Friday Sep 05, 2008

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The Supreme Court ruled that Wal-Mart's employee discount coupon program is illegal, which might have some interest consequences if more people decide to take legal action on this thing. More details on this thing below the Spoiler tag right here:

SPOILERS! (Click to view)

Ok, fellow traveler, I gather it that you took an interest to find out what this is about. Congratulations. Here's the skinny:

Wal-Mart has this "plan" where they'll discount a bunch of coupons from the salary of the employees that voluntarily sign up for the program. These are not benefits, the employees buy them coupons with a portion of their salary and then they can only use them to buy -you guessed it- at Wal-Mart. So one day this guy decides he's not cool with it and the whole thing ends up in the Supreme Court, where they found these contracts to be illegal.

This doesn't mean that the contracts will have to disappear, because the resolution affects only the person who filed the complaint. Our system is different from yours in that aspect, I guess.

Anyway, the Court found it that these contracts are similar to another figure used in the late XIX century where the landowner would pay his workers and have them buy their supplies in HIS own shop, thus recovering a large portion of what he had paid them, if not more. As you can see, in both cases, the worker ends up with an economic burden that should be placed on the employer. Normally, an employer will give his worker coupons which they can use to buy gas, croceries or pay for their meals in a large number of stores and restaurants, but this is on top of their salary, not taking a portion from it.

For the record, I don't hate Wal-Mart like a lot of people do, because mostly I don't buy the "evil corporation" thing. They're just corporations, they don't need to be evil, and the truth is, in a lot of small towns, the smaller businesses have been ruined because they overcharge their customers as much as they can while they're the only option around, then either refuse or are unable to compete with this humongous international monster company. Such is the way of capitalism.

It can also be argued that the employees sign up for this program voluntarily, which is entirely true, however, the center of the argument wasn't that the contract was mandatory but that those who sign it are receiving an unfair treatment by having their income reduced in exchange for some benefits they can only obtain through a certain venue.


In other news, I miss talking to Carina real bad, she's the most amazing person to talk to when it's late at night. Seriously, she is, and even though she messed up my sleep hours at times and I'd end up going to bed two or three hours later than I wanted to, it's always worth the while. So yeah, if you read this, I miss that.

Ok now that I got that out of my system, let's see some more surreal images found though nowhere near as good as the stripper piatas from the last entry. Oh by the way, Darqkloud pointed out something I hadn't considered: You have to beat up the stripper with a stick. And when you do, you get a sweet reward. There's something incredibly wrong with that, I'm sure you can see it too. So what we got today is an A/C unit on the go, and an Euro coin I'd never seen before:

SPOILERS! (Click to view)




I spent all week busy as a damn beehive working on school projects. And I only just made enough money to pay for this trimester. I think I'll switch to taking just one subject instead of two because 1) it consumes way too much time as it is, when I get a formal job again it will be even worse; and 2) it's too damn expensive. And yeah this is one of the biggest private universities in the country and junk but still, it's just pricey and I can't really afford to pay for two next time.

I almost tore up my lotto ticket because I'm a genius and I thought it had already taken place. I am so smrt. But all is well, I didn't do it. If I win, you'll probably find out. whatever

Have you bought your Dr. Horrible Soundtrack on iTunes yet? Well you bloody well should because it's made of win, just like the series itself.

I don't think I'm going to that wedding in January. It's a damn shame because the setting will be just SPECTACULAR. If you've ever been to Tulum, you know I'm not lying, if not, think of Cancun only without the artificial crap all over the place. I think if BITCA was here I'd go with her, but she's not, and she's not even within reach at the moment so it's not even worth asking if she wants to come. She'll be in Finland on that date anyway.

Time to wrap this thing up. I find this terribly amusing, for some reason I can't understand. Because I don't do drugs, I know it has nothing to do with being high. And because I rarely drink during the week, I know I'm not drunk. I don't care, it amuses me. Maybe it reminds me of that stalker of mine:



I told you I don't know why I like it, I just do. End of story. Have a great weekend y'all.

VIEW 17 of 17 COMMENTS
morgan:
Also, I love that you so often come bearing Buffy references smile
morgan:
Well, I think it's awesome!

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