The problem with putting ninnies and shysters in charge of important things is that it trickles down. Everyone starts to think it’s okay to mess with people. Perhaps it’s just part of a great dumbing down here in America. It gets hard to tell the difference between fools and rip-off artists, ninnies and shysters. Here’s a few examples you might find out there.

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Get paid more by earning less — A ride share company does this to their drivers. They call it Priority Mode, and they promise drivers will earn more by taking less for each ride when this feature is turned on. How? Because you get priority over other drivers, so you will get more rides. That’s right, not only will you earn less per ride, you will work more.

What is really going on? Presumably, you get less for the ride because you take it from another driver who is closer to the pickup location. The passenger waits longer, and you get less money per mile. Your active time increases, so your earnings can increase up to 15% an hour, they claim. But are you really earning more? Once you figure in mileage, probably not. The full 15% on $20 per hour, would be $3 more — except you drove more miles: 5 extra miles an hour at 67 cents a mile is a $3.35 deduction from income. You potentially just used your car for a net loss.

Once everyone turns on priority mode, then you are back to square one with all drivers earning less. No problem! Here’s super priority mode! Someone is a ninny here, either the driver who turns it on or the ‘genius’ shyster who came up with it — ‘be damned’ the dubious ethics.

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The late fee when no payment was missed — is this now normal for internet companies? Watch for it if you move their service ”for free” to a new location. They create a new account leaving you in limbo unable to pay the old balance because no bill is due yet and you can’t have a credit on your account. Then the new account is billed after the first of the month with the late fee from the old account already on it. A call with customer service leads you to a company suck-up named “Ralph” who sounds like some guy in India. Even though he can’t find a bill where you missed a payment, he says you knew it was due at the first of the month. Damned be if you couldn’t pay it because no bill was pending.

It’s almost enough to make you go to one of their stores and pay the small fee with pennies. A simpler option is to pay by check with the memo “Bogus Late Fee”, forcing them to process the payment separately, and giving their payment processor a chuckle. Why doesn’t the company just have a moving fee rather than adding a bogus late fee? Simple enough and no need to lie about a ‘free move’.

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On the subject of moving, ninnies and shysters abound in apartment rental offices. It’s like they are always trying to find ways to charge you for stuff, before backing down and acting all nice if you challenge them on it.

There’s a walk-through to be done, but no one is there for the appointment. So you go ahead and leave the keys in the office one day before the lease is scheduled to end. They do the walk-through the next day without you and never call. Then there’s an extra day added to rent. Now you gotta go and talk to them.

It goes something like this….

Why the extra day? — An extra day was added to rent because you turned in your keys a day early. — But that doesn’t make sense, adding a day because I left a day early? — Well, we could have charged you a $150 fee for turning in your keys early and abandoning the apartment. — I turned in my keys at the walk-through time that you scheduled, and the person wasn’t here to do it. — Okay. I did remove that but there’s $100 in damages. — Why didn’t anyone call about the walk-through? All those damages are listed on the move-in form.

Then you move into a new apartment and your assigned parking space is 100 yards from your door while other open spaces are closer. You ask to change that and are told that you have to go to a doctor and get an ADA reasonable accommodation letter, otherwise there’s nothing that can be done. …Really?

And so it goes.

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It may seem ‘whiny’ to complain about these ‘little things’ while people’s houses burn down, the fools on the hill randomly fire people in the name of efficiency, and wars and cease fires happen like it’s part of a video game. But it’s these little things that rankle the most sometimes. In earlier times company employees were kind and pushed back against the corporate grift, now they are mean and embrace corporate greed over the individual.

Do these shills have a fantasy that the corporation will share the riches for their loyalty? The reality is that the riches are rarely shared, and if you stick with them you slowly get turned into a shyster. You might end up such a ninny that retiring will never feel right. You’ll be elderly in some position of power trying to make up for all your shyster-ing  — trying to reign in all the fraud and abuse you imagine around you. Yet it’s really just a response to all the forgotten fraud and abuse and lies you’ve been part of in your own life. Retiring never felt right because you are subconsciously trying to save your soul before the final judgement at the pearly gates. Good luck with that.