Is your brain awake or is your brain asleep? Yes. Researchers at UC Santa Cruz and WashU discovered that small regions of the brain can actually take micronaps while other regions are awake, and vice versa. Very cool, but most importantly, a perfect excuse to toss out the next time anyone calls you out for not listening to them.
In today's email:
Ugh: Out with work friends, in with work nemeses.
Weird week: AI is a joke, an addictive seasoning, and more.
Around the web: A clever take on Wordle, what heat does to trains, and more.
👇 Listen: From micromanagers to complainers, most everyone has felt agitation in the workplace lately. Why is annoyance so widespread?
The Big Idea
Co-workers are annoying the heck out of each other
Workers are losing friends and irritating each other.
2024-07-19T00:00:00Z
Juliet Bennett Rylah
Do you find your co-workers grating? Turns out, that might not just be a you problem.
A recent survey of ~3k employees from resume platform Kickresume found that 85% of employees have dealt with an annoying co-worker, with 58% reporting reduced productivity as a result.
That's a pretty high number that likely indicates many of us are annoying one other.
What do these annoying co-workers do?
The survey named the five most irksome behaviors:
Stealing credit for other people's work (33%)
Micromanaging (32%)
Frequent complaining (30%)
Invading personal space (30%)
Lunch theft (27%)
Some of these issues are obviously mitigated by working at home — it's hard to steal your co-worker's lunch from their own fridge. (Also, can we just point out how baffling it is that adults who aren't the Hamburglar still do this?)
But 33% of Gen Z respondents said remote work had increased irritating behaviors, possibly due to many younger employees starting their careers over Zoom amid the pandemic and the rise of remote work.
The pandemic…
… may also be why people are feeling more annoyed than ever.
Misconduct solutions company Work Shield found that co-worker complaints spiked at the onset of the pandemic and as workers returned to the office. Work Shield CEO Jared Pope toldFast Company he thinks it's because "people forgot how to act" around others.
Meanwhile, work friendships are fizzling out as employees struggle to bond in remote or hybrid settings.
There are numerous think pieces about whether that's a good or bad thing, but it likely means we've lost the co-workers with whom we'd typically vent, leading to issues festering until a complaint is made.
What do experts suggest?
Obviously, harassment should be reported to supervisors. But if you're just annoyed, consider looking within and examining your own emotions and responses. And if that doesn't work, try approaching the co-worker directly — not with anger, but with curiosity and empathy.
Toolbox
You're almost through another week, which means it's almost time to start thinking about… next week. Here are some links that'll give you an edge come Monday.
🧠 Create smarter: Life as a content creator seems like it'd be all glitz and glam, but it's more risk and restraint. Hear how one creator balances financial opportunities with his need to maintain credibility.
🛍 Get a Prime primer: You could cry looking at your post-Prime Day bank balance, or you could simply refill it with all the same tactics Amazon just used on you. Put Prime Day's strategic secrets to work for you.
TRENDING
Bud Light's fall from its perch as America's top-selling beer continues: It's now down to No. 3, with summer sales lagging behind sister brand Michelob Ultra. Modelo Especial retained the top spot.
SNIPPETS
Apex — the largest, most complete stegosaurus fossil ever discovered — sold to billionaire Ken Griffin for a record $44.6m at auction this week. He plans to lend it to a US museum.
Ford Motor is investing $3B to expand production of its Super Duty trucks. The company will use a Canadian plant previously intended for EV production and add a capacity of ~100k pickup trucks per year.
More from Ford: It recently published this patent for "adaptively steered vehicle headlamps" that'd follow the driver's gaze. There are no known plans to integrate the tech, but hey, we thought you'd find it interesting, too.
Britain is the first European nation to green-light the sale of lab-grown meat in pet food with approval of British company Meatly.
Robocop? Police in Santa Monica, California, arrested an alleged car burglar after a drone spotted him behaving suspiciously. If that feels weird, a taser company recently acquired a drone company, so just think about that for a minute.
OpenAI launched GPT-4o mini, a smaller model that will replace GPT-3.5 Turbo in ChatGPT. It's available now for free users.
A pick-me-up for your car, too:Starbucks will get EV charging stations courtesy of Mercedes-Benz at 100 US locations. They can bump compatible EVs to ~80% in ~30 minutes.
Narc for Ferrari: The luxury brand's program in which superfans (apparently called Ferraristi) can rat out counterfeit products has yielded "over a thousand" submissions. In exchange for intel, snitches get a legit Ferrari-branded gadget.
Don't miss this...
Twisters hits theaters today, 28 years after Twister debuted. Tornado warnings have improved since the first film, but homes… not so much. We have the technology to build tornado-proof homes, so why aren't we? Watch and learn (and get a little angry).
That was odd
Weird week: Could you pull off playing hooky for six years?
Plus: A poppy seed crackdown, and AI is probably funnier than you are.
2024-07-19T00:00:00Z
Ben Berkley
The Spanish government discovered an employee had been skipping work for six years while recognizing him for his dedication to the job. Joaquin Garcia, a 69-year-old building supervisor at a water treatment facility in Spain, managed to rake in ~$242k for six years of work he didn't do, thanks to a miscommunication between two local departments that resulted in neither one overseeing his work. (Shout out to bureaucracy.) Ironically, the OG quiet quitter was being nominated for an award for his 20-year tenure when someone finally took notice.
We wish we were joking: AI is funnier than humans, according to a new study. The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Southern California, asked 105 participants to provide their funniest responses to a series of prompts, then had 200 judges assess the human answers against ChatGPT-generated ones. The result: AI punchlines won out ~70% of the time. Admittedly, not all of us are funny.
This Trader Joe's pantry staple is banned in South Korea, where it's considered a drug. The country is cracking down on narcotics-related products, which includes foods that contain poppy seeds — like TJ's Everything but the Bagel seasoning — given their use in opium production. Though such products have been banned since 2022, the popular seasoning is specifically being called out at airports, as travelers apparently can't live without it, which we suppose makes it addictive though maybe not a drug. (Note: Eating the seeds, even a lot of them, can't intoxicate you, but it can result in failed drug tests.)
Fit The Bill
There are thousands of companies valued at $1B+. How many clues do you need to identify today's billion-dollar brand?
Clue 1: It was founded by, and named after, an engineer named Bill Fair and a mathematician named Earl Isaac.
Clue 2: In 1958, the pair sent letters to America's 50 biggest credit grantors, encouraging them to adopt a new system for managing their risk. They only got one reply at the time — extra funny, considering their system's ubiquity today.
Clue 3: This company isn't shy about how it views you, ranking you on a scale of 300 to 850.
👇 Scroll to the bottom for the answer 👇
AROUND THE WEB
🛤️ On this day: In 1900, Porte Maillot-Porte de Vincennes, the first line of the Paris Metro, was inaugurated amid the Paris World's Fair.
🚂 That's interesting: How scorching temperatures can affect rail travel.
Today's Fit the Bill answer is FICO (Market cap: $39.25B)
Today's email was brought to you by Juliet Bennett Rylah, Sara Friedman, and Singdhi Sokpo. Editing by: Ben "Only annoying in big doses and also small doses" Berkley.
