So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[tonyb]

What she ^^^^ said.

And if the palliative care has the unintended effect of expediting the death, well, at least the poor beast was comfortable when it happened.

The difference between such a scenario and deliberately ending the life is akin to opting for a risky surgery. If the choice is either going into a surgery that has a 50-50 chance of killing you on the table, or opting against the surgery knowing that without it you'll very likely be a goner within the month, well, it's hard to fault the surgeon for "ending your life" a couple three or four weeks early. In the case of palliative care, the aim is not to kill the patient, but that very well might happen if the patient is already in such a diminished condition that the medications hasten his demise.

 

[Stearmen]

I've only gone into a shop twice with a cat - both times, cat was in a carrier. Once when I took the girls home for the first time, stopping off to buy some bits in a pet shop, the other just last Friday, picking up some kitteh treats on the way home from the vet with a poorly Marlene. Cats, of course, are a rare thing indeed to be seen out in public with their humans. Dogs you do, but not in and out of shops the same. Living in London, I rarely see big dogs. Mostly in my part of town people live in flats and keep small, yappy-type dogs.

Edward, maybe if you had a cool vehicle, your cats would want to be seen in public with you! [video=youtube;DS2TLgQiqR0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DS2TLgQiqR0[/video]

 

[p51]

In my hometown in Florida, there was a well-known guy who carried his dog on his motorcycle. The pooch had goggles and really seemed to love riding. You'd see the guy often on the roads.
If you ever see the movie, "Something Wild" with Jeff Daniels and Melanie Griffith, Daniels encounters the guy at a phone booth (the movie was filmed in my town, and my Dad was asked to have a cameo role as well). The dog growling at Jeff Daniels was dubbed in. The owner of the pup was quick to tell people that after the movie came out.

 

[swanson_eyes]

Here's a new one for the thread: one of my neighbors is in the shower for 45 minutes at a time. I don't pay the water bill directly but I know the management company has been trying to get us to save water. But people don't and it's one of the reasons rent keeps going up.
More than that, I support the Water Project and I grew up in a state prone to drought. I save water wherever I happen to live. I might be in that shower for 20 or 30 minutes, but the water isn't running unless it needs to be. I have 2 feet of hair and I use less water than some of these people. *sigh*

 

[Fading Fast]

Here's a new one for the thread: one of my neighbors is in the shower for 45 minutes at a time. I don't pay the water bill directly but I know the management company has been trying to get us to save water. But people don't and it's one of the reasons rent keeps going up.
More than that, I support the Water Project and I grew up in a state prone to drought. I save water wherever I happen to live. I might be in that shower for 20 or 30 minutes, but the water isn't running unless it needs to be. I have 2 feet of hair and I use less water than some of these people. *sigh*

The tragedy of the commons (not exactly, but kinda). The only solution to things like that are individual metering, but having lived in well-over ten apartments in my life, I've never seen that done for water.

I grew up with a depression era dad who had us turn the shower water off while we soaped up and where it was a capital crime to run water when brushing your teeth, so I hear ya, but some subset of the population will waste something if they think someone else is paying for it - even if, as you wisely note, it redounds back to them in some way such as in higher rent.

Whenever some group of people can use a resource that they believe someone else is paying for - again, even if it comes back at them later or indirectly - some subset of that population will be brutally wasteful.

 

[Stearmen]

People can learn to save! We were on water rationing during our drought, they would charge you a lot more when you used to much. It worked, we are still using less water, even though the restrictions were lifted! I have been sticking to the old designated watering days, and so are most of the people I know.

 

[swanson_eyes]

Whenever some group of people can use a resource that they believe someone else is paying for - again, even if it comes back at that later or indirectly - some subset of that population will be brutally wasteful.

And that seems to be their only consideration. It seems wrong to waste water when I know women and children in other countries hike for miles to get water--dirty water that makes them sick and kills thousands of children a day. Maybe it's not so trivial after all.

 

[tonyb]

This points to the problem with absolutists of any stripe.

Water gets shut off to households that haven't paid their bills for months on end, after several warnings and offers to arrange for payments on outstanding balances, and sure enough, here come the cries of "water is a basic human right!," as though uttering that phrase is all that needs to be said on the subject.

No one wishes to deny another human safe drinking water, nor a clean, comfortable place to tend to certain basic human bodily functions. But such things aren't heaven sent. It takes a whole lotta infrastructure and human effort to make these things happen.

More than a decade ago my wife and I briefly hosted an exchange student from a former Soviet bloc country. Like the other host families, we were told that the kids might have to be reminded to turn off the tap water. Back in their home countries residential users weren't directly billed for water usage, which had some people regarding that water as cost-free as the air they were breathing.

We would all rather that people would always do the right thing because it's the right thing to do. And we all know that expecting people to actually do that is a purely magical way of thinking.

 

[LizzieMaine]

At the theatre we have timed bathroom taps that shut the water off after ten seconds. This isn't a new idea, either - in our gas station, built in 1940, the restroom taps were spring loaded and would shut off automatically the instant you took your hand off the handle.

 

[dh66]

At the theatre we have timed bathroom taps that shut the water off after ten seconds. This isn't a new idea, either - in our gas station, built in 1940, the restroom taps were spring loaded and would shut off automatically the instant you took your hand off the handle.

Aaaaand cue the Legionnaire's disease and Pontiac fever. The former a deadly, pneumonia like infection, the latter less severe, that are caused by bacteria that grow in domestic water supplies. Both are easily flushed out and down the drain every time the water is run, but the problem - as it turns out - is that the water doesn't run long enough with these self metering fixtures to adequately flush out the bacteria colonies growing inside them. Two steps forward, one step back. Over the last couple of years I have swapped out who knows how many for the old fashioned kind in commercial and institutional properties, in addition to becoming far too familiar with on-site water treatment systems to cover what's not being adequately treated by municipal suppliers. Which is the lesser of two evils, wasting water by letting it run the whole time hands are being washed or teeth brushed, or some one elderly or immuno-compromised ending up sick or dead?

But please don't take this as my condoning 45 minute showers. As a matter of fact, someone is MORE at risk from a long shower than a hand washing or teeth brushing, as the infections result from breathing the mist and airborne water droplets. That's an argument, if ever there was one, to make that shower quick.

 

[Fading Fast]

At the theatre we have timed bathroom taps that shut the water off after ten seconds. This isn't a new idea, either - in our gas station, built in 1940, the restroom taps were spring loaded and would shut off automatically the instant you took your hand off the handle.

I remember those - as someone who has worked in pre-war office buildings and rented in pre-war apartment houses (plus gone to many pre-war bars and restaurants) for over three decades, I've have encountered those many, many times. They are the old tech equivalent of the new tech hand sensor ones that I'm seeing in more and more offices (you get several seconds of water and then they shut off until you wave your hand over the sensor).

Sometimes those old spring loaded ones were set too fast (or wore out with time) and by the time you turned it on and repositioned your hands under them, they turned off - washing your hands ended up looking like a bad slapstick act.

As to Tony B's post - that ties back to my "tragedy of the commons" post. If people don't pay the bill for something, some subset of that population will think the resource is "free" or, even if they don't, they won't care since it isn't costing them anything.

 

[2jakes]

Grew up in small town & didn’t noticed how bad the “drinking water” was until I moved to the
big city.


And in another country south of us. I stayed in a fine hotel with excellent cuisine .
Even had clay tennis courts which is my favorite surface.
The hotel provides “safe” water for the tourists.

Got up early one morning & saw the hotel help refilling the water containers from a water hose ! :eusa_doh:

Luckily my stomach has built a resistance...but I felt sorry for the rest.

 

[p51]

Grew up in small town & didn’t noticed how bad the “drinking water” was until I moved to the big city.

I grew up with well water in North Florida. I now live in the Pacific NW and in a small town, but with 'city' water from the town pumps. The water we have now is leaps and bounds better than it was when I was young. My teeth are permanently stained a light yellow from the mineral content of the water. The older I get, the lighter the staining gets. I probably should do a whitening thing on my teeth but it's not nearly as bad as it used to be.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Well water around here is a crapshoot -- the groundwater in so many areas is full of benzine from leaky gas station tanks and other sources, so city water is generally much cleaner and healthier. Plus the flouridation means that it's a normal thing for kids to grow up without ever having had a dental cavity.

 

[p51]

In the news, I actually side with the person who didn’t leave a tip: http://www.msn.com/en-us/foodanddrink/foodnews/customers-tip-server-with-lol-instead-of-actual-money/ar-BBm3hrJ?ocid=ansmsnfood11 The diners had to wait an hour for food and she expects a tip, still? She should consider herself lucky that this is all they did. “Hey, I gotta pay my bills,” huh? Hey, not my problem. I once got service so terrible (and food to match) at a restaurant in Pennsylvania, that I went to the manager and explained that I wouldn’t paying at all for those reasons and that he’s lucky I wasn’t asking him to pay me for having to endure it all. Really, it was that bad.
I'm sick to death of the tipping mentality people have these days. I work by backside off and have worked in the service industry when I was younger and in all that time, I've never gotten a tip of any kind.
I think this says it best for me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-qV9wVGb38

 

[2jakes]

The biggest tip I ever received was a $20 bill
when I worked in Beverly Hills posh ladies shoe salon.
Those women were very demanding, picky, flirtatious but so arrogant that whatever beauty they possessed was lost for me.
Not having any experience in shoes or selling, all I could provide was to be polite & listen to what they said.

I only lasted 2 days & I quit the job. The mgr. told me that it wasn’t so much the selling of the shoes, but rather the
extras like the polish cleanser, shoe wax etc.-etc. which he felt I wasn’t pushing hard. [huh]

 

[LizzieMaine]

I won't ever stiff a waitress on a tip, no matter how slow the restaurant. She has no control over what happens in the kitchen, and is probably being paid squat besides. Of course, I don't go to high class restaurants, but I wouldn't even stiff a waitress in the greasiest of greasy spoons.

 

[Hercule]

Anymore, especially with prices having skyrocketed in recent years, I'm of the same mind as p51 above. My wife and I had an argument over this just this morning in fact. After dropping my son off for the first day of school we went out to breakfast. It came to $21.30 for the two of us (we both had omelets). And I wanted to leave three dollars and maybe a bit of change for a tip but my wife insisted on leaving a five. Maybe I'm just being cheap, but this is a mom and pop place that about two years ago nearly doubled their prices overnight (they also cut back their hours, now just serving breakfast and lunch. The waitresses don't get the tips directly, they go into a pot which is distributed among all the wait staff. Somehow the obligation to leave a tip just burns me and it always has.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The waitresses don't get the tips directly, they go into a pot which is distributed among all the wait staff.

In such cases, refusing to leave a tip has no impact on the management of the restaurant, with whom you have your beef, at all. The only ones getting stuck are the people who are most likely working for a sub-minimum wage and have no authority over the setting of prices.

The International Workers of the World are quite involved right now in organizing waitstaff in a number of cities to put an end to this nonsense. More power to them, I say.

 

[2jakes]

I won't ever stiff a waitress on a tip, no matter how slow the restaurant. She has no control over what happens in the kitchen, and is probably being paid squat besides. Of course, I don't go to high class restaurants, but I wouldn't even stiff a waitress in the greasiest of greasy spoons.

I don't go to fancy restaurants. I prefer my favorite spots where I know I will enjoy good food & service.
I show my appreciation with a good tip.

But in an ice cream shop where you stand up & place your order.
By the register is a glass jar with a hand-written sign that says “tips”.
I asked the clerk what was the reason for the jar & money.

He replied, “ I’m not really sure...but that’s where people drop their change.”