would get along just fine. If they abused that trust they might get a warning but only once. And you know what? It worked. I've had very little turnover and high morale and my employees really worked hard. Sending a few innocuous emails to a significant other doesn't qualify as a breach of trust. Looking at porn in the workplace would be a firing offense. It's really all about what is reasonable.
Any company that feels the need to monitor their employees that closely without a really compelling need is not going to last long. (I define compelling need as something on the order of national security, building weapons systems, guarding highly valuable financial assets, or similar activities) If they can't ask you for results and trust you to go get them, that isn't a working relationship that is going to be productive.
Furthermore you are making the incorrect assumption that most corporations are large corporations. Actually the opposite is demonstrably true. There are far more small companies, many of which are owned my a single person or small group, and small companies account for an enormous percentage of the economy. With modern corporations, if the profits are likely to drop in the near future, you sell the shares. Bear in mind that MOST companies are not publicly traded on stock exchanges so most stock isn't going to have a ready buyer even if an owner wanted to sell.
That said, Uhh yes... and? As long as management is not buying/selling based on non-public info (that would be insider trading) why is that evil? If you accept the premise that the value of a company is the net present value of its future free cash flows and you get information that profits will drop then yes, you might sell. Or you might not. It's a GOOD thing that you have that option. Would you rather be unable to sell if you were an shareholder in Enron after you found out what they were up to?
(and if anyone reading this has to look up what net present value or future free cash flow means please don't waste your time responding - go learn some finance 101 first) And, still worse, is that too often corporations own other corporations. Again, this is bad how? A corporation owned by another corporation is no different than a company with two divisions that make different products. Sometimes it makes sense to keep the management of the two separate so the management teams can concentrate on their respective businesses. It's just a management structure. It's smart to do that. What you are really doing is making the ridiculous claim that one person should never have a stake in more than one business.
Athletes have to be VERY careful about what drugs they take. Some over the counter cold remedies will result in a positive drug test if used. In my chosen sport using an inhaler for asthma is grounds for disqualification. It's tough but it's fair. Really? Do they all use the same shoes, clothes, and have the same training technology available to them? Within reasonable limits, yes they do have access to essentially the same technology in pretty much any sport. Even in technology heavy sports like bicycling all the competitors have access to practically the same gear if they wish to use it. And when a piece of gear is determined to be unsafe or unfair for some reason, most sporting bodies will outlaw its use.
Using a mechanical assist to overcome a disadvantage and simply being born with an advantage are very different issues. The rules and equipment are supposed to be the same, not the outcomes.
Would be funnier if it weren't so true...