What a killjoy. The new chief executive officer of San Francisco health insurance brokerage Zenefits has told employees to clean up their act, just six months after they had their knuckles rapped for the same reason.
New boss David Sacks on Monday banned alcohol in the office in the latest move to curtail what company brass sees as rowdy and unprofessional behaviour at the startup valued at $4.5-billion (U.S.). (Some of the rowdy behaviour will doubtless be curtailed by Friday's news of a staff cull of 250 employees, according to reports by TechCrunch and Forbes.)
In was only in June when a Zenefits official fired off a tone-it-down missive to staff, which was seen by the Wall Street Journal.
"It has been brought to our attention by building management and security that the stairwells are being used inappropriately. … Cigarettes, plastic cups filled with beer, and several used condoms were found in the stairwell. Yes, you read that right. Do not use the stairwells to smoke, drink, eat, or have sex. Please respect building and company policy and use common sense."
Party poopers.
Trump's KFC shout-out
"The other night I had Kentucky Fried Chicken. Not the worst thing in the world."
Donald Trump tells CNN's Anderson Cooper that he likes fast food, and is particularly big on McDonald's and Burger King, as Fortune reports.
Not even 50 cents to his name
Unless those photos have been doctored, that's definitely more than 50 cents.
Curtis James Jackson III, better known as rapper 50 Cent, was ordered to appear before Justice Ann Nevins in Hartford, Conn., last week.
Judge Nevins is concerned about his filing for bankruptcy protection in July, as The Wall Street Journal reported last week. It's some recent pictures of him posted on various social media websites that she's scratching her head about. In one, he poses lying in bed with stacks of $100 bills all around him, while another shows piles of cash stashed in his fridge.
Then there's the shot of him spelling out "BROKE" with lots of $100s, and the New York Daily News reported in September of his boast about buying a mansion somewhere in Africa. (Photos included, of course.)
Mr. Jackson has a lot of explaining to do about this whole bankruptcy thing.
Keeping time, all the time
There are niche markets, and then there are super-niche markets.
One of the latter is aimed at folks who want their watch to be accurate all the time, which means not having to make that bothersome adjustment every four years.
Swiss watches need all the help they can get in an increasingly competitive market. As The Globe's Michael Babad writes this week, shipments of smartwatches have eclipsed those of Swiss ones for the first time. So making a watch that never has to be adjusted, even for leap years, makes it distinctly superior to any other watch.
If you're on a tight budget, then you'll want to have a look at the Montblanc Heritage Spirit Perpetual Calendar in stainless steel, which Bloomberg reports retails at $12,800 (U.S.) – one of the less expensive options out there.
But even that competitive advantage has its limits. Feb. 29 rolls around just once every four years, except in years that mark centuries (unless that century can be divided by four). Got it? So although 1600 and 2000 marked centuries, they were leap years. And 2400 will be, too.
The Swiss watch makers' only problem is, of course, no one really cares.
Fish tale
Google "fish and oil" and you'll get hits about, unsurprisingly, fish oil. But there's another, more surprising story to be told about the two.
While even oil-rich countries such as Norway are feeling the pinch from slumping crude prices, another one of its industries is going full throttle. That'd be the one for fish, specifically, salmon.
Low supply and a weak currency have sent prices for the fish and for oil in opposite directions, so much so that mid-January saw a gutted and packed 4.5-kilogram salmon going for 65 kroner ($7.48) a kilo, according to industry publication iLaks. That works out to $33.84 per fish.
At the same time, a barrel of Brent crude was fetching $29.14. Maybe it's time to dump your energy stocks and invest in the salmon patch instead.