Fish in the microwave
Office microaggressions
Good morning, my friends old and new. This is your Stock Market Rundown for July 3rd, 2023. Thanks as always for reading. Let’s get it started:
TODAY’S TOP STORY: SAD DESK LUNCH🥪
Workers across the country are getting an unwelcome memo. With the pandemic behind us, Corporate America has done a 180 from “remote work forever 🫶” to “get your ass in here for 9 AM Monday, thx”.
Example: the CEO of Amazon told employees that he expected them to be back in their cubicles, waxing poetic: “There is something about being face-to-face with somebody, looking them in the eye, and seeing they’re fully immersed in whatever you’re discussing that bonds people together.” Wow man, that’s, like, magical.
Strangely, the employees weren’t moved by this corporate bumpf and responded by staging a livestreamed walkout. Okay, to be fair, only a couple hundred Amazonians participated in the protest, out of hundreds of thousands. The rest might’ve scanned recent news of tech layoffs and realized holding a sassy sign in front of headquarters could be a career-limiting move.
Apple employees were similarly nonplussed over their own employer’s back-to-work push, and argued for the status quo of remote work in an emotive open letter signed by thousands. TL;DR: having to commute makes the workplace more “neuro-normative”. (I’ll Google it later.)
Spare a thought for the “genius bar” associates who toil at the Apple store in the mall, slogging to and fro on public transit daily, to listen to Karen cry over bricking her iPad by dropping it in the hot tub, while the smell of Auntie Annie’s Pretzels from the food court wafts in the air. No working from home for them!
The work-from-home trend has led to a wave of vacancies in office buildings that have been a big headache for the commercial real estate industry. In fact, it’s crashing and might not recover even by 2040.
Maybe the Chinese have the right idea—they’re developing skyscrapers into pig farms. Kick out the coders and dedicate the floorspace to bacon and ham production? Points for creativity.
SO WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON?
Know the risks of your Guiness: Ireland is going to put warning labels on alcohol.
Not just for the countertop of your kitchen island: scientists say granite could provide energy storage for solar power.
Nonprofits are complaining that the global oil & gas industry has made “almost no progress” on Paris agreement climate goals. The global oil & gas industry responded by saying they will definitely do it after the football game is over, and could you grab them a beer from the fridge while you’re up?
Bill Gates’ philanthropic foundation is funding a trial for a tuberculosis vaccine, which could save over a million and a half lives a year. Okay Bill, we forgive you for implanting us with microchips.
Better get a bus pass: due to supply chain tie-ups and aging vehicles, average wait times for car repairs have stretched to 17 days, from 10 before the pandemic. Staff shortages are biting too—file “auto mechanic” under “jobs that cannot be replaced with AI”.
That’s it for today, see you bright and early tomorrow. Yours in capitalism, The Axe