Author: Kim du Toit

Work Ethic

Business, Snowflakes

What bullshit.  From Richard Littlejohn:

My nephew recently applied for a vacancy at a City institution. He got the job, even though he was over-qualified, because he was the only applicant prepared to turn up at least three days a week.

Apparently, the new corporate sin is “presenteeism” — the insistence that employees actually go to the company office to do their job.  Apparently, employees now have the “right” to tell the company when they’ll be most productive.  What a load of crap.

Listen:  I worked from home for over nine years (out of a working lifetime of over thirty) and even though I was as motivated as hell, I can tell you right now that I often goofed off.  Oh, the excuses were good:

  • the program I was running would take over two hours to run, so why not mow the lawn during that time?
  • the meeting was being conducted online (by phone;  we didn’t have Zoom or whatever back then), so I could get in the car and drive to the supermarket while listening in;
  • I didn’t want to be disturbed while working on a project, and so working at home meant that people wouldn’t interrupt me by coming into my office;
  • and so on.

The thing that’s common to all this nonsense is that people are conflating personal productivity with corporate productivity.  In the first example above, sure:  I could get something done that needed doing while waiting for the program to run — but what I should have been doing is other work-related stuff:  responding to emails, planning the next project — you know, doing company business while on company time.

I don’t buy any of this WFH nonsense.  If I were running a company, I would insist on 100% (5 days a week) office attendance, with work from home being allowed only on a case-by-case basis, and only at the employee’s manager’s discretion — his decision being final and absolute, not subject to appeal or revision.

“Oh but Kim, you’d never get anyone to work for you on that basis then.”

You know who would work for me under those conditions?  Men and women of age greater than 55, with all the work experience (i.e. requiring little or no training) who all understand that work is work, and that work needs to be done in the appropriate environment.  Not at home, where you can play video games while being on a Zoom call with a client.

I’d rather pay some old fart (or fartette) $45/hour and know that he’ll not only be there when and if I need him, but he’ll also understand the concept of loyalty and will stay with me for the next ten years;  as opposed to paying some supercilious little twerp $35/hour for him to be goofing off 50% of the time at home, and who will quit in two months’ time because someone offered him $37.50, or his manager “offended” him.

And I don’t want to hear any protestations of innocence and indignation from Gen Z, either.  I’ve been there and done that, I know how the game is played, and you won’t shame me by accusing me of “presenteeism” or some other spurious concocted offense.

Fuck you.  You want the job, you work where and when your employer tells you to.  Otherwise, feel free to pursue your precious career goals in the fast food industry, DoorDash, or as a “content creator” on your own website or OnlyFans.  Get out of the way, and leave business to serious people.

Dreams For Suckers

Marketing / Advertising

Here’s an irresistible offer assuming, that is, you want to live on Planet Manhattan:

For most, owning an apartment on the Upper West Side just minutes away from Central Park is an expensive dream.

However, New York City apartments in the prime location complete with hardwood floors and air conditioning, are being sold for as little as $174,000.  Studio apartments are estimated at $173,801, while one-bedroom flats will cost around $184,990.

But there is a catch. The cheap properties, located within a five-storey walk-up pre-war building, are being sold through a lottery open only to those earning below a certain income.  Only households with an annual income of around $150,000 or less – 120% of New York’s median income — will qualify for the draw.

Sounds good, dunnit?  The company is giving people of lesser income (that would be too little to afford to live in NYfC) a chance to get in there — a very laudable goal.  Read on:

Applicants must use the home as their primary residence and may not currently own or have previously owned a property.

That’s good.

Interested buyers must also have 5% of the purchase price to hand in order to make a down payment.

Also reasonable.

Those looking to get their hands on one of the 17 units in at 165 West 80th Street must enter the draw by the deadline on August 27.

That’s kinda soon for a purchase of this magnitude, don’t you think?  (Anyone who’s ever bought a car will recognize this little line;  “Offer only good through this weekend!” or “There are two other guys interested in this deal.” )

…which brings me to my next point.  Most likely, there are going to be far more buyers than apartments, what finance people call “oversubscribed” in the market.  Which is fine, but my antennae — already twitching — lead me to ask one simple question:

Does one have to purchase a ticket or pay some kind of fee to enter this particular little lottery?

Because if so, the organizers are going to make a shitload of money from the potential buyers before the first apartment is sold because regardless of the ticket price, there are likely to be hundreds of thousands of applicants wanting in on the deal.

If not, and the entry is based solely upon proof of financial qualification, then all is well, more or less.

But I can’t but help thinking that there’s a scam in all this, somewhere.  As the old (and wise) saying goes:  when a deal is too good to be true, it usually is.  And apart from the obvious question (who would want to live in a five-floor walk-up in Manhattan nowadays?), this one seems to be just that.

I’ve seen apartments in Manhattan, and most are absolute shit — especially in older buildings.  Offering a “floor and A/C” isn’t much, and if the place needs substantial work — at Manhattan-level prices — then the deal is going to cost a ton of money.  And if the organizers have already refurbished the apartments –also at Manhattan-level prices — then how are they going to make money on so low a price?

Feel free to argue the point, in Comments.

Blackmail, Pure And Simple

Men & Women

It appears that I’m not alone in hating this recent trend of a guy surprising his girlfriend by proposing to her in front of a large crowd of people.

Public proposals appear to have added an extra fear factor for women hoping to stay out of the spotlight and avoid online ridicule for saying no.

Rejection videos shared online are met either with support or shaming, demanding a ‘yes’ to save their partner humiliation.

Actually, I think that any asshole who subjects his future wife to this kind of emotional blackmail deserves the public humiliation if she rejects him.  And if she wants to show her rejection in a more ummm aggressive manner, that’s her prerogative.

You may disagree with me on this, but you’d be wrong.

Innocent Times, Part 4

Classic Beauty, Funny Stuff

…in which we continue to look at earlier, more innocent times.  That said, some of the cartoons below were not so innocent — and probably couldn’t get published today.

Which. of course, is why I’m posting them.

From the H.R. files:

In Medical Ethics:

And in the Groves of Academe:

Another from H.R.:

In Sporting News:

And In Flagrante Delicto:

See you all next month.

Forgot to mention:  if you want to see the first couple of these, use the “Search” function at the top of the page and just type: Innocent Times then hit Enter.

That Garage Thing Part 1 – The British Invasion

Drive Time

Former Drummer Knob wrote to me, enclosing a listing for a house in Plano, and mischievously asked:  “It’s in your neighborhood.  Would you buy it?”

I have no idea why Knob would be looking at a house in Plano (from his penthouse in Monaco), but whatever.  I’ve shared the link but by the time this is posted, it will probably already have been sold — houses in the swanky Willow Bend neighborhood seldom last long on the market.  Still, it provoked a train of thought in me because, unusually for a house in the $2.5 million range in that area, it had four garages (most have only two or three).

You can probably guess where this is taking us, because I’m a total slut when it comes to cars and my likes and loves change quite promiscuously depending on what I happen to be looking at.

Nevertheless, I’m currently locked on a mindset which asks the question:  “If I wanted to escape the modern trend in cars of electronic everything, basically a four-wheeled laptop which has the added benefit of spying on your every move, would I be prepared to sacrifice some of the modern characteristics, e.g. reliability or handling, for that freedom?”

And the answer is, “Yes.  But I’d have to have backup.”

It’s no good having a car you love and adore when it’s in the mechanic’s hands and you need to make a grocery- or liquor store run.  One funny guy remarked on these very pages that if you collect vintage cars, you actually need more than one, for this precise reason.  (“Two is one and one is none… actually, sometimes even three is none.”)

But a 4-car garage certainly gives you the opportunity to indulge yourself.

So here’s my current list — for some reason I’m on a British kick at the moment, so a couple may be familiar from recent posts — of three desirable beauties that would make parts of me throb every time I opened the garage door:

1966 Austin Healey Mk III

1956 Jaguar XK140

!968 Jag E-type Series 2

Alert Readers will notice some similarities:  stick shift, wooden dashboard, leather seats etc.

“But Kim,” I hear, “didn’t you say you had a four-car garage available at your lottery-winning house in Plano?”

Indeed I did.  But given the history of the above three when it comes to reliability, I would have to have a car that would be absolutely guaranteed to start every time I turned the key, and for that, I’m afraid I’d have to forsake British cars because

Yup, I’d have to go Japanese if I wanted a supremely-reliable sports car.  And here it is:

1999 Acura (Honda) NSX

All the performance I’d ever need, matchless reliability, and as befitting its relative modernity, in crass shouty-yellow.  Also with a stick shift, of course.

But I know that some people are going to laugh at my fondness for old British cars, so next week I’ll go all-European, applying the same criteria for my selections.