Would you rather be paid by a salary or hourly if all else was equal?
You are absolutely correct. Salaries are often a "joke" because they limit the amount of money a person can make and can tie a person to working 60, 70 hour weeks. Salaries were big back in the 50's because they showed that the person had a stable job and financial security. Today, salaries are meaningless. Hourly wages are far more advantageous because they allow overtime and flexibility with hours. People that work 60,70 hours when they receive hourly wages want to, not are forced too. Finally, the only actual upside to salaries is that salaries usually means benefits. It's possible to get benefits with hourly wages, but it's not as common.
When do you tip even though you're not being waited on in the US? Is it appropriate for me not to tip even though I'm always prompted to do so when paying with a card?
I'm a 20% tipper usually rounded on the plus side for average service. I only do this as anyone who's worked in the service industry understands, servers are really underpaid in the US.Do I agree with this, not in principle. I still don't understand why restaurants are the only business in the US (no other part of the world) that makes their customers pay for their employees and are allowed to pay these employees less than minimum wage. Tips are supposed to make up the difference, but taxes are only paid on a fraction of them. It's just not a fair system all the way around.Like you state, it is frustrating when your doing takeout that a tip is expected. As much as I hate this, I still usually put $1 or $2 in the tip field of the bill for the cooking and assembly of the order. Much like I do a delivery tip, but usually that's in the range of $5 to $10. At a buffet, I tend to leave 10% because I serve myself, but there is always a coffee or water person running around.I don't see an end to tipping problems in the US as I don't believe there would be enough servers if they only made minimum wage and had to claim all their revenue for taxes. Employees love this as much as owners, because customers pay more!
Do actors/actresses get paid for an episode even though they do not show up in that particular episode (since they are generally paid per episode)?
Actors who have series regular contracts are paid for the number of episodes specified in that contract. For example, if the contract is ’10 out of 13,’ it means the actor will appear in 10 of the 13 episodes scheduled for that season, and if for some reason they appear in fewer than that, they will still be paid for that many.Guest and recurring actors are booked per episode, so they are only paid for the episodes they’re in. It is possible that a guest actor will be booked on an episode and later written or edited out, in which case they are still paid for the shoot but will not receive residuals.
Which sentence is grammatically correct, the customer has not paid, or the customer did not pay?
Let me tell you a standard secretarial practice taught to us in the 1970s (per Pitman’s Institute) regarding non-payment.It isn’t a matter of grammatical correctness — both your versions (has not vs. did not) are equally correct. But the two will lead to different interpretations with some significant consequences.“The customer has not paid.”This conveys the tone and perception that the bill merely remains unpaid by the customer. It usually doesn’t carry any connotation of the below.“The customer did not pay.”The ‘did not’ in this context to most native English-speaking ears carry the implication that the customer had refused to pay in some way. The word ‘did’ here makes the customer the direct action-maker of not paying up.By contrast, using ‘has’ carries the implication that the payment itself simply has not been done yet. So the focus then is centred on the payment (‘paid’) rather than the customer.And that is why trained secretaries will use constructions such as “the invoice has not been paid [yet]” or “the invoice is awaiting payment by the customer” rather than “the customer did not pay his invoice” or “we are waiting for the customer’s payment.”So the recommendation is “the customer has not paid [yet].”
Will government furloughed workers get back pay?
Probably. There are a lot of federal employees, and they vote. It’s common for them to feel like they take the hits when it comes to money because they are easy targets for both the President and the Congress. Congress will feel the guilt and work to save the votes.The government pays its employees enough to meet their basic needs without forcing them to seek outside employment. There’s enough sigma with government employment that it becomes more difficult to find comparable employment in the private sector; they’re locked in, so to speak. Private employment is not focused on providing the same kinds of broad spectrum services to the public, so the skills and attitudes are different.The things not reimbursed will be the fees for late payments for mortgages and credit cards. They won’t escape changes to their credit ratings. They will have to live with the stress of not having enough in their bank accounts to pay for food and gasoline. Why? Because most do live pay check to pay check. They may have savings, but it is tied up in their 401K-type of retirement program.So far, federal employees have not been stripped of some protections even though there is a threat to their freedom of speech from the President. There is a level of protection in federal service that does not occur in the private sector, so there is less need for savings. (The protection is necessary because politicians would threaten careers of employees who do not perform political favors. I know. I had more than one little politician threaten to have his Congressman fire me when I wouldn’t break the rules for him. I was safe in offering the politician the phone number to his Congressman!)Fortunately, my federal retirement pension is not affected, so far. After living through several shut downs, I wished that I had not entered government service even though I truly believed in the work that I was doing. There are no “thank you for your service” comments from the public. Politicians always blame the government for corruption and inefficiency even though most federal workers do their jobs very well. Gone are the days when government service was a highly respected job. There are no reimbursements for the intangibles lost in a shut down.
Are paid research assistants published, even if they are not pursuing a graduate degree?
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. When I was a 2nd year graduate student I worked as a paid RA for two of my professors who planned the study and did the major work of writing it up for publication. Even though I conducted the study and helped analyze the results, one of the professors refused to put me on the paper as a co-author because I was being paid, but at least I received an acknowledgement. In the succeeding years, I have been an author on about 200 articles. On some of those papers paid RAs have been authors, sometimes even first authors, but it didn’t depend on whether or not they were pursuing a graduate degree. Authorship depends more on one’s contribution to the manuscript than to their role in gathering the data or to whether or not they were paid for their effort.
Do regular actors with no lines in an episode still get paid for that episode?
A2A.Actors who are hired as series regulars have an episode guarantee built into their contract. This is something like “10 out of 13,” meaning that of the 13 episodes that will be produced in a given season, the actor will be paid for at least 10, regardless of whether s/he appears in them.It is possible (and was once relatively common) for recurring/guest actors to have contractual guarantees. However, it is very rare nowadays. These actors are almost always hired on a per-episode basis.