The WSJ says that companies are seeking "A New Compact With Workers." Sounds comforting, does it not? A new compact. A new agreement. A new partnership, so that both of us may move forward, together. And here it is: Lower pay, fewer health care benefits, and no retirement plan.

Thank god that new compact is finished. American business can move on to the real business of American business, which is: business. And you, the workers, can move on to the new business of American workers, which is: moving into your car, now that your home's been foreclosed on.

That will also benefit the US auto industry. Win-win.

Before you go examining this New Compact (Car—heh!) too closely, it's worth considering the pain that companies themselves are going through. It's not just a pity party for you workers, you know. The demand for new corporate jets is still "sluggish." That's a row that corporate titans are forced to hoe; a cross they're forced to bear; a first class commercial seat they're forced to occupy, for the time being.

Shared sacrifice. It's a phrase that means something, at certain times. At other times, it's a meaningless phrase used to obfuscate a fundamentally unjust situation. That's not the point. The point is that we're all in this together. The boss will settle for Net Jets; you, the average poor bastard living in Flint Michigan, plant a vegetable garden on abandoned urban lots, to give you sustenance through the harsh, jobless winter. In both cases, it's about people, and doing things. Whatever you do, don't start a revolution.
[Pic: AP]

Dunkin Brands trust you and they're sure your store is just fine and everything, but if you don't meet their "standards" you will have to install a security camera system in your store. Headquarters might just peek in, from time to time! The NYP reports:

According to one Dunkin' letter, the franchisee was required either to allow Dunkin' to monitor the stores "24 hours a day, 7 days a week [on video]" or pay to have each store inspected every other week at a cost of $350 a visit.

The real reason: trying to crack down on robberies by cops.

[Alternate headline: "1984 Frosted." Pic via]

Sorry Starbucks but we're pretty sure the Olsen twins and Anna Wintour are not gonna be too enthusiastic about drinking some Sanka type shit, what are they, auto repairpersons???

Starbucks' whole sales pitch here: It tastes the same as our regular coffee, but it's way cheaper and you don't have to go to a Starbucks for it. Bad move.

"We're convinced a majority of people won't be able to tell the difference," said Mr. Schultz, who explained that he has secretly been serving Via to people at his office and home for months and that they haven't realized they were drinking instant coffee.

1. Well, no reason to pay Starbucks prices now, hmm? Why don't we all just carry our personal hobo cups, fished out of the trash, and heat water in a sardine tin, with a Bic lighter, and mix it with our Starbucks Hobo Coffee Crystals? Sounds good? God.

2.Physical danger.

[Pic: Flickr, Flickr]

"Survivaball." Read all about it on the website. "Worried About Climate Change? Don't sweat it." Instead, you can wear a ridiculous rubber-ball body suit to protect you from the ravages of global warming. It's an example of the world's largest corporations using engineering to replace ethics, with humorous results, etc.

This sort of fake corporate reductio ad absurdum is The Yes Men's specialty. They've previously posed as corporate spokespeople and weaseled their way onto unsuspecting news shows, where they made humorous, evil corporate statements, and filmed rooms full of unsuspecting corporate suits applauding politely at some outrageous presentation for an idea like using shit to feed the poor. They also had a hand in last year's Fake New York Times.

So! A tipster tells us this Survivaball website and promo video are just laying the groundwork for next week's stunt:

The plan so far is to put a bunch of people in like 50 inflatable "Survivaball" suits and float them down the East River. It's about the UN meetings that are happening that day, and it's going to be pretty crazy.

The group's already been handing out this Survivaball flier down on Wall Street. Everything appears to be in order here. All you unsuspecting corporate whores who don't read this website or watch lefty documentaries on a regular basis will soon pay—with your dignity.

They're raising prices on macchiatos and frappucinos and the other fancy drinks of the sort that mediocre comedians like to mock in exaggerated tones, adding, "What does that even mean?"

Conversely, the "Just a regular coffee" drinks of the sort that mediocre comedians pine for as a counterpoint to the fancy newfangled drinks will see their prices go down.

So the yuppies willing to pay more for fancy coffee are now subsidizing the poors, who will get their basic swill cheaper. Starbucks and Barack Obama should probably meet in some sort of socialism summit?
[Pic via]

GMAC Financial Services


ConAgra


Geico


Procter & Gamble


Progressive Insurance


Roche


Sanofi-Aventis


Radio Shack


Men's Wearhouse


Lawyers.com


Sargento

[Miss any? Email us. Pic via. Info via NYT, Politico, Previously]

The New York Times reports that there already is a new measurement agency with the appropriately dystopian name "Geomentum," and it can totally predict whether Procter & Gamble should place an ad for Tide™ brand Slammin Hip Hop Detergent For Kidzzz on the bus shelter on your block, or whether this particular bit of marketing wizardry would have slightly more resonance on the next block. The shocking implication:

In a simple example, a company selling drugstore makeup for Asian women ought to advertise in neighborhoods where lots of Asian women live, and not bother pitching its products in neighborhoods heavy on white men.

First the advertising measurement Gestapo came for the white male geisha crossdressers, and I said nothing...
[Pic via]

The Wall Street Journal reveals that the coffee company of choice for robots has a whole team of efficiency experts that will come to your Starbucks location, watch your every move, then tell you how, by plotting the movements of your arms, legs, fingers, toes, and head on a PowerPoint graph that is cross-referenced with a 3D image map of cataloging even your smallest eye twitches, you can shave several seconds off your Macchiato assembly time.

He and a 10-person "lean team" have been going from region to region armed with a stopwatch and a Mr. Potato Head toy that they challenge managers to put together and re-box in less than 45 seconds.

Huzzah for "fun" corporate thinking tools! That Mr. Potato Head is just one of the tools Starbucks used to help its super-efficient Oregon City story "cut two seconds" off its average drive-thru time (the other tool: threats). No price is too high to pay to achieve our common Starbucks goal!

If Starbucks can reduce the time each employee spends making a drink, he says, the company could make more drinks with the same number of workers or have fewer workers.

Work harder. Work faster. Work more. Work yourself out of a job!
[Pic via]

Radios are old, right? Get rid of that 'Radio' anchor weighing down your valuable forward-thinking brand of the future, by all means! But for god's sake, replace it with something. Otherwise you get this:

[Our] tipster says that in-store signs will reflect the change this week, and storefront signage will begin to be reworked as "The Shack" sometime later this year.

Forget the old "Radio Shack." The new home of sophisticated electronic retailing is "The Shack."
With everyone broke, this should go over well.
[Endgadget. Pic via]

Fun with reporters desperately seeking sources! Here's a HARO request from Fox News, looking for help for a story that could be big:

18)Summary: Allergic to Wi-Fi?
Name: Karlie Pouliot
Category: Health/Fitness
Email: [Redacted]
Title: Health Producer
Media Outlet: FOX NEWS
Specific Geographic Region: N
Region: New York City area
Deadline: 01:07am EASTERN - 31 July

Query:
Do you ever feel sick, dizzy and confused? You could be allergic to Wi-Fi! Were looking for patients who suffer from Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity and doctors who specialize in treating it.

Journalism in action, ladies and gentlemen.


Here, via Guest of a Guest, is a photo of Thrillist boss Ben Lerer at some Thrillist-sponsored beach party thing in the Hamptons last weekend. Yep.


This story about how Swiffer set up a "lounge" at some convention to attract blogger coverage is a good reminder that we're all just dancing monkeys for corporate America. Write your Twitter about your Swiffer Lounge experience, monkey. Dance.


Navy-besieged Miami Herald reporter Carol Rosenberg's peers speak up: "On a personal note, I had to laugh at Gordon's complaint about "Carol's attempts to bully other reporters and establish dominance" on the base. When I traveled to Gitmo in January for our story on the base's final days, Rosenberg helped me from start to finish with my reporting and asked nothing in return." Conversely, none of the Navy commander's peers have come forward yet to say he is not a crybaby.


The Washington Post has replaced sourpuss TV critic Tom Shales with Hank Stuever. But they're giving Shales a column in the Style section where he will "will illuminate, pontificate and eviscerate, on TV and other subjects" and generally continue being self-important. Michael Calderone has the full memo.

What Will Happen?

We got some fascinating insight into the McKinsey corporate bulldozer process, from people who have experienced it firsthand. First, look for your chance to put your thumb on the consulting scale: "The McKinsey team and the management team will usually form a joint working group. That working group will often have several lower level people from the client working on it to gather facts, run analyses, and so forth. Get on that team. At least you'll see what's coming, and at best you might influence it."

But don't expect to feel too important: "The big firms don't bother interviewing individual employees (a la the Bobs in Office Space) - they'll gut entire departments that they deem strategically insignificant or issue edicts like 'cut out 50% of management at this level.' The actual firing is all done by the client firm's management (McK would never get their hands dirty that way)." Another vet confirms: "McKinsey doesn't give a shit, they are not interested in you. They want to get rid of entire divisions, not individuals."

What Can You Do?

Be Nice to the Consultants—It does not pay to be an asshole, unfortunately. One tipster advises you to "cooperate with the consultants (they always report back to senior management)." Another survivor says, " If interviewed by a McKenzie, answer everything question nicely. If you hold back, or are snotty, they fire your ass. Threee of my former collegues tried the stonewall approach and got canned."

Suck Up—Kiss ass, Kiss ass, Kiss ass. "Suck up to your own superiors, and their superiors, and theirs." It's just that simple. A brown nose could give you a minute edge on your fellow layoff-eligibles.

Practice Subtle Backstabbing—You don't want to be seen as a desperate bastard ready to sell out any and all of your colleagues to save your own job (even though you are). You just want to plant the seed. Take it from someone who's been there: " Don't talk shit about individuals, talk shit about DIVISIONS in a passive-aggressive way. Saying things like: 'Those fellows that work in [blank] division are really nice guys, but I've worked here for five years and I still don't know what they do' is a winner." Corporate espionage at its finest, ladies and gentlemen.

Watch Office Space—Several of you sent this tip. Har har. This will only have value if you can bribe a McKinseyite with, like, a hijacked truck full of Office Space DVDs.

Slut It Up—"If all else fails: Find out who the senior partner at McKinsey is, and fuck them." This is experience speaking, people.

Despair—You may find it strangely comforting to accept the fact that—even if you employ all of these countermeasures—you may still get fucked by McKinsey, and not just by the partner you fucked on purpose. "As a consultant for [firm] who's worked on several optimization cases, I wish the Conde Nasters luck. That being said, there's little they can do personally to avoid the axe," says one tipster. He should know! Need more proof? This comes from a former McKinsey consultant: "it's a good idea to release any sense of control you might have over your future. Being nice, being useful, and doing a great job all have nothing do with it - they will be deciding what the company should be doing, not making HR-type decisions about who's good at their job. If you work in a function that they decide doesn't need doing, it doesn't matter how nice/useful/great-at-your-job you are - that function will be eliminated."

Your job: Enjoy it while it lasts.

The video has been pulled from Youtube — "This video is no longer available due to a trademark claim by a third party" — so you will never ever see a blowjob involving Sprite on the Internet ever again.

Here's what Max has to say:

My name is Max Isaacson,
I directed and produced the fake Sprite ads that have been making the rounds over the past five days. There have been quite a lot of false statements made regarding these and I would like to make a few things very clear about these spots. First, there was no involvement from either The Coca-Cola Company or Greencard Pictures. Second, this was not supposed to be taken seriously by anybody. They were made completely on spec, which was clearly stated on the YouTube pages on which the ads were primarily seen. I paid for, produced and directed both spots independently. I am frankly quite surprised that spots of this nature were so quickly and easily believed to be legitimate. I hope that all parties involved will understand that this was a simple mistake that went much too far too fast, and that it is now made clear that these were not real commercials, nor were they ever produced with intention of being taken as such.

Thank you,
Max Isaacson

PS: I would like to thank Gawker personally for immediately realizing that these were spec commercials. I believe you were one of only two sources that did any fact checking before posting.

Edelman memo.

Stalinist propaganda.

Edelman memo.

Military-industrial complex propaganda.

Edelman memo.

Hitler Youth propaganda.

Little Debbie told the interns of America that if they take a photo of themselves at the office holding up some cutesy sign with a plea, and looking pitiful, that Little Debbie will bestow upon them one (1) free box of muffins, which they may gobble up as quickly as possible in order to absorb the maximum number of calories before the fellow office hordes smell them out and descend like so many hungry bats, while the Little Debbie corporation receives, in return, rights to exploit their image in perpetuity. And interns are doing this all over the place. Hey, what's that, muffins? Give me some, I'm your boss. Is that a picture of you at the office? You're all fucking fired.
[via Adrants]

Loehr is 44. She spent the entire decade of the 90s running hotel and safari operations in Kenya. Nevertheless, she has managed to master the subtle nuances of Generation Boomer, Generation X, and Generation Y. She uses her knowledge to educate the olds about "people born in the late 1970s or early 1980s." That's us, and you, creative underclass! Marvel at how she seems to know you personally:

"People say to me, 'Why do they talk like that?' Because they grew up on reality TV. Okay? It's not good, it's not bad. That's what they grew up on. They think it's okay to talk like that."

She has Richard Lawson nailed already!

"They saw 9/11," she says. "Connection is vital, they want to be connected all the time. People say, 'Why are they on Facebook all the time? Why are they texting?' They really want balance, too. They saw their parents go crazy in Generation X. They are not having that lifestyle. They are going to do it their way. They're going to go to yoga at 4, and the Red Sox game at 7, and do their work at midnight. It might be a good idea to let them go to yoga at 4!"

And how!

"If you can say you are 'green,' or politically correct or socially correct, whatever, that goes a long way with them. Nike, no way. Gen Y will not buy Nike — that big, ugly globalized company. This generation is very well-educated — both parents probably have MBAs."

She's speaking your language! Assuming both of your parents have MBAs. And her seminars get results. Her clients are learning to "walk the walk," as Gen Y says:

Xiaoyuan "Wennie" Hanson, 29 (Gen X/millennial), a financial adviser at Morgan Stanley, looks puzzled. She came to the seminar because many of her clients are "trust-fund babies who are Generation Y," she says, and she is slowly beginning to use words like "cool" and "sucks" to make better inroads with them

You can financially advise me any day, "Wennie." As long as you don't "suck!" Just keep Anne Loehr's Generational Cheat Sheet close at hand, and remember that if a Gen Y-er seems listless or unfocused, they're probably just thinking about AIDS or the "Internet boom/bust," two "Life-Shaping Events" of their generations. So get off our backs, and give us some money. We're going to yoga at 4.
[Washington Post]

It was all a big misunderstanding though. It probably just got flagged for having "Michael Jackson memorial ticket" in the description. So then Ebay put it back. But now they've pulled it down again. "Ebay has told me that they need to consult with their legal department before allowing the painting to be relisted," says Lacey.

What are you afraid of, Ebay? Is the truth about the MJ-JJ-Pancake connection a little "too much" for the boardroom types? We wouldn't want material like this falling into the wrong hands, hmmmm? You cannot hold the people down, Ebay. We are legion.

In the meantime you can buy this other MJ-related painting by Dan Lacey, which is equally dramatic:

The spots did not come from Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Microsoft's edgy ad agency of record. Instead, they were from an agency called Bradley & Montgomery. And they were directed by Bobcat Goldthwait. Who said earlier this month:

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

I think they were trying to do something that was a little less mainstream, and I think that's (what led to) my involvement. Normally the corporate world is very frightened of hiring the dude from Police Academy to direct their stuff

A fear that was well-founded.
[Media Memo]