Bottom-line shocker
"I booked a $39 seat at The Blind Date Project," writes a reader from Westmere. "The conditions on the booking page say, 'a payment processing fee of no more than 2.3 per cent applies to purchases by credit card, debit card or gift card on selected events. The payment processing fee includes (but is not limited to) credit and debit card fees and expenses, administration and associated infrastructure costs. The payment processing fee will be added to the ticket price ... Right through the booking process it was $39. At the last 'buy ticket' stage it was $47. An $8 (more than 20 per cent) processing fee for a transaction done online (my time, my bandwidth, my printing, my everything) is an outrage, particularly in view of the above disclaimer. The fee is not disclosed until the last page. Where do these roosters get off?"
Caption competition, anyone?
Running into an image problem
When Brendan from Manurewa was training for last year's Auckland marathon he went running with his wife. "About 100m from home I gave her a head start for a sprint home. I realised about halfway into the race that to passing cars it looked like a guy chasing a girl running for her life. So I tried to smile to make the scene less scary-looking, until I realised that now it looked like a young lady was being chased by a sprinting attacker smiling menacingly. We stopped having races home after that."
Good read: This article does a good job of explaining why people like sharing terrible stories on Facebook. "I think the casual, impersonal nature of social media allows people to further ignore the obvious randomness of the world we live in. It's easier to look at one person's natural tragedy and apply it to the universe's uncaring nature. You watch it and feel comfortable applying platitudes and aphorisms, like "life is too short," and, "there but for the grace of a deity go I." You feel that by watching it and feeling a justified level of empathy, that you've either settled some karmic balance sheet, or that if the worst should happen to you, at least others will mourn. Now you can get a regular dose of it through social media."
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