I love living in the world the books of my youth called "science fiction".

Not as much as Starbucks and Apple love having you in their demographic.

Not as much as Starbucks and Apple love having you in their demographic.

...or are they in mine?

(shifty eyes)

An interesting video.

A 1959 Chevy vs. a 2009 Chevy in a head-on offset collision test. No surprise which car does better, but it's pretty dramatic.

[link]

...or are they in mine?

Well, you just took money - legal tender in all 50 states - and put it in a card that says "may spend only at Starbucks." So Starbucks already has your future spending. They're making interest off it. And you can't buy a beer with your Starbucks card.

So I maintain that they have the shiftier eyes. And Apple makes that seem cool.

I've had Starbucks cards since the company introduced them, and my family is full of alcoholics, so drinking beer is a once- or twice-yearly thing. Coffee, though, is several-times-a-day.

Apple simply lets me continue doing something I've been doing for years in a shiny, candy-like fashion.

This is what you were doing instead of [other seemingly more urgent HR tasks]

That always seems to be the case with HR departments! (no offense, Scrappy.)

If the median household income in your area is X, what is a reasonable salary expectation for a single young professional to have?

I don't think they're corralative. Salary really depends on industry, years of experience, education level, the type of company (non-profit, small corporate, large corporate), benefits included, bonus and/or commission potential.

Location (as in cost of living for said location) is also a variable.

My suggestion is to find a professional association for the industry or job type and see if they have salary survey data. I did that at my old company and negotiated a decent raise based on industry, years of experience, size of company and location.

Sorry to be so snarkful about it SH, I just find those cards to be a deep and regrettable scam.

Sorry to be so snarkful about it SH, I just find those cards to be a deep and regrettable scam.

I didn't find it snarkful; I know there are both non-Starbucks and non-Apple folk around. Heck, until my Windows Mobile phone died on me (many, many times) while I was in Atlanta last month, *I* was a non-iPhone person.

I choose to spend money on coffee rather than other, more dangerous things to become addicted to. And if I can tie up my income in a coffee-only fashion, that guarantees I won't indulge in the stronger drugs the Seattle gay scene constantly pushes on me.

wrod. And so many Apple people are *so* annoying. (now, people don't generally need permission to be assholes, whatever the trigger is, but they really have internalized that whole "too cool for school" image.) But my posting about a computer problem is NOT your frickin' cue to step in and wax rhapsodic about your damn MacBook. Honest to god.ETA: Having Rahm Emanuel as my tag makes some conversations extra funny.