Company decided to only hire part time cleaning staff. Low pay. No benefits. Didn’t do background checks either.

They came in after everyone left.

One of them was huge on identity theft.

He went through everything in the office. HR was really lax about locking things up. Passwords written on the bottom of keyboards. Or on post it notes.

700 employees there.

He had all our banking info. Social Security. Drivers License. We did lots of work travel so he had banking and credit card info. Insurance info. All the info on our applications.

He was handing all that off to his criminal buddies. Redirecting direct deposit. Buying stuff. Insurance fraud. Moving money out of retirement accounts. It was a nightmare.

He was coming to work everyday like nothing was going on. They had all the passwords. They eventually sold all that to hackers. Trying to throw off the police.

The company had to buy us all life lock. I had to change every account I had. It was unbelievable. They ran up credit card debt. Stole money out of accounts. Direct deposit went to offshore accounts. Took out car loans and home equity loans using employee info.

One part time custodian did all that.

He got six years in prison. A bunch of other people were arrested.

That was 15 years ago. I have to still have extra security. All my info is out there forever.

The company tried to save some money on payroll.

Ended up spending millions fixing all that.

I’m a Navy Veteran. Anyone who claims Navy Recruit training is difficult has no basis in reality.

That being said, I’ve only heard this from Army guys, but I’ve heard it a few times, so my guess is it is true. About 50 miles from where I live is Fort Leonard Wood. Some call it “Fort Lost in the Woods.” Many Army recruits begin their journey there. On to the story. The day began with a march. The platoon was told they would be camping out and doing field training-or whatever it’s called. After marching several miles, the platoon finds itself on top of a beautiful Ozark hill in the early afternoon. The Drill Sargent then tells them, as soon as you get your tents set up and fox holes dug, you can knock off for the day and relax. For any branch of the military, an afternoon of loafing around it boot camp is music to the ears.

However, much like every other hill in South Central Missouri, the ground is a very thin layer of dirt and dead leaves on top of dolomite rock.

I have no idea how they dug them fox holes, but locals would likely use ANFO or Tannerite.

Two dishes are commonly known as the most difficult tests for a world class chef:

That’s right; the stuff you’ve served at home countless times.

Why soup and eggs? They are so simple, and that’s exactly why they are so difficult.

There is no way to cover up a mistake or a mis-step. There is no where to run and no other ingredients to hide behind. There is precisely one way to do it correctly and millions of ways to mess it up irreversibly.

You may think “I cook that all the time,” but really most people don’t really make these things from scratch (canned soup doesn’t count as “cooking”), and most people do a horrible job of making eggs at home.

If your boiled eggs look like this:

you’re doing it wrong…

Properly boiled eggs look like these:

(Shown top to bottom: hard boiled, soft boiled, and runny-soft boiled)

That little gray/green ring around the yolk means it’s over-cooked and now you’ve dried out the yolk to the consistency of chalk.

Making perfectly cooked eggs is hard… most people just don’t know what properly cooked eggs look or taste like so they don’t realize when they do it wrong.

PS: Because I’ve had to repeat this in the comments…

1) Eggs means eggs in general; not just boiled eggs. Different chefs use different egg dishes as a measuring stick. Gordon Ramsey makes every new chef he hires cook him scrambled eggs, Wolfgang Puck and Thomas Keller prefer omelettes, etc… I used boiled eggs as an example because there is a visually obvious way to show when they have been badly burnt; the grey/green ring around the yolk.

2) No, a properly cooked boiled egg does not mean it has to be “soft” or “runny” or “under cooked.” A properly cooked egg can be “hard boiled;” which means it is fully set (no jelly like liquids inside). It’s just relatively difficult to get to “hard boiled” without accidentally over cooking and burning the eggs. Most home cooks/restaurants lack the knowledge, skill, or time required to do it correctly. Apparently as a result, a sizable number of people have started to incorrectly assume that an egg has to be burnt beyond recognition (aka cooked till that grey ring appears) in order to be “hard boiled.” However, nothing could be further from the truth.

Just like a steak, eggs can be correctly cooked to a range of “doneness.” If you like your steak well done or your eggs hard boiled that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with that and it’s a perfectly valid request. However, just like a charred lump of crumbling ashes is not the same as a “well done” steak, a boiled egg with a grey/green ring around the yolk is not the same as a “hard boiled” egg.

3) Because some people asked; I personally started to steam my “boiled” eggs. I found it to be a more consistent and slightly forgiving process that requires less active attention.

I used this method as a baseline and tweaked it a bit to my needs:

Perfect Hard-Boiled Eggs Recipe

They did a lot of experimenting to come up with that method:

How to Make Perfect Hard-Boiled Eggs | The Food Lab

Like, me personally? My plan is to have enough money that it’s not really a problem for me, then die.

So far, my plan is working out great! We replaced our central AC two summers ago. Our old one wasn’t even bad, but the government was taxing the hell out of the freon it required, and it had a small freon leak in it (from a small nail I drove into a wall, not realizing that the AC pipe was behind it), and I got tired of paying for the refills. So I upgraded.

Actually, we have two AC units in this house. The big one, and then a smaller one for just our enclosed back porch. That’s a dual AC/heat unit. I can sit on my extremely energy inefficient enclosed back porch on the hottest day of the summer, or the coldest day of the winter, and be perfectly comfortable.

On a side-note, when I was a child, my father used to act like running the AC was super expensive and our opening the door to go outside and play made all of the expensive, cold air in the house immediately leave. I have vivid memories of him insisting that my sister and I pick a side of the door to be on, and stay there, to keep the air in the house. Once I got my own house, I realized that my father was being a little dramatic about it. It’s like, at best, $150 per month to keep my house cool during the hottest summer months. Like $5 per day to keep myself comfortable. It’s more than worth it.

Anyway, my plan is to keep this up for the next 20–40 years, then die.

But what about my kids, you ask. Not to worry. My plan of leaving them enough money that they, too, can afford comfort in a climate-changed world is also going well. As long as my children don’t screw up their own futures via really shitty decision making, they should be in the position I’m in now when they are my age: comfortably upper-middle class. Or, at least, able to replace their central AC units without going into debt for it.

If you meant “how would I handle climate change if I were in charge of all of humanity,” then I would shift a lot of focus (and money, the motivator of focus) into engineering our way out of it.

That is, not just renewable energy, but actually reversing the damage that’s already been done.

Too much CO2 in the air? Motivate people (with money) to engineer ways to remove CO2 from the atmosphere quicker than it is done naturally. Or, if the problem is that the CO2 is trapping too much sunlight in the atmosphere, reducing the amount of sunlight coming to the atmosphere could also be a solution. Something large and space-based to literally block the sunlight.

Renewable energy options exist, but people aren’t buying them? Make their purchase a 100% write-off on taxable income. For example, I read this week that Ford is going to discontinue the all-electric version of its F-150, because of low demand. The base model for that truck costs $55k. If someone spends $55k on that truck, just make all $55k a tax write-off from their income. Watch demand for that truck skyrocket.

Another good option would be to make renewable energy profitable for the average person. I have a house that’s hooked up to the electric grid. My house has a roof. I could easily put solar panels on that roof, but I’m not motivated to. I’d be much more motivated to do that if I could actually sell the electricity they produced to the grid, thus turning a profit from my own roof.

There are dozens of little things the government could do to motivate people to make better choices for the climate. They just need to use more of a carrot approach, and less of a stick. Less punishing people (via higher taxes and fees) for making bad choices, and more rewarding people (via lower taxes and profit) for making good choices.

My grandfather was a car mechanic and he was specialized in British cars.

He had joined the Resistance in Antwerp, made weapons for them (later he would make weapons for the famous company FN Herstal), and was highly regarded by British Intelligence (his wife was a spy for MI6).

In September 1944, Antwerp was liberated. The British were short on mechanics and he joined the Royal Army Service Corps. He had his own mechanic shop and all the tools to work on British vehicles (Imperial System versus Metric System).

Then came the Americans in October 1944 to help defend against the German V-Weapons. He joined the US Army to help out.

By now, he had hired several people and was expanding his business. Since he paid these people out of his own pocket, which was not reimbursed by either the British or the Americans, he decided to pay himself in jeeps and trucks.

With literally tens of thousands of them all over the place, nobody kept track … so quite a lot “disappeared” and were parked in a nearby forest. This was by no means suspicious as everyone assumed it was for camouflage. He wrote them off as “having been used for spare parts” … nobody cared.

In December 1944, he was drafted in then Belgian Army. Told them he was a mechanic with his own workshop, and got to work from home.

By now, he had his own transport fleet and began “organizing” all sorts of supplies for the civilian population … in other words, he ran the local black market.

Not only did he have three military pays, not only did he make a shitload of money on the black market, he also ended the war with enough trucks to start a transport company.

That is how family made its fortune.

If the Germans had known, he would have been awarded the Iron Cross.