I Baffled The Cashier at Safeway This Morning

[MrsSmith]

Okay, boys and girls--time for the utility worker to chime in.

PSNH is the largest, but by no means only, power provider in New Hampshire.  They cover about 500K customers, with National Grid and Unitil picking up most of the rest.

To bury JUST PSNH's lines (existing and proposed) would take on the order of 40 YEARS, and cost (at current dollars) around $40-50 BILLION.  Guess who those costs are going to get passed on to?  It was estimated that the average customer's bill would be several hundred a month higher than they are now.

http://www.unionleader.com/article/20111106/NEWS02/711069975

Just ONE utility, just ONE state.

WHAT??

Are you a repig, or something?  What's wrong with you??

Like COST matters!  We'll just tax the rich and make them pay for it all!   They all have underground lines and never go without power!  I have a right to have never-ending free electricity at my house.  It's right in the Constitution!  I have a RIGHT to HAPPINESS and no worthless repig is going to tell me our country can't afford to give me that!!     [/DUmpmode]


 

[MrsSmith]

Hahaha, I love how he made the cashier's DH a city councilman, to "show" how he knew she was conservative. Since he just won the seat, I wonder if she can stop working at the Safeway now and become one of the 1%?

Here is a grocery store tale:

Today was my kid's b'day and I needed to bring the obligatory cupcakes in to his class this afternoon. I went to the Super Walmart, because I wanted to. I walked to the bakery and looked at the cupcakes. There was one pack of 12 Angry Bird cupcakes, so I asked the baker lady if there was anymore at another place in the store (they sometimes have displays in assorted places). She told me there wasn't, but she would be happy to take some of the plain packs of cupcakes ( I needed 30 total)and deck them out with sprinkles and Angry Bird rings. And so she did. I thought it was a very sweet thing to offer and thanked her. And then I paid for my cupcakes and left. There were no political discussions, no applause, and no cops in bushes. Silly me, I thought that was how most folks grocery store experiences went.

They don't even try to be believable. In all my years of grocery shopping, I have never, not once, discussed politics with the cashiers, the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, and not with the other customers either.

 

You get zero bongs.  You missed several valuable opportunities to MAKE A DIFFERENCE while speaking to a poor, oppressed, underpaid Wal-Mart slave, AND you think we'll buy the idea that you took horribly unhealthy sugar-loaded cupcakes to a SCHOOL,  increasing the obesity of all those children...and the teacher ALLOWED this!!  Tsk, tsk...   



 

[JohnnyReb]

Okay, boys and girls--time for the utility worker to chime in.

PSNH is the largest, but by no means only, power provider in New Hampshire.  They cover about 500K customers, with National Grid and Unitil picking up most of the rest.

To bury JUST PSNH's lines (existing and proposed) would take on the order of 40 YEARS, and cost (at current dollars) around $40-50 BILLION.  Guess who those costs are going to get passed on to?  It was estimated that the average customer's bill would be several hundred a month higher than they are now.

http://www.unionleader.com/article/20111106/NEWS02/711069975

Just ONE utility, just ONE state.

...and that doesn't even take into consideration the lawsuits by DUmmies families suing the power companies after a DUmmie digs into a 100,000 volt underground cable....pffft....one DUmmie up in smoke.

[JohnnyReb]

Forgot to mention, DUmmies always baffle me...but not with their brilliance.

[franksolich]

Okay, boys and girls--time for the utility worker to chime in.

PSNH is the largest, but by no means only, power provider in New Hampshire.  They cover about 500K customers, with National Grid and Unitil picking up most of the rest.

To bury JUST PSNH's lines (existing and proposed) would take on the order of 40 YEARS, and cost (at current dollars) around $40-50 BILLION.  Guess who those costs are going to get passed on to?  It was estimated that the average customer's bill would be several hundred a month higher than they are now.

http://www.unionleader.com/article/20111106/NEWS02/711069975

Just ONE utility, just ONE state.

Well now, I dunno if it makes any difference if power lines are on poles, or underground.

There's a fenced-in thingamajig about eight miles from here, and there's a sign on it saying it belongs to the county public power district, and don't come in unless one wishes to be fried.

I dunno what it's called--transformers maybe?  But whatever.

The power lines in this county are all on poles; in fact a great deal of money was spent the past two years putting up newer, stronger, higher poles.  Miles and miles and miles of them.

Nebraska's notorious for its wind.

I myself have never had a power outage since I've lived here--the autumn of 2005--and it needs pointed out that since I live on the edge of the territory, the power lines are still carried on poles that are probably from the Truman administration; about as old as the old dude over on Skins's island.

It seems to me every time the power's gone out somewhere in the county, it's because something happened at that fenced-in compound, not from power lines going down.

[USA4ME]

I baffle cashiers on a regular basis, but mine typically involved the price being something like $11.93 and I hand them $22.18.  They look at me so confused, and I just say with a smile "Just enter the amount I gave you into your register and it'll all work out."

As for the OP, it's a bouncy.  New city councilman's wife a cashier at SF and primitive getting in her line makes it unbelievable right off the bat.

.

[Skul]

Fenced-in thingamajigs and sky sparks, don't play well together.
Darn things are spark magnets on the same order that mobile homes, are tornado magnets.

[AprilRazz]

You didn't baffle her DUmmy. She was just trying to keep conscious after the smell hit her.
You have power now. Take a shower!!

[Vagabond]

I baffle cashiers on a regular basis, but mine typically involved the price being something like $11.93 and I hand them $22.18.  They look at me so confused, and I just say with a smile "Just enter the amount I gave you into your register and it'll all work out."

As for the OP, it's a bouncy.  New city councilman's wife a cashier at SF and primitive getting in her line makes it unbelievable right off the bat.

.

I know of a guy that used to walk in, buy a weeks worth of food and one role of single ply toilet paper.  As he paid in cash, he would ask the cashier, "So you think the one role will be enough?"  The cashier would almost always count the change wrong after that.

[DumbAss Tanker]

rsmith6621 (6,024 posts) Profile Journal Send DU Mail Ignore

Well the cashier who's conservative husband just won a seat to the city council heard the conversation and looked over toward me and said how would that help the economy and just had that .... "JEEZ I DONT KNOW WHAT TO SAY LOOK" on her face. it was like she was saying with her face how come liberal/progressives always have the good ideas??

She was probably thinking something more like "My God, what that would do to the power bills and tax assessments, they'd lynch my husband and then come after me!!!"

 

[formerlurker]

My Husbands Aunt has underground power lines and we have over-head power lines, she lost power for 3 days during the Halloween Storm and she had to stay with us since we only lost power briefly.

As do I and I lost power several years ago in an ice storm for ten days.   I didn't lose power in the October storm, but towns adjacent to us did for several weeks also. 

[Rebel]

it was like she was saying with her face how come liberal/progressives always have the good ideas??

 

[GOBUCKS]

To bury JUST PSNH's lines (existing and proposed) would take on the order of 40 YEARS, and cost (at current dollars) around $40-50 BILLION.  Guess who those costs are going to get passed on to?  It was estimated that the average customer's bill would be several hundred a month higher than they are now.

To me, that sounds like a far better use of fifty billion dollars than high-speed rail, light rail, windmills, solar panels, ethanol, battery cars, recycling centers, kneeling buses, 0bamacare,and the host of other socialist boondoggles that soak up the productive potential of America.

At least people would use the underground utilities, and their asthetic value alone is worth more than all the "green" horseshit we're forced to support.

[LC EFA]

I live in cyclone country.  All new subdivisions here have underground power , which is a great move.

It doesn't make a huge difference in when you lose your power - but it does make a difference as to how soon you get it back on.

The local substation will usually trip out for whatever reason and when the storm clears the crews can go out there and turn back on the areas with UG power first, while the crews work on clearing and reinstalling lines in the areas with above ground power - which can take some weeks in a bad storm.

Of course all our main 220KV feeders are above ground and if one of them has a woopsie it's still lights out for everyone for a while.

For what it is worth I'd be more than happy to pay extra on my electricity bill for the added service of having the underground power installed. Many other people don't and funnily enough they're also the same crowd that don't own generators AND bitch loudest that their nice leafy green suburb is the last to be switched back on.

[Rebel]

I live in cyclone country.  All new subdivisions here have underground power , which is a great move.

It doesn't make a huge difference in when you lose your power - but it does make a difference as to how soon you get it back on.

The local substation will usually trip out for whatever reason and when the storm clears the crews can go out there and turn back on the areas with UG power first, while the crews work on clearing and reinstalling lines in the areas with above ground power - which can take some weeks in a bad storm.

Of course all our main 220KV feeders are above ground and if one of them has a woopsie it's still lights out for everyone for a while.

For what it is worth I'd be more than happy to pay extra on my electricity bill for the added service of having the underground power installed. Many other people don't and funnily enough they're also the same crowd that don't own generators AND bitch loudest that their nice leafy green suburb is the last to be switched back on.

Same out here. Doesn't matter if you bury ALL wires in or around neighborhoods underground. They're all slaves to the power lines feeding them.

[NHSparky]

To me, that sounds like a far better use of fifty billion dollars than high-speed rail, light rail, windmills, solar panels, ethanol, battery cars, recycling centers, kneeling buses, 0bamacare,and the host of other socialist boondoggles that soak up the productive potential of America.

At least people would use the underground utilities, and their asthetic value alone is worth more than all the "green" horseshit we're forced to support.

GO--that's for about a half-million customers.  According to the UL link, that comes out to just under $80,000 PER CUSTOMER over the course of the project--money which doesn't come for "da gubmint" but directly from the ratepayers.  Of course, that's just principal.  To actually fund such a project, rate cases would have to be made with the state, bond issues floated (and a VERY substantial interest rate promised, probably tax-free), which would drive costs well over double the initial estimates.

Then there would be the NIMBY types because even though all those big power lines are underground, right of way still has to be cleared, lines marked, mapped, and registered, and yes, as one previous poster stated, what happens when (NOT IF, WHEN) some dipshit doesn't do the 72-hour call ahead and get the lines marked?  Not to mention that they don't call this place "The Granite State" for no reason.

Underground lines are fine in urban settings.  Rural or for transmission?  Not so much.

If you're going to create new infrastructure, go ahead and put your sub-trans and distribution stuff underground, but it's simply not worth trying to "fix" stuff that's already existing.  Money just doesn't exist for it, and when it boils right down, you're not going to find a customer willing to pay for it.

[GOBUCKS]

GO--that's for about a half-million customers.  According to the UL link, that comes out to just under $80,000 PER CUSTOMER over the course of the project--money which doesn't come for "da gubmint" but directly from the ratepayers. 

....

Underground lines are fine in urban settings.  Rural or for transmission?  Not so much.

Most places conversion of existing utiliities to underground doesn't make sense, but $80,000 per customer is a bargain when you start talking about these commuter rail and high speed rail boondoggles.

And around here, for the "mass transit" buses that are paid for by the taxpayers, the cost per customer is infinite, since they patrol their routes all day long literally without a single paying customer.

They are cute, though, since they paid a fortune for buses that look like old-time trolley cars. As they explained at the time, it didn't really cost anything because nearly all the money came from the federal government.