Tuesday, October 30, 2007

First impressions: part two

Something that confused me at first was the fact that you are never sure that the price tag on an item is what you eventually have to pay.
From buying clothes to going out for dinner, you always pay more than is written down.
What is even worse is that you are expected to know up front how much extra you have to spend.
Sigh, I never liked math at school and even worse, I hate surprises when it comes to money.
Don't see the reasons behind all of this either, I mean, the Netherlands are smaller than most States and we can figure out what is to be payed on tax, so it is on the price tag.
Now, I won't dare touch the tip situation. If employees had to depend on those over here, they wouldn't have enough money to get food on the table.
But I understand that in the US you need it as part of your income.


Something that shocked me was the amount of old people still at work.
Worst was the lady at the airport that was cleaning the bathroom. She must have been well into her 70's.
And I have seen it more than once. Some people may have taken certain jobs because they can't sit still, but cleaning bathrooms isn't a job you do for the sheer fun of it.
And it makes me sad that it may be needed.

1 comment:

Petra said...

Got this comment from Willeke today through Hyves:

yes, there are pros and cons to working till you odl age. it does keep you busy, you will feel more useful, but I know that often it's only to make sure they keep their health insurance, and that is sad, imho.
But still, you just cannot copare things there with things here, the backgrounds differ too much. I talked to a doctor ion the tates who just cold not believe that our hospitals could be good... since we have this insurance system... and I could only say that it used to be very good here, but the more commercial the system gets, the worse off people are.