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43 Professionals Confess What Others Don’t Want You To Know

Professionals Confess What Others Don't Want You To Know (39)

Secrets of the trade are much easier to come by nowadays than they were before. And one basic truth that we should realize is that in our world a lot of money is made by the middle-man. So then, if you’re not too lazy, you can basically get a better price on anything, all you need is to pay a little attention and to know a few tricks. Like the ones exposed here, from folks on the brilliant ask reddit.

(Source: Distractify)

  • Mea Fata Est Solitudini

    Great!

    Thanks for sharing!

  • greatUnknown

    Buying out-of-country textbooks is a massive money-saver. Publishers used to claim that their copyrights made that illegal, but the Supreme Court slapped down that argument a few years ago.

  • Liberius

    As a former retail worker, most retail workers do not know what’s on sale next week. Only managers or in some cases a specialty clerk that does the ordering will know in advance, and even then, the most they’ll ever know in advance is one day. Also, the only people that have the authority to mark down a product (such as something on the edge of going out of date) are managers. Gas station clerks don’t have the ability or authority to turn on the air machine, don’t pester them. It has a quarter slot for a reason, cheapskate. Finally, the back rooms in almost all modern retail establishments are tiny – they have offsite warehouses for storage. Almost all merchandise is on the shelves.

    As a current IT person, you can cut down vastly on your amount of calls by completely powering off the machine for 30 seconds and rebooting it. If it’s an internet problem, do that to your router instead of your computer. If the problem persists, then call. Yes, we do Google (or Bing, or duckduckgo according to personal preference) your questions. It’s not possible for one technician to know everything. Also, if you have a Mac, do yourself a favor: insure it, drop it off a tall building, and get a PC with the payout.

  • epobirs

    A longtime Mac-using engineer I know has the axiom, “On Mac, everything is either very easy or nearly impossible.”

  • epobirs

    Funny thing is, dentists don’t treat this as a secret. Every dentist I’ve ever been to stressed the value of good self-administered hygeine for avoiding pain in the chair. Unlike ‘Little Shop of Horrors,’ they generally don’t enjoy inflicting pain. This has long been assumed to be a factor in dentists having among the highest suicide rates of professionals, alongside physicians.

  • epobirs

    Alternately, if there is no foreign edition to be had, get together with several other students and divide the cost between you. Then find someone with a good sheet-fed duplex scanner like a Fujitsu ScanSnap and convert the book into a PDF file that can be easily used with a tablet.

    Further, check torrent sites to see if such a PDF is already in circulation. If you feel guilty, send the publisher what you think the book is actually worth. If you can find a mailing address for the author, send it to them and cut out the middleman.

  • epobirs

    At most retail jobs I had we knew well in advance what sales were coming up because we had to be prepped for the promotions. Also, it was public information in the bookstore gig, since the sale list was the NYT Bestseller list.

  • epobirs

    Extreme couponing is geography dependent. The rules at the major supermarket chains in Southern California have pretty much killed it and coupon use in general. It’s just more trouble than its worth and most stores with a loyalty card have an app for your phone to tie coupons to your card. It’s big letdown from the kind of damage I use to do with coupons but the hassle factor is greatly reduced.

  • Burn_the_Witch

    The tax on hot/cold food at restaurants is dependent on which state you live in.