SALON PSYCHIATRISTS: SUICIDE PREVENTION
Forget the shrink. Most people would rather pour their hearts out to their hairdresser or taxi driver - working people they can relate to. With this in mind, mental-health professionals in Belfast have begun training cabbies and hair stylists to spot people who may be suicidal, the BBC reports. The project was launched based on research that shows people who are feeling depressed would rather chat about their problems with strangers than with loved ones. "We, as hairdressers, do it too. We tell them things about our personal lives and we don't realize that we've done it," says Nichola McWilliams, who runs the Ben Thomas salon in Belfast. While they can hand out leaflets and suggest places to get help, at the end of they day, they're still hairdressers, Ms. McWilliams says. Now if only psychiatrists could throw in a free perm with each session, their rates might begin to be justifiable.
PIGEON COURIER: FASTER THAN THE WEB
"We started looking at other ways to solve the problem and discovered that carrier pigeons could do the job a lot more quickly."
- Kevin Rolfe, manager of a financial services company in South Africa that recently ditched the Internet in favour of pigeons to transfer important technical data between bosses. Broadband Internet proved far too sluggish and unreliable, the team at Unlimited Group told The Daily Mail. Mr. Rolfe said it took six hours to transfer four gigabytes of encrypted data by Internet to a call centre 80 kilometres away. A pigeon named Winston took less than an hour to carry a memory card full of data in his beak.
BY THE NUMBERS: FIVE-FINGER DISCOUNTS
80: Percentage of British employees who see nothing wrong with stealing from their workplace, according to a recent study of 15,000 people conducted by researchers at Brunel University near London. The study, which aimed to take a hard look at Britain's moral compass, examined everything from music piracy to shoplifting.
66: Percentage of people who admitted they have taken stationery home from work. Women were more likely to feel guilty about pinching paper than men or to consider that behaviour dishonest, the survey finds.
WORKPLACE JARGON: IT'S A GAME CHANGER!
Last month, job search company Accountemps rounded up the most overused, clichéd and jargoned words and phrases tossed around in Canada's workplaces. Perhaps you'll find some of them familiar. Time after time you've been told to "reach out" to customers (as if customers really care) and deconstruct departmental "silos" (what is this, a chicken farm?). Not surprisingly, a lot of the terms sound like a cross between tech garble and hippie guru speak. Employees are told to thrive on the "synergy" they feel among their teammates (can you feel the creative energy, white-collar drones?) and "align" their goals with the company's (we will be "one" with the boss man). The best phrase in our books? "It is what it is." Which we'll translate to mean, "Oh good, I don't have to do anything about it. Can I go home now please?"
