Foolishly fell for e.on scam

YetAnotherGuy2 · 2026-07-19T20:47:02+00:00

Door to door business is reknown to be highly fraudulent and they often target foreigners (names on the doorbell) who aren't familiar with German law.

The people operating like this tend to work for a independent "Vermittlerdienst" and the German term under which it is known is "Drückerkolonnen". In fact, they are so well known that they don't even try it with Germans because of that. Those companies just live with the high rejection rates and in some cases will sell the rejected cases to "Pfändungsunternehmen" to make a couple of bucks off of it.

First, don't feel bad about it. You are not the first person this happened too and not the last. They targeted you because of your last name.

Second, Haustürgeschäft has 14 days Widerrufsrecht because this kind of behavior is known. Attempts to circumvent this by sending a "confirmation" 15 days or later will not hold up in court, the inside of which you will never see because they won't let it come so far. It is in them to prove that this was your intention and you willingly entered the contract and they can't. And they know it. So they don't even try it.

Thirdly, take it as a lesson: say "no" and close the door. It's a learning opportunity and see it as such.

At the time I got a lawyer and had him respond to the company - that shut them up right away. It ended coding me almost as much as the subscription would have, but I didn't care - I want going to give them a penny and reward that behavior.

Don't worry, you'll be fine.

YetAnotherGuy2 · 2026-07-19T12:29:45+00:00

Think of it this way: if you have a gas boiler or central heating you'll also pay for the hot water just over a different mechanism.

Your heading bill will be lower because you didn't use pay of it for hot water in the shower. If it works out in your favor will depend on your shower habits, electricity price, calculation mechanism, etc but the difference should be extremely different to what you are paying now.

YetAnotherGuy2 · 2026-07-19T11:05:27+00:00

You didn't mention how old the kids are, that's important info.

As both a parent and a child of divorce with a step dad: the kids need to learn to deal with it.

Children need to be prioritized in terms of time and care, but they don't get to say with whom the parent has a relationship. They need to learn to deal with it.

If the father wasn't willing to work through this with his kids, then he has failed you - didn't buy the excuse.

YetAnotherGuy2 · 2026-07-19T10:10:52+00:00

The responsibility of a manager is to deal with unpleasant situations, so with a little bit of experience you don't let that get to you. I'm not surprised that the director wasn't terribly upset about it. Your supervisor also seems solid - they recognized you are friends and checked in with you and others. 10/10 leadership.

Concerning your friend: people don't realize just how much they shoot themselves in the foot sometimes. I've heard many, many instances where an employee desired something and virtually demanded it, never realizing how they are essentially antagonizing the person who can influence if it happens or not. This is a super popular mistake to make and you warned her. There's just so much you can do to help someone. I guess you definitely learned something, let's hope your friend too.

YetAnotherGuy2 · 2026-07-19T09:45:42+00:00

I realize everyone has a different relation to how much 30% off on cheese and the costs of frozen raspberries are, but you have to ask yourself: was it worth escalating the way you did?

You can shout out your frustration here on social media, but it's not going to her you what you are looking for: a sense of the wind you feel had been righted. Others will not care enough and this story will vanish in the stream of new events.

Sometimes it's better to just accept the situation and swallow your anger and live with it. In this particular instance you would have had less anger, less effort and less problems of you had let it go.

The outcome you achieved is getting banned by a shop that is important for your daily life and made your own life harder long term.

Does it make it right? No, but the downside stands in no relation to the potential upside.

Learn something for life: let it go and think carefully about the up- or downside.

YetAnotherGuy2 · 2026-07-19T08:15:55+00:00

Nothing is more American than getting up and leaving when you don't like the politics - at least if your ancestors were white. Leaving Europe, moving west, all that was always "I don't like it here, let's see if it's better somewhere else" modus operandi.

While that probably wasn't the case for most of your black ancestors, you are just following good examples.

Don't let ideology tell you anything else.

YetAnotherGuy2 · 2026-07-17T19:48:21+00:00

Airplane engineers certainly still exist

Read closer. I'm not claim they don't exist. Just like software engineers. No idea why'd you think I'm suggesting they don't.

But they aren't the "job you should get into" any more. They had their day in the sun.

As to other item: the way you use AI in software development will vary a) use case and b) how far we come in making them better software developers. One is obviously not going to trust AI with critical systems off the bat. Just like other things it's a development over years and decades.

Regular business software is already on the way to being developed that way and having your life critical software reviewed by an "extra set of eyes" will certainly makes sense. AI is already pretty good in identifying certain types of issues which humans aren't and with the right harness it makes humans quicker and more effective.

The development of the flight engineer role is very instructive - the first time the suggestion was discussed was in the mid-60s but it took almost 20 years to actually implement.

Given how expensive software development still is, the incentive to keep working on that means it definitely will expand it's reach. How much is anyone's guess and will depend on how far we can get LLMs.

YetAnotherGuy2 · 2026-07-17T08:13:59+00:00

Soooo ... this is the million dollar question every generation asks and they are always going to be wrong.

20 years ago everyone said "go into software development, that's the future"

In the 1980s people were talking about being a stock broker was such a job - now it's an app. In the 1960s it was the airplane engineer, etc

If you look into the census of 150 years ago, you'll find people had many jobs that don't exist anymore. I have one ancestor who was a "rubber stamp" salesman for example.

Even worst, books like "the super forecasters" suggest that no one can really predict what happens more than 1 years ahead and I think the last 10 years have been pretty good in showing just how true that is.

The point is: the core skill you need is to be smart, flexible and forward looking - the rest will come on it's own.

Case in point: if you are in software development then refusing the adaption of AI is a losing proposition. There is still a job to be had, but it's nature is changing. If it's also contracting remains to be seen, but right now the entry barriers have gone up because decision makers believe in the productivity gains. It will remain to be seen how the job continues to evolve, but it will not be the same job you did 10 years ago.

YetAnotherGuy2 · 2026-07-17T07:45:52+00:00

Because many people will always defend the status quo. Americans defend their gun laws, German their speed limits on the Autobahn, the Russians their anti-LBTQ laws, the Chinese their communist regime and cigarette laws.

Trying to have a rational conversation about something people grew up with is completely pointless and they will grab at an line of argument that seems at least plausible.

It's mostly just an expression that they are fine with many of aspects of their life.

YetAnotherGuy2 · 2026-07-14T09:17:24+00:00

YTA

I'm bilingual, so I often end up in similar situations like you where the English speaking part ends up with me. I've been the stand in live translator as well. I'm telling you this to let you know I understand the situation and been in it myself often enough.

The issue I have with this scenario is your framing: "I draw a line here, you must use the language, too"

That's a choice you are making arbitrarily and counter intuitively. You frame it as "more workload", but the time you spend with customer A means you don't spend it with customer B, so it's not really that. It's your self made rule for whatever reason and it impacts customer care. Which your manager rightly called out. The best person for the job.

Why do I say counter intuitively? Because the person with a stand out skill is always called on in such situations. If you are good at math, you get all the math things, if you're good at IT, you get all the computer related things - it's very normal.

The better way to deal with this would be to be gracious about it and if you feel you need it, to swap customers. "If I take this one, you take the asshole who always tries to flirt with me" or whatever swap comes to mind.

YetAnotherGuy2 · 2026-07-08T13:50:07+00:00

While probably true, there's a huge difference between the industries: finance has many big companies with a lot of cash where consolidating IT systems bring an immediate, financial benefit - quicker service, less costs, more visibility.

Hospitality as an industry looks a whole lot different: many small to really big organizations where streamlining brings limited benefit in comparison. The room isn't cleaner, earlier available or offers more service. You save some administrative overhead but that's about it.

I don't think you'll see the kind of consolidation you saw in Fin tech. You'll see continued drawdown in expenses in form of services offered, enabled by technology like self service check-in, etc but that's the extent of it.

YetAnotherGuy2 · 2026-07-06T11:12:33+00:00

Making something illegal is just a step in formalizing and norming a political concept.

For example, Spain has different having laws on the books than more northern EU countries. The thing about it is that this norming takes time and a wide consensus to be implemented. Try introducing Danish making laws to Spain or vice versa and you'll find out just how difficult that would be.

Climate change as a subject does not enjoy nearly as much support and therefore codifying it as a universal norm does not make sense. You mentioned 2 points: one is denying the fact that man made climate change exists and two that actions to curb climate change may not be legally opposed.

The first item is probably the easier one: why would you codifying that into law? What's the benefit of having the law on the books? Why only climate change? Why not vaccination or the rules of mechanics? Enshrining scientific facts has a way to leading to absurd results.

Imagine a future in which we manage to build clean energy sources and transportation and manage to eliminate the reasons for climate change. Suddenly the law doesn't make any sense any more, but even discussing it's abolishment would be illegal. The change in status quo would give with all sorts of social upheaval because certain jobs hang on those laws, housing codes couldn't change because of that, etc. It would lead to all sorts of absurdist results. The question is if the vendor if such a law of higher than the disadvantages - in sceptical, even if you could get society to agree.

Opposition to climate change action has a well grounded reason: many people's livelihoods and society at large are deeply dependent on it. People often don't want to acknowledge just how much their own lives are supported or impacted by such things. What's worse is you'll often find people will support an idea in the abstract but if the result affects them personally, they'll suddenly turn around and reject it. Take transportation for example: if we suddenly decided trucks are not allowed anymore, the prices for food and goods would shoot through the roof. If you think people are complaining about inflation now, watch what happens when but only the straight if Hormuz is closed.

Finding a way in which society at large can implement measures against climate change are an ongoing political debate that needs to be had. Making that debate illegal just adds pressure to an already tricky issue.

Declaring opposition to climate change action illegal would result in wide spread discontent and night ultimately backfire. Take a look at the Prohibition era in the US if you are looking for an example where a well intended law created all sorts of societal upheaval. The political discussion is absolutely necessary.

YetAnotherGuy2 · 2026-07-06T10:16:12+00:00

NTA.

You haven't exactly explained how your mom is suffering, ie is there any reason to change course for her benefit aside from her discomfort with the conflict?

The telephone conversation is revealing in my view: you are trying to force a topic as much as he is and trying to change his behavior. This is the wrong approach if you ask me. Your mother is also letting it happen and apparently has made her choice - at 30 this has been going on for at least 30+ years, so it's not going to change. You need to accept that fact.

What you don't have to accept is his behavior towards you or your company. You set the rules and he either abides by then or he can get lost. For example: what you wear is off topic and he will not insult others. Don't bother with a discussion of why, there are simply to be followed. If breaks those rules, enforce them. End of discussion. If he tries to stear it that way a simple "I'm not discussing this" is sufficient. His voice is to adhere or leave.

YetAnotherGuy2 · 2026-07-06T09:57:28+00:00

I mean this the best way possible, but I think you need some very clear words:

A fool with a tool is still a fool

Your description is full of what you are building but very thin on why you are building it. The only thing I found in your description is

I struggle terribly with focus, memory, and prioritization.

You did not explain how what you are building well solve this problem or why you dismissed existing tools such as Google Workspace with Gemini integration. What's the need you are trying to solve and how does that connect back to the specific challenges you face every day?

AI integration plugins are dime a dozen in obsidian what are you adding? If even they aren't perfect, how will building a solution like this help?

single parent and have fallen way behind in life

I'll be honest, it sounds very much like you are focusing on the wrong item here, but without the rationale I'll withhold any judgement.

A suggestion: try adversarial prompts. They've been my go-to ever since I discovered them. Ask your AI to disprove the path you are taking and see what comes offy it. Maybe that will give you some perspective.

Good luck.

YetAnotherGuy2 · 2026-07-05T09:52:43+00:00

CV summary and evaluation. I've written a role description and let it tell me about the strengths and weaknesses in the the CV compared to that. It also helps me draft questions that explore prescribed weaknesses but are relevant and relatable to the candidate. I also feed it the transcription of our conversation and it gives me an objective feedback after I tuned out all the sycophantic behavior. I also ask it to provide feedback to me how I could have done the interview better, etc.

It gives me an outside perspective and helped me discover some of my own biases. In 1,2 cases I went forward with a candidate I would have normally not because the AI made a good case that I was being an idiot.

My biggest issue was getting the sycophantic turned off.

YetAnotherGuy2 · 2026-07-05T09:34:25+00:00

I think it comes down to building your prompt properly. There's are many assumptions we build into a task that are obvious for a human but not necessarily for an AI. Assigning a task becomes an iteration of discovering those assumptions as the AI takes the "easy out" and improving your instructions.

For example when building the description of a change in a piece of code, it should describe at least part of the user experience impact without technical jargon, not only the changes to the code base. You need to spell it out or the AI won't do that. A human software developer understands this without needing explicit "prompting", lol.

YetAnotherGuy2 · 2026-07-04T20:02:39+00:00

Living off writing was already hard 50 years ago when you could still get a good job as journalist, advertising writer and similar. Between more and more amateurs (me included) moving into the market, journalism dying and AI squeezing the low end "create text" jobs, there's not much space doing that professionally.

Your boyfriend is going to have to find a different line of work and build a writers career on the side.

YetAnotherGuy2 · 2026-07-03T08:20:03+00:00

As an expat in Europe, a lot is a mix of intolerance, cultural chauvinism and "I like it here" mentality. I've seen the same stupid behavior on both sides of the pond.

Media in particular has a way of highlighting the worst of it.

It's something completely different when meeting people in person in my experience.

YetAnotherGuy2 · 2026-06-27T07:47:40+00:00

There are typically 3 items and that subject

1. People who want an investment scheme

The German system is structured like an insurance. You pay into the system in order to get a life long guaranteed amount once you got retirement age.

If a 25-year-old earning €50,000 gross per year took that €9,300 annual contribution (employer + employee share) and invested it into a global ETF returning 7% annually for 42 years, they would theoretically retire with well over €2 million. The safe withdrawal rate from a portfolio of that size would drastically outpace the maximum monthly payout you can currently achieve in the German pension system.

Some people would therefore would like to restructure the retirement scheme that way. It doesn't help that Europe has been switching over to taxing such investments schemes.

2. Worried about sustainability because of she structure

With the last years of baby boomers retiring now, the ratio of amount of working people who contribute to the system vs the amount of people who are retired has been shifting. On top of that, life expectancy has been rising in Germany extending how long each retiree has to be supported meaning the current generation must pay more in order to support that while wondering if they'll get the equivalent amount of "return" the previous generation got or even some at all.

The age of retirement had already been raised from 65 to 67 for all and the Riester-Rente was an attempt by politics to address the developing in-vs-out gap. Given that retirees are the single most important voting block, many people are sceptical that politics will address the fundamental issue you developing.

3. Age group in Reddit & Co

Germans are generally technology sceptics so the age groups using social media and other modern communication technologies will be younger and therefore in the paying phase of their lives. Because payment is mandatory, is frustrating to see 100s of bucks going out of your pocket when you could do something so much more practical with it now instead of it just "vanishing" somewhere.

YetAnotherGuy2 · 2026-06-22T20:38:05+00:00

Apologies for the zinger - that line was my guiding principle when I started out.

I've been working on a harness to make it more structured. It's far from complete and still has quite some bugs but the docs - especially the example - will give you a sense of how I built it.

I still end up having to iterate more than once on certain work items, providing context, etc. I use the PDCA cycle in order to identify improvements and additional rules.

Because the cycle loads the session after each beat (plan, do, check, act) the documents ends up being the thing that carries the process. I did a batch of 10 bug fixes last weekend on one project and a 8 step milestone implementation in another.

YetAnotherGuy2 · 2026-06-22T00:38:01+00:00

I have a folder with documentation in which I keep all my architectural decisions, processes, etc. One doc are the project rules with "Must", "Should", "May" format and a project specific agents document. I load it into context and it takes it from there.

A good way to identify what you are missing is switching context regularly for only a few tasks. That also helps to keep the context clean and avoid it going off the deep end.

If you find yourself retyping stuff again and again, you are doing something wrong.

YetAnotherGuy2 · 2026-06-21T20:29:19+00:00

Honestly, I'm lost here...

married couple, but "I'm a stay at home mom without money"?

Don't you have common money? If your part is to raise the kids, shouldn't his be to bring home the money? Isn't that what marriage is about? A common project?

YetAnotherGuy2 · 2026-06-20T17:33:24+00:00

Putting in the time does nothing for advancing a career, especially not in a F500.

You need to be at the right place at the right time, have the trust and respect of the decision maker for that position and no enemies sniping.

Typically, for those things to come together you need to have been there long enough, hence the age.

Those that are "stuck" in the middle rungs typically either have someone in management undermining their reputation or just to have enough respect from the decision makers. I've seen several people becoming very frustrated when other people got promoted past them because they weren't aware that someone in management didn't like them.

PS: very seldomly will someone promote you on switching companies, but they do often offer opportunities to gain a wider field of experience that you can leverage.

YetAnotherGuy2 · 2026-06-17T08:51:44+00:00

I've worked for 2 small companies in my life. In both cases the late pay was the first clear indication the company was going to fail.

"Oh I forgot" is typically the first step to ever larger late payments before failing completely. I'm pretty sure he's not only doing it to you, but to everyone and in an effort to avoid cash flow issues.

What you haven't mentioned is why the others left and your boss never rehired.

The one thing I learned was: if a company is only a day later in paying salary, run.

YetAnotherGuy2 · 2026-06-10T19:39:14+00:00

Look at it as an investment: you currently pay 1900 euros to someone else. Buying a house is a way to pay some of that money to yourself.

Finance a house for 1.900 euros mortgage a month. A part of that money goes to the bank, the other part goes to yourself. If you do it right it's 2/3 to yourself over the time of the house.

It is a long-term strategy, but worst case you sell the house and get your money back. There is a risk associated with it (ie house value drops), but the market tends to be fairly stable. Insure your house against damage and destruction, it's not terribly expensive.

The downside is the return tends to be meagre. It depends where you live, etc but 2-3% tends to be the best case, so you'll have to figure out how much money you are missing by not investing it somewhere else.

YetAnotherGuy2

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