Today's another one of those weird "holidays" — a small German town is celebrating Rat Catcher's Day — but this is one to take seriously. Rat catchers deserve a full parade in their honor. Disagree? One English exterminator told YorkshireLive he's taken down ~50k rats since 2018, warning they're "getting bigger, bolder, and more brazen" — and that he once caught a rat 2x the length of a Chihuahua. See you at the parade.
In today's email:
Virtual meetings: It's OK if you've already tuned this story out.
7-Eleven: Get your Slurpee, then get the hell off their property.
Coca-Cola: A better brand name than Dr Tuggle's Compound Syrup of Globe Flower.
Around the web: Cool movie tricks, turning hobby magazines into profits, and more.
👇 Listen: Fast food is getting cheaper. But is it still too pricey?
The Big Idea
On mute and off-camera: Employees are checking out of their virtual meetings
Employees are exhausted from virtual meetings — can new tech change that?
2024-06-26T00:00:00Z
Sara Friedman
It looks like employees might not love sitting through a bunch of pointless meetings every day, according to new data.
Shocking, we know.
Analytics platform Vyopta evaluated 40m+ virtual meetings across 11 companies and 450k+ employees during two six-week windows from Q1 2022 and Q1 2023.
The results?
They were pretty telling of where our collective morale is at, perHarvard Business Review. We're guessing most of these will resonate:
Despite return-to-office mandates, employees attended a lot of virtual meetings in 2023, averaging 10.1 per week.
The rate of participants staying muted for the entirety of smaller virtual meetings was up from 4.8% in 2022 to 7.2% in 2023.
People spent more time off-camera, with camera enablement rates falling slightly between 2022 and 2023.
Also, unsurprisingly, there's a strong correlation between camera enablement and participation rates and retention: Employees who stayed at their company had a 32.5% camera enablement rate and a 9.6% participation rate, versus just 18.4% and 7.1%, respectively, among those who left within a year.
(Makes sense — updating your resume takes a lot of concentration.)
Meeting in the future
The surge in virtual meetings even as more employees return to their offices is proof that your Zoom calls aren't going anywhere.
But new technology might make them a whole lot more enjoyable. Or, at least, weirder.
Zoom Workplace wants AI-powered digital twins to attend our meetings for us.
Google's Project Starline is a video booth that uses high-tech cameras, sensors, and displays to make meeting participants feel like they're in the same room.
Meta's Meta Quest Pro headset paired with its Horizon Workrooms virtual office app brings meetings into the metaverse.
And many other tech companies are also working on solutions for virtual meetings.
Our favorite possibility? Having a meeting via holograms in the back seat of your driverless car.
Free Resource
The dreaded question: Where are you heading?
We know it sucks to sit and do adulting — but every so often, it's super beneficial to size up your career and ask crummy questions, such as:
What really excites me about work? (World domination.)
What do I do better than 99% of the world? (Um.)
Which is the most fulfilling part of doing my job? (Talking to you!)
How can I improve to maximize my usefulness? (Get a second dog. And beam AI into my brain.)
Where will I go, and how will I get there? (...you first.)
This free career planning doc will help you organize your outlook and chase down your dreams.
Best to dive right in, the very moment you're feeling it.
Self-esteem issues: US consumer confidence nearly shedded a full point in June. The index captures sentiment on business prospects, the job market, and incomes, and… it ain't great. Oh, consumers, if only you could see yourselves through our eyes — you're all economically beautiful.
SNIPPETS
Another day, another EU vs. Big Tech battle: European regulators charged Microsoft with antitrust violations, accusing the company of breaching competition rules by bundling its Teams and Office 365 tools.
Tesla issued two recalls on 11k+ Cybertrucks, one involving an issue with its windshield wiper and the other a trim in the trunk bed.
Patreon is offering new features for creators, including live chat, countdowns for new content, and the ability for fans to pay for past content without subscribing.
Snapchat is adding new teen safety features, including warnings on messages from unknown contacts, users that have been blocked or reported by others, or people from outside the region where the teen's contacts are located.
Robotaxis for all: Waymo's self-driving cars are available to everyone in San Francisco. Anyone with the Waymo app can hail the Alphabet-owned taxis, no waitlisting required.
Deltaopens its largest-ever lounge inside New York's JFK Airport today. The 39k-square-foot space offers luxuries for up to 515 people, including a high-end restaurant, bakery, and bar; complimentary spa treatments; and eight shower suites ready with robes and slippers.
Yelp is rolling out new tools to help users find businesses that meet mobility, hearing, and vision accessibility needs. The platform is also adding AI-generated alt text to its photos.
Eighty percent of Mattel's gaming portfolio will be accessible to people with color-vision deficiencies by the end of the year. The move will add symbols to Uno decks to aid those who cannot distinguish the cards' colors.
More ways to burn your mouth: Campbell's is welcoming four spicy flavors into its soup portfolio because, well, young people are masochists. Flavors with heat, popular among youths, represent one-quarter of soup biz growth.
Don't miss this...
Nearly 150m Americans have tried this at least once. Trends spells out three major opportunities in a booming $2B market.
ICYMI
Why 7-Eleven thanks heaven for classical music
Way back in the 18th century, as the composer Johann Sebastian Bach took Europe by storm, he described music as "an agreeable harmony for the honor of God and the permissible delights of the soul."
Little did he know that by the mid-1980s, enterprising 7-Eleven managers in British Columbia would find a perfectly disagreeable use for his Baroque sound: pissing off teens.
The 7-Eleven stores struggled to prevent kids from loitering, so they sought unconventional means to drive them away. They added better lighting, removed window ledges (so nobody could sit on them), and started playing music by the likes of Bach, Vivaldi, and Mozart.
There are thousands of companies valued at $1B+. How many clues do you need to identify today's billion-dollar brand?
Clue 1: In 1991, this company became the first of its kind to popularize drive-thru service.
Clue 2: It's responsible for some big world-improving moves, including its 1922 invention of the malted milkshake and its 1968 decision to put prescription medication into child-resistant containers.
Clue 3: Though this company has 12.5k+ locations across the US, Europe and Latin America, they are not all under the same brand. In Mexico, for instance, it's known as Farmacias Benavides.
👇 Scroll to the bottom for the answer 👇
Background Check
From a health tonic to the world's favorite soda
A pharmacist created a health tonic and formed the basis for the world's largest beverage company.
2024-06-26T00:00:00Z
Juliet Bennett Rylah
To curb his morphine dependency following an injury sustained as a Confederate soldier in the Civil War, Georgia pharmacist John Pemberton developed and sold Pemberton's French Wine Coca, an alcoholic health tonic inspired by Vin Mariani, a coca wine — meaning it contained then-legal coca leaves.
Pemberton switched to a nonalcoholic version after a countywide prohibition went into effect. His bookkeeper, Frank Robinson, suggested he call it Coca-Cola, as it was made with coca leaves and kola nuts.
Shortly before his death in 1888, Pemberton sold his ownership in the beverage. It was under another pharmacist, Asa Griggs Candler, and Robinson's stead that the formula was modified, bottled, and ultimately became the world's most popular soda — now both cocaine- and kola nut-free.
Fun fact: An earlier, unsuccessful version of Pemberton's tonic, made with a toxic flower known as buttonbush, was called Dr Tuggle's Compound Syrup of Globe Flower.
AROUND THE WEB
🚢 On this day: In 1959, the St. Lawrence Seaway opened, creating a pathway from the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes.
📽️ That's cool: A collection of film techniques with fun examples.
🎧 My First Million:FreightWaves' Craig Fuller shares how he turned dying hobby magazines into a $60m-per-year cash flow machine.
👀 Game:Guess the pixelated object as it comes into focus.
Yesterday, we asked you how many hours you're actually working while on the clock.
As it turns out, we have a bunch of rule followers on our hands. Most (32%) said they're locked into work for 30-40 hours a week, while 30% said they're in focus mode for 20-30 hours.
On the extreme ends of the spectrum, 6% reported working for 50+ hours a week and 2% said they're grinding for just 0-10 hours.
And most are fessing up when they step away: The majority (64%) said they're only away from their computer for 0-5 hours a week without telling their boss, and 61% said they've never taken secret vacation time.
Not everyone is innocent, though:
"I took a weeklong vacation to Florida with my family. I worked a few hours each day while the kids napped so no one would suspect anything."
"I've gone on an entire weeklong trip (not technically vacation, family stuff) from the Midwest to Arizona without telling anyone. I'd get up at 4am to clock in at normal time, and then work until midday, then spend the rest of the day with family. I even worked from the car on the way back."
SHARE THE HUSTLE
Hey. Don't keep us a secret.
Refer just 3 people and we'll send Hustle essentials as a thank you.
Today's Fit the Bill answer is Walgreens Boots Alliance (Market cap: $13.73B)
Today's email was brought to you by Juliet Bennett Rylah and Sara Friedman. Editing by: Ben "Had the worst dream where someone said there was a rat 2x the length of a Chihuahua" Berkley.
