I think it is the business owners responsibility to pay fairly and make the price the actual price, not throw on fees and tip requests during the final transaction. I know it's not the employees fault especially on POS.

Even people that I normally and happily tip (beyond servers - say a taxi/Uber) I'd just as soon be charged appropriately as to have a tip request at the end.

But I think in the spirit of the thread it's that these POS systems now make it to easy to misrepresent prices - at one point another local place was adding an "inflation charge" and a "healthcare for employees" and a "service fee" for pickup orders (presumably because people don't tip pickup but the system asked for a tip anyway). Just tell me the price and let me decide don't spread the ticketmaster model everywhere.

Yes sorry my distaste is not for the workers it's for the owners who think setting up a POS system with tips puts the responsibility for paying workers on the customer. As well, I understand inflation but they have increased prices 20% this winter. So basically they probably had a poor business model and now are punishing their employees and customers to extract profit and eventually that house of cards topples. But it's still super popular so what do I know.

Seven Stars new POS annoys me so much. Like I get it, someone made the sandwich I grabbed out of the case, but now some person has to look at me like I'm an asshole because I'm not going to tip for a wrapped sandwich I took out of a case and handed to you to scan? At least they finally adjusted it from starting at 20%.

Tipping culture is abhorrent. I'm sorry. I know there are people who make good money. But studies out there show that attractiveness is basically the top predictor of tips. I mean it goes that way for sales too, I know. But still, it's unfair to people that their salary (not job performance) is based on whether people want to fuck them. Pay servers a fair wage, put the fucking price on the menu.

Last, if you are working retail don't put out a fucking tip jar. I bought a fucking t-shirt. I don't need to tip the cashier, but you will see this shit now.

FTR I tip and tip well people who have to rely on it. I still hate the system but it's the system.

Here's the deal.

RIers are allowed to shit all over RI and everything about it. It makes us feel good.

But if you are coming from somewhere else to shit on RI, we are coming for you.

Now, beyond that, there is a long time state/city dynamic between the rest of the state and Providence. It goes way back to Buddy Cianci's feuds with the governors and probably before that. Add to that the recent red/blue inspired rural versus city dynamic and you get a lot of people who actually know nothing about Providence crapping on it for ha-ha's.

Last, there is the well known internet dynamic that it's a lot easier to be vocal about complaints than compliments. You think this sub is bad, check NextDoor for 5 minutes or any Facebook group comments.

I just read about the deli. I hope it's great.

Nice news about Feast & Fettle thanks!

Agreed. I selfishly (shellfishly?) want them to move in next to Rasoi/Antonio's and build out a little outdoor seating area there. Wish the owners of the plaza had more imagination than basic strip mall.

I believe the plan was for them to keep both locations fwiw. But who knows.

Yeah last year I was buzzed by a recruiter about a job in Bend OR. I thought it might be a nice 2-3 year change to go live out there. Then I saw that unless I wanted to live in a trailer park 10 miles out of town I'd need to make about 10% more than my Boston salary to stay even, nevermind the lower salary they were offering. How is it that everyone in a smallish mountain town can afford $800k condos. Then go to VRBO and Airbnb and see about 2000 listings...oh

There was definitely contamination. I think that and covid is what killed dune bros. There

No idea I just still have realtor alerts on and this popped up today

Possible they have some remediation to do before they would be able to sell.

It's for sale now.

https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/691-N-Main-St_Providence_RI_02904_M95711-68966

It's not just a RI problem.

A lot of people think there is something special here but there isn't.

So the answer to your question is that mortgages got super cheap during covid. But all of the economic stimulus wasn't really needed as much as we thought particularly for white collar professionals. Therefore white collar professionals had money to spend, time on their hands, and low interest rates. This drove prices up. There is also some downstream effect of remote work although Providence isn't really the beneficiary of this in the ways that places in the west were.

Now prices are a bit sticky. They will come down probably but not to 2019 levels unless there is a major correction (which will involve major losses of income etc so might not become a buying opportunity then either). Part of this is that inventory will be artificially depressed because if you are in a home with a 3.25% mortgage why would you be looking to move now if you need to take on a 6% mortgage. Same goes for people who refinanced to low rates.

Also during the runup corporations started buying homes, more than you think. And many individuals buy into get rich quick with short term rental schemes that also depress inventory.

It's all these things. And it's everywhere.

They are responsible to keep an egress safe.

That said generally speaking there is a pretty wide tolerance for the timeframe - it will vary by city. Pawtucket for instance is 12 hours of "daylight" which I guess could extend more than 1 day but generally what they mean is that if the snow stops overnight the property owners have the day to clear it. If the snow stops at 1 PM, you have to clear it by 1 AM. That kind of thing. Every town is slightly different. RI general law I believe in 24 hours after the storm clears - this applies to things like sidewalks and businesses state wide.

HOWEVER, since the fucking cities don't bother enforcing this stuff on busy pedestrian streets and barely do it on their own properties, I think it will be harder to get code enforcement on your side than you think. Sorry that's just reality.

Tenants with special time needs are often left on their own, which for most storms means you have to figure out how to get to work in the morning after an overnight storm. That's just life. Yes, this law protects you if you have a slip and fall but getting injured and going to court isn't that fun either.

They should at least provide you with the means to take care of it yourself when you need to. Just a bit of ice melt this morning's ice would have been fine. I would request that and let them know about today's situation.

No guarantees but check out L Sweet in Providence. If they can't help you themselves they have been pretty good with referral for me at least.

I did Pawtucket -> Kendall for about 2 years, on a once or twice a week cadence. I took the train from Attleboro which limited me to the commuter rail.

On mobile but maybe later I will repost advice I gave the last time a similar question was asked. Here are some general thoughts on the negative side.

The problem with the train commute is you have to be there when the train leaves. If you miss the train it adds a lot of time. This used to be easier to deal with in PVD with Amtrak but they have reduced service. Anyway, because of this large change in time (30-60 minutes depending on when you are going) with a missed train, you have to make damn sure you are at the station when it leaves. This means if you have a 10 minute drive to the station +/- 5 minutes, you have a 15 minute drive to the station. You will quickly learn not to take chances.

I regularly had 8 AM meetings. This fucking sucked. I'm just going to be straight up with you. My timing was such that taking the 6:34 train from Attleboro would get me to the office at 8 AM if everything went right. I couldn't rely on that so guess what - 5:34 train it is. My boss gave me a 15 minute late pass on days I commuted which was enough cushion but some meetings I had to be there on time.

Same thing coming home. You have to be absolutely militant about leaving the office on time. No last second conversations to talk about that one email. The red line has some variance, though you are going against the commute (I think you are going to Andrew based on your post) so it should be a bit more consistent. Still, it is often a bit late. So same deal. 6 minute headways again now so I would give 15 minutes from arrival at Andrew to arrival at the CR platform as a worst case and again, you have to plan around the worst case.

the upsides are that it is hella better than driving, the train can be relaxing sometimes (though the rush hour trains are stuffed between Canton or Sharon and S.S.). It is more reliable than people credit. I like the way they pour a Guinness in the pub in South Station which made missing the train more tolerable. To be honest, the worst thing was timing the transfers and how packed and miserable the red line was. If I could have walked from South Station to the office it would have been much better. And, it might be better now, I was commuting during the MBTA self-destruct sequence of 2021 and early 2022.

I always get a little sad when I read these as I just assume younger people don't have this trouble.

I think Covid did not help. It changed the nature of how we meet and interact with strangers even subconsciously. I find that even among my friends things are much more clique-y than they were 3 years ago. Like I am the periphery of several friend groups and don't really don't get invited to any casual hangs anymore because they whittled down their core groups to 8-10 people or whatever and those same 10 people do all the things together except the occasional big gathering for a birthday or whatever, whereas before they would intermingle more. Hopefully it passes.

Anyway the rest of the advice here seems good. I think you should start from your interests. Find book clubs if you like to read. Maybe grab those 2 friends and start going to pub quiz if you like that. I know it's tough though.

NY has been on a similar trajectory with actual fuel prices though I think New York State does a better job of tamping down the utility delivery costs.

I was going to post on here earlier today and decided not to, but once in a while (say every six weeks) a recruiter will contact me about jobs in other areas of the country. And then I look, and to get the same level of say walkability and pleasure (this is to say, going too far from the ocean you better give me some good alternative things to do, and straying too far from places that don't get touring bands coming through is also bad) the prices are basically the same or worse every place I've been tempted to look. Yes, it's easy to so "ok sure Providence is cheaper than California or Chicago or whatever" but it's also cheaper than Charleston or Raleigh or New Orleans or Bend, OR or Lafayette, CO (etc. etc.) these days. Sure, if you want to move to the sticks you can get cheaper cost of living, and yes there are still some midwest cities (mostly in Ohio, even Detroit is expensive these days if you want to live in the "cool" area) where you can live cheaply and have some cool stuff (like Buffalo, but fuuuuuuuuck no on the snow sorry).

If you like, you can be like the r/wallstreetbets folks and just blame Jerome Powell for it all, but it is certainly not unique to Providence. And at least Providence has things going for it like a supply of water that they don't have to fight 7 other states for (hello Arizona what the hell is up with that housing market)

This project is egregious. Noone cares that it is aesthetically shit. The recommendations from all of the people who actually know planning and development is to follow the recommendations on height and development scope on these parcels. As many in this thread of noted, throw this thing on a block that is appropriate for scale and noone would be that upset. The architecture is also shit but that's not what people are arguing about. What we care about is whether this development makes sense. But you and I have had this out before on this very subject so why waste my time.

As much as people like me might parrot talking points of organizations like PPS it is amazing to me that people are putting forward the idea that this makes any difference to the housing supply issues which affect low income people far more than luxury buyers. This is a building trades talking point, not reality. If you want to dent the housing crisis then you can do it with appropriate scale housing as easily as you can with expensive towers. Our real estate is not at a premium multiple that towers are needed.

I like towers and skyline too. I was a heavy proponent of the Westin condos and waterplace etc. But stop trying to justify this junky piece of crap with "we need housing". It's a straw man for this project and worse plays the idiotic game of taking a genuinely important issue and trivializing it to justify a bad project.

At least have the honesty to say "I work in the trades and just want the job" or "I like seeing steel rising no matter what it is" or "I actually never go to and/or hate Providence but think I know better than Providence residents what is good for them."

There is also the parking lot across from the civic center that was supposed to be a tower (former public safety complex).

If you build your incentive system around garbage projects like this you will only end up with garbage. The 195 committee and the state can both get fucked for running roughshod over the city's provenance here.

I am not against projects. I am against this specific one. One problem in this forum is that anyone who says no to this piece of ugly tribute to ego bullshit tower is that we are "anti development" but that's a bunch of shit. There are plenty of better developments and better use for this space that integrates the neighborhood and there are better sites in the city for a project of this scale.

If your attitude is "we have to take what we can get" you end up with a lot of shit. I know a lot of people weren't aware of things during the last boom cycle but a bunch of projects that had high hopes and destroyed city blocks went basically nowhere and left a patchwork of useless parking lots that we are still struggling to infill 15 years later. Our enforcement is typically lagging. There is very little stopping Fane from digging a hole in the ground the saying "oops market conditions" and we are left with a hole in the ground or more surface parking.

This is actually a lot better. The 95/93 (128) split can still back up at this hour but it should be pretty smooth otherwise. In the evening you would be fine. With this commute you could plan on it being about an hour in and 45 minutes home plus whatever distance from the highway you are.

That said, you also will need to be mindful of overnight work which will significantly increase your commute time at night. From Needham you can divert to Rt. 1 easily enough etc. but you'll want to be in the habit of checking.

I had a friend who lived off of Pearl St. in Newton for a reasonable price. Of course that reason came with he needed to take the bus or drive into town, compared to being close to a light rail line (which is great but pricey)

It's doable in that you can do it.

Your tolerance for sitting in a car is going to be the question. There is no public transportation or even a good option. I guess if you didn't need a car in Providence you could take on the expense of leaving a car at the 128 station in Westwood take the train there then drive the last 10 miles but that seems...well silly.

I would personally not do it but I get not wanting to live in the burbs and also not paying for Boston prices. But if you think the commute isn't doable from here after all, one area you might want to look is the area of Newton north of I-90 or even in Watertown.

Any place the grid is overly reliant on natural gas has seen a spike in utility rates this winter.

The governor though I am not a fan has little to do with it, there is a Public Utilities Commission that approves RI Energy prices.

Some landlords are exploitative and will use this as an opportunity to extract more rent or withhold your security deposit from you or straight up evict you if they think they can get more money. One thing though is rents have eased a bit compared to the spring/summer so they probably can't expect to get a lot more for your apartment now - this is to say that the monetary incentive to evict isn't as wild as it was a year ago. Anyway I don't want to argue about whether exploitative applies to all landlords. Just assume I know that the general opinion of redditors is that they are.

OK, beyond that, this is what landlords are going to care about with pets:

- Complaints from other people in the building, etc. This shouldn't be a big deal with a cat (no barking, generally no waste to clean up in common areas) but you never know. If you are thinking of a cat that leaves the apartment this is a bigger deal. Noone wants hairballs or piles of cat vomit in the halls.

- damage to the apartment. The same way all landlords suck all landlords think all tenants are recalcitrant slobs. Which is to say that they then don't take care to make sure that the cat isn't peeing on the rugs or clawing the millwork or whatever. Again, cats much easier than dogs in this manner.

There's a reason most places are more accommodating to cats than dogs. Though I am a dog person myself they require a lot more effort to keep from annoying the neighbors.

I would probably ask. But Strive has a bad rep.