I remember seeing once someone arguing that measles vaccines were unnecessary because "when was the last time you heard about someone dying from measles?" This is clearly an ignorant person (people haven't died from measles because everyone was vaccinated), but is it necessarily an argument from ignorance? I'm not good at identifying fallacies.
This article was recently posted in another sub: https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/press-release/2010-02-03/upper-deck-forced-to-settle-with-konami-digital-entertainment
The thing which really stands out to me is just how much contempt the defendant company's lawyer has for his own client. This was part of his opening statement, according to the article: "The behavior is still undeniably wrong. And I am in here, as counsel for the two defendants, asking you to hold my clients accountable for that behavior; asking you to hold my clients responsible for this conduct that there is no dispute, and there was no disputing even before this case started today, that it was wrong.”
No surprise that the case settled after the opening statements, I guess.
My question is, why would you go to trial if that's what your opening statement is going to be? If there's no dispute of fact, what's the point of a trial? And why would you go to trial with a lawyer who has clearly, reading between the lines, been telling you all along that your case is a loser?
This was the attorney's statement after the settlement: “At this point, Upper Deck doesn't have a lot of Life Points. We're talking about behavior that, from a defense attorney's standpoint, I can't defend and I am not going to defend,” noted attorney Richard Howell, of Rutan & Tucker, who represented The Upper Deck Company during the trial. “I'm here defending a counterfeiter. And now I have to deal with that issue.”
This story is from when I worked in in-house Reservations, but it applies to new Front Desk agents as well. And really anyone starting a new job.
We hired a couple new reservations agents, and agents always started with a week of classroom training. The assistant manager goes to collect the new hires, finds them waiting by the employee entrance where the shift clock is, as expected. She conducts them to the classroom, introduces them to the system software we use, yadda yadda, starts the first day of training.
Cut to one hour before the end of the day, one of the new hires raises their hand. "I clocked in one hour early, can I go home now?" The assistant manager is somewhat stunned at this, since it means they arrived, clocked in, and just sat there for an hour doing nothing but wait. However, under our labor agreement, trainees can't do overtime, so she releases the new hire. She finishes the day with the rest of the new hires and then consults with the reservations manager and HR. The new hire who clocked in early is informed they will be paid for the day, but they are terminated effective immediately.
To this day I don't know what they were thinking.
I saw this short from Trevor Noah (https://youtube.com/shorts/NMOiVgUSFl0) where he basically says he was told he shouldn't try to aid anyone in need in the United States because then you can get sued. Of course everyone in the comments is bringing up the fact that there are Good Samaritan laws. But do all the Good Samaritan laws have fee-shifting provisions? A common theme in the comments is "well, it doesn't matter if you win in court, they can still sue you into bankruptcy". How likely is this circumstance, where someone takes you to court, loses due to the Good Samaritan defense, but you end up having to pay a fortune in legal fees for your defense?
I feel like if it was as likely as the comments make it out to be, it would be in the news more often.
50% chance of success
If successful, you gain 70% of alien technology
Reason: You destroy some alien technology during the fight, so only 70% is salvageable
If failed, alien animosity: 100%
30% chance of success
If successful, you gain 90% of alien technology
Reason: 10% of alien technology is kept by alien rebels who refuse to surrender
Alien animosity: 70%
70% chance of success
If successful, you gain 50% of alien technology
Reason: The aliens do not fully trust humanity, so they only share limited technology
If failed, alien animosity: 10%
100% chance of success
You gain 30% of alien technology
Reason: The aliens train humans to perform tasks for them, and some of their technology is inadvertently inherited through the process
Alien animosity: 0%
10% chance of success
If successful, you gain 150% of alien technology
Reason: The aliens fully trust humanity, and you gain access to other alien civilizations they have made contact with
If failed, alien animosity: 50%
90% chance of success
You gain 0% of alien technology
Reason: The aliens leave permanently and will never return, so humanity loses the chance to obtain their technology
Alien animosity: 30%
As he drained the blood from my arm, I wondered how to tell him about Father and why the blood wouldn't work.
Tl:Dr: guest attempts to use feminine wiles to get employee family & friends discount. Guest fails.
I used to work for an upscale hotel for a big chain on the Mediterranean. We used to get a lot of club members, especially shiny and extra shiny members. Shiny and extra shiny members were eligible for upgrades upon availability; shiny members got one level of upgrade and extra shinies got two.
There was this one lady who stayed with us for a couple weeks on a special rate. I don't remember why. She received her shiny upgrade, and then requested to extend her stay. For whatever reason, the upgrade was not available for the extension. Cue pouty behavior. I have to be the bearer of this bad news. I bear the bad news. She accepts it with poor grace, but she accepts it and moves rooms. All is well with the world, and time moves on.
It is important for the following part of the story that I am male. I don't kid myself that I'm particularly handsome, but I do ok. I promise this is relevant.
After her extension was up, she requested to extend again. This time, I had to tell her that her special rate was also no longer available. She argues with me a bit, I check with the manager, sorry, no can do, I bear the bad news, she takes it strangely much better than the first time and goes away. She comes back an hour later in a different outfit. With a very, very low-cut top. She makes conversation for a bit, and asks me, by the by, if hotel employees of this chain get family& friends discounts. This is where I fuck up. I reply in the affirmative because I have not been trained to lie. She leans further over the desk and, in a comically husky voice, says "Well, Aervanath, since we're friends, you could give me that rate, couldn't you?" At this point I just stare at her because a) no I can't and b) I am not into her at all. I do like women, just not women who are so blatant about using me. It took me about 15 seconds to figure out how to diplomatically say something along the lines of "Sorry, were not allowed to do that for current guests."
I think she left at that point since I don't remember any more of the interaction. I did report it to the management. I don't remember if she extended. I think she avoided me after that.
I used to work Front Desk at a large upscale hotel on the Mediterranean. The hotel of course has inhouse laundry that the guests can use, but it's expensive, so often the guests just send their laundry down the street to a nearby laundromat. The laundromat will come to the hotel, pick up the clothes, launder, dry, fold, and deliver back to the hotel concierge desk all within a few hours. The concierge desk will accept the clothes and give them a slip to take to the Front Desk to exchange for cash on the guest's room bill.
All of this generally worked pretty seamlessly, unless you were Mr. Asshole. I only met Mr. Asshole once. He was a delivery man for the laundromat, and apparently did not believe in waiting in lines. I was about to call the next guest, who'd been patiently waiting in line, when Mr. Asshole just pops over from the Concierge desk and thrusts this slip in my face. I tell him to get in line. I'll never forget his exact words. "I don't need to wait in line, I work here." (Ok, buddy, first of all, you don't work here because you're not an employee of the hotel. And if you were, you'd know not to fucking cut in line in front of guests who are paying hundreds of dollars a night for their rooms.) I told him I don't care where he works, he needed to wait in line. It's been a while so I don't remember the exact rest of the conversation, but he was incredibly ignorant and rude. Eventually I got him out of my face and was able to help the next guest, who was the sweetest, most patient person imaginable and had taken no offense. My colleague then came out from the back, to help with the line. The delivery guy is next in line. He complains about me making him wait in line. My colleague, who had heard the entire previous conversation because our rest area is behind a wall literally one meter away, also ends up in a shouting match with him. He does eventually give him his money and send him on his way.
After that, there are no guests so we go inside for a breather and chat with the duty manager, who happens to be the assistant FD, who also happens to have overheard both of our shouting matches with Mr Asshole. She decides to call the laundromat manager and ask since when their employees act like this. The answer? Since never, also Mr Asshole was already on thin ice for other reasons so we wouldn't be seeing him again anyway.
Tl;Dr: outside laundry employee came to the hotel, was rude to the front desk employees, who called the laundry and got him fired.
This happened about 10 years ago in a large, expensive hotel on the Mediterranean. Some details have probably been muddled by time, but this story I will never forget.
I was working morning shift towards the end of a very busy holiday period. The hotel is always at 100% capacity during this period, so it's not a slow shift, and there is always a line at the front desk, even though we have multiple agents working, not to mention a separate reception desk in the VIP lounge for those guests who don't want to mix with the peons in the lobby.
I call the next guest, and he says he wants to settle his bill and gives me the room number. It's a VIP suite, so he could have done this in the VIP lounge, but VIP guests can check out wherever they like, so I'm not going to tell him no. It turns out he's also paying for two other VIP suites and two additional rooms on the VIP floor for a 10-day stay.
The guest argued about some minor charges, had some particular requests about how to format the bill, and it took about 15 minutes to print out an interim bill he was happy with. The total, dear reader, was around US$45,000. This is not, in and of itself, that exceptional. I'd had bills of $100k or more, the guests would swipe the black Visa, sign the credit card receipt like they're at a gas station, and go on with their day. Instead, he says "I'll come back to you" and walks away. I think this is weird, but I don't think too much of it. He's probably going to get his credit card.
Two hours later, I see him in line again, specifically waiting for me, with a satchel. He lets other guests ahead of him in line to be helped by other agents so he can get me. To this day I still don't know why he got stuck on me, but when I freed up, he came over and plopped the satchel down. Then he opened the satchel and took out US$50k worth of local currency. It was two large, solid bricks of cash, all wrapped in plastic and labeled from the bank. It made me nervous just looking at it. I apologized, excused myself for a second, and went and found the Front Desk manager. He told me that yes, I had to unwrap and count it all with the money counting machine (I forget the name of it). I went outside and started to count it. The guest, a little perplexed, asked me to check again with my manager, who confirmed that yes, I could release the guest and then count the cash at the end of my shift. I gave the guest their change of $5k in local currency, put the cash in my safe and prayed for my relief to come early. (They did not.)
It took me 2.5 hours of overtime to fully unwrap and count the bills, and then properly close my cashier for the shift.
A year or so later the local jurisdiction passed anti-money-laundering laws mandating credit card transactions for any purchases over a certain limit, so this story will never happen again.
(Apologies for any formatting shenanigans due to writing this on my phone. I don't know why I did that; I do own a computer and it would have been way easier to type this with more than one finger.)
Edit: I just realized (after 10 years) that he probably checked out downstairs because the VIP lounge didn't accept cash. And he probably came specifically to me because he knew I was already familiar with the bill and wouldn't waste time checking to make sure it was okay, since I already had. It probably didn't save him any time in the long run because the agents in the VIP lounge were much more experienced than I was and could probably have settled his bill faster. Of course, if he'd gotten a more experienced agent at the Front Desk, it probably wouldn't have taken so long, but he got me instead. I probably looked more experienced since I was older than a lot of the other agents, but I was actually one of the newer agents. Looks can be deceiving.
According to Wikipedia, and according to a Lateral podcast I just watched, the residents of what is now Belgium, Wisconsin originally submitted the name of Luxemburg for their new town, but the Post Office Department accidentally swapped their name with a nearby town that had submitted Belgium. So now the town that should have been called Luxemburg was called Belgium, and the town that should have been called Belgium was called Luxemburg.
The Wikipedia articles don't mention that anyone protested or tried to fix the clerical error that caused this, but I can't imagine the town founders just shrugging and getting on with life. How hard would such a situation have been to fix, and are there any records of anyone trying to fix it?
I often see this sub being referenced in threads on other subs, and it's frequently misspelled, which is it's own form of tragedeigh.