I hate capitalism

[tahnan]

All corporations suck. More on this tomorrow. In the meantime, note that when applying for an account at Sovereign Bank, the available titles do not include "Ms.", and your options for employment are "Employed Full Time / Employed Part Time / Self-Employed / Homemaker / Retired", and not, say, "currently looking for employment".

Comments

[jeffurrynpl.livejournal.com]

In England in the 1990s I was repeatedly asked for my "Christian name." Naturally I said I didn't have one.

Some say the employment search is a job in itself...I guess that makes one a Self-Employed Job Seeker.

[cazique.livejournal.com]

not that you were necessarily looking for advice, but "Self-employed" is definitely the way to go here. Annoying, agree.

[srl.livejournal.com]

I'd send them a letter informing them of why I took my banking business elsewhere.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I wish we could do so, but frankly even if they insist on calling my wife "Mrs.", that still makes them suck less than the alternatives.

[q-pheevr.livejournal.com]

Credit unions suck less.¹

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1. Than banks. On the whole. IME. YMMV.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

I'd like to believe you, and yet my undergrad advisor tells me, "The woman who put her paycheck in the bank was wiser than the one that put it in the Brown University Employees Credit Union" (http://www.cog.brown.edu/~pj/abstracts.htm#paychecks).

[rubrick.livejournal.com]

You have amused me.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

There is, of course, a history to the sentence. The original sentence illustrating "paycheck pronouns" was:

(1) The man who gave his paycheck to his wife was wiser than the man who gave it to his mistress.

The linguistic question at stake is: what does "it" refer to? Clearly, the second man's paycheck, but that's a little tricky because that hasn't been mentioned in the discourse before, so why can you use a pronoun there? (Compare: "I read a book last night. He's very smart"--since the author hasn't been mentioned, you can't use "he" to refer to him.)

But sentences about wives and mistresses are a little passe these days, so Polly updated it based on, er, some current events (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_and_loan_scandal). (In the original paper, she thanks a Rhode Island politician for making the sentence possible.)

[rubrick.livejournal.com]

To me it seems that "it" refers, not to the second man's paycheck, but to the phrase "his paycheck"-- whose referent shifts from the first man to the second, even though it only actually appears in the sentence once.

Does this mean I don't buy variable-free semantics?

[rubrick.livejournal.com]

Note: I don't actually have the foggiest idea what variable-free semantics are. Or is.

[q-pheevr.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes, well. Providence.

Didn't the BUECU go under because embezzlement at another institution bankrupted the deposit insurance company? So it wasn't really the credit union's fault, although I guess banks are better protected because they're federally insured. (My credit union is insured by DICO.)

Still, I think the woman who deposited her paycheque in the Brown University Employees' Credit Union was wiser (if no wealthier) than the one who fed it to her donkey.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

Thank you. That's the funniest thing I've read all week.

[rubrick.livejournal.com]

Is this an online application, or paper? If the latter, I'm fond of write-ins when forms piss me off that way (as they so often do).

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

It was online. In the end, I decided it was easier to just go down to the bank in person, and let them decide how to fill everything in. Plus that way we didn't have to mail them the checks.