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Fat Pile of Cash

Submitted by: thecougar
Created: Mar 14, 2007, 9:36 pm

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The Idea

Picture this. You pull into the office at 8am. You spend three hours working on a PowerPoint presentation, four hours crunching a quarterly budget report in Excel, and two more hours answering Email before heading home. A week later you get a paycheck automatically deposited to your bank account. But overall, pretty boring, right?

Now picture this scenario. You complete a PowerPoint presentation, your boss comes into your office and hands you $40 in cash. After the budget report? $55 bucks! Then another $20 or so just for sending some Emails!! Cash is a great motivator for those of us who love immediate gratification.

Here's the idea. A widget that monitors the work that you do and presents a running total of exactly how much you are earning for doing that task. You type in your yearly salary and the widget automatically calculates how much cash you earn per minute. It would be a fun (or maybe depressing) way to track what you are earning for completing your tasks.

I thought of this idea when I was...

thinking about how much more inspired I would be in my job if I got paid with a fat pile of cash at the end of each day.

Comments Posted

generic_idea_machine Posted: March 16, 2007, 8:45 am

i like it
this would be an awesome Second Life widget as well:

http://uk.gizmodo.com/usbham_pop.jpg

WittZi Posted: March 19, 2007, 5:50 am

There is a similar tool, but for the exact opposite out there:

http://www.mrceri.co.uk/

It's a good idea, but (as industry shows) it appears to lend itself better to manufacturing-based / manual industries. Pay-per-producton on service sector work is generally only viable through recognised professeions (medical consultations, legal fees, accountancy fees, etc ...)?

Still, if there's a way of incentivising office staff in this way and you marketed the product / concept correctly then it could be a winner?

thecougar Posted: March 19, 2007, 2:34 pm

Yes, this is it! http://www.mrceri.co...oftware/salarytimer/ Great find, Wittzi!

X_Tergwin_X Posted: July 11, 2007, 6:52 pm

DELETED

saigon Posted: July 11, 2007, 10:08 pm

Every good executive knows how much he earns per hour...its one of the tricky quesiton thrown in an interview.

No need for a widget thing..just a calculator and stick it to one's head i guess.

jill Posted: July 11, 2007, 10:19 pm

Hey thecougar, what is the status of your idea now that you have a bit of new info?

vanhees Posted: July 12, 2007, 12:56 am

Wow you guys get paid to work?

PhilipH Posted: July 12, 2007, 3:53 pm

Sounds good, but do you expect to make money on it? If so, how? I guess you could possibly sell it to companies who want to motivate their staff, but probably not for very much.

darlinglilred Posted: July 13, 2007, 9:41 am

HAHAHAH my boss would see that I spend entirerly too much time on social networking sites like this one, and not even close to enough time on the work I am actually supposed to do.

Moogy Posted: July 13, 2007, 12:19 pm

Well I don't think it can fly.
The majority of people don't work hard ...
Now if your idea was to pay then for doing nothing... then you could be on to something.

]V[oogy

phaze Posted: July 14, 2007, 5:49 am

mmm my legal guy does that.. seems that each minute turns out to be a 15 minute bill. would need a heacy audit or i would have someone write a work bot for me

jim_lewis Posted: July 14, 2007, 9:36 am

Not a compelling idea, 2 minutes with a calculator would tell me just as much. plus I get paid the same amount per minute whether I'm on a coffee break, using the loo or actually being productive.

Rizal Posted: July 15, 2007, 6:19 am

As a ceo of a company. I can tell you no company .. unless this company is really profiatble will do this... First of all there is the accounting issue.,. there will be more expense to hire accountants to register every single employee that gets cash out every day... For a company to take that amount of money daily for several to hundreds-thousands of employees is ridicolous. that would mean tens of thousands of dollars held at the office every day.. millions of dollars every month... Remember companies arent banks they are just companies and dont deposit money.. there is too many problems with this system.. thats why we have banks and accounts and creditcards... otherwise you will have to have security that guards the money.. the risk of being robbed will skyrocket .... more money to security.. imagine the major loss of money to the company just to implement this system... a very stupid idea if i say so.. this only works in short term jobs like gardening, housecleaning, restaurant and all small private businesses.. never for big companies or something like that...

thecougar Posted: July 16, 2007, 12:24 pm

Good point, Rizal - just to clarify, this widget is just for fun, it definitely would not be used for accounting purposes or actual cash payments each day. Just a *very* simple widget that took your hourly salary, work hour (i.e. 9 - 5), and then displayed a few simple numbers (i.e. amount of money earned between 9am and the current time, amount of money earned since you opened Excel at 11:15 this morning, etc..).

GordonMcDowell Posted: July 16, 2007, 3:00 pm

Well to track how much EACH activity earns you... you're kinda looking at implementing basic time tracking... maybe there's an open source one you could extend? I'm not sure I'd find this entertaining enough to use myself. One suggestion: maybe if Gord wants a new pair of shoes, he sets up the app with how much money he needs to earn, how much he's making an hour, and the app counts down remaining $ needed until the shoes have been earned?

"You have earned 1.7 shoes. Only .3 of a shoe to go before you can buy a pair, keep working Gord... keep working!" - automated semi-motivational message

jill Posted: July 17, 2007, 6:32 pm

Gord, sounds like you were at the casino rolling the dice!

"Gord wants a new pair of shoes!"

But the idea of linking work to earning something you want is a good basis for an entertaining thing. Save for holidays. Save for lunch. Pay off debts from the last holidays. Could be a cute graphic, like a puzzle that fills in the picture of the new pair of shoes as you earn them.

It's just a game. I could see it for self-employed types as another way to procrastinate ;-)

eZeitgeist Posted: July 18, 2007, 10:36 am

i dont get it...whats wrong with taking my payslip every two weeks and get my bunoses with every extra work? Computing my rate is a simple labor cost reminder ..but the meat is always on the extra effort which is not predictable. Why the need of this widget when a whole accounting dept compute my payslip anyway?

Hello!

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