Maybe, but Zhou is movie-star handsome and not oddly proportioned, too. Apparently he's single, by which I assume he's crushed half of Shanghai and a third of Hong Kong.
Oh Zhou is definitely more handsome and will land a higher body count, but Ming was in the NBA, which brings a level of wealth and access that probably drew women like a magnet. So he's probably second in line, with Genghis third.
My very Japanese wife, who is so Japanese she would only go to China if it was bombed into the next millennium to dance on its ashes, likes Zhou and thinks he's cute and says he sounds nice in the promo videos he's in. She doesn't like Tsunoda at all. I find the whole thing hilarious.
There's a word for "Sign this or else" agreements and I'm too stupid to remember it. The non-compete agreements were a joke. We had a client come with a new employee and the old employer threatened to sue us. It wasn't worth 50k in legal fees for a 5k client we didn't really need.
At MidOhio the difference shouldn't be as much as you see in the video. It's a home track for me and I'm an aggressive starter. Over the long haul the difference was about 2.5s per lap.
I was really impressed in the IG vid with how unlabored it seemed just running away. I know you’re wheeling away but it just looks smooth and lazy, like the mechanics of the car allow it to lap at a much faster pace without really having to push at all. Comparatively when you’ve a whole run group of cars like that ~ F1 etc, things look so frenzied. It’s quite amazing moreso to anyone who’s driven that track.
I've spent a lot of effort and thought learning how NOT to upset the SR8. Almost all the weight is behind you, it's short on tire compared to other Radicals, and if you ever watch a Radical Platinum Cup race you'll see people who have owned them for a decade repeatedly spin. The goof-around factor with them is close to zero and if you can drive up to, but not past, the capabilities of the car, you need never fear anything like an 800-horse race Viper or GT3 Cup.
There’s a guy that brings an early red one to Woodward every year and is always at our hotel. I’ve wanted one since. A couple have popped up locally but I’m not really in a position in life to use it properly. Hard to find time, too many irons in the fire and need a legit tow pig / trailer / lift.
I’m gonna daisy chain four mustangs together like some white trash Mad Max War Rig. I’ll be sitting atop two stacked Corvettes and have the Viper on reigns out front like some sort of devil stallion. The Radical can be on a rented U-Haul trailer in tow.
I'm curious what will happen with non-competes that are actually legit. Preventing a CEO with a head full of strategic plans and trade secrets from going to a direct competitor is a legitimate thing for a company to do. Preventing a hairdresser from going down the street to another salon is ridiculous. The line is somewhere in between. Personally I think it's probably consideration for the agreement beyond simply getting the job or the ability to negotiate it that a CEO clearly has.
I'm just a lowly senior engineer. My non-compete says that if they prevent me from taking a job, they have to continue to pay my salary to do nothing for as long as they do so. That seems fair to me. They won't enforce it unless they have a reason, because they have to pay up, and if they do I get paid to search for the next job. I did negotiate it from ridiculously overbroad down to working for a company with a competing product to something I directly worked on.
I think it is very unfair for the hairdresser, but not ridiculous. It is a question of if the regular clients are the salon's, or the hairdresser's. On one hand, their is the hairdresser's work and talent, on the other there is the substantial investment in facilities and marketing on the salon's.
I am with the hairdresser on this, but it is not cut and dry.
An individual hairdresser without a noncompete can do some harm to a salon, as you've outlined.
A salon can use a noncompete to crush the life of a hairdresser and prohibit her from working.
So unless there's evidence of obvious manipulation or misuse of the business goodwill, which is subject to other legal remedies anyway, I'm inclined to choose the policy that favors the individual. Even knowing that many small businesses are, effectively, individuals.
"A salon can use a noncompete to crush the life of a hairdresser and prohibit her from working." TOTALLY sexist, racist and a buncha other negative things I don't know how to spell there jack .
Thing is, the hairdresser also paid for beauty school and they need to maintain their license. Not to mention the apprenticeship most states require before opening your own salon. And the externality argument gets dicey for the salon - where do you want to allocate infrastructure, basic education, etc?
I’d argue it’s better to reflect all of that in wages - pay more for a better hairdresser, but less for the costs the salon incurs. Otherwise it’s difficult for me to accept restricting work after severing the employment relationship.
My hairdresser, a lovely petite Greek woman who has cut my hair for around 29 years (yes I pay to look like this har har) went out on her “own” a couple years ago. She was at a large (25+ chairs) salon and left after they refused a raise. She leases an individual stall/chair/office thing at a large shop where everyone is an individual. She lost exactly zero of her clients in the transition. Seems like she’s doing well for herself, and her old place is hurting based on the begging me to come back texts and emails my wife and I get (wife is her client too).
I believe it, my barber got kicked out of his admittedly shitty spot a year ago so a new distillery could go up in its place. So he bought a salon and kept the existing hair dressers that were renting chairs from the previous owner. I give him shit because he's all new money now, got a powered chair, one of those auto vacuums that sucks up the hair off the floor, and a new Model X.
They've even been applied to fast food workers. So if the Adams Road McDonald's is paying $17/hour and the Baker Road Burger King offers $19, the burger flipper cannot accept the higher paying job (and certainly can't afford an attorney!). So the so-called "free market" means that BOTH his rent has doubled due ZIRP and illegals on Section 8, AND his noncompete prevents him from accepting marginally higher wages (Sherman inhales deeply and confidently).
And yes, in my experience, the stylist is 99% of what I'm paying for, and the salon 1%. If nothing else, they need to get experience about the specifics of my particular growth patterns. I had an excellent guy that I saw for years in a nice salon, although I found him through an advertisement in a local art magazine. When the salon raised his rent (shortly before closing, I think), he "retired" and called me and asked if I'd be willing to come to his house. So until I left the state, I'd just go to his basement to get cuts.
I just go to a local if not nearby) Barber who has two chairs but gave up filling the other one after too much bullshit . I have to make an appointment but she's not too $pendy and does a really good job, what _I_ want not what she (or anyone else) things is hip, cool or whatever stupid excuse they give you after giving you a different haircut than what you asked and _PAID_FOR_ .
I actually own several hair salons and would consider a non-compete completely ridicules. If someone starts letting clients know they are starting their own salon/chair I let them go immediately. It's not my job to let them steal my clients, but I'm not going to stop them from making a living.
I have a neighbor who was subject to a similar noncompete, she was sidelined for ~9 months and paid either by her new employer or her old one, details are fuzzy due in part to the fact that she told us this around Halloween and it was at a party where I was chugging bourbon. She does something around supply chain for small electronic components, title of senior director. So important-ish but certainly no executive. The whole “get paid not to work for almost a year” didn’t sound terrible to me.
Each time I buy someone out I make part of the compensation a non compete with a geographic limit. I also get to make part of the buyout a pretax business expense.
I'm in agreement that the use of non-competes has gotten out of hand, but the new FTC rule has gone a bit too far. There can be plenty of employees who have access to a company's IP and trade secrets who are not senior VP level. Limiting the duration of the agreement to six months, requiring some compensation upon invoking the agreement, and limiting the non-compete to only apply against going to an actual competing firm seems like an appropriate compromise.
But what is an "actual competing firm?" Some mega-corporations seem to do a little of almost everything, and also employee skills may be industry-specific (imagine Sparky Anderson managing an NBA, NFL, or soccer team?).
Or, in general if "free agency" meant "you are free to work for any firm, just not another franchise of our league?"
Goes too far against what? Why do we need to protect stale companies sitting on "proprietary information"? If they don't want their people to leave, pay them better. If there is a risk of losing market position because their info leaks out over time, time to innovate and make something new.
I see your point about executives, but do you actually see C-level Lizard People being hindered by any of this? My impression is that they perpetually sit on each others boards and come and go between competitors as they wish.
For example, when Steve Jobs got fired from Apple Computer in the SF Bay area in 1985, his next step was to start NeXT Computer [get it?] in the SF Bay area in 1985, using ideas that he had gathered while talking to Apple customers. Granted, all of this was in California, which has long had a PUBLIC POLICY of banning noncompetes in order to foster exactly this sort of competition and innovation.
I work for a medium sized public company. If our CEO tried to go to one of about four direct competitors, they would 100% block it. Our CFO recent departed to another company in our industry who isn't a direct competitor.
When you are on “gardening leave,” you are typically paid (your base salary) by the company you are leaving NOT to work elsewhere.
When I lived in Chicago, I worked for a diversified investment bank that later bought a specialty firm that did what my team of ~35 people did. All but one or two of us got cut (and those guys left in short order). I was paid rather handsomely not to work in the first half of 2020 … not that there was any M&A work to be done at the time!
Edit: I should add that the gardening leave calculus is a little different if you’re making $300-$500K as a base salary and then millions as a bonus (as an executive or as a client servant or an F1 aerodynamicist or whatever). Six or twelve months on the bench will severely crimp your income for the year. For a junior person it’s typically very welcomed. Almost everyone I know who has gone through it really enjoyed it, however. One guy hiked the AT; another one spent a summer in Colorado with his wife and kids; one guy spent basically 6 months traveling in Asia.
Also, as a lowly engineer, most companies around here have non-competes but they are pretty specific but generally not enforced in my state.
I previously worked for a company that made production audio and video equipment. I couldn't go work for one of their competitors but I could go work in any other industry.
We have a company here who competes heavily with Cisco and their non-competes were similar.
Most of the engineering work here however is from government contractors and interestingly enough they rarely have non-competes for lowly engineers. I've been told the government doesn't like this because it prevents engineers staying on the same project even if who runs the project is a different contractor.
That’s what’s been happening to my friends in banking. They get paid to sit out. There’s so many reasons for it, but in theory any transaction they were working on should have closed - no insider information risk, and no chance if them negotiating against you next week if you end up at the bank on the other side.
Makes sense except they don’t really include bonuses which the majority of your pay. If not all of it. Haha. But you really don’t have a choice because the real non compete is deferred compensation. Ohhh you earned this, but not if you leave right now. You can’t take it. You wait. And play nice. Because we don’t have to sue you. We just don’t give you the money we “owe” you. You can sue us if you think you deserve it… 🤣🤦♂️
An engineering software company that I worked for had a 2-year noncompete: I think that they did offer to pay IF you got an offer, but I have had recruiters ask in an initial phone screen "Are you subject to any noncompetes," which would probably make that almost impossible to collect on.
Yeah but when you go from Bank A to Bank B, the second bank will have to match what you’re walking away from regarding deferred comp … unless you’re really desperate, in which case Bank B won’t want to hire you.
I'm generally opposed to non-competes, especially for low- and mid-level employees. I likely violated one early in my career when I was laid off by a large consultancy and then immediately began working as contractor for the former employer's client. Thankfully no one cared.
But my issue here, as with other Biden administration actions, is the method of implementation. Is this sort of rulemaking within the FTC's authority, or will it be quickly struck down in court? Why doesn't Congress pass a law?
It's supposed to be in their authority, but, like many other powers they hold, they've basically done nothing with it for over forty years. These sorts of regulations sometimes do good and sometimes bad. This is a similar mechanism to how we get all sorts of junk from NHTSA, EPA, FAA, you name it.
Congress could pass something. How likely is that? How effective?
As a senior level engineer myself, same (except there's no pay me clause). I still have the legal letter they sent framed in my office. In any event, I don't know any case where this was enforced. I think it's a nuclear option just in case company "B" starts exhibiting new products or technology it really shouldn't have access to. Company "A" can then start taking people to court. However in my part of the industry, people go back and forth between companies quite frequently while still working in the same technology.
However I have been affected by this when my doctor left one practice and couldn't establish a competing practice in the same zip code for xx years.
And based on what my wife has told me, hairdressers and non-competes are more brutal than back-alley knife fights.
Maybe, if we're lucky, the corporations will pursue enforced loyalty by other means, like in the William Gibson novels. Arcologies on the mesa! Killer drones! Cortex bombs!
My current job paid a "signing bonus", which would have to have been refunded if you left within the first year.
The (barbed) hook is that while the "bonus" is ordinary income from which taxes and social security are withheld, they expected the full amount to be repaid within 30 days if you left. Witholding and taxes be damned. It explicitly said so in the contract.
To be fair, you may only see 3 of your 5k signing bonus but the company paid every bit of that 5k plus their side of social security. On the bright side, there is some tax deduction for repayment of the bonus. Been a few years since ive dine one but it works much better if it’s in the same calendar year.
I see this all the time on social media about a wide ranging number of companies and jobs.
I know this is waaaaay off topic here, but many of the online armchair economists and CEOs won't rail at the companies with the largest margins. They pick non-profits or companies with think margins, and will say, well well if we just got rid of the CEO.....
And then you do the math and realize that if all the executive salaries were gone that would put a paltry 500 dollars in each employees account.
Not sure what the reply is to but i have no problem with executive salaries but i do have a problem with executive salaries and incompetence. Our biggest expense is payroll by far but we try and keep up with the market:slightly ahead because we dont want our key employees leaving
My problem is with a CEO who shuts down a factory in Ohio or Missouri, puts 5,000 people out of work, basically wipes out the economy of an entire COUNTY and still gets to ride his eight-figure parachute safely to the ground.
I mean you joke but I’ve more than quadrupled my salary in less than 20 years swinging from vine to vine across 7 different employers. There are few worse feelings (professionally) for me personally than that of being stuck in a position where it sucks and I cannot leave. I’ve done it twice, once in the military, and another by going to grad school on my employer’s dime. I’ve promised myself I won’t do it again. Next time I chain myself to an employer without recourse it will be because they’ve incentivized me financially where I won’t have to go anywhere else, I’ll just retire.
Amazon has this service called 'Kindle Unlimited' and if you're in it, you are forced to sign a non-compete that you won't sell ANY of your ebooks that are in KU ANYWHERE else in the world.
Now, Amazon is a monopoly in the ebook world (they are over 90 percent of the market), and mainly because of things like this. To really make good money, you have to be in KU.
Now it would be really nice if this 'rule' applied to things we're forced into by monopolies like Amazon, but somehow, I have a feeling we're not going to be getting any relief.
Yesterday was a day off so I jumped in the Miata and ran down 800 to a small used bookstore in Dover, OH where I discussed Seikos with the proprietor and purchased a 1917 copy of King Coal by Upton Sinclair. In ink on the title page was scrawled the original owner's name; Charlie Grunder. Dover. Dec 1918.
Today if someone wrote a novel about cobalt mining maybe it gets published electronically by the one company that's forced everyone else out. It's purchaser won't be able pass it on. No one will know who it was. Maybe he loses the book when he loses his password, maybe the publisher decides people shouldn't read about cobalt mining and just disappears the book.
Their Vella serial service only asks that you release your serial there exclusively first. After it's up there you can release it anywhere else you'd like.
They changed the rules recently. It was before the first three parts of your serial were free, then pay-to-read after that, but now it's the first ten. The pay structure is different as well, instead of tokens you spend based on the length of the part, I believe it's become a flat rate. If they are planning on shutting it down I don't know. Honestly, it's a miracle I know this much at all.
It's my understanding the FCC board voted 2 to 1 on the non compete and predictably there already talk of a law suit by a national business group. We've been on the other side of the non compete at a veterinary hospital and it wasn't easy for us either. A vet left, hired some other employees away, and told the community about the new business on social media. Surprise, a lot of clients were friends on FB.
Now, non compete agreements are a thing of the past in the veterinary business. I'm not complaining cause it worked out in the end. No one said it would be easy
Well, there you go. Clearly the services were provided by the indiviudal, Dr. Smith, unlike the way that a Corvette is a product of General Motors (preexisting IP, the coordinated labor of thousands of individuals, and the capital assets at the Bowling Green factory, including assembly lines, robots, paint booths, etc.). So trying to keep individuals from patronizing a person whose work they liked is unreasonable, and impractical with the advent of social media.
Taking the employees is sort of an issue...but it's also not like you had spent billions on proprietary advanced technology trade secrets that only they knew.
To clarify, majority were clients first, then friended on FB through contact on the company page. And we hadn't spent billions nor were we making millions. Maybe more like procuring cause in real estate
It was part of the employment contract, 8 mile radius. Typical distance and everyone signed them until 4 or 5 years ago. We been in business 35 years and growing each year
Actually the veterinarian that violates the cause owes us money. The test was is the distance reasonable considering the location of the majority of the clients. This was the standard until recently.
When I bought our house near Tulsa a couple years ago, it took me a good 6 months of getting home for the weekend to finally realize this really really nice "serious" house is actually mine, and not some relatives house I was visiting.
We went from a house built in 1896 to one built in 2014. A very welcome thing. The old house always needed more and more. New house is well, a new house.
Yes and no. Anything built this millennium is chock full of Chinesium. We aren't quite at dixie cup levels but soon. Home Depot lot/ bus stop labor is getting worse as well, or so I read.
True enough, but (excepting for lighting) the code makes better buildings, the pre-aseembled floor joists you'd get a new house are better, foundations will be better, studs probably won't be 24" OC, ceilings in a new build will be higher, the insulation and a modern AC or heat pump will make the entire home more efficient.. to say nothing of ongoing maintenance and big-ticket repairs. A balloon framed house needs everything replaced except the studs every 20-50 years. Why be exit liquidity if you can buy new?
On the other hand, the code now requires new-build lighting to be those horrific blue-tinted LEDs. It's not sustainable. The blueness of all (even 2700k) LED light is literally going to make people go insane as time goes on. This problem we've got to solve.
I don’t like the state of IL at all, but I seriously love our village (suburb) and my 100y/o house in the historical section of it. It’s in an area where most of the houses are somewhat custom and distinct and they’re known by what house you have rather than only on what block you live (e.g. “oh you’re the blue house on Main Street, I love your landscaping”). It is the first truly nice and special thing that I own that I feel will significantly appreciate and outlast me.
Earnest question: what would tip the scales for regular readers to become paid subscribers? There are substacks where I only read the free articles. Just curious.
Speaking of Hooters: Did you see the Nike's US Olympic Womens' team gear? The g-string part is very narrow and goes up almost to the waist. I'm not a woman, but I think a Hooters uniform would be significantly more modest, more comfortable, and probably more functional.
The reasons why (now that women basically run everything) would be an interesting post.
More importantly, why aren’t the trans women complaining about these non-junk friendly womyns outfits? Nike is just reinforcing the matriarchy (or something like that).
While we’re on the topic, when are the annual subscriptions due? Is it dependent on when you originally subscribed, or do you like to do the majority at a set time?
I would guess you’d have to go somewhat viral with a polarizing but true opinion or article to draw in new readers, something along the lines of the attention Rob Henderson’s “luxury beliefs” concept received. Or say something not politically correct about a subject that no one else is talking about. Then, appear in other people’s Substacks or podcasts as a guest to discuss said opinion and filter through new audiences that might be interested in reading more from you.
But this path may be a “be careful what you wish for” path.
Truthfully, I'm perfectly happy where we are, subscriber-wise. Another 20-40% wouldn't go amiss. Above that, the comment management becomes a full-time job, without the pay.
You dont want to be too popular. The noise to content ratio will be ruined. Better to charge more. Well, better to charge everyone but me more. I demand* legacy rates!
I don't like 2000-comment-long comment areas. I'm not reading all those. If I'm not here on the first day of a post and the second day I see 500 or 600 comments sometimes I just "nope" out of those, too.
I believe that Ted Gioia has a good post on how his Substack grew organically over the years. Like you, he just cranks out quality content that people are interested in.
I just think it’s great how the comments section exploded from the Riverside Green days. That was something I did not see coming when you started ACF.
I just wonder how long it will be before someone will start offering seminars in hotel meeting rooms on how to increase your paid vs non-paying subscribers on Substack like those guys that have seminars on how to invest in real estate????
I am sure there is a “science” to optimizing publishing cadence and how much of a preview you share as an author to maximize paid subs.
There are some substacks that I do not subscribe to because they give most of it away for free; there are others that I do NOT subscribe to that give nothing away, so I don’t have a feel for what I’d be getting.
By “subscribe” above, I mean “pay for.” I receive emails from 100+ substacks (many of them are dormant or publish infrequently) and pay for about a dozen.
I only read three SubStacks regularly, and I pay to subscribe to all three. Two of them I find interesting and informative and valuable, but they also make me feel angry and despondent (Shellenberger and Taibbi.) I’m toying with the idea of cancelling both. I’m having the internal debate whether it’s better to be more or less informed given that I’m also powerless. More and more I feel the draw of shutting out the world and just focusing on my wife kids and hobbies. Not sure I’m wired that way though. I’d still have my WSJ subscription as long as I can cancel and re-sign at $4/mo or whatever I pay.
Choose the less informed path like me. Most of what passes for news is just staring into the abyss. It’s poison for the mind and it’s not healthy.
There are interesting things to pursue out in the world and even online that are not news related. If I get bored I go to the county library and peruse the stacks with an open mind. I’ve found some great and unexpected books.
But the process to shut out the world to any degree is like a detoxification, it takes a while to accomplish and there’s work involved.
This is different, because none of us (to my knowledge) has any insider insight or stands to benefit in any significant way based on guiding the audience. Most of us are, best I can tell, a bunch of salarymen putting in our two cents. As much as I respect Taibbi, he’s still a reporter, and has become part of the story. He also has a vested interest in engagement, and the more he can draw out things like censorship/1A issues, the more he can print money.
Versus someone like you, I’m not here for your reporting, I’m here because you write things that make me think, and you bring up information/sources I often haven’t seen. I don’t think you make money trying to create artificial engagement. Unless it’s something like “why a 1970s Corvette isn’t worse than XXX” in which case I’ll be happy to give you my clicks to be baited into reading the arguments.
Many unsupported leaps of logic; the most grating was this comment:
“It’s literally impossible to not make money in banking borrowing at zero”
That’s like saying “it’s literally impossible to not [sic - split infinitive!] make money when you buy a product at a wholesale price and sell it at a retail price.”
With the diverse subject matter you cover, and the diverse group of subscribers you have, I believe that anything you choose to write about will spark ideas and commentary that we can all learn something from, or at the very least cause us to stop and think about a subject in a different way. That’s already been my experience. I never want to stop learning new things. So thanks again for this forum.
You don’t have to. Taibbi is usually a few emails everyday, and it’s all depressing subjects. Basically, it’s a stream of “the world is crazy and falling apart and there’s nothing we can do, but I’ll chronicle it anyway”. He’s not discussing the charms of C3 Corvettes.
I think substack package subs might help. Like cable. There is too much competition for attention and only so much time in the day.
Individually subscribing to every substack I would like to is hard to defend, especially if the material is only of interest to one person in the household. Substackers compete with all other subscriptions, not just other substacks. It can add up quickly.
I don't know if that business model makes sense for authors though. You probably wouldn't make enough per subscriber, and then have to sell ad space to make up the difference...
Here is a kind of race related question for the learned ACF team. What is the deal with the inventory of Hell Cats on the floor plan at the big Dodge dealers in VA and Florida? Dealers have multiples of many models (except for Chrysler 300C’s) and multiples of some colors. They are all loaded with options and some dealers are sticking with the $25K ADM and other dealers are selling at MSRP…. Except for the Challenger 170 1000hp dragsters none at the big auctions have sold, have not met reserve. I am wondering if Dodge just cranked up the production line and flooded the market…. I am old enough to remember the dealers getting really greedy for the 1976 Eldorado Convertible and now almost 50 years later there are always a number of low mileage cars coming up for sale for less then what they sold for in 1976 accounting for the effects of the loss in the value of the dollar. Anyone got any theories or explanation on the huge inventory of Hell Cats?
The dealers all saw what happened to Viper pricing, and they don't want to miss out on the appreciation curve. But most of them won't have the guts to hold onto the inventory the full 18 to 24 months it will take to really see that appreciation. So they'll hold, then they'll dump.
It's a pretty decent looking/driving little crossover that is about $10k too expensive and also hilariously prone to breaking.
Give it a couple more months, and I'm sure you'll find some terriric finance deals/rebates that make them appealing. Avoid the hybrid R/T and go for the 2.0t though. More robust and just as fast.
I don't think it's a bad product, per se, but it's one of the most cynical rebadges we've seen in years, it's too expensive, and it's not very Dodgey. Praying that it's just a one-off stopgap and not the future of things to come from Stellantis.
Charger and Challenger production ended in December 2023, as I recall, and the ICE version of the next-generation Charger won't be available until sometime in 2025. So it makes some sense that Chrysler built up inventory to bridge the gap.
Dodge ABSOLUTELY flooded the market with these things. They built and delivered as many as they physically could before the lines shut down so that their dealers would have at least some product to sit on before the new Charger comes out next year. There are thousands of Chargers and Challengers sitting on lots right now, brand new, and at least on the V6s and maybe the 5.7s, you can get a crazy deal on them.
Thirty years ago I was managing a Papa John's and had hired a new assistant manager making a jump from the local Pizza Hut franchise. Had to let him go because he had signed a non-compete and they were holding him to it. Maybe they were just being pissy because the founder of Pizza Hut had blown through all the cash he made from selling out and John made him a deal on some Papa's stores. Marketing Gold! Pizza Hut founder now a Papa John's franchisee.
I have a seriously messed up Salena Zito fetish. Come renewal time probably going to have to upgrade to Platinum Level in hopes that when Jack finally has a party at the Pussy Palace he invites his WE co-contributer. If my wife comes she'll be busy petting cats.
When I was a kid, our pizza options in town were Pizza Hut and Dominos, plus a few independent restaurants that kept irregular hours and offered worse fare. None of them offered delivery - too rural at the time, and navigation was much harder before smartphones.
My peers and I considered Papa John’s a special treat, as it was only available closer to Atlanta; it was clearly a cut above the Hut and Dominos. You had to (1) be in the suburbs and (2) be with an adult that was willing to eat Papa John’s. I only learned as an adult that most people do NOT consider Papa John’s at a peer level with the other two!
I’ve made it 35 years without eating Little Caesar’s.
I have been known to eat Domino’s on occasion when I am in my hometown; they offer delivery, in theory (it usually takes 3+ hours), and it’s serviceable during wintertime (I don’t particularly want to drive around on steep, privately maintained roads on Michelin Cup 2 tires when it’s 20 degrees outside).
In Chicagoland you can’t swing the proverbial dead cat without hitting a local pizza joint that would be the best place in almost any other state that’s not CT or NY (or Detroit if you swing that way which I do). But we still grab an occasional Dominos especially for kids’ parties because it’s fast cheap easy and just good enough. I almost never eat LC’s but my youngest inexplicably loves it.
I also hate delivery, I will almost always go pick up my own food (unless I’m intoxicated) because it’s cheaper and almost always faster and therefore hotter.
I never liked Lou Malnati's. Always greatly preferred Giordano's out of the chain places.
At one point, my now wife demanded deep dish because she's from WY and had never tried it. We ordered Pizano's. She ate part of a slice and that cured her curiosity.
Having lived most of my life in Chicago, I have never had pizza from Dominos, Little Caesar’s, Papa John’s, or Pizza Hut. Eating at a pizza chain in Chicago would be like choosing to eat dog food when all the restaurants are serving steak.
There’s a local place down the street from me that has a burger that is honest to god decent competition for Au Cheval. I eat one fairly regularly, every month or two. But sometimes I don’t want it, sometimes I want a Culver’s ButterBurger even though it’s worse.
Back in 2006 the Phaeton Owners Club had a meetup in Chicago. The woman who was running it told us that we NEEDED to eat AUTHENTIC CHICAGO PIZZA so we waited, and I am not kidding, 170 minutes to sit down. When the pizza showed up, I stood up and yelled,
"THIS IS JUST PIZZERIA FUCKIN' UNO!!!"
"No it's not," the idiot woman replied. "This is Due's".
the only time ive ever had it is when ive attended a party that ran into the late hours and everyone decided that we needed food and that dominoes was also closed
Little Sleazar’s is the bottom of the barrel in round pies. HOWEVER, their Detroit-style deep-dish is actually a well-kept secret—almost as good as Jet’s for a lot less coin, Jet’s being the only pizza that even comes close to Buscemi’s/Buddy’s/whatever other Motown pizza emporiums there are.
Fun fact: Little Caesar's is the only of the major pizza chains to prepare dough fresh in store. Others all use frozen. I'm an unapologetic fan of the Detroit-style DEEP!DEEP! dish, but because their stores are all inconveniently located in the ghetto, I rarely get to enjoy it.
There was one down the street from my old house so my kid got a taste for it. Now we are a 58 minute round trip away from one, and he STILL SUGGESTS IT FOR DINNER
The round trip is similar for me. It's also well out of the way of my route home from work. So now all I have are the memories, and corporate's Instagram account.
Papa John’s to me is a cut above Pizza Hut, and even further above Dominos! At some point in the past ten or fifteen years, Dominos went from cardboard crust and wallpaper paste for cheese to what they are now: the McDonald’s of pizza.
My family moved from the Detroit area to Toledo in 1984, always having eaten pizza from a local delicatessen which used the Buscemi’s (said to be the original Detroit-style deep-dish) recipe, and instead of Marco’s, the Toledo franchise that is off the charts in new franchises some forty years later, they started forcing us to dine on Pizza Hut’s Super Supreme, including onion chunks as thick as a trailing arm, along with loads of black olives! (Gah-ross! 🤢) Almost put me off of pizza altogether until some other chains mercifully came along!
I spent spring break of my senior year of high school, which also coincided with my 18th birthday, on a school trip to Italy. The typical EF or ACIS tour. It was mostly my high-achieving, nerdy friends; most of our families went, as well.
Our tour guide was an Englishwoman who had trouble understanding most of the group’s accents. She did an excellent job (I am actually still in touch with her via social media) overall.
The night before my birthday, we were standing in a hotel lobby in Florence awaiting a tour bus to ferry us to an American-friendly restaurant. A man in the restaurant started talking to my father, who was wearing a cap emblazoned with the name of the school that I would be attending in the fall. The Italian man had once dated an alumna of the school while he was in business school in DC.
In a three minute conversation, my father and this stranger shared quite a lot: I was his son; I was headed to that school in the fall; I would be 18 the next day; the Italian man happened to own the hotel, or at least part of it. My father asked him who owned the red 288 GTO parked on the side of the hotel … he was speaking to the owner.
Would the soon to be 18 year old like to go for a joyride in a stranger’s 288 GTO in Florence, Italy? Of course. It was about like the film Rendezvous. He drove wildly into oncoming traffic, powerslid around corners, and screamed at most cars we passed. My mother still has no idea this happened.
Moreover, would the soon to be 18 year old and his father like to split off from the group and take a train to Modena and then a cab to Maranello the next day and visit Ferrari? Of course.
The tour guide skipped dinner with the group and put together an itinerary with the hotelier’s assistance (and rolodex).
My father and I visited upon the Via Abetone Inferiore the next day, and everything went swimmingly. We reunited with the group, and the tour guide agreed to have dinner with the teenagers at my choice of restaurant.
While she admitted that the had trepidation after the fact, she seemed to enjoy her first experience at Pizza Hut.
Having returned stateside, I found myself trying to recreate the magic of that trip by dining at the local Pizza Hut with a few of my friends. They had the “slow food” thing down to a science - we were the only customers in the joint, and it still took over two hours for us to dine.
My next trip there was my final dine-in experience, as we were all banned for tertiary (at best) involvement in a food fight that transpired in the “party room.”
Had a Papa Johns on campus where I went to college.
It was the single grossest piece of food I have ever eaten. The garlic bread was barely serviceable! I don't know how they made pizza -- something I enjoy deeply even when it's not delivery, it's DiGiorno -- so fucking miserably gross as to turn me off from ever eating there again.
Little Caesar's, on the other hand, isn't good but it's cheap and at least tolerable. I am from NJ so I will allow myself some level of expertise on "good pizza."
Growing up in NY to a very picky Italian mother meant I only really got exposure to chain pizza at friends houses or birthday parties, save for Little Caesars. There was a location before their first bankruptcy forced them out of NY that I could get to as a kid on my bike or, be gentle, roller blades. They had a slice and soda special we would often exploit, much to the dissatisfaction of my mother. So it holds a near and dear place for me despite the pizza being unremarkable at best. The local place I order pizza from now is around 40-50 bucks for two pies and a salad, so there is something to be said for Little Caesars ability to still sell you something resembling pizza for $5 bucks. (Are they still $5 I'd guess they have gone up with inflation)
Because corporations view worker bees as their property? Corporations would hoard staplers if they thought they could make someone outside the corporation suffer from a lack of available staplers.
I had a tangentially-related conversation with my brother about corporations' monitoring of their employees' social media posts.
He asserted that a company has the right to know what their employees are up to in their down time, because it's in the company's best interest to hire morally-straight people. I pointed out that people can compartmentalize their lives, and who someone is at 11 pm Saturday night on the town is not who they are at 9 am Tuesday morning in the office.
He countered with the idea that people's actions affect their employer's reputation. I said yeah - in 1957. Besides, I pointed out, if the company can control your life on and off the clock, you're not really an employee. You're property, or a serf or a retainer in the samurai sense. You'd be on-call 24-7 and if that's how the company wants to play it, they can pony up for round-the-clock compensation.
I'm responsible to my employer when I'm on the clock. That's it.
"I never had the Old Time Religion, so I cannot write about it like someone who did, but it seemed to be based on the idea that anything you enjoyed doing was sinful and should be abhorred."
Corporations LOVE punishing their employees about social media. It really reinforces the chattel relationship in a manner that is quite satisfying for HR professionals.
The list is the Left’s Pyramid of Victims. Cub fans aren’t on it so they can be whacked. Now, a gay Muslim Cub fan who wears a Cubs uniform to the office? Untouchable.
"That's why I don't hire women. They waltz in with a pissy Hear Me Roar attitude, nuke the place's vibe to Hell & gone, then get knocked up and punch a hundred-thousand-dollar hole in my org chart for an entire fiscal year."
I've always been torn on Non-competes. Mentioned were "corporate boots" but they do and have protected small startup companies. A small startup company hires an engineer and spends thousands of dollars on that engineer for that engineer to take the knowledge the company invested to somewhere else? That doesn't seem fair.
It's also not fair when local journalists have to sign non-competes and can't work at another station even if they are fired.
I'm not sure what the answer is. I know that in my state that non competes are rarely enforced.
I think the answer, if there is one, is to write smarter agreements. You can prohibit someone from disclosing confidential information to a successive employer without it being in the context of a non-compete. When I worked at a biotech firm last year, that was a separate agreement.
That really isn't the goal of Non-Competes, that is the goal of a Non-Disclosure Agreement. I'm not talking about specific proprietary information. What I am talking about is the amount of money invested, through compensation, for an employee to learn or develop "information and knowledge".
To give a very good anecdotal experience, a company here in town had a very good tuition assistance policy. Many employees with 2 year electronics degrees were going back to get their EE/CPE/SE degrees. After the company realized that for 5 years in a row they were losing these employees in 6 months after they'd get their degree, they changed their policy on tuition assistance where employees who used tuition assistance had to work there for two years after completing their degree. I do not know how "legal" or enforceable it was, but it worked.
Just for my own experience, I was hired right out of school as an embedded engineer. I knew very little about production video and audio even though I did have the basics of embedded engineering through school. The company invested in my time through compensation to gather all the relevant knowledge in how embedded design applies directly to their market. Without a Non-compete I could work a year or two and go work for a competitor with all this new information I had. A fair argument can be had that "this is just the cost of doing business". I also think that a fair argument, especially from small companies (or big one's too), that they don't want an employee they've invested in working for another direct competitor.
I do agree that smarter agreements need to be made, but not necessarily relevant to NDA type information, but rather towards "knowledge earned through company investment".
Every tech company I've worked at has laid claim to not just stuff I do on my own time but also the certifications I get. There's a fuzzy area between NDA and non-compete.
An employment contract seems like a fair compromise. You work for us for a set term and we pay you. We renegotiate at the end of the term. This “we get all the upside, you get all the downside” isnt right.
That's how it worked for foreign "teachers" in Japan. We had a yearly contract that was generally reliably renewed, but there was no guarantee. For anyone looking to stay in Japan permanently this was a less-than-ideal situation as it would make getting a credit card or loans for houses or cars impossible because of the annual renewal. Luckily they'll give credit and loans to anyone here in the US.
I thought that once anyone from the Indian subcontinent sets foot on our shores and kicks an American IT person to behind the counter at SBUX, it’s impossible to throw them out!
Those are pretty much the only immigrants who EVER get sent home -- and, as discussed above, it's because it gives their visa sponsors real leverage over them.
JasonS had this happen to small companies a lot. We had a small sub that had created software for us to use on the Virginia class and they were under the gun because as soon as there task order was closed the prime could do a FOIA to get the data and that was the small subs primary asset. So I did a $5M mod to the task to keep them testing for another year so that the task would not be closed until they could be awarded another task. That was one of the issues we had with the prime, they would take all the information produced by the subs and reproduce it putting the sub out of business.
"the last Chinese dude to have this many chances to get laid just based on competitive fame… was probably Genghis Khan."
Yao Ming might want a word...
Also, can we all take a moment to appreciate a "Porsche 944 Type R"?
Maybe, but Zhou is movie-star handsome and not oddly proportioned, too. Apparently he's single, by which I assume he's crushed half of Shanghai and a third of Hong Kong.
Oh Zhou is definitely more handsome and will land a higher body count, but Ming was in the NBA, which brings a level of wealth and access that probably drew women like a magnet. So he's probably second in line, with Genghis third.
My very Japanese wife, who is so Japanese she would only go to China if it was bombed into the next millennium to dance on its ashes, likes Zhou and thinks he's cute and says he sounds nice in the promo videos he's in. She doesn't like Tsunoda at all. I find the whole thing hilarious.
There's a word for "Sign this or else" agreements and I'm too stupid to remember it. The non-compete agreements were a joke. We had a client come with a new employee and the old employer threatened to sue us. It wasn't worth 50k in legal fees for a 5k client we didn't really need.
Coercion!
https://www.upcounsel.com/coercion-in-law-of-contract
There's also "contract of adhesion."
Adhesion? People from Ohio got nothin' to DO with this!
So it could be a sticky situation! 😂😂
I’m here the rest of the week..try the shrimp scampi.
....Unless you have a hot date later, the dragon's breath kinda puts a damper on the later desired activities .
-Nate
Also... bloody hell that Radical is fast!
Someone said, "Wow, you're pretty cautious with that throttle" and I was like "
a) the car spins if you're not, doubly true in winter temps;
b) I can shift early and still beat 'em"
If a car isn't willing to punish poor driving, is it really worth driving?
What was that other silver prototype (Radical?) you pulled away from just as quickly?
There are two Radical SR3s behind me. One is white and orange the other is white and green...
Wow, I'm surprised your SR8 is that much faster than a SR3.
At MidOhio the difference shouldn't be as much as you see in the video. It's a home track for me and I'm an aggressive starter. Over the long haul the difference was about 2.5s per lap.
Makes sense
Jack could probably lift up the fence in the backyard and push a car through and onto the track!
I presume that getting it into the staging area would be another matter!
Sounds like two giant tubs of sherbet.
I was really impressed in the IG vid with how unlabored it seemed just running away. I know you’re wheeling away but it just looks smooth and lazy, like the mechanics of the car allow it to lap at a much faster pace without really having to push at all. Comparatively when you’ve a whole run group of cars like that ~ F1 etc, things look so frenzied. It’s quite amazing moreso to anyone who’s driven that track.
I've spent a lot of effort and thought learning how NOT to upset the SR8. Almost all the weight is behind you, it's short on tire compared to other Radicals, and if you ever watch a Radical Platinum Cup race you'll see people who have owned them for a decade repeatedly spin. The goof-around factor with them is close to zero and if you can drive up to, but not past, the capabilities of the car, you need never fear anything like an 800-horse race Viper or GT3 Cup.
There’s a guy that brings an early red one to Woodward every year and is always at our hotel. I’ve wanted one since. A couple have popped up locally but I’m not really in a position in life to use it properly. Hard to find time, too many irons in the fire and need a legit tow pig / trailer / lift.
you mean the viper couldnt tow a radical
imagine how hard you could stunt on everyone if you pulled up to the track with that
I’m gonna daisy chain four mustangs together like some white trash Mad Max War Rig. I’ll be sitting atop two stacked Corvettes and have the Viper on reigns out front like some sort of devil stallion. The Radical can be on a rented U-Haul trailer in tow.
I am awaited.
I'm curious what will happen with non-competes that are actually legit. Preventing a CEO with a head full of strategic plans and trade secrets from going to a direct competitor is a legitimate thing for a company to do. Preventing a hairdresser from going down the street to another salon is ridiculous. The line is somewhere in between. Personally I think it's probably consideration for the agreement beyond simply getting the job or the ability to negotiate it that a CEO clearly has.
I'm just a lowly senior engineer. My non-compete says that if they prevent me from taking a job, they have to continue to pay my salary to do nothing for as long as they do so. That seems fair to me. They won't enforce it unless they have a reason, because they have to pay up, and if they do I get paid to search for the next job. I did negotiate it from ridiculously overbroad down to working for a company with a competing product to something I directly worked on.
I think it is very unfair for the hairdresser, but not ridiculous. It is a question of if the regular clients are the salon's, or the hairdresser's. On one hand, their is the hairdresser's work and talent, on the other there is the substantial investment in facilities and marketing on the salon's.
I am with the hairdresser on this, but it is not cut and dry.
I tend to go by the metric of "greater harm".
An individual hairdresser without a noncompete can do some harm to a salon, as you've outlined.
A salon can use a noncompete to crush the life of a hairdresser and prohibit her from working.
So unless there's evidence of obvious manipulation or misuse of the business goodwill, which is subject to other legal remedies anyway, I'm inclined to choose the policy that favors the individual. Even knowing that many small businesses are, effectively, individuals.
I thought most barbers and stylists pay a “chair fee” each day to the owner. Each worker is effectively an independent contractor.
It's like stripping in that sense.
How convenient for the owner!
It thens into private equity buying out small business and crushing competition
One other thing.
Noncompetes should include compensation for the length of the agreement.
"A salon can use a noncompete to crush the life of a hairdresser and prohibit her from working." TOTALLY sexist, racist and a buncha other negative things I don't know how to spell there jack .
-Nate
Funny thing is that before I understood what right-to-work really meant, I thought it described a state where non-competes weren't enforceable.
Thing is, the hairdresser also paid for beauty school and they need to maintain their license. Not to mention the apprenticeship most states require before opening your own salon. And the externality argument gets dicey for the salon - where do you want to allocate infrastructure, basic education, etc?
I’d argue it’s better to reflect all of that in wages - pay more for a better hairdresser, but less for the costs the salon incurs. Otherwise it’s difficult for me to accept restricting work after severing the employment relationship.
Licensing hairdressers. As if they were EOD techs or airline pilots.
My hairdresser, a lovely petite Greek woman who has cut my hair for around 29 years (yes I pay to look like this har har) went out on her “own” a couple years ago. She was at a large (25+ chairs) salon and left after they refused a raise. She leases an individual stall/chair/office thing at a large shop where everyone is an individual. She lost exactly zero of her clients in the transition. Seems like she’s doing well for herself, and her old place is hurting based on the begging me to come back texts and emails my wife and I get (wife is her client too).
I have a hair dresser clients who pulls down 200k a year doing color
Must have degrees from an Ivy.
You have no idea what women pay to color their hair professionally.
But if you love redheads, it's worth every penny.
I do. I have an idea
I believe it, my barber got kicked out of his admittedly shitty spot a year ago so a new distillery could go up in its place. So he bought a salon and kept the existing hair dressers that were renting chairs from the previous owner. I give him shit because he's all new money now, got a powered chair, one of those auto vacuums that sucks up the hair off the floor, and a new Model X.
"cut and dry" ;)
They've even been applied to fast food workers. So if the Adams Road McDonald's is paying $17/hour and the Baker Road Burger King offers $19, the burger flipper cannot accept the higher paying job (and certainly can't afford an attorney!). So the so-called "free market" means that BOTH his rent has doubled due ZIRP and illegals on Section 8, AND his noncompete prevents him from accepting marginally higher wages (Sherman inhales deeply and confidently).
And yes, in my experience, the stylist is 99% of what I'm paying for, and the salon 1%. If nothing else, they need to get experience about the specifics of my particular growth patterns. I had an excellent guy that I saw for years in a nice salon, although I found him through an advertisement in a local art magazine. When the salon raised his rent (shortly before closing, I think), he "retired" and called me and asked if I'd be willing to come to his house. So until I left the state, I'd just go to his basement to get cuts.
Poore Sherman sure is turning into the town whipping boy
He can handle it; he is anything but poor!
I just go to a local if not nearby) Barber who has two chairs but gave up filling the other one after too much bullshit . I have to make an appointment but she's not too $pendy and does a really good job, what _I_ want not what she (or anyone else) things is hip, cool or whatever stupid excuse they give you after giving you a different haircut than what you asked and _PAID_FOR_ .
-Nate
I actually own several hair salons and would consider a non-compete completely ridicules. If someone starts letting clients know they are starting their own salon/chair I let them go immediately. It's not my job to let them steal my clients, but I'm not going to stop them from making a living.
This makes sense. Imagine holding a disgruntled employee hostage and expecting good work out of them.
The soundtrack for this should be Van Morrison's Contractual Obligation album:
https://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2005/09/van_morrisons_c.html
https://open.spotify.com/album/2MHnBZNoGHhxq7XdNoFc9C
The thing is most hair dressers at salons just rent the chair and the clients are theirs. They aren't employees of the salon.
Your typical chain hair cut place works differently than a salon, as the stylist is an employee.
SHAME
I have a neighbor who was subject to a similar noncompete, she was sidelined for ~9 months and paid either by her new employer or her old one, details are fuzzy due in part to the fact that she told us this around Halloween and it was at a party where I was chugging bourbon. She does something around supply chain for small electronic components, title of senior director. So important-ish but certainly no executive. The whole “get paid not to work for almost a year” didn’t sound terrible to me.
Gardening leave does sound nice.
Each time I buy someone out I make part of the compensation a non compete with a geographic limit. I also get to make part of the buyout a pretax business expense.
Geographic limit does not apply to most jobs I've worked in (software, automotive, aerospace).
I'm in agreement that the use of non-competes has gotten out of hand, but the new FTC rule has gone a bit too far. There can be plenty of employees who have access to a company's IP and trade secrets who are not senior VP level. Limiting the duration of the agreement to six months, requiring some compensation upon invoking the agreement, and limiting the non-compete to only apply against going to an actual competing firm seems like an appropriate compromise.
But what is an "actual competing firm?" Some mega-corporations seem to do a little of almost everything, and also employee skills may be industry-specific (imagine Sparky Anderson managing an NBA, NFL, or soccer team?).
Or, in general if "free agency" meant "you are free to work for any firm, just not another franchise of our league?"
Hell, I can see their point. Pretty much ALL large multinationals are basically the same company.
It's like those Grateful Dead bears - same shape, different color.
Goes too far against what? Why do we need to protect stale companies sitting on "proprietary information"? If they don't want their people to leave, pay them better. If there is a risk of losing market position because their info leaks out over time, time to innovate and make something new.
I see your point about executives, but do you actually see C-level Lizard People being hindered by any of this? My impression is that they perpetually sit on each others boards and come and go between competitors as they wish.
For example, when Steve Jobs got fired from Apple Computer in the SF Bay area in 1985, his next step was to start NeXT Computer [get it?] in the SF Bay area in 1985, using ideas that he had gathered while talking to Apple customers. Granted, all of this was in California, which has long had a PUBLIC POLICY of banning noncompetes in order to foster exactly this sort of competition and innovation.
I work for a medium sized public company. If our CEO tried to go to one of about four direct competitors, they would 100% block it. Our CFO recent departed to another company in our industry who isn't a direct competitor.
When you are on “gardening leave,” you are typically paid (your base salary) by the company you are leaving NOT to work elsewhere.
When I lived in Chicago, I worked for a diversified investment bank that later bought a specialty firm that did what my team of ~35 people did. All but one or two of us got cut (and those guys left in short order). I was paid rather handsomely not to work in the first half of 2020 … not that there was any M&A work to be done at the time!
Edit: I should add that the gardening leave calculus is a little different if you’re making $300-$500K as a base salary and then millions as a bonus (as an executive or as a client servant or an F1 aerodynamicist or whatever). Six or twelve months on the bench will severely crimp your income for the year. For a junior person it’s typically very welcomed. Almost everyone I know who has gone through it really enjoyed it, however. One guy hiked the AT; another one spent a summer in Colorado with his wife and kids; one guy spent basically 6 months traveling in Asia.
Live off your salary and not your bonus
A seriously 'DUH' point there Scott ! .
I guess the rules are different for non Blue Collar folks .
-Nate
Hell, I saw something about some CEO who, when he retired, gave his last year's half-million-dollar salary to charity.
Wow, what a great guy!
Of course, he left the building with something like $40 million in stock options.
Also, as a lowly engineer, most companies around here have non-competes but they are pretty specific but generally not enforced in my state.
I previously worked for a company that made production audio and video equipment. I couldn't go work for one of their competitors but I could go work in any other industry.
We have a company here who competes heavily with Cisco and their non-competes were similar.
Most of the engineering work here however is from government contractors and interestingly enough they rarely have non-competes for lowly engineers. I've been told the government doesn't like this because it prevents engineers staying on the same project even if who runs the project is a different contractor.
That’s what’s been happening to my friends in banking. They get paid to sit out. There’s so many reasons for it, but in theory any transaction they were working on should have closed - no insider information risk, and no chance if them negotiating against you next week if you end up at the bank on the other side.
Makes sense except they don’t really include bonuses which the majority of your pay. If not all of it. Haha. But you really don’t have a choice because the real non compete is deferred compensation. Ohhh you earned this, but not if you leave right now. You can’t take it. You wait. And play nice. Because we don’t have to sue you. We just don’t give you the money we “owe” you. You can sue us if you think you deserve it… 🤣🤦♂️
An engineering software company that I worked for had a 2-year noncompete: I think that they did offer to pay IF you got an offer, but I have had recruiters ask in an initial phone screen "Are you subject to any noncompetes," which would probably make that almost impossible to collect on.
Yeah but when you go from Bank A to Bank B, the second bank will have to match what you’re walking away from regarding deferred comp … unless you’re really desperate, in which case Bank B won’t want to hire you.
Substitute bank for woman and the comment still works
So then ;
I should give dating rich women another chance ? .
One of the C.F.O.'s I used to be tight with is moving back into my town in 2015.....
-Nate
Think of yourself as their entertainment. Their pet tiger
Yeah well ;
One wanted to buy me a shop so I could retire (at 36!) and play Mechanic all day until she came home......
I loved her but not like that .
I'm Conservative and so don't like others carrying my water .
-Nate
I'm generally opposed to non-competes, especially for low- and mid-level employees. I likely violated one early in my career when I was laid off by a large consultancy and then immediately began working as contractor for the former employer's client. Thankfully no one cared.
But my issue here, as with other Biden administration actions, is the method of implementation. Is this sort of rulemaking within the FTC's authority, or will it be quickly struck down in court? Why doesn't Congress pass a law?
It's supposed to be in their authority, but, like many other powers they hold, they've basically done nothing with it for over forty years. These sorts of regulations sometimes do good and sometimes bad. This is a similar mechanism to how we get all sorts of junk from NHTSA, EPA, FAA, you name it.
Congress could pass something. How likely is that? How effective?
That's a proper non-compete!
As a senior level engineer myself, same (except there's no pay me clause). I still have the legal letter they sent framed in my office. In any event, I don't know any case where this was enforced. I think it's a nuclear option just in case company "B" starts exhibiting new products or technology it really shouldn't have access to. Company "A" can then start taking people to court. However in my part of the industry, people go back and forth between companies quite frequently while still working in the same technology.
However I have been affected by this when my doctor left one practice and couldn't establish a competing practice in the same zip code for xx years.
And based on what my wife has told me, hairdressers and non-competes are more brutal than back-alley knife fights.
On the other hand, the noncompete ban will allow you to swap the color of your branded chains seamlessly from one corporation to join another.
Maybe, if we're lucky, the corporations will pursue enforced loyalty by other means, like in the William Gibson novels. Arcologies on the mesa! Killer drones! Cortex bombs!
Maybe pay their employees more…
Everything But is the usual retention strategy.
Look, I don't care about a complimentary gym membership. I'm saving up for a blower kit for my Mustang, so how about you help me with that?
twin screw sign on bonus
My current job paid a "signing bonus", which would have to have been refunded if you left within the first year.
The (barbed) hook is that while the "bonus" is ordinary income from which taxes and social security are withheld, they expected the full amount to be repaid within 30 days if you left. Witholding and taxes be damned. It explicitly said so in the contract.
Twin screw indeed.
That’s pretty standard I think.
There are certain investment banks (Jefferies comes to mind) that will tie you up by clawing back your regular bonus if you leave after it’s paid out.
To be fair, you may only see 3 of your 5k signing bonus but the company paid every bit of that 5k plus their side of social security. On the bright side, there is some tax deduction for repayment of the bonus. Been a few years since ive dine one but it works much better if it’s in the same calendar year.
Hey, be a good company deserving of loyalty and my ass is parked here FOR LIFE.
I see this all the time on social media about a wide ranging number of companies and jobs.
I know this is waaaaay off topic here, but many of the online armchair economists and CEOs won't rail at the companies with the largest margins. They pick non-profits or companies with think margins, and will say, well well if we just got rid of the CEO.....
And then you do the math and realize that if all the executive salaries were gone that would put a paltry 500 dollars in each employees account.
( Bringing me to Union strikes from last year )
Not sure what the reply is to but i have no problem with executive salaries but i do have a problem with executive salaries and incompetence. Our biggest expense is payroll by far but we try and keep up with the market:slightly ahead because we dont want our key employees leaving
My problem is with a CEO who shuts down a factory in Ohio or Missouri, puts 5,000 people out of work, basically wipes out the economy of an entire COUNTY and still gets to ride his eight-figure parachute safely to the ground.
I mean you joke but I’ve more than quadrupled my salary in less than 20 years swinging from vine to vine across 7 different employers. There are few worse feelings (professionally) for me personally than that of being stuck in a position where it sucks and I cannot leave. I’ve done it twice, once in the military, and another by going to grad school on my employer’s dime. I’ve promised myself I won’t do it again. Next time I chain myself to an employer without recourse it will be because they’ve incentivized me financially where I won’t have to go anywhere else, I’ll just retire.
On the non-compete thing.
Amazon has this service called 'Kindle Unlimited' and if you're in it, you are forced to sign a non-compete that you won't sell ANY of your ebooks that are in KU ANYWHERE else in the world.
Now, Amazon is a monopoly in the ebook world (they are over 90 percent of the market), and mainly because of things like this. To really make good money, you have to be in KU.
Now it would be really nice if this 'rule' applied to things we're forced into by monopolies like Amazon, but somehow, I have a feeling we're not going to be getting any relief.
Thank you for another reason to not use Amazon.
I have been trying to buy from anywhere else and i really miss the convenience but i am mostly doing well
Yesterday was a day off so I jumped in the Miata and ran down 800 to a small used bookstore in Dover, OH where I discussed Seikos with the proprietor and purchased a 1917 copy of King Coal by Upton Sinclair. In ink on the title page was scrawled the original owner's name; Charlie Grunder. Dover. Dec 1918.
Today if someone wrote a novel about cobalt mining maybe it gets published electronically by the one company that's forced everyone else out. It's purchaser won't be able pass it on. No one will know who it was. Maybe he loses the book when he loses his password, maybe the publisher decides people shouldn't read about cobalt mining and just disappears the book.
Fuck Amazon.
"In ink on the title page was scrawled the original owner's name; Charlie Grunder. Dover. Dec 1918."
Oh man.
Have a cousin or two in Dover!
I prefer books my ownself, I buy plenty used on Amazon .
I've had more than a few really old first editions with and without owner's names / stickers/stamps inside .
I don't buy books to resell, I just give them all away after reading .
Trying to figure out how to dispose of my vintage technical library now .
-Nate
Their Vella serial service only asks that you release your serial there exclusively first. After it's up there you can release it anywhere else you'd like.
Didn't they just shut down Vella?
They changed the rules recently. It was before the first three parts of your serial were free, then pay-to-read after that, but now it's the first ten. The pay structure is different as well, instead of tokens you spend based on the length of the part, I believe it's become a flat rate. If they are planning on shutting it down I don't know. Honestly, it's a miracle I know this much at all.
I have noticed "Mike O" on the rear wing, but it's not clear to me how to find any more information about "Mike O." Does "Mike O" have a Web site?
He's a commenter here, going by the name of...Mike O! He was also at FP Detroit last year.
And I had an experience at FP! Thank you again for setting ot up. Unfortunately family issues kept me from the second FP.
Honoured to e-meet you!
Glad that you're a real person...for a moment I wondered if you were like Corey Daugherty's best friend: https://youtu.be/oEE-KjV-HVE
Very nice to meet you also!
It's my understanding the FCC board voted 2 to 1 on the non compete and predictably there already talk of a law suit by a national business group. We've been on the other side of the non compete at a veterinary hospital and it wasn't easy for us either. A vet left, hired some other employees away, and told the community about the new business on social media. Surprise, a lot of clients were friends on FB.
Now, non compete agreements are a thing of the past in the veterinary business. I'm not complaining cause it worked out in the end. No one said it would be easy
"a lot of clients were friends on FB"
Well, there you go. Clearly the services were provided by the indiviudal, Dr. Smith, unlike the way that a Corvette is a product of General Motors (preexisting IP, the coordinated labor of thousands of individuals, and the capital assets at the Bowling Green factory, including assembly lines, robots, paint booths, etc.). So trying to keep individuals from patronizing a person whose work they liked is unreasonable, and impractical with the advent of social media.
Taking the employees is sort of an issue...but it's also not like you had spent billions on proprietary advanced technology trade secrets that only they knew.
To clarify, majority were clients first, then friended on FB through contact on the company page. And we hadn't spent billions nor were we making millions. Maybe more like procuring cause in real estate
How much did you pay her for a non compete? People starting small businesses is the best part of america. Offer a better service
It was part of the employment contract, 8 mile radius. Typical distance and everyone signed them until 4 or 5 years ago. We been in business 35 years and growing each year
So, nothing. A w2 wage shouldnt be consideration and it really isnt
Actually the veterinarian that violates the cause owes us money. The test was is the distance reasonable considering the location of the majority of the clients. This was the standard until recently.
Eight miles isn't unreasonable.
Wow..non-competes even in that sphere! A dog-eat-dog world, to be sure! 😁
And there's not enough dog to go around.
When I bought our house near Tulsa a couple years ago, it took me a good 6 months of getting home for the weekend to finally realize this really really nice "serious" house is actually mine, and not some relatives house I was visiting.
Same except “i own this piece of crap”
Love my house but it’s a new york 22 year old woman. Beautiful on the outside…
We went from a house built in 1896 to one built in 2014. A very welcome thing. The old house always needed more and more. New house is well, a new house.
Much like the bpd woman, im irrationally attached to this thing
"All women are bi. You just have to figure out whether it's -polar or -sexual."
(via Bill Maher after a NY Times employee tweeted that)
If it has tits or wheels, it WILL give you problems.
I think the classic formulation is alliterative: "tits or tires, it's trouble."
I seem to have experienced exceptions to that rule.
I didn't know anything was built near Tulsa before 1905.
The old house was in Wisconsin. That didn't help anything either.
Yes and no. Anything built this millennium is chock full of Chinesium. We aren't quite at dixie cup levels but soon. Home Depot lot/ bus stop labor is getting worse as well, or so I read.
True enough, but (excepting for lighting) the code makes better buildings, the pre-aseembled floor joists you'd get a new house are better, foundations will be better, studs probably won't be 24" OC, ceilings in a new build will be higher, the insulation and a modern AC or heat pump will make the entire home more efficient.. to say nothing of ongoing maintenance and big-ticket repairs. A balloon framed house needs everything replaced except the studs every 20-50 years. Why be exit liquidity if you can buy new?
On the other hand, the code now requires new-build lighting to be those horrific blue-tinted LEDs. It's not sustainable. The blueness of all (even 2700k) LED light is literally going to make people go insane as time goes on. This problem we've got to solve.
are you saying your house has bpd and a septum piercing
Pretty on the outside but small and broken on the inside, so, yes.
And fifty people have been inside it over the years, got spooked by SOMETHING and left posthaste.
Be grateful Scott ;
I just hope my 1923 termite farm ('charming craftsman bungalow') doesn't collapse on me before I die .
So bad I won't allow my Sweet to come over anymore .
-Nate
I don’t like the state of IL at all, but I seriously love our village (suburb) and my 100y/o house in the historical section of it. It’s in an area where most of the houses are somewhat custom and distinct and they’re known by what house you have rather than only on what block you live (e.g. “oh you’re the blue house on Main Street, I love your landscaping”). It is the first truly nice and special thing that I own that I feel will significantly appreciate and outlast me.
"link to a pair of genuinely excellent Substacks"
A pair? I see only The Ruffian...unless you are counting the link to an earlier ACF as one of the two? ;)
Nice!
The other link was to Matt Stoller's substack.
Doh! It didn't occur to me to look backwards.
I'm going to blame the 12 ounces of 9.5% that I had with dinner for that one.
"It was a real lesson for me in how power works; both she and the CEO were somebody and I was nobody."
I am reminded of that with increasing frequency and force each year for the past decade or so.
Sir Morris you should not worry about being reminded. we are all nobody’s as somebody’s are somewhere else.
The older I get the more I realize that I'm just an extra in somebody else's movie
Earnest question: what would tip the scales for regular readers to become paid subscribers? There are substacks where I only read the free articles. Just curious.
Most substacks run about 10% paid. I'm at 28%. So I'm doing something right. Just don't know how to do more of it!
Do you happen to have the stats for paid, free and subscribed, vs neither?
Absolutely. I'll email them to you.
does that mean you also have info on which users have commented and total comment amount and likes overall
always been curious about that
Sadly, no
The level of garbage-ness of the substack comment system is almost impressive.
I assume you're #1 in frequency.
i do be yappin
“How to have sex with a hooters waitress” paid only
Good call.
Speaking of Hooters: Did you see the Nike's US Olympic Womens' team gear? The g-string part is very narrow and goes up almost to the waist. I'm not a woman, but I think a Hooters uniform would be significantly more modest, more comfortable, and probably more functional.
The reasons why (now that women basically run everything) would be an interesting post.
I have now!
More importantly, why aren’t the trans women complaining about these non-junk friendly womyns outfits? Nike is just reinforcing the matriarchy (or something like that).
how dare the womens outfit not have a banana hammock
They don’t need them; Alanis King isn’t on the team
“ The reasons why (now that women basically run everything) would be an interesting post.”
Women hate each other.
And they call that phenomenon "patriarchy"; got it!
I know you like to bang this drum and you're certainly not wrong but I think it elides nuance, "women frenemize each other" seems closer imo
Yes. Women dont have the same delusions about each other that men have about women.
How to have unpaid sex with a hooters waitress, paid subscribers only
Must be prettier hooters girls East of me .
-Nate
Had a buddy who did this while we we're still in college with a hooters waitress.
He was exceptionally handsome, she was jawdropping. He did read her palm 😂
While we’re on the topic, when are the annual subscriptions due? Is it dependent on when you originally subscribed, or do you like to do the majority at a set time?
It renews on day 366 from your last one. For many of us, it's gonna be July.
Makes sense, thanks. July sounds about right for mine too.
I would guess you’d have to go somewhat viral with a polarizing but true opinion or article to draw in new readers, something along the lines of the attention Rob Henderson’s “luxury beliefs” concept received. Or say something not politically correct about a subject that no one else is talking about. Then, appear in other people’s Substacks or podcasts as a guest to discuss said opinion and filter through new audiences that might be interested in reading more from you.
But this path may be a “be careful what you wish for” path.
Truthfully, I'm perfectly happy where we are, subscriber-wise. Another 20-40% wouldn't go amiss. Above that, the comment management becomes a full-time job, without the pay.
You dont want to be too popular. The noise to content ratio will be ruined. Better to charge more. Well, better to charge everyone but me more. I demand* legacy rates!
*request
The comments here are part of the draw. Over a certain size they become youtube comments.
I don't like 2000-comment-long comment areas. I'm not reading all those. If I'm not here on the first day of a post and the second day I see 500 or 600 comments sometimes I just "nope" out of those, too.
The average YouTube comment thread is 11-year-old boys drawing dicks on everything.
I enjoy both making and consuming shitposts,
but I will say that to the extent I read them (hardly ever, 30 min per year) I have seen some tremendous youtube comments.
YMMV , particularly if opposed to shitpost or political incorrectness
I believe that Ted Gioia has a good post on how his Substack grew organically over the years. Like you, he just cranks out quality content that people are interested in.
I just think it’s great how the comments section exploded from the Riverside Green days. That was something I did not see coming when you started ACF.
Me neither. And it's not because Substack has a better comment system, because it certainly does not.
It is better because it’s sorta realtime. Its still not good
It may be buggy but is arguably slightly more private than disqus or whatever Riverside Green used.
Doubly so on non-open threads, where everyone should feel free to advocate full-throated [COMMENT REDACTED]
This is essentially what the TTAC commentariat, the “Best And Brightest,” used to be!
I agree.
I just wonder how long it will be before someone will start offering seminars in hotel meeting rooms on how to increase your paid vs non-paying subscribers on Substack like those guys that have seminars on how to invest in real estate????
Brought to you by "the dark art of SEO gurus"
If they knew what they were doing they wouldnt be selling seminars
How to increase your substack subscriptions when you’re living in a van down by the river…
It's popular, now it sucks.
Your audience of thoughtful, conscientious types is inherently self-limiting.
I am sure there is a “science” to optimizing publishing cadence and how much of a preview you share as an author to maximize paid subs.
There are some substacks that I do not subscribe to because they give most of it away for free; there are others that I do NOT subscribe to that give nothing away, so I don’t have a feel for what I’d be getting.
By “subscribe” above, I mean “pay for.” I receive emails from 100+ substacks (many of them are dormant or publish infrequently) and pay for about a dozen.
I only read three SubStacks regularly, and I pay to subscribe to all three. Two of them I find interesting and informative and valuable, but they also make me feel angry and despondent (Shellenberger and Taibbi.) I’m toying with the idea of cancelling both. I’m having the internal debate whether it’s better to be more or less informed given that I’m also powerless. More and more I feel the draw of shutting out the world and just focusing on my wife kids and hobbies. Not sure I’m wired that way though. I’d still have my WSJ subscription as long as I can cancel and re-sign at $4/mo or whatever I pay.
Choose the less informed path like me. Most of what passes for news is just staring into the abyss. It’s poison for the mind and it’s not healthy.
There are interesting things to pursue out in the world and even online that are not news related. If I get bored I go to the county library and peruse the stacks with an open mind. I’ve found some great and unexpected books.
But the process to shut out the world to any degree is like a detoxification, it takes a while to accomplish and there’s work involved.
Good luck!
This is a reminder to me to make sure we discuss evergreen topics as well as news.
This is different, because none of us (to my knowledge) has any insider insight or stands to benefit in any significant way based on guiding the audience. Most of us are, best I can tell, a bunch of salarymen putting in our two cents. As much as I respect Taibbi, he’s still a reporter, and has become part of the story. He also has a vested interest in engagement, and the more he can draw out things like censorship/1A issues, the more he can print money.
Versus someone like you, I’m not here for your reporting, I’m here because you write things that make me think, and you bring up information/sources I often haven’t seen. I don’t think you make money trying to create artificial engagement. Unless it’s something like “why a 1970s Corvette isn’t worse than XXX” in which case I’ll be happy to give you my clicks to be baited into reading the arguments.
He comes across as a tourist when he writes stuff like this:
https://www.racket.news/p/a-new-elitist-craze-fixing-the-publics?publication_id=1042&utm_campaign=email-post-title&r=8jzkh&utm_medium=email
Many unsupported leaps of logic; the most grating was this comment:
“It’s literally impossible to not make money in banking borrowing at zero”
That’s like saying “it’s literally impossible to not [sic - split infinitive!] make money when you buy a product at a wholesale price and sell it at a retail price.”
With the diverse subject matter you cover, and the diverse group of subscribers you have, I believe that anything you choose to write about will spark ideas and commentary that we can all learn something from, or at the very least cause us to stop and think about a subject in a different way. That’s already been my experience. I never want to stop learning new things. So thanks again for this forum.
well said
I'm finding Taibbi too much now. Constant avalanche of stuff. I canceled my sub for that one.
This is why I worry about doing email for the guest posts...
You don’t have to. Taibbi is usually a few emails everyday, and it’s all depressing subjects. Basically, it’s a stream of “the world is crazy and falling apart and there’s nothing we can do, but I’ll chronicle it anyway”. He’s not discussing the charms of C3 Corvettes.
I immediately bin guest posts from the Substacks I subscribe to (yours, and others).
I think that's a common practice.
I think substack package subs might help. Like cable. There is too much competition for attention and only so much time in the day.
Individually subscribing to every substack I would like to is hard to defend, especially if the material is only of interest to one person in the household. Substackers compete with all other subscriptions, not just other substacks. It can add up quickly.
I don't know if that business model makes sense for authors though. You probably wouldn't make enough per subscriber, and then have to sell ad space to make up the difference...
Substack Prime!
SUBSTACK UNLIMITED!
Can I get something like a "league pass" for Corvette C3 content?
SMC-PLASTIC MEDALLION LEVEL
Here is a kind of race related question for the learned ACF team. What is the deal with the inventory of Hell Cats on the floor plan at the big Dodge dealers in VA and Florida? Dealers have multiples of many models (except for Chrysler 300C’s) and multiples of some colors. They are all loaded with options and some dealers are sticking with the $25K ADM and other dealers are selling at MSRP…. Except for the Challenger 170 1000hp dragsters none at the big auctions have sold, have not met reserve. I am wondering if Dodge just cranked up the production line and flooded the market…. I am old enough to remember the dealers getting really greedy for the 1976 Eldorado Convertible and now almost 50 years later there are always a number of low mileage cars coming up for sale for less then what they sold for in 1976 accounting for the effects of the loss in the value of the dollar. Anyone got any theories or explanation on the huge inventory of Hell Cats?
The dealers all saw what happened to Viper pricing, and they don't want to miss out on the appreciation curve. But most of them won't have the guts to hold onto the inventory the full 18 to 24 months it will take to really see that appreciation. So they'll hold, then they'll dump.
Youd need 7-8% appreciation per year to beat their floor plan interest right? Thats a lot
Floorplan should be prime plus one.
As of April 23, 2024, the US Bank Prime Loan Rate is 8.50%.
My thought is the Dodge dealers are holding out on the Challengers and Chargers because:
This is it.
They will soon have nothing in the pipeline that will sell.
Color me surprised that the Hornet isn't setting the world on fire.
It's a pretty decent looking/driving little crossover that is about $10k too expensive and also hilariously prone to breaking.
Give it a couple more months, and I'm sure you'll find some terriric finance deals/rebates that make them appealing. Avoid the hybrid R/T and go for the 2.0t though. More robust and just as fast.
I don't think it's a bad product, per se, but it's one of the most cynical rebadges we've seen in years, it's too expensive, and it's not very Dodgey. Praying that it's just a one-off stopgap and not the future of things to come from Stellantis.
Now that Dodge has gotten rid of its fun vehicles I might actually want to own, I think about them as much as I think about Mitsubishi vehicles.
Holding out hope for the new Charger.
Every once in a while I see a Mitsubishi on the road and thinkg to myself, "Oh, yeah, they do make cars still."
Charger and Challenger production ended in December 2023, as I recall, and the ICE version of the next-generation Charger won't be available until sometime in 2025. So it makes some sense that Chrysler built up inventory to bridge the gap.
Dodge ABSOLUTELY flooded the market with these things. They built and delivered as many as they physically could before the lines shut down so that their dealers would have at least some product to sit on before the new Charger comes out next year. There are thousands of Chargers and Challengers sitting on lots right now, brand new, and at least on the V6s and maybe the 5.7s, you can get a crazy deal on them.
Other stuff, not so much.
Thirty years ago I was managing a Papa John's and had hired a new assistant manager making a jump from the local Pizza Hut franchise. Had to let him go because he had signed a non-compete and they were holding him to it. Maybe they were just being pissy because the founder of Pizza Hut had blown through all the cash he made from selling out and John made him a deal on some Papa's stores. Marketing Gold! Pizza Hut founder now a Papa John's franchisee.
Maybe the Biden administration did the right thing for regular folks just trying to pay the bills but also they're suing Scheetz for the crime of not hiring criminals. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/2976681/biden-lawsuit-against-sheetz-gas-will-enrage-pennsylvania-voters/
I have a seriously messed up Salena Zito fetish. Come renewal time probably going to have to upgrade to Platinum Level in hopes that when Jack finally has a party at the Pussy Palace he invites his WE co-contributer. If my wife comes she'll be busy petting cats.
When I was a kid, our pizza options in town were Pizza Hut and Dominos, plus a few independent restaurants that kept irregular hours and offered worse fare. None of them offered delivery - too rural at the time, and navigation was much harder before smartphones.
My peers and I considered Papa John’s a special treat, as it was only available closer to Atlanta; it was clearly a cut above the Hut and Dominos. You had to (1) be in the suburbs and (2) be with an adult that was willing to eat Papa John’s. I only learned as an adult that most people do NOT consider Papa John’s at a peer level with the other two!
Papa John’s is like the Stellantis to Ford/Dominos and Pizza Hut/GM.
Little Ceaser’s is a BHPH lot Nissan.
I’ve made it 35 years without eating Little Caesar’s.
I have been known to eat Domino’s on occasion when I am in my hometown; they offer delivery, in theory (it usually takes 3+ hours), and it’s serviceable during wintertime (I don’t particularly want to drive around on steep, privately maintained roads on Michelin Cup 2 tires when it’s 20 degrees outside).
In Chicagoland you can’t swing the proverbial dead cat without hitting a local pizza joint that would be the best place in almost any other state that’s not CT or NY (or Detroit if you swing that way which I do). But we still grab an occasional Dominos especially for kids’ parties because it’s fast cheap easy and just good enough. I almost never eat LC’s but my youngest inexplicably loves it.
I also hate delivery, I will almost always go pick up my own food (unless I’m intoxicated) because it’s cheaper and almost always faster and therefore hotter.
My favorite in Chicago was probably Piece Pizza.
I lived near the Lou Malnati’s on Wells and would only go when someone visited and demanded deep dish.
I never liked Lou Malnati's. Always greatly preferred Giordano's out of the chain places.
At one point, my now wife demanded deep dish because she's from WY and had never tried it. We ordered Pizano's. She ate part of a slice and that cured her curiosity.
I use delivery almost exclusively when ive been drinking and i don’t do DoorDash so its almost always pizza or chinese
When in Detroit I try to make it to the original Buddy's.
Having lived most of my life in Chicago, I have never had pizza from Dominos, Little Caesar’s, Papa John’s, or Pizza Hut. Eating at a pizza chain in Chicago would be like choosing to eat dog food when all the restaurants are serving steak.
Every once in awhile papa johns and jets hits the spot for me
There’s a local place down the street from me that has a burger that is honest to god decent competition for Au Cheval. I eat one fairly regularly, every month or two. But sometimes I don’t want it, sometimes I want a Culver’s ButterBurger even though it’s worse.
Back in 2006 the Phaeton Owners Club had a meetup in Chicago. The woman who was running it told us that we NEEDED to eat AUTHENTIC CHICAGO PIZZA so we waited, and I am not kidding, 170 minutes to sit down. When the pizza showed up, I stood up and yelled,
"THIS IS JUST PIZZERIA FUCKIN' UNO!!!"
"No it's not," the idiot woman replied. "This is Due's".
Oof. Entirely accurate.
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/little-caesars-taste-so-good-when-u-aint-got-a-bitch-in-ya-ear-telling-you-its-nasty
Im sorry, this pizza is reserved for credit scores under 550. Would uou like the 60 or 72 week financing?
When my brother lived near Lake Forest, he once had pizza delivered by a kid driving a Saab convertible.
Dad was rich. My buddy had a 9000 hatchback. That car was awesome
can i get employee financing if im related to someone that works there
If you want a nissan or little ceasars. I dont mind garbage pizza but little ceasars is beyond garbage
the only time ive ever had it is when ive attended a party that ran into the late hours and everyone decided that we needed food and that dominoes was also closed
I told my Papa John's meth story a while back.
little caesars is hot and ready
"But is it good?"
its HOT and its READY
$5 hot and ready pepperoni on the way home after a track meet in high school. Pretty hard to beat.
These are the criteria I used to find uh
Pizza
if youre going to regret it later you might as well enjoy it
Little Sleazar’s is the bottom of the barrel in round pies. HOWEVER, their Detroit-style deep-dish is actually a well-kept secret—almost as good as Jet’s for a lot less coin, Jet’s being the only pizza that even comes close to Buscemi’s/Buddy’s/whatever other Motown pizza emporiums there are.
i think the only other chain pizza restaurant weve got locally is dominoes
everything else is a one off or at least not part of a country wide chain
Fun fact: Little Caesar's is the only of the major pizza chains to prepare dough fresh in store. Others all use frozen. I'm an unapologetic fan of the Detroit-style DEEP!DEEP! dish, but because their stores are all inconveniently located in the ghetto, I rarely get to enjoy it.
There was one down the street from my old house so my kid got a taste for it. Now we are a 58 minute round trip away from one, and he STILL SUGGESTS IT FOR DINNER
The round trip is similar for me. It's also well out of the way of my route home from work. So now all I have are the memories, and corporate's Instagram account.
Papa John’s to me is a cut above Pizza Hut, and even further above Dominos! At some point in the past ten or fifteen years, Dominos went from cardboard crust and wallpaper paste for cheese to what they are now: the McDonald’s of pizza.
My family moved from the Detroit area to Toledo in 1984, always having eaten pizza from a local delicatessen which used the Buscemi’s (said to be the original Detroit-style deep-dish) recipe, and instead of Marco’s, the Toledo franchise that is off the charts in new franchises some forty years later, they started forcing us to dine on Pizza Hut’s Super Supreme, including onion chunks as thick as a trailing arm, along with loads of black olives! (Gah-ross! 🤢) Almost put me off of pizza altogether until some other chains mercifully came along!
You kids liked Papa John's because the sauce has nearly as much sugar as Kool-Aid.
It seemed impossibly exotic, at the time.
I spent spring break of my senior year of high school, which also coincided with my 18th birthday, on a school trip to Italy. The typical EF or ACIS tour. It was mostly my high-achieving, nerdy friends; most of our families went, as well.
Our tour guide was an Englishwoman who had trouble understanding most of the group’s accents. She did an excellent job (I am actually still in touch with her via social media) overall.
The night before my birthday, we were standing in a hotel lobby in Florence awaiting a tour bus to ferry us to an American-friendly restaurant. A man in the restaurant started talking to my father, who was wearing a cap emblazoned with the name of the school that I would be attending in the fall. The Italian man had once dated an alumna of the school while he was in business school in DC.
In a three minute conversation, my father and this stranger shared quite a lot: I was his son; I was headed to that school in the fall; I would be 18 the next day; the Italian man happened to own the hotel, or at least part of it. My father asked him who owned the red 288 GTO parked on the side of the hotel … he was speaking to the owner.
Would the soon to be 18 year old like to go for a joyride in a stranger’s 288 GTO in Florence, Italy? Of course. It was about like the film Rendezvous. He drove wildly into oncoming traffic, powerslid around corners, and screamed at most cars we passed. My mother still has no idea this happened.
Moreover, would the soon to be 18 year old and his father like to split off from the group and take a train to Modena and then a cab to Maranello the next day and visit Ferrari? Of course.
The tour guide skipped dinner with the group and put together an itinerary with the hotelier’s assistance (and rolodex).
My father and I visited upon the Via Abetone Inferiore the next day, and everything went swimmingly. We reunited with the group, and the tour guide agreed to have dinner with the teenagers at my choice of restaurant.
While she admitted that the had trepidation after the fact, she seemed to enjoy her first experience at Pizza Hut.
Having returned stateside, I found myself trying to recreate the magic of that trip by dining at the local Pizza Hut with a few of my friends. They had the “slow food” thing down to a science - we were the only customers in the joint, and it still took over two hours for us to dine.
My next trip there was my final dine-in experience, as we were all banned for tertiary (at best) involvement in a food fight that transpired in the “party room.”
Absolutely magical. Your father must really have a way with words.
Hardly.
It was just serendipity.
Dad donated a building or some dental work
The instrumental party was the guy who owned one of the rarest Ferraris of all time!
Had a Papa Johns on campus where I went to college.
It was the single grossest piece of food I have ever eaten. The garlic bread was barely serviceable! I don't know how they made pizza -- something I enjoy deeply even when it's not delivery, it's DiGiorno -- so fucking miserably gross as to turn me off from ever eating there again.
Little Caesar's, on the other hand, isn't good but it's cheap and at least tolerable. I am from NJ so I will allow myself some level of expertise on "good pizza."
Growing up in NY to a very picky Italian mother meant I only really got exposure to chain pizza at friends houses or birthday parties, save for Little Caesars. There was a location before their first bankruptcy forced them out of NY that I could get to as a kid on my bike or, be gentle, roller blades. They had a slice and soda special we would often exploit, much to the dissatisfaction of my mother. So it holds a near and dear place for me despite the pizza being unremarkable at best. The local place I order pizza from now is around 40-50 bucks for two pies and a salad, so there is something to be said for Little Caesars ability to still sell you something resembling pizza for $5 bucks. (Are they still $5 I'd guess they have gone up with inflation)
It's about $7. Still a deal. You can pay more and have to bake it yourself.
I've been saying that for decades: Being fired nullifies a non-compete. Being fired is the company saying "You're not good enough to work here."
So if I'm not good enough to work for you, why do you not want me to work elsewhere?
Because corporations view worker bees as their property? Corporations would hoard staplers if they thought they could make someone outside the corporation suffer from a lack of available staplers.
I had a tangentially-related conversation with my brother about corporations' monitoring of their employees' social media posts.
He asserted that a company has the right to know what their employees are up to in their down time, because it's in the company's best interest to hire morally-straight people. I pointed out that people can compartmentalize their lives, and who someone is at 11 pm Saturday night on the town is not who they are at 9 am Tuesday morning in the office.
He countered with the idea that people's actions affect their employer's reputation. I said yeah - in 1957. Besides, I pointed out, if the company can control your life on and off the clock, you're not really an employee. You're property, or a serf or a retainer in the samurai sense. You'd be on-call 24-7 and if that's how the company wants to play it, they can pony up for round-the-clock compensation.
I'm responsible to my employer when I'm on the clock. That's it.
This hasn’t been a Puritan country for a long, long time.
"I never had the Old Time Religion, so I cannot write about it like someone who did, but it seemed to be based on the idea that anything you enjoyed doing was sinful and should be abhorred."
Ralph Gould
"Yankee Boyhood"
Thats why im catholic. You can do it as long as you apologize. All the priests drink. They just cant get laid…
You guys have such awesome cathedrals and chanting.
Corporations LOVE punishing their employees about social media. It really reinforces the chattel relationship in a manner that is quite satisfying for HR professionals.
"Why can't we find loyal employees?!"
That brings to mind one absurd aspect of antidiscrimination law.
I can't fire an employee for being black or homosexual, but I can shitcan his ass for having big ears, or for being a Cubs fan.
There's no consistency, only a list.
The list is the Left’s Pyramid of Victims. Cub fans aren’t on it so they can be whacked. Now, a gay Muslim Cub fan who wears a Cubs uniform to the office? Untouchable.
"That's why I don't hire women. They waltz in with a pissy Hear Me Roar attitude, nuke the place's vibe to Hell & gone, then get knocked up and punch a hundred-thousand-dollar hole in my org chart for an entire fiscal year."
I can fire people for being Cubs fans?
Signed,
A White Sox Fan
From what I understand, Wrigley Field is just an open-air bar with the live entertainment on retainer.
I've always been torn on Non-competes. Mentioned were "corporate boots" but they do and have protected small startup companies. A small startup company hires an engineer and spends thousands of dollars on that engineer for that engineer to take the knowledge the company invested to somewhere else? That doesn't seem fair.
It's also not fair when local journalists have to sign non-competes and can't work at another station even if they are fired.
I'm not sure what the answer is. I know that in my state that non competes are rarely enforced.
I think the answer, if there is one, is to write smarter agreements. You can prohibit someone from disclosing confidential information to a successive employer without it being in the context of a non-compete. When I worked at a biotech firm last year, that was a separate agreement.
Trade secrets are already protected by law. Huge penalties for leaking them. This is a topic independent of non-compete.
Yes but much of what's being discussed here is more NDA than NC.
That really isn't the goal of Non-Competes, that is the goal of a Non-Disclosure Agreement. I'm not talking about specific proprietary information. What I am talking about is the amount of money invested, through compensation, for an employee to learn or develop "information and knowledge".
To give a very good anecdotal experience, a company here in town had a very good tuition assistance policy. Many employees with 2 year electronics degrees were going back to get their EE/CPE/SE degrees. After the company realized that for 5 years in a row they were losing these employees in 6 months after they'd get their degree, they changed their policy on tuition assistance where employees who used tuition assistance had to work there for two years after completing their degree. I do not know how "legal" or enforceable it was, but it worked.
Just for my own experience, I was hired right out of school as an embedded engineer. I knew very little about production video and audio even though I did have the basics of embedded engineering through school. The company invested in my time through compensation to gather all the relevant knowledge in how embedded design applies directly to their market. Without a Non-compete I could work a year or two and go work for a competitor with all this new information I had. A fair argument can be had that "this is just the cost of doing business". I also think that a fair argument, especially from small companies (or big one's too), that they don't want an employee they've invested in working for another direct competitor.
I do agree that smarter agreements need to be made, but not necessarily relevant to NDA type information, but rather towards "knowledge earned through company investment".
Every tech company I've worked at has laid claim to not just stuff I do on my own time but also the certifications I get. There's a fuzzy area between NDA and non-compete.
An employment contract seems like a fair compromise. You work for us for a set term and we pay you. We renegotiate at the end of the term. This “we get all the upside, you get all the downside” isnt right.
Correct. “We get all the upside, you get all the downside” is solely the purview of Big Government, Inc.
That's how it worked for foreign "teachers" in Japan. We had a yearly contract that was generally reliably renewed, but there was no guarantee. For anyone looking to stay in Japan permanently this was a less-than-ideal situation as it would make getting a credit card or loans for houses or cars impossible because of the annual renewal. Luckily they'll give credit and loans to anyone here in the US.
When they can kick you out of the country, they have leverage. Thank god the USA doesn't do that to Asians* here!
*the british usage
The USA does in fact kick Indian H1-Bs out... because it gives the corporate lizards some leverage on salary and rate.
REALLY??
I thought that once anyone from the Indian subcontinent sets foot on our shores and kicks an American IT person to behind the counter at SBUX, it’s impossible to throw them out!
Uh-uh.
Those are pretty much the only immigrants who EVER get sent home -- and, as discussed above, it's because it gives their visa sponsors real leverage over them.
JasonS had this happen to small companies a lot. We had a small sub that had created software for us to use on the Virginia class and they were under the gun because as soon as there task order was closed the prime could do a FOIA to get the data and that was the small subs primary asset. So I did a $5M mod to the task to keep them testing for another year so that the task would not be closed until they could be awarded another task. That was one of the issues we had with the prime, they would take all the information produced by the subs and reproduce it putting the sub out of business.
NDAs still can exist, which should cover a lot of that I would think.
On the other hand, it's barbaric to restrict someone's livelihood because the company doesn't want to pay them more or offer a better experience.