CAT | It’s a Numbers Game
NEW YORK CITY-
At some point in each of our lives we will all go to great lengths to do something that we truly believe in. Sometimes it comes down to doing something for the principle of the matter, while other times we do it because we believe it’s our duty. Jury duty would be a great example of someone’s sense of civic duty. Despite jury duty being required by law, anyone with the desire and a lame excuse, can usually get out of jury duty, and many people take that route. But that’s not everyone, some people summoned for jury duty take it very seriously and will commit to the long, and sometimes thankless hours required to carry out their civic duty.
But it’s not only jury duty that people take seriously as their civic duty. Another example would be something most people take more seriously than jury duty, however, it’s not forced upon anyone by law, and is a right for most, but also a choice. Voting. In America no one is forced to vote, yet, most choose to because they want to have a voice. Take the case of voting in the Presidential Election every four years. As the saying goes, “Every vote counts,” and if you lump together many thousands of “every vote counts” you may have something that could actually matter. But no matter what anyone says, the odds of any individual vote making a difference in any Presidential Election is zero, after all, the Electoral College is really what decides who the next President will be. But I’m not here to educate anyone about how the President is elected, if you want to know that I would suggest a quick visit to Wikipedia, where you can look up the Electoral College.
But when it comes to voting for the President most people know that they don’t really have any say in the outcome, it’s more about making a statement and voicing their opinion. Still, despite the reality of it, most American citizens still take their right to vote very seriously. And please do not take the tone of this post the wrong way, I fully support every American casting their vote (and I do myself every election). The tone of this post is more to set up what the post is really about.
New Zealand-born Susan Scott-Ker and her Moroccan husband are American citizens. In fact, they had lived in America for 13 years on Green Cards, but got tired of their opinions not mattering, so they became American citizens (just a year before the 2008 Presidential Election) simply so they could vote and have their opinions finally count. But a few months after becoming American citizens Scott-Ker was transferred to India and as of October, 2008, the couple worked and lived in India. While there they had waited very patiently for their New York State absentee ballots to arrive in India so they could cast their ballots for the next President of the United States. As time went on and the ballots did not arrive they began calling around, including the American Consulate. They also considered hiring a round trip courier so they could get their ballots counted. Reality set in and they realized even if they had the ballots in hand, they would not have enough time to get them back in time.
The couple weighed their options and considered going on a vacation so they could kick back on a beautiful beach somewhere. Instead they jumped on a plane on a Tuesday evening catching a flight from Bangalore to New Delhi, about 1,100 miles. Then from New Delhi to Chicago, another 7,500 miles. By 5:30 on Wednesday morning, they had cleared immigration and customs at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, and flew the last 700 miles to La Guardia.
They were in New York six days before the election. The entire journey lasted 22 hours and covered 9,300 miles. They went nearly as far as humanly possibly in one direction around the globe, costing them $5,000, all for a right they so dearly wanted, and something many take for granted, the right to vote.
The moral of the story: This one’s twofold……You gotta do what you gotta do……..and no one ever has any excuse again not to vote (that is unless you hate both candidates, and that’s a whole different story).
© 2010 StrangeRush.com
Print This Strange Story
NEW YORK CITY-
Some things in life make no sense at all. This is another one of those stories that really leaves you scratching your head. You would think that someone had put some thought behind it, which would therefore make you think there is some logic behind it too.
Millions of Americans have been caught up in the ugly mortgage situation that has caused so many to lose their homes to foreclosure. Although, this story is not about someone losing their home to foreclosure, it does have some similarities.
Pasang Sherpa of Queens, New York was just your everyday immigrant trying to live the American Dream and make an honest living. Pasang just wanted to make his mark and provide for his family like every other hard working American. Pasang must have thought he won the New York State lottery when the city’s parks department auctioned off the rights to the most sought after vendor location at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He must have thought he had died and gone to heaven landing that sort of prime real estate. But in America, some say, nothing is that easy. There was a catch to this beautiful winning story. The annual rent for the spot Pasang occupied was a whopping $643,000 a year, nearly $54,000 a month to sell frickin’ hot dogs.
Okay, so I know the cost of living in New York is a lot higher than in other parts of the country, but let me do a little quick math. So $54,000 a month, is $1,800 a day, and say he works from dusk till dawn 7-7, seven days a week, that means poor Pasang would have to sell 150 hot dogs every hour for 12 straight hours. Let me switch the math a little. How much could a hot dog cost in New York? $3, $4, $5? Let’s be real generous and say a hot dog vendor standing in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art can sell his scrumptious dogs for $8 a pop (I’ve never been to NY, but I doubt it). At $8 a pop that would mean he has to sell 225 dogs a day or 28 an hour over 8 hours, or 19 an hour over 12 hours (quite possible)….but that’s just to pay his stinking rent. Again, I’m thinking $8 a dog is quite high and that does not even cover the cost of his supplies or any profit he may want to make as a business man trying to make a living and support his family in the great state of New York. No matter which way you look at it, no place in the world is worth $1,800 dollars a day to sell hot dogs, much less anything else.
As a small rebuttal against Pasang Sherpa, he had to have had some idea going in what the rent would be for that prime piece of hot dog real estate, and if so why on Earth would he get himself into something like that? He was finally evicted when he became $310,000 behind on his payments.
The moral of the story: When that cost of occupying a 10×10 piece of land is the same as the mortgage on a mansion it’s definitely time to move.
© 2010 StrangeRush.com
Print This Strange Story
North Texas-
I don’t smoke and never have, so I really don’t know what a pack of cigarettes costs these days. Just a guess…..$3 to $4? Ask Jon Seale of North Texas and he may give you an entirely different answer, because when Jon buys a pack of cigarettes he goes all out, sparing no expense to get the very best he can.
One day Jon went into a Wolfgang Puck’s, Five Sixty restaurant and bought a pack of cigarettes using his Wachovia Visa Buxx credit card. No big deal, he does it all the time. But when Jon went to check his credit card statement, he saw that he had been slightly overcharged for the smokes. To be exact, his bill was more than 2,000 the entire national debt of the United States of America. He was charged a nice round $23,148,855,308,184,500.00, also known as 23 quadrillion,148 trillion, 855 billion, 308 million, 184,000 thousand, 500 dollars. I am wondering, for that much money couldn’t he have bought the entire world? At the very least the restaurant where he bought the cigarettes?
Boy oh boy, it’s a really good thing he caught that mistake, otherwise poor Jon would have been in debt for a very long time. It’s not like Wachovia or Visa were going to call and say, “Oops, sorry but we overcharged you.” When was the last time a credit card company gave a shit about anyone? I thought this was a great story, and as I researched it the plot got a little deeper. I discovered that the same exact thing, and the same exact over charge also happened to Josh Muszynski of Manchester, New Hampshire. Hmmmmmm……Now I’m beginning to wonder……is there a conspiracy going on here between Wachovia and the tobacco companies?
In the end, Visa went on record as saying, “A temporary programming error at Visa Debit Processing Services caused some transactions to be inaccurately posted to a small number of Visa prepaid accounts. The technical glitch has been corrected, and all erroneous postings have been removed.” Good thing as I am sure Jon and Josh were really sweating it, just hoping and praying they wouldn’t have to hire lawyers.
The moral of the story: Always check your credit card statement.
© 2009 StrangeRush.com
Print This Strange Story
