2 ms·

Folks will still get paid for the "whole month" of December and so on. Well, one example of how it could be problematic, is if someone is paid hourly (say a fr

by corin_ 16y ago

Folks will still get paid for the "whole month" of December and so on. Well, one example of how it could be problematic, is if someone is paid hourly (say a freelancer with a non-expiring fulltime-equivilent contract to a company). They would lose out on a day's pay, while their rent/other bills would still charge for one month, not for one month pro-rated down by one day. As you said, different months have different lengths anyway, so it's not like an end-of-the-world problem, but for someone in that situation, they will none-the-less be losing money as a result of the change. And as to your judgements on days vs months, it's fine to say "it doesn't have to be a problem if we do it like this", but when it comes to any sort of law or contract, that would rely on both parties agreeing, and it's not impossible that they would take opposite views to both try and improve the situation for themselves. On a side note, if I were in Samoa, I would have great fun buying a 2011 calendar from as many shops as I could, then go round on December 29th complaining that it was factually incorrect and wanting a refund. Well, I say "I would...", in actual fact I wouldn't be quite that bored. But I like the idea of doing that.

bruce511 16y ago
>> As you said, different months have different lengths anyway, so it's not like an end-of-the-world problem, but for someone in that situation, they will none-the-less be losing money as a result of the change. No, they're not really losing money, it's more like they're losing the opportunity to make money on that missing day. So a freelancer can, for example work in an extra day that week if they choose. Public Holidays have the same effect every year, especially in countries where the actual day of the holiday follows the date, and thus in some years falls on a weekend. Actually they've chosen to shorten a month which has 31 days to 30 days, which is no different than say April, June, September or November. So, by your measure they're being shorted for at least 5 months of every year anyway. Plus, they've done it between Christmas and New Years, which in the Southern Hemisphere is the middle of the summer holidays. So pretty much no-one is working anyway. The opposite way of looking at the same data is that they get a "free day" in every 31-day-month. And one of these "free days" is being discarded. In other words, only us programmer types would try and nit-pick the thing apart. People on the ground haven't "lost" anything really. My point about the contracts is that nothing is affected. Contracts that say "days" mean days, contracts that say months mean "months". This is built into contracts already because months aren't the same length. a 30 day December is no different to a 30 day April.

by corin_ 16y ago

bruce511 16y ago

>> As you said, different months have different lengths anyway, so it's not like an end-of-the-world problem, but for someone in that situation, they will none-the-less be losing money as a result of the change. No, they're not really losing money, it's more like they're losing the opportunity to make money on that missing day. So a freelancer can, for example work in an extra day that week if they choose. Public Holidays have the same effect every year, especially in countries where the actual day of the holiday follows the date, and thus in some years falls on a weekend. Actually they've chosen to shorten a month which has 31 days to 30 days, which is no different than say April, June, September or November. So, by your measure they're being shorted for at least 5 months of every year anyway. Plus, they've done it between Christmas and New Years, which in the Southern Hemisphere is the middle of the summer holidays. So pretty much no-one is working anyway. The opposite way of looking at the same data is that they get a "free day" in every 31-day-month. And one of these "free days" is being discarded. In other words, only us programmer types would try and nit-pick the thing apart. People on the ground haven't "lost" anything really. My point about the contracts is that nothing is affected. Contracts that say "days" mean days, contracts that say months mean "months". This is built into contracts already because months aren't the same length. a 30 day December is no different to a 30 day April.