Jade's Blog - Archived Entry

Two more things have been going on recently that people are told benefits them, but in reality, it benefits businesses.

One of them is this new check rule. On Thursday nights, I go grocery shopping at Walmart (I know that's wrong, but the day I get rich I'm never going there again). I write a check because I know that at 7 am Friday morning my paycheck will be in my bank account. Well, I guess I can forget about doing that. Bush just passed some new rule where checks are run right then and there. In fact, I'm not sure that it's supposed to benefit the consumer at all, but it's to help out the business by making sure they don't get written bad checks. That's fine and dandy, but say that your checkbook gets stolen. This new rule makes it virtually impossible to stop fraud so the money is gone before you can even do anything about it.

The next one is this overtime rule. Sure it is now including a few people that weren't eligible before. Before, if you made less than $238 a week you were eligible, however, now it is expanded to those making less than $455 a week. Great unless you have two or more people working under you, your job requires creativity, of if you are a salesperson who has to travel and is away from your physical place of employment. If you are a doctor, teacher, or lawyer you also get no overtime pay. Decision-making administrative employees are also ineligible for overtime. People with computer related jobs are ineligible.

Thankfully, this new overtime rule doesn't affect me, but it effects everyone in my family including my boyfriend and his family. So now when my boyfriend is staying late at work for the third night in a row this week, he's doing it for free. When my dad or my boyfriend's dad puts in another 65 hour workweek, that's 25 hours he's not getting paid for.

I wish I could get as angry as I used to about these issues, but now I just get heartburn. If I don't get my way in November, I'm going to need some Xanax.