What surveys really pay you

OAKLAND, California — It’s after noon on a recent Wednesday, and the kitchen and patio at ThredUp’s Oakland headquarters are packed. Employees are eating lunch and chatting around a long table in the kitchen. Smaller groups are clustered outside and enjoying a sunny spring day after weeks of rain. But by 1:40 p.m., the communal gathering areas are silent. People are quietly typing back at their desks, walking briskly to meetings or holed up in conference rooms on video calls. As Nickelback’s “Far Away” plays to a virtually empty kitchen, a few people pop in for free snacks, but they grab what they need and go. No chitchat. No lounging around. Efficiency and time management are key when you’re on a four-day work schedule, as the more than 250 corporate employees at ThredUp are. The online secondhand reseller is one of a small but growing number of companies that have bucked the traditional five-day week in favor of what advocates and participants say is greater work-life … [Read more...] about Bay Area employees share what their 4-day workweek is really like

7 Business At a time when even mortgage companies prompt tips, there's a new wrinkle: self-serve checkouts that prompt a fat gratuity for your trouble. Beth Dalbey , Patch Staff Posted | Updated Replies ACROSS AMERICA — What’s this? Tip the self-checkout machine ? Here’s a tip: Customers feel like they’re being “emotionally blackmailed” by this new example of so-called tip creep, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal. Increasingly at airports, sports stadiums, bakeries, coffee shops and other businesses and venues, customers using the self-checkout option are invited to tip the customary 20 percent. Many are drawing the line at adding on a 20 percent gratuity when they do the work themselves. Businesses cut labor costs with self-checkout options, leaving consumers to question where the tip is going, Ishita Jamar, a senior at American University in Washington, D.C., told The Journal. In one … [Read more...] about Self-Serve Checkouts Prompt Tips, But Who Gets The Gratuity?

Four years after a gay Black teenager in Alabama died by suicide following an onslaught of bullying at school, his mother said she finally feels as though she can almost breathe again, now that the civil litigation against her child’s school district has been settled. Camika Shelby and Patrick Cruz, the parents of 15-year-old Nigel Shelby, settled a civil lawsuit against the Huntsville City Board of Education and the high school’s then-freshman principal, Jo Stafford in March. In her first interview since the settlement, Shelby said she now wants to focus on keeping the memory of her only child alive. “Nigel was loved at home, but that wasn’t enough, obviously,” Shelby said. “I just want kids of the LGBTQ community, Black kids, all kids really to be able to go to school and feel comfortable and not feel closed in, alone, alienated.” As a result of the $840,000 settlement reached in March, the Huntsville City Board of Education is required to implement a number of policies … [Read more...] about After her only son died by suicide, a mother wants other gay Black students to thrive

CARDIFF, Wales — A few hours before a recent Wales-Ireland rugby match in Cardiff, amid throngs of fans dressed in team colors of red and green, and sidewalk merchants selling scarves and flags, police officers The officers stopped a man carrying a large Starbucks coffee, asked him a series of questions and then arrested him. A camera attached to the van had captured his image, and facial recognition technology used by the city identified him as someone wanted on suspicion of assault. The presence of the cameras, and the Britain has traditionally sacrificed privacy more than other Western democracies, mostly in the name of security. The government’s use of thousands of closed- But now a new generation of cameras is beginning to be used. Like the one perched on the top of the Cardiff police van, these cameras feed into facial recognition software, enabling real-time identity checks — raising new concerns among public officials, civil society groups and citizens. … [Read more...] about Real-Time Surveillance Will Test the British Tolerance for Cameras

B efore he had even made his first movie, Spike Lee used to fantasize about three things: season tickets at the Garden, a brownstone in Fort Greene like the one that he was raised in and a house in the historically black Oak Bluffs section of Martha’s Vineyard. In 1986, after writing, producing, directing and acting in his infectious debut, “She’s Gotta Have It,” a stylish, edgy rom-com about a libidinous young woman juggling three lovers, those Knicks seats came first. The two homes swiftly followed, and within a decade, Lee’s status and celebrity had catapulted him, practically against his will, from Da Republic of Brooklyn, as he likes to call it in emails, into a 8,200-square-foot Upper East Side townhouse that was previously home to Jasper Johns. But the getaway in Massachusetts, situated next to the 18th hole at the Farm Neck Golf Club, has never required upgrading. As I was preparing to visit him there this summer, Lee warned me that the second week of August is when … [Read more...] about The Culture Caught Up With Spike Lee — Now What?

Feinstein is struggling on many fronts at the end of her distinguished career. Photo: Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images Dianne Feinstein ’s poor health , absences from the U.S. Senate, and alleged mental lapses have been a big story in Washington this year. That’s mostly thanks to the 89-year-old’s position on the Judiciary Committee , which clears the nominations for the federal judgeships that Joe Biden really needs to get approved in case Democrats lose control of the Senate or the White House in 2024. But it’s clear Californians have been paying attention as well. A new poll from IGS/UC Berkeley shows Feinstein’s political standing deteriorating. Fully 67 percent of respondents to the survey agreed that “Feinstein’s latest illness underlines the fact that she is no longer fit to continue serving in the U.S. Senate.” The poll doesn’t provide a partisan breakdown of that particular result, though we are told “agreement extends to voters of all … [Read more...] about Poll: Californians Deem Feinstein Unfit to Serve