I need you to switch servers because I refuse to pay the host and they could shut us down



  • I found this funny:  My boss calls me this morning (despite it being, you know, a holiday weekend, not that this bothers him as he called me on Christmas Day because a server was running slowly) reminding me that I need to switch over some of our servers at work.  They currently run on Amazon EC2 and I guess he didn't estimate the cost prior to getting started on this "cloud" stuff, so now he wants to switch to regular dedicated servers because they're cheaper.  Okay, that's not the WTF.  The WTF is he reminds me time is of the essence here because he owes Amazon like two thousand bucks and doesn't want to pay them, so he's afraid they're going to shut the servers down and wants them transferred before that.  As a matter of fact he's dissolving the current company and starting up a new one this coming week presumably to avoid paying anything should Amazon (or any other creditors) try to get the money from him.

     I love how some people think that they shouldn't have to pay the same as everybody else but deserve some kind of special treatment.   And I love how he's afraid they'll shut him down... well duh, if you refuse to pay your hosting bill of course they'll shut you down!


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    I see another potential WTF. Are you on call?



  • No, but I'm the main point of contact for everything since everything else is offshored to india (again, cheaper) so I need to be online during work hours plus be on from 10pm starting Sunday night (Monday in India) thru Thursday night (Friday in India) to talk to the offshore programmers.  I've had calls at 6am because something isn't working right, but I am not supposed to be on call at all.



  • @ObiWayneKenobi said:

    No, but I'm the main point of contact for everything since everything else is offshored to india (again, cheaper) so I need to be online during work hours plus be on from 10pm starting Sunday night (Monday in India) thru Thursday night (Friday in India) to talk to the offshore programmers.  I've had calls at 6am because something isn't working right, but I am not supposed to be on call at all.


    Hope the pay is at least decent.



  • As a matter of fact, it's not.  In fact, I have to beg him to transfer money to my account because he won't give me direct deposit due to firing his bookkeeper (because he's closing down the company to start another one).  And he usually does it a day or two after I'm supposed to be paid; I've had to give my rent as a check because they take a week to process it, so by that time I know he'll have put the money in my account.



  • @ObiWayneKenobi said:

    I found this funny:  My boss calls me this morning (despite it being, you know, a holiday weekend, not that this bothers him as he called me on Christmas Day because a server was running slowly)

    There's a software solution to this part of the problem: install asterisk, set up a voice mail menu, make the first item "Do you understand that you are paying double time from the moment you proceed past this menu?  Press '1' for yes or hang up for no."

     @ObiWayneKenobi said:

    Okay, that's not the WTF.  The WTF is he reminds me time is of the essence here because he owes Amazon like two thousand bucks and doesn't want to pay them, so he's afraid they're going to shut the servers down and wants them transferred before that.  As a matter of fact he's dissolving the current company and starting up a new one this coming week presumably to avoid paying anything should Amazon (or any other creditors) try to get the money from him.

    No, TRWTF is that you are willing to do this work for him and think he won't shaft you too at the drop of a hat.  If he thinks he doesn't have to pay some massive corporation with a million lawyers, why the hell would he think you had a chance of getting your money out of him if he chose not to give it to you?

     This man is not your friend.  Grab what you can (obviously, only against what you are legitimately owed) and get the hell out before the shit hits the fan and any of it rubs off on you and your long term career reputation.



  • Oh believe you me I'm trying.  As soon as I found out he was like this, I immediately put out my resume again.  As much as I'd like to I can't just say "F-you, you crook" to him, but I'm well aware he has no loyalties to me and that he isn't my friend at all.  I'm only "willing" to do the extra work for him because my job depends on it; until I get a better offer on the table I'm pretty much stuck.



  • @ObiWayneKenobi said:

    Oh believe you me I'm trying.  As soon as I found out he was like this, I immediately put out my resume again.  As much as I'd like to I can't just say "F-you, you crook" to him, but I'm well aware he has no loyalties to me and that he isn't my friend at all.  I'm only "willing" to do the extra work for him because my job depends on it; until I get a better offer on the table I'm pretty much stuck.
    Fair do's mate.  Good luck in finding something more worthy of your efforts! 

     

    EDIT: I really didn't know what to do there.  I hate grocers' apostrophes but "fair dos" sounds too much like an open source operating system.. i really couldn't think a better way to express it typographically.

     



  • @ObiWayneKenobi said:

    I love how some people think that they shouldn't have to pay the same as everybody else but deserve some kind of special treatment.

    What I find funny about it is he would be furious if someone didn't pay him, yet he thinks its acceptable to do it to others. These are the types of people who think the only way to make money in business is to not play by the rules, and in doing so, never actually wind up being that successful. They're so busy scamming they don't spend any time improving their product and remain marginal, insignificant, and a public drain on resources forever.

    If the cost of EC2 hosting goes up (past the cost of inflation, naturally), we partially have your boss to thank for that.



  • @DaveK said:

    EDIT: I really didn't know what to do there.  I hate grocers' apostrophes but "fair dos" sounds too much like an open source operating system.. i really couldn't think a better way to express it typographically.

     

    That's because you should have written "fair dues".



  • @rosko said:

    @DaveK said:

    EDIT: I really didn't know what to do there.  I hate grocers' apostrophes but "fair dos" sounds too much like an open source operating system.. i really couldn't think a better way to express it typographically.

     

    That's because you should have written "fair dues".

    No, I shouldn't have, because that's not what I meant.  I know what I meant.  I'm from bloody England, and this is how we talk round here, what do you think you know about it?



  • I hope your being paid weekly, as otherwise I can see him "forgetting" to pay you, your rent check bouncing, and you being up shit creek without a paddle.

    It times like this when recruitment companies are actually a pretty good idea. I remember sending my resume to them and within 2 weeks (and several interviews) I had an offer of a new job. Within 3 weeks, I was working at the new place. I'm not talking about the kind of recruitment that tell you to go work for X for $3/hour (and charge $6/hour to the co), but rather the ones that charge company X a "finders fee". 



  • @DaveK said:

    @rosko said:

    @DaveK said:

    EDIT: I really didn't know what to do there.  I hate grocers' apostrophes but "fair dos" sounds too much like an open source operating system.. i really couldn't think a better way to express it typographically.

     

    That's because you should have written "fair dues".

    No, I shouldn't have, because that's not what I meant.  I know what I meant.  I'm from bloody England, and this is how we talk round here, what do you think you know about it?

     

    Fair enough, and my apologies; I'm so used to seeing silly Americans talking about "dues" but spelling it "do's" because both sound about the same with their mangled Wronglish :)



  • Bi-monthly on the 15th and 30th :-( something I did not know to begin with. He told me it would be every two weeks.



  • @DaveK said:

    EDIT: I really didn't know what to do there.  I hate grocers' apostrophes but "fair dos" sounds too much like an open source operating system.. i really couldn't think a better way to express it typographically.

     

     

    Just to derail this topic even further: the apostrophe is for the genitive. So "fair do's mate" means "the mate of a fair do". The usual plural of words ending in -o is -oes (think potatoes), so you could have written "fair does, mate", but what's a "do" in this context? Clearly not the musical note...



  • @ObiWayneKenobi said:

    Bi-monthly on the 15th and 30th :-( something I did not know to begin with. He told me it would be every two weeks.
    To an idiot (and some business people), every month has 4 weeks, so it would then make sense. However, people with common sense know that if that was the case, we would be 4 weeks short per year.

    More interestingly, what happens in February? Do you only get paid once, or does he pay you sooner? (In which case, why not pay on the 28th every month to make it easily to schedule) Hopefully you will not be there long enough to find out. 



  • I don't know, and I hope I'm not around then either.  He just left me 3 voicemails asking for a status update on the servers and if they will be up tonight (when I have to be on Skype with the Indian team).  He emails me on New Years saying how he can't sleep because he's thinking about "our" future and how I'll be financially set for the rest of my life in the coming weeks as long as I get those servers ready.  This is a man with half a dozen businesses he's trying to run at once, with the same 3-4 people a part of every one, with everything else outsourced to this same Indian team.  It's a perfect con, really.  If things go sour he can close up shop and form a new LLC or Corporation with the same individuals and not have to change a thing except the business name.



  • To make things worse:  One of thse "mission critical" servers hosts a CMS (Joomla) for all of the various businesses and clients.  Not a big deal, right?  Easy to move over... except that every one has its own separate Joomla install with it's own database.  So there are two dozen Joomla installs that need to be copied over along with two dozen MySQL databases that need to be exported and re-imported to the new server!



  • @rosko said:

    @DaveK said:

    @rosko said:

    @DaveK said:

    EDIT: I really didn't know what to do there.  I hate grocers' apostrophes but "fair dos" sounds too much like an open source operating system.. i really couldn't think a better way to express it typographically.

     

    That's because you should have written "fair dues".

    No, I shouldn't have, because that's not what I meant.  I know what I meant.  I'm from bloody England, and this is how we talk round here, what do you think you know about it?

     

    Fair enough, and my apologies; I'm so used to seeing silly Americans talking about "dues" but spelling it "do's" because both sound about the same with their mangled Wronglish :)

    What can I possibly say in response to your gracious apology except: Fair do's mate!  :-)

     



  • This sounds suspiciously like the owner of the last company I worked for. . . . . .



  • @TGV said:

    @DaveK said:

    EDIT: I really didn't know what to do there.  I hate grocers' apostrophes but "fair dos" sounds too much like an open source operating system.. i really couldn't think a better way to express it typographically.

     

    Just to derail this topic even further: the apostrophe is for the genitive. So "fair do's mate" means "the mate of a fair do".

    Err, maybe in ancient Latin, but I thought English didn't have a genitive?  Or maybe I'm mis-remembering 'gerund'? 

    <one quick google later>  Oh, genitive just means the same as possessive?  Ok!  Well, as I'm sure you know, the apostrophe may indicate possession, but it may also indicate elision, as in don't, won't or can't.  So..... maybe I just left a letter or two out between the 'o' and the 's'?  (thinks quickly.... hmmmm.... actually I don't think that gets me anywhere..... no, *ping*, (lightbulb) wait a minute!)  Yes, that's it: "fair do's" is an abbreviation for "fair domokuns", which are blonde grues that eat you in the light.  Errr.r....... or something! 

     

    [ yes, possessive.  that's why I said the whole thing about grocer's apostrophes (aka "grocers' apostrophes").  I didn't want to indicate a possessive, or even really an elision; I wanted to indicate a pause or separator of some sort.  "Fair do,s" might have been technically more correct, or maybe "fair do;s", but they just didn't look right to me. ]

    @TGV said:

    The usual plural of words ending in -o is -oes (think potatoes),

    That depends on what kind of -o sound is involved, soft or hard.  Potat-o has a hard 'o' at the end, and becomes potatoes; however 'do' has a soft, u-sounding o at the end, like 'poo', and the plural of 'poo' is just 'poos', not 'pooes'.  So I don't think the -oes ending applies here.

    @TGV said:

    so you could have written "fair does, mate", but what's a "do" in this context? Clearly not the musical note...

    @Homer J. said:
    D'oh!  A deer! A female deer!

     



  • @DaveK said:

    I'm from bloody England, and this is how we talk round here, what do you think you know about it?

    What's the deal with the English seemingly creating or using word variations to highlight their accents?

    I'm convinced they say the word "proper" simply because you can pronounce it "propah".



  • @ObiWayneKenobi said:

    So there are two dozen Joomla installs that need to be copied over along with two dozen MySQL databases that need to be exported and re-imported to the new server!

    Whatever he is, or isn't, paying you, its not worth it! Do you not have an EI you can fall back on?



  • @ObiWayneKenobi said:

    He emails me on New Years saying how he can't sleep because he's thinking about "our" future
    Woops.  That just crossed the line from "dodgy and probably-crooked" to "actually creepy obsessive and sinister". :-(



  • @ObiWayneKenobi said:

    To make things worse:  One of thse "mission critical" servers hosts a CMS (Joomla) for all of the various businesses and clients.  Not a big deal, right?  Easy to move over... except that every one has its own separate Joomla install with it's own database.  So there are two dozen Joomla installs that need to be copied over along with two dozen MySQL databases that need to be exported and re-imported to the new server!
    Err, well, .... aren't computers supposed to make these sort of repetitive mechanical tasks easy for us?  Won't the script that I'm sure you're going to use (for the sake of documentation and reproducibility) to transfer one of those databases across work just as well for the other twentythree?

     



  • @Soviut said:

    creating or using word variations to highlight their accents

    WTF is "creating" a word variation to "highlight" an accent?  (And how is it different from what any other folk on the face of the planet Earth do?)  WTF do you think accents are apart from "word variations"?  Or are you getting mixed up between dialects and accents?  Trying to get to grips with your concepts is like trying to wrestle jelly.... there's nothing solid there to get a grasp on.

     



  • @Soviut said:

    @ObiWayneKenobi said:
    So there are two dozen Joomla installs that need to be copied over along with two dozen MySQL databases that need to be exported and re-imported to the new server!

    Whatever he is, or isn't, paying you, its not worth it! Do you not have an EI you can fall back on?

    If I had another source of income, I would have told this guy to F off a long time ago when I found out that he's just another con artist who wants to start a business, outsource all the work, and cash out as quick as possible instead of growing a real, legitimate business.  When he tells me that he doesn't want to grow and add more employees, it tells me immediately that something is fishy and this is just a "get rich quick" idea, not a real business.  The fact he has half a dozen (if not more) businesses (at once, keep in mind) that follow this same mindset cements that thought.



  • @ObiWayneKenobi said:

    When he tells me that he doesn't want to grow and add more employees, it tells me immediately that something is fishy and this is just a "get rich quick" idea, not a real business.  The fact he has half a dozen (if not more) businesses (at once, keep in mind) that follow this same mindset cements that thought.

    What, you never read The 4-Hour Work Week?



  • @rad131304 said:

    What, you never read The 4-Hour Work Week?

     

    Funnily enough I have, and that book was one of my favorites.  But I don't consider following the book's advice to be for real businesspeople, and neither does the book since it outright says the goal is to create a steady revenue stream to let you go off around the world or spend your time surfing in Hawaii or whatever instead of being in an office. It also says to only check email twice a week and I get several messages a day LOL

    Besides, the 4HWW doesn't say to start half a dozen businesses at once without any market research or goals. The fact most of this guy's past businesses have just flopped around, gone nowhere, and then get slightly repackaged into something new but kind of similar still tells me he's a snake oil salesman.



  • @DaveK said:

    No, TRWTF is that you are willing to do this work for him and think he won't shaft you too at the drop of a hat.  If he thinks he doesn't have to pay some massive corporation with a million lawyers, why the hell would he think you had a chance of getting your money out of him if he chose not to give it to you?
    I would rather have the Department of Labor on my side than Amazon.com



  • @ObiWayneKenobi said:

    @rad131304 said:

    What, you never read The 4-Hour Work Week?

     

    Funnily enough I have, and that book was one of my favorites.  But I don't consider following the book's advice to be for real businesspeople, and neither does the book since it outright says the goal is to create a steady revenue stream to let you go off around the world or spend your time surfing in Hawaii or whatever instead of being in an office. It also says to only check email twice a week and I get several messages a day LOL

    Besides, the 4HWW doesn't say to start half a dozen businesses at once without any market research or goals. The fact most of this guy's past businesses have just flopped around, gone nowhere, and then get slightly repackaged into something new but kind of similar still tells me he's a snake oil salesman.

    I agree - it was a good book, and it's not for real business people ... but then, would you consider your boss a "real business person"? He's obviously impatient as evidenced by his email habbits over the holiday, maybe he just feels like he's got tons of really good ideas, so why shouldn't he do them simultaneously? Does he use YMII, or are they too high-end for him?



  • ObiWayne, I feel for you. I was in a strangely similar sitation a little over 3 years ago. I got recuited by a small business owner (he already had 3 or 4 other companies in play) who had a "great" idea for an "application". I started off doing a few small coding tasks for him on the side while I was working full time as a software engineer. I believed then (as I still do now) that the concept had merit and could really have taken off. Looking back, I thnk the main problem was how badly he underestimated just how expensive development can be. I quite my job and started working for him full time. Money was tight so there were times when I didn't see a paycheck for several weeks. We got a prototype built and started trying to sell it - and my focus shifted from being a developer to a sales engineer, disallowing me to continue to improve the "product" (remember, we're still talking prototype). Because it wasn't 100% complete potential customers weren't willing to dive in. Then, we were out of money and spent most of our time trying lure in investors - again, taking away my ability to actually build the product.

     In the end, I walked away with 0% of the promised ownership and about $16,000 worth of personal debt because, like a complete idiot, I personally guaranteed one of the business loans.

     I learned a lot about how NOT to run a business during those 2 years. But, it still a pretty regretable part of my life. My suggestion is to move on as soon as you can, and try as hard as you can not to expose yourself to personal debt risk unless you have solid grasp of ownership and the true ability to steer the company's direction.



  • Yeah too high end.  He uses some company called Web-Werks or something like that because he can get a "senior" (yeah, right) person for $1600/month.  Instead of paying someone local who he can meet with regularly, he instead has a fleet of Indian programmers so I need to be up at night to deal with them.



  • Of course, the reason he doesn't want someone local is so he doesn't have to worry about taxes or social security or things like that (although he takes care of mine) and if the business goes bad he can just start a new company and keep the same resources.



  • @ObiWayneKenobi said:

    Of course, the reason he doesn't want someone local is so he doesn't have to worry about taxes or social security or things like that (although he takes care of mine) and if the business goes bad he can just start a new company and keep the same resources.

    I don't know how to do it but you need to check with the government that he really is paying your SS and other taxes.  Based on what you've said, I strongly doubt they have actually been paid.

     MArk B.



  • @DaveK said:

    for the sake of documentation and reproducibility
    HAHAHAHAHAHAHA That was a good one, Dave.



  • Funny update:  Amazon is going to suspend his account, so he's pressuring me to get these servers copied over...except that I'm already doing it and it's a tedious process due to thousands of files to be switched.  So now I'm the bad guy for not moving fast enough, when HE refuses to pay Amazon and wonders that they're going to turn off service.  I'm guessing he expects me to work 24-7 on this for the $2600 or so (net) that he pays me each month.



  • He just tells me that "we didn't switch things fast enough in December" and that's why we're having these problems now.. not because, you know, he's trying to cheat Amazon.  Noooo it's my fault for not doing this way back in December.



  • D'oh, a Deer!

    "fair do's, mate"

    Remember the songs and poems that turn "every" into "ev'ry"? Sure you do.

    I'd wager the original phrase was "fair doings, mate" but because syllables take energy, and/or they were being poetic, and the noun "doing" is crazy anyway, the phrase became "fair do's, mate."



  • Well in a strike of bad news, I had been interviewing for another position (had 3 interviews) but it fell through in the end (I guarantee it was probably because I have no really recent .NET experience, since the past 2 years was working for this bozo's friend who is even worse than he is, writing SQL and playing with Classic ASP).  So until I can find something else I'm stuck with this guy and his insane demands.



  • @belgariontheking said:

    @DaveK said:

    for the sake of documentation and reproducibility
    HAHAHAHAHAHAHA That was a good one, Dave.

    Thank you *bows*

    I just hate grubbing around in my .bash_history after something goes wrong, trying to reconstruct what I exactly did and hoping I didn't exit my shells in an order that would overwrite the evidence.  So I actually do do things that properly myself sometimes.  But, I admit, not as often as I should.




  • @too_many_usernames said:

    "fair do's, mate"

    Remember the songs and poems that turn "every" into "ev'ry"? Sure you do.

    I'd wager the original phrase was "fair doings, mate" but because syllables take energy, and/or they were being poetic, and the noun "doing" is crazy anyway, the phrase became "fair do's, mate."

    I've always thought it was a "do", as in a go or turn or shake of the stick.  Can't claim I have any more evidence for my hypothetical etymology than you do though!


  • @tster said:

    @DaveK said:
    No, TRWTF is that you are willing to do this work for him and think he won't shaft you too at the drop of a hat.  If he thinks he doesn't have to pay some massive corporation with a million lawyers, why the hell would he think you had a chance of getting your money out of him if he chose not to give it to you?
    I would rather have the Department of Labor on my side than Amazon.com

    I don't know much about the US legal system, but at least in the UK courts, pursuing a deadbeat for a civil debt can be a long-winded and often under-rewarding process.   There are multiple stages of returning to court and claiming non-payment and applying for orders, and you've got to hope the guy actually has any property worth seizing by the time the bailiffs finally get involved.  When it's not a huge amount of money, people often end up writing it off because they consider the effort more than it's worth.

    As always, YMMV according to legal jurisdiction and personal time-effort-money trade-off decisions.



  • @DaveK said:

     I've always thought it was a "do", as in a go or turn or shake of the stick.  Can't claim I have any more evidence for my hypothetical etymology than you do though!

    Wow, it's hard to find anything much out about the origin of this phrase.

    Now, according to Partridge's "A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English", it can be doo's or doos or does or do's or dues, and the latter form (fair dues) is supposedly the original, with "fair do's" having been a gradual transition beginning around the 1930s and the old form pretty much obsolete by the middle of the century.  In the same author's "Shorter dictionary of catch phrases", this derivation from "fair dues" is described as "probably" a corruption.

    On the other hand, this may have a somewhat speculative assumption on Partridge's part.  Certainly, Volume 32 of the "Publications of the English Dialect Society" , dating from 1881, describes it as meaning "fair treatment", without any reference to derivation from "fair dues", and so the suggestion that it's a '30s derivation seems flawed.   Other discussions I found on the web while searching suggested that this seems like an altogether-too-neat probable-back-construction, and it's certainly a little odd that this earlier source wouldn't mention anything about it if that were not so.

    The proceedings of the EDS were apparently the basis from which Joseph Wright's definitive "English Dialect Dictionary" was assembled, and publised in six volumes between 1898 and 1905.  Unfortunately for us, the volume containing words beginning D-G is one of the only two that has not yet been digitised, so we can't look up what he had to say about "fair do's" and whether he had anything to add to the definition or not.  Oh, hang on though: there's an entry for it in the supplement, and that says "fair dooes" without any mention of dues, and references some source called "M.S.C", which I couldn't in the time available to me locate in the bibliography later in that same volume.




  • @too_many_usernames said:

    "fair do's, mate"

    Remember the songs and poems that turn "every" into "ev'ry"? Sure you do.

    I'd wager the original phrase was "fair doings, mate" but because syllables take energy, and/or they were being poetic, and the noun "doing" is crazy anyway, the phrase became "fair do's, mate."

    I've heard the phrase "fair doings" from a few people, but I can't decide if it was a popular embellishment, or an older form of the phrase. Apparently the phrase is Northern English in origin, and that's where I grew up, so it could well be a preserved form. That would make "fair do's" the correct short form.

    Oxford is usually the authority on matters of international English usage: do is given the nominal (i.e. noun) definition "noun (pl. dos or do’s) informal, chiefly Brit. a party or other social event." Note that this is from the Compact version, not the full OED, so other usages aren't covered, but the meaning in the phrase "fair dos" or "fair do's" is "fair treatment". It can be, as Dave wrote, a recognition that he'd been treated fairly, or it can be an appeal for fairness when you haven't. Anyway, Oxford lists "dos" before "do's", and they don't do these things haphazardly; so if the phrase "fair doings" is an embellishment, the shorter more popular version should be "fair dos", with "fair do's" an acceptable alternative.

    Incidentally, there's some other debate on know-it-all grammar forums (sorry, fora) about whether you'd title a list of rules "dos and don'ts" or "do's and don'ts". The answer of course is to title one list "DO" and the other "DON'T". Duh. The curmudgeons (takes one to know one) complained that "dos" makes them think they're reading about a Microsoft product, ignoring the fact that "DOS" is spelt uppercase 90% of the time, even by people who spell "I" lowercase.



  •  Sometimes I think my job sucks.  In the future, I will just remember this post and weep with joy.



  • I always heard it was "dues" - as in, things owed to you, things which are due to you.

    Anyway... you'd be surprised how many businesses operate like this, as in, MOST of them. In fact there's a whole industry based on the idea of doing essentially nothing but moving money around. The banking industry is based on the idea that if you are owed more money than you owe, then it's all groovy... and that idea works pretty well :)



  • @rfsmit said:

    Incidentally, there's some other debate on know-it-all grammar forums (sorry, fora) about whether you'd title a list of rules "dos and don'ts" or "do's and don'ts". The answer of course is to title one list "DO" and the other "DON'T". Duh. The curmudgeons (takes one to know one) complained that "dos" makes them think they're reading about a Microsoft product, ignoring the fact that "DOS" is spelt uppercase 90% of the time, even by people who spell "I" lowercase.

    I saw that thread too, but I would have used the word "curmudgeons" to describe the faction that was insisting this was an invalid grocer's's apostrophe, rather than the faction arguing that you shouldn't be too stiff about rules and adding an apostrophe is a reasonable stretch of them for the sake of clarity.

     

     

    Yeah, I see what I did there.  It should have been "grocers's' apostrophe", right? ;-)



  • @DaveK said:

    I saw that thread too, but I would have used the word "curmudgeons" to describe the faction that was insisting this was an invalid grocer's's apostrophe, rather than the faction arguing that you shouldn't be too stiff about rules and adding an apostrophe is a reasonable stretch of them for the sake of clarity.
     

    I agree 100% on the point of it being an intrusive apostrophe -- it's not because the source remains unclear. I'm ambivalent on the clarity issue though, but I'm tending towards disagreeing with you, because I think it's clear enough as it is. Yeah, you could stumble on [i]"fair dos, mate"[/i] if you were reading aloud... it's not a common word, and words don't have to be long to be confusing!

    @DaveK said:

    Yeah, I see what I did there.  It should have been "grocers's' apostrophe", right? ;-)
     

    Hehe. "MacDonald's" is the brand, so restaurants belonging to them are "MacDonald's's restaurants", right? And multiple franchises should be "MacDonald'ses' restaurants". I came up with one recently where you should write "MacDonald's's's", according to strict grammatical rules. Can't for the life of me remember how on earth I arrived at that, but I'm sure it involved some sleight of hand.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

     Sometimes I think my job sucks.  In the future, I will just remember this post and weep with joy.
     

    QFMFT.

    I have been thinking exactly the same thing since returning to work from hols this week.


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