They should write an article titled "The very brief lifetime of a terribly bad idea" ...

I think the biggest insult was claiming that this was a "rewards" program. Just what was it rewarding?

United has about 88,000 employees. Most of those are full time, but let's assume that, on average, they are only half time and work 1,000 hours a year. That's 88 million work hours a year. Since that's a pretty low estimate, let's make it 100 million work hours a year.

If they had wanted to ADD some excitement to their incentive program without touching their current bonus system, then if they were to reduce their next raises by just one penny per hour they would have had one million dollars to dump into their lottery plan. This alone gives some insight into who was really benefiting from eliminating their bonus plans in exchange for this -- there's little chance that the value of all the prizes came close to equaling the value of all the bonuses.

But let's say that they dumped that million dollars into these lottery prizes. They could have made it a reasonable incentive plan by tying your chances to win to your performance. Say every employee gets an automatic entry for each full month of employment they compete. Then they get five entries for perfect work attendance in a month and ten entries for achieving a high level of employment. You could easily add other ways to tie entries to desired behaviors, such as volunteering for community service projects. You might also give them the choice of trading in some of the normal bonus money for additional entries (but ONLY bonus money earned due to performance -- they can't just buy entries for cash).

 

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattl...-rules-seattle-homeless-mans-truck-is-a-home/

Just put a sleeping bag in the back with a little "Home Sweet Home" sign in the front.

 

Don't let your kids be this guy.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/pharma-bro-faces-high-stakes-sentencing-fraud-case-53628027

The smirk wiped off his face, a crying Martin Shkreli was sentenced to seven years in prison for securities fraud Friday in a hard fall for the pharmaceutical-industry bad boy vilified for jacking up the price of a lifesaving drug.
...
His own lawyer confessed to wanting to punch him in the face sometimes.

 

His own lawyer confessed to wanting to punch him in the face sometimes.

I like his lawyer already...

 

Seized and turned over to the DoJ - reported to have cost US$260 million. They must have had a ton of overdue parking tickets.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...ry-yacht-to-u-s-amid-1mdb-probe-idUSKCN1GK0Q8

 

How to handle the homeless when they destroy their encampments.

https://www.ocregister.com/2018/03/...ut-from-santa-ana-river-homeless-encampments/

Orange County Public Works released eye-popping figures Thursday, March 8, on the total amount of debris, needles and hazardous waste removed when crews cleaned up the area along the Santa Ana River Trail once populated by the encampments of homeless people.

Here’s what was collected between Jan. 22 and March 3 from a more than two-mile stretch of bike trail roughly from I-5 in Orange to Ball Road in Anaheim, according to OC Public Works spokesman Shannon Widor:

• 404 tons of debris
• 13,950 needles (approximate number based on what disposal containers hold)
• 5,279 pounds of hazardous waste (human waste, propane, pesticides and other materials)

 

His own lawyer confessed to wanting to punch him in the face sometimes.

I like his lawyer already...

The Bro's first day in Prison video released.

 

It cuts both ways, the casino is also making a gamble with the 'free' offers that they will make money on the deal so that puts some element of risk on them instead of totally on me.

Not much of gamble on their part. They are in a position to play the averages (which they control). They are NOT betting that they will make money off each instance of any of those deals, just as they are not betting that they will make money each time someone pull the handle or pushes the button on a slot machine. When a player plays, not matter how long (in fact, the more so the longer they play) they HAVE to beat the odds in order to walk a way a winner. The house doesn't; they are more than happy to settle for enough plays being made that they can expect the result, with very high confidence, to adhere to the Law of Large Numbers.

The same is true for their deals. They know that some people will skillfully manipulate the deals in their favor and "guarantee" a win. That's fine. It's in their models. Furthermore, just like the inevitable few that do beat the odds walk away big winners, they know how to turn those losses to their favor -- they simply use them for advertising to show the world how wonderful it is to be a winner and get the message across that if this person could do it, so can you.

My parents used to go out to Vegas every year or to on one casino deal or other. The rules always varied, but the time I went with them it was pretty typical and it worked like this (as best I can rememeber). They had to purchase the package for $600 up front. The package included round-trip airfare, three days and two nights accommodations, tickets to two shows (the ones we had were Cirque du Soleil and some big Broadway show that I don't remember the name of, but the point is that they weren't back alley shows).

To hook people in, they promised that you would get every penny of your $600 back upon checking in to the hotel -- and they were true to their word, provided you could navigate their mine field. When you checked in, they gave you an envelope that had $1000 of gaming chips in it. These were special chips that could not be cashed in, but otherwise could be played like any other chips. IF you took the envelope, unopened, to a specific cage you could exchange it for $600 cash. But once the envelope was opened, you could no longer do that.

While my stepmom went up to register us (she had purchased the deal, so she had to be the one to check us in), my dad and I sat at some nearby slot machines chatting and since it was a quite long line, we had enough time to observe the behavior of a number of people. The first thing we realized was that the check-in counter and the specially designated cashier's cage were located at opposite corners of the casino floor, forcing people to walk past all the table games on their way there. As we watched people leave the check-in counter, we saw a few that had obviously already decided that they were going to gamble with the $1000 in chips, probably feeling that the "free" $400 virtually guaranteed they's be able to walk away winners.

But a large fraction of folks headed out across the casino floor headed for that one cashier's cage -- and virtually none of them made it. Most them started pausing for longer and longer at the games they were passing and, with $1000 in chips calling to them, probably saw this as their one chance to play with the big boys instead of sitting on the sidelines feeding nickel and quarter slots. So at some point they would tear open their envelope and start playing (oh, and they weren't burdened with any luggage or coats or anything because the hotel was oh so nice to have everything taken to their room right from the check-in counter -- no tip needed).

The next thing we realized was that the hostesses were paying particular attention to these folks with that envelope in their hand offering them all the free booze they wanted -- much more so than anyone else. I don't know if they were trying to get them inebriated, since that takes some amount of time to take effect, or rather just trying to slow them down and get them into the casino atmosphere and make them feel a part of it and want to be more fully a part of it.

It was a bit hard to tell, but as near as we could determine not one single person made it over to the cashier's cage. As soon as my stepmom got us checked in, we headed off across the casino. My stepmom was like a homing missile and she didn't slow down any longer than it took to say a firm, "No thank you," to the nearly dozen hostess that tried to give her a drink (and that largely ignore my dad and me except when we were immediately next to her -- we tended to lag a bit to watch the show).

She got to the window and asked for her $600 in cash and, somewhat to my surprise, the gal didn't try to talk her out of it or offer her any kind of a premium to reconsider. She simply tool the envelope, checked it to make sure it hadn't been opened, opened it up and counted and examined the chips, gave my stepmom six one-hundred dollar bills, and cheerfully wished us a pleasant stay.

The next day I went over to that counter and saw that the same gal was there, so I went up and talked to her. At first she was a bit hesitant to be anything more than polite, but after a bit she answered a few questions. First I asked her why she didn't try to talk us out of cashing in the envelope and she said that it was because anyone that made it to her window would only resent the effort without changing the outcome one bit. That left me open to ask her what fraction of people make it to her window and she said maybe two in fifty. So I remarked that the casino must figure that that's an acceptable loss to get the other forty-eight here to which she pointed out that the casino wasn't losing much on us at all -- they know that nearly all of the people that make it to the counter are going to go home and be walking advertisements to all of their family and friend telling them what a wonderful trip they had and it was all on the casino.

And we did have a very enjoyable time. My parents had set a $50 limit for themselves and I had set a $20 limit for me. Most of our time was spent seeing the attractions and very little of it was spent gambling. Many of the attractions (at least then) were free in order to draw people into the casinos, and so we focused on them.

 

Not much of gamble on their part. They are in a position to play the averages (which they control). They are NOT betting that they will make money off each instance of any of those deals, just as they are not betting that they will make money each time someone pull the handle or pushes the button on a slot machine. When a player plays, not matter how long (in fact, the more so the longer they play) they HAVE to beat the odds in order to walk a way a winner. The house doesn't; they are more than happy to settle for enough plays being made that they can expect the result, with very high confidence, to adhere to the Law of Large Numbers.

Completely true but I've been playing the Vegas deal game since the 70's and know all the tricks like your folks did.

 

Completely true but I've been playing the Vegas deal game since the 70's and know all the tricks like your folks did.

And my guess is that if the casinos could identify you as such (and they probably have long since) they wouldn't do anything to stop you. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if you aren't on the list of several casinos to get their better deals. Given the cost of advertising and the power of word-of-mouth advertising, they probably see you as a very cost-effective advertising channel for them. It's a nice win-win.

 

And my guess is that if the casinos could identify you as such (and they probably have long since) they wouldn't do anything to stop you. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if you aren't on the list of several casinos to get their better deals. Given the cost of advertising and the power of word-of-mouth advertising, they probably see you as a very cost-effective advertising channel for them. It's a nice win-win.

I think they really target my wife but over the years she's gotten wise the gambling game too.

 

I think they really target my wife but over the years she's gotten wise the gambling game too.

I'm sure she's wiser... marrying you must've been quite a bet for her...

 

I think they really target my wife but over the years she's gotten wise the gambling game too.

I would hate to see either of you on this list https://begado.legitimatecasino.com/stars-banned-casino-blackjack/

(note they were pretty harsh on poor Paris, "Considered by most to be Hollywood’s least intelligent life form")

 

https://www.wired.com/story/how-wikipedia-portrayed-humanity-in-a-single-photo/

The Sagans were encountering an old problem. Any time the brains behind an encyclopedia (or a SETI mission) need to represent humanity, they have to somehow encompass the whole of the species in a single form—a type specimen, as biologists would call it.

There is only one choice.

 

Going....going...gone

.

Still going strong...

I wonder if they still have those batter-dipped foot long hot dogs - Junk Food Supreme

 

Going....going...gone

.

Still going strong...

I wonder if they still have those batter-dipped foot long hot dogs - Junk Food Supreme

Very very sad example of "Toys'r Us" about what happens when you don't know how to adapt to market changes...

 

Sometimes, it's better to be lucky than good.

 

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/03/1...pse-have-history-fines-failures-lawsuits.html

"Innovations take a design firm into an area where they don't have applicable experience, and then we have another unexpected failure on our hands,"

 

Very very sad example of "Toys'r Us" about what happens when you don't know how to adapt to market changes...

Was that they didn't know how, or their decision to operate under a crushing debt load prevented them from doing so?

If I understand it correctly, they owed over $5 billion and were spending a good deal of their time and effort continuously having to try to refinance about $1 billion of that debt a year.

So they file bankruptcy to restructure their debt. Fine. Perhaps they learned their lesson and will stop trying to borrow their way out of their mess. Hah! Part of the reason that they filed was to enable them to borrow another $2 billion!

 

Was that they didn't know how, or their decision to operate under a crushing debt load prevented them from doing so?

If I understand it correctly, they owed over $5 billion and were spending a good deal of their time and effort continuously having to try to refinance about $1 billion of that debt a year.

So they file bankruptcy to restructure their debt. Fine. Perhaps they learned their lesson and will stop trying to borrow their way out of their mess. Hah! Part of the reason that they filed was to enable them to borrow another $2 billion!

In other words, they didn't know when to call it quits...