BEFORE WE GET TO THE GOOD STUFF: This is who you’re talking to when you call your friendly local megabank: Classic Craigslist ad from a bitter B of A (ex-?) employee.

FANCY BOOK LEARNIN’ DOESN’T HAVE TO BE EXPENSIVE: The Wall Street Journal recently reported that colleges have painted themselves into a corner due to ridiculously high prices and meager job prospects. It’s expensive to get a piece of paper that says you graduated, but it’s cheaper than ever to get the actual education. Somebody at Slickdeals compiled a list of 73 free online courses from Harvard, Stanford, MIT, and others. They cover a wide range of topics–math, Spanish, computer science, writing, you name it–and are open to anybody who wants to learn.

A WHOLE BUNCH MORE FREE MUSIC FROM AMAZON: How about some free music to listen to while you’re studing? Amazon has a whole bunch more Classical albums on sale for $0.99.  The list:

• 50 Must-Have Beethoven Masterpieces
• 50 Must-Have Tchaikovsky Masterpieces
• Big Beethoven Box 15+ hours of music
• 50 Must-Have Strauss Family Masterpieces
• 50 Must-Have Handel Masterpieces
• Classical Music for Relaxation
• 100 Must-Have Waltz & Dance Classics

They’re on sale for $0.99, but you can get a $5 Amazon MP3 credit via this link (H/T: Slickdeals).

DID YOU KNOW 5,000 JANITORS HAVE PhDs?: Neither did we. Enjoy… (Onlinecolleges.net via ZeroHedge)

 

IMPRESSIVE: We’re impressed by this story out of Michigan: Apparently a man by the name of Barnett Jones was just outed as holding two relatively senior full-time jobs simultaneously. He was working as an administrator of public safety for Flint and he was head of secuurity for the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department. Total annual salary for both roles: $273,750.

The question you’re undoubtedly wondering is, was he doing a legitimately good job in both positions, or was he just mailing it in and/or cynically exploiting the system? When asked, Jones replied, “There are some days I go to both, some days I go to one. Sometimes I leave out at 8, 9, 10 o’clock at night, Saturdays. I’m a workaholic.” Detroit Water Department Director Sue McCormick said, “He was out patrolling with us on Angel’s Night, he’s made midnight visits to the Port Huron facility to meet with his security officers there… I’ve seen no lack of his on-duty performance to the job.” Flint City Administrator Michael Brown said, “He did a great job for us.”

Of course any or all of these statements could be self-serving, so who knows what the truth is. If he actually is doing a good job, why not let him continue? Is there a excess of dedicated, competent, workaholic public servants that needs to be trimmed off?

STARWOOD LAWSUIT: Thanks to Loyalty Lobby, we have some juicy details on Starwood Hotels’ lawsuit against two luxury hotels. Starwood filed suit against Le Parker Meridien New York and Parker Palm Springs for faking accounting records and visits in order to scam money from Starwood. For those of you who don’t know, Starwood doesn’t own all the hotels operating under its brand, thus the potential incentives for cheating. Here’s LL’s summary of Starwood’s side of the story:

The reimbursement rate from Starwood for award nights is dependent of the occupancy rate of the night. When the occupancy rate is below 95%, the hotel gets a set monetary reimbursement that is relatively low.

When the occupancy rate is 95% or higher, the property receives the ADR (average daily rate) for the consumed award rooms. In case of Le Parker Meridien, the reimbursement under the ADR is $200 or more higher than the base reimbursement.

The hotel had falsified records, when it was close to the 95% occupancy rate, in order to get the higher ADR reimbursement rate from SPG.

The suit alleges that both properties had made reservations under fictitious names and faked their check ins to the hotel to get the higher occupancy rate.

The New York property had done this mainly by booking FAM (free travel agent familiarization trips) trips. According to the law suit, they had booked hundreds of of these trips to manipulate the occupancy rate. They had also checked in guests, who had reservations for the night, but never showed up.

It seems that when hotel hits the 95% occupancy rate, they need to produce a ADR document for the Starwood and fax it to the SPG’s office in Ontario (Canada) for processing purposes.

Apparently, there was quite a few employees aware of this falsifications as they had to carry it through by producing these documents. According to the law suit, they were instructed not to discuss it over the email.

Kind of makes you wonder what other kinds of shenanigans are going on behind the scenes, yes? (H/T: View From The Wing)

20 FREE REAMS OF PAPER: Do you need 10,000 sheets of paper? You do? Well, be sure to stop at OfficeMax no later than tomorrow, as you can get two free cases of paper (total value: $88) there. It’s “free” in the sense that your rebate is in the form of OfficeMax credit, but still, not bad, especially if you actually happen to need 10,000 sheets of paper. Full details are in the Slickdeals thread.

SPEAKING OF PAPER PRODUCTS, HERE’S SOMEBODY ELSE WHO THINKS OUTSIDE THE BOX: “Rules say I can’t bring beer into the office, but they don’t say anything about making beer in the office.” — Kevin Malone, The Office

Happy Friday!

More on this later, but Amex has some great offers right now and we don’t know how long they’ll last. Here’s what you do:

1. Go here: https://www.creditcards.com/cardmatch/

2. Enter your info, but you do NOT need to enter your SSN.

3. Submit and you’ll see some Amex offers. The best ones are the Platinum 100K points (annual fee NOT waived) and the Gold 50K points (annual fee IS waived).

If you have a major trip or two coming up, Platinum’s probably a better bet since you get lounge access as well as a $200 airline fee reimbursement. If you’re not into travel so much, the Gold offer would be better.

UPDATE: As of 1 PM EST, this deal appears to be dead, though don’t let that stop you from trying. Congrats to those who got in!

We’re traveling back from our vacation today, so no finance updates, but we will say this: The Hilton Princess Managua is awesome! We’ve been staying here the past two weeks so we’re in a pretty good position to critique. Obviously Managua, Nicaragua isn’t a tourist mecca, but if you ever do find yourself in Managua, by all means stop in at the Hilton Princess. The service is top notch: every staff member was friendly and efficient and every request of ours was met. The location is pretty good too. Reviews on tripadvisor.com have complained about the street noise, but we were overlooking the street and it didn’t bother us one bit (being on the fifth floor probably didn’t hurt).

We’ll be back tomorrow with our usual fare.