The Amateur Financier

Previously: There was good news and bad news about your latest attempt to use time travel to become rich without hard work or the need to wait for decades for your money to grow.  The bad news is that your grandfather ended up withdrawing your money and using it himself decades before you were born.  The good news is that he seems like he started a business with the money, so perhaps all is not lost…

As you talk to your aunts, uncles, and cousins at your grandfather’s birthday party, you begin to realize one of the biggest problems (if one of the generally unacknowledged ones) about using time travel to alter reality: you are out of sync with everyone you know, heck, the entire world.  Just about everything you say, from talk about current events to comments about which school your family members are attending, just gets you weird looks and weirder responses.  You decide to simply stop talking until you have time to closely scrutinize the history of the last fifty years and get on the same page as everyone else.

Still, you can’t resist trying to learn more about what your grandfather did with YOUR money.  He talked about a business he opened back in the sixties, and that it ‘changed his whole life’.  He didn’t mention any names, what the business did, or HOW it changed his life, although from the bored and knowing expressions on your other relatives’ faces, it’s a story that he told often enough that nobody needed to hear it any more.  Nobody but you, that is.

So, you attempt to subtly ask your relatives to share information about the business, without mentioning sports, politics, current events, or any personal information that would lead them to believe you’re not who you say you are.  (You can’t be sure that time travel exists in this version of reality; perhaps you’ll be mistaken as an identity stealing cyborg and dissected instead.)  It takes a while (none of your relatives particularly want to talk about Granddad’s business), but you eventually learn that it was called Omnicorp (an ominous company name if ever you’ve heard one, even more ominous than ‘Microsoft’), and it still seems to be in existence.

Excited, you decide to cut out all the middlemen and go directly to the source.  “Grandpa,” you ask, trying to sound curious but not completely ignorant, “tell me about Omnicorp.”  You think you’ve done alright; the question is vague enough that Grandpa can interpret it any way he wants, and will be unlikely to jump to the conclusion that you’re completely ignorant of the past five decades of family history.

“Well, well; I’m glad one of my grandchildren still wants to hear the stories from this old man,” he responds, beaming.  He proceeds to regale you with the story of how he used that sudden, unexpected wealth (YOUR money, you think with no small amount of bitterness that you play as close to your chest as possible) to start the Omnicorp, the ‘company that provides everything you need’ (somehow becoming even more ominous when you know the purpose behind the name).  He was planning to start with the consumer goods of the day that were becoming more and more essential to the average household, and gradually growing to be a major competitor in every technological field on the planet.

You give him credit; he has chutzpah, if nothing else.  Still, if the the business was still around, he must have done something right.  You aren’t in a giant compound, patrolled by bodyguards and decorated with gold and diamonds, so you’re guessing he never achieved his goal of a company that was tops in the incredibly large field of everything.  But even a small business, allowed to grow for decades, could still be influential and an excellent source of profit.

You want to ask what Omnicorp currently makes, but he speaks up before you have a chance, “You want to go visit the the factory?  This party’s starting to get a bit boring…”  You couldn’t ask for a better opportunity (or narrative convenience), so you readily agree and accompany him on a trip to the factory (he drives, so you don’t have to ask for directions to a place you should know how to reach).

You whistle in spite of yourself; the factory is big, really, really big.  You see the large ‘Omnicorp’ sign, and follow Gramps inside, still wondering what it actually produces.  Inside you see row after row of hamster cages, and you inadvertently flinch; there’s still so many memories of grooming hamsters.  You take a moment to remind yourself that these hamsters can’t talk, when you start to hear voices all around you.

You look around in surprise, glancing at your grandfather.  He’s standing next to a sign that says ‘Omnicorp: Proud Maker of Animal Translators Since 1978′.  Your mind reels at the implications; first, that animal translators actually exist, and second, that your grandfather has been making money off them since the time of disco (did disco even exist in this reality?  If not, they really dodged a bullet).  It just seems surreal (even more so than everything else that you’ve gone through lately).

You’re about to ask your grandfather all the questions burning in your chest, when a screen comes on next to him.  A dog appears, along with the crest of the President of the United States.  Your granddad, without missing a beat, says “Hello, Mr. President.”

Holy Hand Grenades, Batman!  Is a dog really the President?  Is he an improvement over the recent humans who’ve held the position in your original reality?  (It would be hard for him not to be.)  Is Roger losing the already tenuous connection between these stories and personal finance?  (Yep, it’s already gone.)  Find out on the next Wacky Wednesday.

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For most of us, the main motivation to get up and go to work in the morning is the desire for a pay check.  After all, that’s practically the definition of work; something you wouldn’t normally want to do, but are willing to do in exchange for money.  Yes, there are other reasons to work, from the chance to better all humankind to simply having something to do every day, but primarily, it’s all about the money.

That said, there are some jobs where the intangible benefits of the job itself make me think that I’d be willing to take them on without any compensation.  These ‘dream jobs’ are the type that I’d consider doing, even if they’d pay so little (if at all) that I’d have to take a second (and possibly third) job just keep food on the table while doing so.  Some of these jobs are…

Playboy Photographer: It’s hard to imagine a man who wouldn’t want to take on this particular task (with the exception of those men who’d rather work for Playgirl, that is); heck, it was one of Homer Simpson’s dream jobs, along with rock star.  With the possible exception of ‘Being Hugh Hefner’ (a job that is, alas, already taken), there’s few examples of employment that sound more appealing.  There is a slight risk, I suppose, that spending hours each day trying to get the best shots of attractive, nude women could wear on you, and the last thing you’d want to see when you go home is your significant other naked, but that’s the kind of risk I’d be willing to take.

Not a Playboy Photographer, as far as I know; but did you really think I was going to use a picture from Playboy?

Penthouse Photographer: Actually, I suppose this is rather similar to being a Playboy photographer.  Somewhat naughtier magazine, slightly less prestigious, but still, the photographers employed there get to spend all day taking pictures of nude women; it’s not a bad deal.  Let’s just lump all such positions into one ‘gets to take naughty pictures of attractive females’ job and move on from there.

*Flips through a few pages of the Dream Job list*  Wow, there were a lot more naughty jobs than I thought at first.  That might say more about me than about how good the job would actually be.  Ah, here’s a non-naughty one:

Ruler of the World: Another position where the fringe benefits vastly outweigh the actual duties and responsibilities of the job.  As Tears for Fears put it, “Everybody Wants To Rule The World”; there’s something about the thought of lording it over all humanity that appeals to our innate desires.  Admittedly, the actual job of ruling would likely be tough and require long hours; still, it’s hard to say that that would be enough to dissuade me from wanting to pursue the position.  Of course, I don’t need to shoot that high to gain power…

Ruler of a Small Island Nation: Perhaps trying to take over the world is a bit much; it’s a goal that has thus far thwarted everyone from Pinky and The Brain to Stewie Griffin, and they had the advantages of being cartoon characters to help them out.  No, maybe I should set my sights lower, on a single nation.  Preferably something small, out of the way, unlikely to draw much attention if it suddenly is taken over by a benevolent ruler.  Perhaps something in the South Pacific; if you’re going to rule over an island, why not one with a great climate?  Although, the native uprisings and all that international diplomacy could get tiring; still, it’s a darn sight better than working in retail.

Superhero: Strong, fast, muscular, and able to pull off skintight spandex; there’s a lot to like about the superhero profession.  Plus, you don’t get paid for doing it, making it a perfect fit for our list already.  It has its downfalls, as well; supervillains constantly trying to destroy the world, the country, the city, or you, personally.  Still, you don’t see many of them around currently, so maybe I’ll luck out if and when I develop super powers.  Of course, there’s always the alternative path…

Supervillain: Not a bad alternative; just an evil one.  Besides having many of the same advantages as a superhero, there’s also no need to be noble and refuse compensation for using your powers; that’s the whole reason why you’d use them, to derive a profit or gain power.  True, a life of crime isn’t for everyone, but it’s definitely worth some consideration.

Mad Scientist: Similar to supervillain, although even more dependent on my extreme, twisted intellect.  From re-animating the dead to building doomsday devices to…re-animating the dead some more, there’s a lot you can accomplish with nearly impossible science, a willing supplier of all the money and supplies you need, and an almost reckless disregard for the laws of man and nature.  Plus, shrink rays!  Everyone loves shrink rays!

That’s about it; the jobs I’d do for free.  Admittedly, the number of openings for these positions is fairly small; they wouldn’t be dream jobs if they were open to just anyone.  Still, if you happen to have an ‘In’ with Playboy (or wherever I’d go to get a job as a despot or super-powered comic book character), let me know; I’m ready and willing to start my dream job at any time.

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Previously, in our Wacky Wednesday series: You attempted to use the power of time travel (combined with compound interest) to become rich.  It worked, sort of; you were a billionaire, but even a cup of coffee cost millions of dollars.  Inflation having ruined your plan, at which point you decided to travel back to the past, only to discover that it’s impossible to withdraw your money to travel back in time and not invest it.  To survive in the future, you end up taking a job as a hamster groomer; it wouldn’t be so bad, if the hamsters weren’t such huge gossips.  Finally, you’re able to travel back to your own time; well, actually, the Time Cops caught you, pre-Hitler assassination, and forced you back.  What will you try now?

“Alright,” you say to yourself, “this time it’ll work.”  You’re just about to rent a time machine again, but this time, you’re going to do it right.  Rather than traveling to the unknown future (well, unknown to everyone who didn’t spend several weeks grooming talking hamsters), you’re going to travel to the past, invest some money in companies you know will be profitable, and then come back to the present to sell your stock and live large on the profits you’ve made.

You’ve picked 1960 as your target year; fifty years is a nice, round number, and will give your specially chosen stocks plenty of time to grow.  To avoid the problems you had last time, getting stuck in the future and all, you’ve bought the deluxe time travel package; six time jumps included, a total of three round trips.  You can have problems twice, and still manage to make your plan work.

You'll be a bit too early for Woodstock, though

You run one last check: list of stocks to buy, life savings (what you have left of it), address of secluded place to land your time machine and address of an old-fashioned brokerage house.  Confident that you have everything you need, you travel back in time, heading toward the brokerage.  You walk in, confidently asking to speak with a broker, and make your desire to open an account known.  The broker seems quite eager to have you as a client, and asks you for your ID to start the paperwork.

You pause, dumbfounded.  You realize that your ID won’t even be issued for another several decades; heck, you won’t even be born for a few decades more.  There’s no way you can buy stock using your ID without being arrested for fraud or locked up as a lunatic if you decide to share the truth of your time traveling nature.  You quickly excuse yourself, running back to the time machine to head back to the future.

STRIKE ONE!

When you’re safely back in 2010, you think of how to get your hands on an ID that will pass muster in the sixties.  Forgeries are too expensive, and you don’t know how to get your hands on one, anyway.  Then it hits you: your grandfather was a strapping young (well, younger, anyway) lad in 1960, one with a resemblance to you that all your family members keep commenting on; if you can borrow his Social Security Card and other old IDs, you could pass for him, and invest your money in his name.

It takes a minimum of effort to get Gramps to show off his old memorabilia, and just a bit more effort for him to allow you to borrow his old Social Security card and a late fifties dated driver’s license.  Convinced you can now buy and sell stocks to your heart’s content, you hop back in the time machine and jam to the past.

You again head to the brokerage house, and get the same broker, albeit a little more reluctant to work with the man who flaked on their last meeting.  Still, when you produce your authentic (if more worn than he was expecting) IDs, his mood lightens.  He readies the trade, and just asks you to produce the money to cover the purchase.

You smile as you pull the wad of bills out of your wallet and hand it over.  You smile disappears when he hands it back to you, frowning and asking whether you think it’s funny to waste his time.  Before you have a chance to say anything, he berates you for giving him clearly fake money, the work of a not so clever forger.  You don’t ask what he means; looking down at your cash, you realize it’s the re-designed, counterfeit resistant kind that’s been introduced in the past few decades.  Even if it didn’t look totally alien, it all has dates of 2000 or later on it, the sort of thing the broker would only see in Science Fiction films.  You excuse yourself, and run back to the time machine again.

STRIKE TWO!

You know you’ll only have one more chance at this; you vow to make it work.  You rack your brain trying to figure out where you can come up with a sizable amount of pre-1960 cash.  Most of the bills that old have been taken out of circulation or are being hoarded in safes somewhere; the coins are collectibles, rare pieces that fetch a high price now but will be nearly worthless back then.  As you ponder for a solution, it hits you: gold!  Buy some gold now, sell it in the past, and you’ll get 1960′s money without having to steal it from someone in the present!

You go to the nearest pawn shop, and buy as much gold as you can afford.  Hiding it until you get back to the time machine (you don’t want to be mugged), you hurry in order to get to the past.  One quick time jump, another trip to the pawn shop (this time in 1960) in order to liquidate your shiny treasure, and you’re ready for another meeting with your broker.

By this time, he’s rather perturbed with the whole situation; you’ve bailed on this purchase twice now, and he’s a busy man.  But when you produce a sizable amount of time-appropriate bills and lay them down on the table, his mood lightens; he tells you to have a good day, and you leave, convinced you’ve finally accomplished your goal.

You hop in the time machine, heading back to the future as you think of what you’ll do with your money.  You didn’t have that much to invest, but you chose companies that will grow at such an incredible pace that your money will double ten times over, at least, a thousand-fold increase when you finally withdraw it.  If that’s still not enough, you just have to be sure to keep some seed money to rent another time machine, invest the rest, and end up a millionaire all over again.

You arrive back in the present, and go to the brokerage to check on your ‘Grandfather’s’ account.  You’re surprised to hear that it was closed and emptied out decades ago.  You hurry to visit your grandfather, catching him as he regales his grandchildren (and a few great grandchildren) with some of his stories.  You don’t recall ever hearing this one; he tells of how he discovered one day in the early sixties that a brokerage had made a mistake, putting a few thousand dollars in an account with his name on it.  Of course, being the truthful sort he was, he attempted to convince them it was a mistake on their end, but when they insisted it was his, well, what was he supposed to do?  He took it out and spent it, of course!

STRIKE THREE!  YOU’RE OUT OF HERE!

Slumping along the wall, you realize that all your plans have come to naught, yet again.  Still, from the excited way that Grandpa talks about finding that money and what he did with it, you can’t help thinking that perhaps it was worthwhile, after all.  Bringing this much happiness to an old man must surely be worth something.  Also, if you heard correctly, you thought you caught something about a business he started with the remaining funds…

Will you learn more about Gramp’s business?  Does time travel always lead to trouble?  Does Roger like to do ongoing stories?  (The answer to that last one, by the way, is a resounding yes.)  Find out next Wacky Wednesday!

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You might think, after reading the title to this post, that I’ve lost my mind, or at least, am trying to boost my blog’s visibility on the search engines.  (For some odd reason, anything that involves young attractive women garners a sizable amount of attention.)  That’s not the case (well, the second one might be a tiny bit true); there’s actually a serious question to be answered here.

Specifically, that question is why, in our current legalistic, anti-discriminatory environment, can Hooters get away with hiring um, ‘highly qualified’ young women while keeping out the older women, the ‘less qualified’, and of course, men?  (By the way, I’m still looking for a job, so if any Hooters managers in the Northwest Pennsylvania area are hiring, give me a ring.)

The only 'Hooters' you're going to see in this article; sorry to disappoint.

In other businesses, there’s been a movement away from such hiring requirements.  To cite just one example, stewardesses (back before they were flight attendants) used to have a long list of qualifications in order to hold their position, from height and weight restrictions (arguably important when space is limited, as on early planes) to being women (that’s starting to get a bit questionable) to being young, attractive, and unmarried (can you see those qualifications ‘flying’ today without leading to protests and legal actions?).

Now, of course, such restrictions have all but disappeared in the flight attendant field; I’ve been on several flights, and the stereotypical beautiful female stewardess (launcher of a thousand ‘Coffee?  Tea?  Or Me?’ jokes) hasn’t appeared on a single one.  (More often than not, I have a male flight attendant; this is probably for the best, as my last flight was with my fiancee.)   Given all of this, why can Hooters use gender and ‘high qualifications’ as a hiring qualification while airlines can’t?

Bona Fide Occupational Qualifications

The answer is bona fide occupational qualifications.  Title 29, Chapter 14, Section 623 of the United States Code (wow, that’s a mouthful) allows companies and other employers to make particular qualifications a condition of employment, even ones that violate other sections of the anti-discrimination law, in situations:

where age is a bona fide occupational qualification reasonably necessary to the normal operation of the particular business, or where the differentiation is based on reasonable factors other than age, or where such practices involve an employee in a workplace in a foreign country, and compliance with such subsections would cause such employer, or a corporation controlled by such employer, to violate the laws of the country in which such workplace is located.

The goal of this subsection is to prevent anti-discrimination laws from forcing companies or other organization to make hiring decisions that would oppose the mission of said organization.  The Catholic church doesn’t have to hire non-Catholic priests, bus and plane companies can set age, eyesight and physical fitness requirements to ensure rider safety, and companies in countries that prohibit women from working can hire all men for their operations in those countries.

All of this gives Hooters the legal protection that they need to justify their hiring practices.  You can legally hire only attractive women to work in your wing and beer joint if they are necessary for the normal operation of the business.  (No argument from me; goodness knows that with all the places to get wings and beer, you need to have something to set your chain apart from the crowd.)

This hasn’t stopped several men from raising law suits regarding discrimination against men in Hooter’s hiring practices.  In response, Hooters has raised the bono fide occupational qualifications argument, that their qualifications for waitresses are needed for the business model to work.  (Again, when your business model is getting guys to come in, ogle girls, drink, and eat wings, it helps to have plenty of cute, attractive girls in skimpy outfits to facilitate the ogling.)  As a result, Hooters has added positions for men (again, I’m available), although for the waitresses, it’s still young, cute, ‘highly qualified’, and of course, female.

So, next time you head out to visit your local Hooters, remember: you’re not just trying to get drunk, eat wings, and stare at cute girls, you’re supporting an innovative business using a bono fide occupational qualifications methodology to support sales.  If that works on your wife, girlfriend, or other significant other, let me know; there’s no way I’m trying on Sondra without some proof.

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