Ride-hailing services want to make sure Grandma Betty can get to bridge club just as easily as her 22-year-old grandson travels to and from ... whatever it is young folks are doing these days.
Once the domain of 20-somethings who might have a drink or two and need a safe ride home, companies like Lyft and Uber have set their sights on a different age range entirely: senior citizens.
Lyft announced Tuesday it has partnered with GreatCall, a mobile phone company that specializes in providing cell phones to seniors, to extend its ride-hailing services to those who ― like the elderly ― may not have a smartphone, much less want to learn how to use an app on one to hail a ride.
Instead of an app, GreatCall customers dial “0” to talk to an operator, who can provide a cost estimate and book a ride. The fare is tacked onto the customer’s monthly cell phone bill.
The L.A. Times notes Uber struck up a similar arrangement with a company called 24Hr HomeCare last week.
Several third-party ride-hailing services also specialize in giving lifts to older adults who don’t have smartphones, including GoGoGrandparent, a newer entrant that adds additional features like meal and grocery delivery options.
As people age, one thing to go is the ability to drive. That means losing your freedom to get to doctor’s appointments and to stay social with friends.
This is far from either company’s first foray into the senior market, which, judging by recent moves from both Uber and Lyft, seems ripe for disruption.
And it couldn’t come at a better time. The first wave of the so-called “baby boomer” generation turned 65 in 2011, with the number of Americans aged 65 and older projected to keep growing until 2030, when it’s expected to peak at around 71 million people.
Earlier this year, both Uber and Lyft began offering non-emergency medical transport services, specifically targeting customers whose rides would be reimbursed by Medicaid.
And in the Denver suburb of Centennial, where 15 years from now at least 30 percent of the population is projected to be over the age of 65, city officials are exploring replacing current dial-a-ride services with less expensive, more efficient rides via Lyft.
Starting Aug. 17, the city has embarked on a first-of-its-kind, six-month long pilot project, paying for Lyft rides to and from the area’s major light-rail station in a bid to increase mobility.
“We call Centennial the Silver Tsunami,” Centennial Mayor Cathy Noon told The Atlantic blog CityLab. “As people age, one thing to go is the ability to drive. That means losing your freedom to get to doctor’s appointments and to stay social with friends. We really want to help keep the people who started Centennial engaged in it.”
Note: The Huffington Post’s editor-in-chief Arianna Huffington is a member of Uber’s board of directors and has recused herself from any involvement in the site’s coverage of the company.
Three years ago, Fishkill Farms owner and operator Joshua Morgenthau found himself facing a situation that is every farmer’s nightmare.
It was time to prepare his 100-acre fruit and vegetable farm’s cherries and strawberries for harvest, but the workers he’d hired for the job weren’t there to help. His employees were many miles away in Jamaica, waiting for the green light to enter the U.S. and get to work.
Without enough hands to weed and prune the delicate crop, Morgenthau’s berries were at risk of rotting on the vine. Worse, he knew there was little he could do but wait and hope he didn’t lose his whole crop in the meantime.
Each year, Morgenthau employs eight seasonal migrant workers who travel to his farm in New York’s Hudson Valley through the labor department’s H-2A temporary agricultural worker program. The process of obtaining their H-2A visas had been relatively painless for the previous five years. But this time, he says the department changed the file number of his application without any warning.
That meant he had to refile all the applications, creating “hours and hours and hours of more paperwork and hassle for us” and delaying the workers’ arrival by more than a month.
As a result, the farm’s cherry and strawberry production took a hit that season. His team of migrant and domestic workers were unable to make up for the decreased harvest preparation time.
“We managed to get it picked, but it was still kind of a mess,” he told The Huffington Post.
Despite setbacks like this one, the visa program is essential to Morgenthau’s farm. He works with the same employees each year and described them as “part of the farm family.” He credits them with being experts at operating the machinery specific to the crops he grows.
The H-2A program was created in the 1990s to help agricultural employers bring temporary foreign workers into the U.S. to do seasonal work that domestic workers cannot or are not willing to do. As part of the program, employers are required to offer certain wages, plus transportation and housing when necessary. The H-2A visa holders live and work in the U.S. for several months at a time but are not considered immigrants, and the program is not seen as a pathway to citizenship.
This so-called guest farm worker program is far from perfect. It has been criticized for being easy to abuse, with some employers neglecting worker safety and stealing wages while facing little recourse. However, those familiar with the visa program describe it as the industry’s sole legal option for getting temporary farm work done.
The farming industry still relies heavily on undocumented workers, who are estimated to make up about half of the country’s 2.5 million hired farm hands, according to the Labor Department. The temporary visa program is responsible for just a fraction of the overall agricultural workforce.
Yet the program is growing increasingly popular ― due to the domestic labor shortages ― forcing more farmers to contend with a chaotic and heavily bureaucratic system that puts their crops in jeopardy. At the same time, calls to improve the program are being sounded by farmers and immigration reform advocates alike.
Credit: Gosia Wozniacka/APIn this Oct. 12, 2011, file photo, a crew of farmworkers harvest and package cantaloupes near Firebaugh, California.
The U.S. has cracked down on the use of undocumented laborers coming into the country, resulting in a widespread labor shortage in agriculture and ballooning demand for H-2A visas. This has also meant more administrative delays in processing visa applications.
Delays of even a week can result in major crop losses for farmers. Delays of a month or more can be devastating.
Morgenthau was able to save his harvest in 2013, the year his workers were delayed, but he knows just how easily things can fall apart. “We’re lucky to have never lost an entire crop,” he said.
Others aren’t so fortunate.
A number of farmers in Georgia reported six-digit losses this year due to delays in visa processing. Another farmer, in California, watched as one-third of his Napa cabbage rotted in the field while he waited for the H-2A workers to arrive.
Last year, a State Department computer glitch delayed workers on the West Coast, causing millions of dollars of lost revenue. Elise Bauman, executive director at Salem Harvest, a food recovery group that partners with dozens of farms in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, saw the fallout of this glitch firsthand. She and her team worked with just three strawberry farms in 2015, but she estimated seeing some 100 acres of the wasted berries with her own eyes.
“They have to be handled and harvested at exactly the right time, otherwise you get a pile of mush,” Bauman said. “Very delicious-tasting mush, but it’s not attractive.”
These issues will only compound as the visa program continues to grow. Visa applications increased by 40 percent over the past five years, according to NPR. Last year, 140,000 H-2A visas were granted. In the first half of this year, visa issuance is up another 17 percent over 2015.
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The H-2A program’s issues have sent the farming industry into crisis mode, vocally criticizing the program’s backlog of visa applications and emerging as a somewhat surprising proponent of immigration reform.
In an April news release, the American Farm Bureau Federation warned of rotting fields of crops resulting from H-2A delays. Those delays, the organization says, could be avoided if the program were revamped.
So far, there hasn’t been much action on that advice.
In June, a bipartisan group of Congress members calling for H-2A reform sent a letter to the Labor Department and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services leaders, asking them to streamline the guest worker visa process. Their effort has yet to gain traction.
In a media call organized by the pro-immigration reform Partnership for a New American Economy earlier this month, AFB president Zippy Duvall called for a more flexible and efficient visa program for migrant farmworkers. One solution Duvall has offered would be filing paperwork for the program electronically. Currently, paperwork must be processed through standard mail.
Failure to act, Duvall warned, would threaten the nation’s food supply.
“We’re coming to a point where the American people need to make up their mind if they want to import their food or import their labor,” Duvall said.
Other voices are calling for bigger changes.
Tom Nassif, president and CEO of Western Growers, which represents farmers in California, Arizona and Colorado, took his call for reform a step further. Beyond streamlining the H-2A program, he would like to find a way to keep some of these temporary farm workers in the U.S., instead of sending them back to their home countries when their visas expire.
“We want to take care of the workers who are with us,” Nassif said. “They have experience, families and roots here. We want to keep those people [here] and protect them. We want some sort of legal status for them.”
In 2013, Nassif backed legislation sponsored by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) that proposed a new “blue card” program that would make temporary workers in good legal standing eligible for a legal status, allowing them to stay in the country and granting them a path to citizenship. The bill passed in the Senate but did not come up for a vote in the House after being blocked by Speaker John Boehner.
In the absence of action in Washington, some believe employers in the industry should be doing more to offer better wages and conditions to their farmworkers, Bruce Goldstein, president of the Farmworker Justice advocacy group, argues.
“If employers want to retain their workforce and attract workers to their jobs, they collectively need to improve their reputation,” Goldstein told HuffPost.
Due to many farmworkers’ undocumented status, Goldstein argues, they silently endure subpar working conditions and pay, fearing that they’ll be reported or fired if they complain.
The average seasonal migrant farmworker is paid between $12,500 and $14,999 a year. Most lack health insurance and many work far more than 40 hours a week. (By contrast, someone working full time for the federal minimum wage earns $15,080 a year.)
Guest farm workers are supposed to earn more under the temporary work program. H-2A wages are set by the Labor Department and vary from state to state ― between $10.59 and $13.80 an hour ― based on state minimums and typical wages for domestic farm workers in the region. In Washington state, for example, the minimum wage for H-2A workers is $12.69 an hour. That’s significantly more than the state’s minimum wage of $9.47.
Some research has raised questions about whether visa-holding guest workers fare much better than unauthorized workers, however. An Economic Policy Institute study released last year found no significant difference in pay or conditions between the two groups.
As of now, farmers are able to get away with this. While advocates like Goldstein believe some employers are treating their workers fairly, the ones who aren’t continue to hinder their progress. And they need to be held accountable.
“There are many employers that comply with the law, but they are being undermined by the companies that want to reduce their cost and increase their profitability by cheating workers,” Goldstein said. “We need to create a law-abiding agricultural sector to benefit both the farmworkers and the employers that comply with the law.”
BuzzFeed has reported that the H-2A visa program and its sister program for short-term non-farm workers (H-2B) suffer from a host of other abuse problems. The Labor Department found that between 2010 and 2014 almost 1,000 companies had violated H-2 laws; however, fewer than 150 employers were banned from hiring guest workers through the program.
Still, some farmers believe the H-2A program is overburdened with regulations and expenses.
Dan Fazio, president of the Washington Farm Labor Association, connects farmers with migrant workers. He, too, described the H-2A program as flawed, but said he’s seen its popularity with participating farmworkers firsthand.
“Is it ideal to take a person from one country and bring them to another country to work? I don’t know,” Fazio said. “But I do know that the people coming to Washington state love the program and when their six months here are done and they go back, they make sure they’re on the list to come back next year.”
A lack of alternatives might have something to do with this popularity — and there’s no sign of that changing anytime soon.
But the lack of progress doesn’t mean the industry has to start from scratch to arrive at a solution, said Luawanna Halstrom, an agriculture consultant who previously served as president of the National Council of Agricultural Employers and has worked with a number of national and state organizations.
She’s hopeful that a fix is on the horizon — and it may not be as complex as it might initially seem.
“People are working with this old horse because it’s all they’ve got,” Halstrom said. “It can be a good program if we could reformulate it and figure out how to make it work.”
A revamped program would be welcomed by Morgenthau, too. Another delay like 2013’s might not turn out as well next time.
“The system should be streamlined,” he said. “When you have the whims of a bureaucracy and a heated political debate that could determine pretty quickly a positive or negative outcome in terms of being able to work with the qualified employees you have been working with, it’s just one too many variables to stomach.”
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Joseph Erbentraut covers promising innovations and challenges in the areas of food and water. In addition, Erbentraut explores the evolving ways Americans are identifying and defining themselves. Follow Erbentraut on Twitter at @robojojo. Tips? Email joseph.erbentraut@huffingtonpost.com.
More stories like this:
Restaurants Officially Have No Excuse Not To Donate Leftover Food
A Whole New Kind Of Grocery Store Is Coming To The U.S.
This Guy Spends $2.75 A Year On Food And Eats Like A King
Genius Solid Shampoos Use No Plastic Packaging By Leaving Out Water
Meat Eaters Should Have Been Listening To Vegetarians All Along
Farmer Forced To Dump Insane Amount Of Gorgeous Cherries
Al Capone’s Brother May Have Invented Date Labels For Milk
CLARIFICATION: The headline on this story has been amended to better reflect the systemic problems with the H-2A program.
Here’s one way to deal with the insane housing costs in California’s Bay Area: ditch your home altogether.
That’s exactly what Kristin Hanes did for four months last year. The outdoorsy 35-year-old slept in a “cozy” Toyota Prius as well as in a tent in various campgrounds, all the while working full time at KGO, an AM radio station in San Francisco. Hanes wrote about being “intentionally homeless” in an essay published in online magazine The Bold Italic last week.
Hanes gave up her studio apartment in Mill Valley, a city north of San Francisco, in May 2015. She also gave up her $1,800 monthly rent. For the next few months, she spent about $400 a month on living expenses: $200 for a gym membership; $150 for a storage space for extra belongings; and about $50 for various camping costs.
Reducing her costs by more than 75 percent allowed her to save money and pay off thousands of dollars of debt, her main goal.
In September, Hanes ended her “intentionally homeless” experiment and found a houseboat for rent with a roommate. She stayed there until spring, when she was laid off from her job. In May, she moved into her boyfriend’s 41-foot sailboat, which they are restoring. In the meantime, they do not have a working toilet and cook on a camping stove.
She currently spends a few hundred dollars a month on living expenses while working as a freelance voiceover artist and writer.
“Yes, I could have spent half my income on an apartment and lived a fancy life, but I would have always had debt, and possibly would have gone into more debt to do so, especially after being laid-off,” Hanes told The Huffington Post in an email.
Credit: Kristin HanesKristin Hanes and her boyfriend live in a small but homey vintage sailboat in the Bay Area, but forgo modern plumbing and a functional kitchen.
Hanes takes pleasure in the non-fancy life she shares with her boyfriend in the close quarters of the boat. She also found unexpected joys during her months living without a roof over her head, she explained in her essay:
We had a blast, roasting salmon in foil over campfires, playing guitar and drinking beer under the pinprick lights of a thousand stars. We heard the deep-throated hooting of owls and the pitter-patter of rain on our tent, and breathed in fresh pine air. On weekends, we’d get out of town and backpack Lassen Volcano and Yosemite National Parks. Unfettered by rent or the need to clean, we both felt so free and closer to both nature and each other than we’d ever felt before.
The lifestyle also came with challenges ― imagine not having a kitchen or a bathroom. Sleeping in a car, which they did most nights, was particularly nerve-wracking.
“It was also hard always being on alert, not wanting to be caught,” Hanes told HuffPost. “Sleep could never be fully relaxing.”
While Hanes refers to that time as being intentionally homeless, she also thinks of it as an adventure, like “playing an adult game of ‘fort.’” She was quick to distinguish her experience ― a choice she had the luxury to make, made easier with amenities like a gym membership and evenings spent at happy hours ― from the forced homelessness that’s a systemic issue in San Francisco.
More than 6,800 adults go without shelter on any given day in San Francisco, according to volunteers’ citywide count on a single night in January 2015. However, the San Francisco Chronicle notes that the figure may exclude a significant portion of the homeless population and could actually be much higher.
A lack of housing and an influx of tech workers have helped rents and housing costs skyrocket in the Bay Area, pushing out less affluent residents and minorities. More than 2,000 San Francisco residents were evicted last year, as advocates call for more affordable housing and anti-displacement initiatives.
Read more:
There's A Profoundly Simple Explanation For San Francisco's Housing Crisis
Scathing Resignation Letter Nails Silicon Valley's Housing Crisis
Hanes’ response to high rents might seem unusual, but others have also created offbeat homes rather than spend a few thousand dollars each month for a cramped apartment.
An engineer at Google received attention last year for his choice to live in a truck he purchased for $10,000 ― just five months’ worth of rent at his previous apartment. Earlier this year, a San Francisco resident built and lived in a small wooden pod in a friend’s apartment, paying $400 a month. However, he was soon forced to dismantle his makeshift room, which violated housing codes. Others live in garages or share bedrooms with multiple roommates.
“I think the wealth of many is pushing others out onto the streets,” Hanes told HuffPost. “Many people are getting evicted and have to move out of the Bay Area or to a different part of the Bay. Others end up living in a tent under a freeway, or in their cars.”
“It’s probably the biggest social issue in the region today,” she added.
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Kate Abbey-Lambertz covers sustainable cities, housing and inequality. Tips? Feedback? Send an email or follow her on Twitter.
In most of the U.S., a household income of $150,000 means you’re doing pretty well. In San Francisco, it’s probably not enough to buy a home.
A report released Monday by mortgage and loan site HSH.com looks at what salary families in 27 metro areas would need to afford the local median home price, including principal, interest, taxes and insurance.
The report assumes a buyer’s down payment is 20 percent and uses the lending standard that a monthly home payment shouldn’t be more than 28 percent of income. It relies on the National Association of Realtors’ quarterly data for single family home prices, and excludes condos and co-ops.
According to the data, home prices have gone up since the first quarter of the year in every metro area except three, all in Florida: Tampa, Orlando and Miami. Pittsburgh was the most affordable metro area, with a prospective buyer only needing to make $32,400 to afford a typical home.
The San Francisco metro area requires the highest salary, $162,000. If a buyer wanted to put down 10 percent instead of 20 percent, they’d need to make over $196,000.
And while there have been signs of housing costs leveling off in the area, the HSH report shows prices increasing nearly 15 percent from the first quarter of the year, to a median price over $885,000.
Of course, the dollar amounts for home price and income level look very different depending on where you live: The median household income is $40,000 in the city of Pittsburgh, compared to over $78,000 in San Francisco.
But costs are still spiraling out of control in the Bay Area (and several other cities), putting homeownership out of reach for all but the wealthiest residents.
In San Francisco County, only 13 percent of households can afford a median-priced home, according to a report this month.
Though more people are renting, it’s not necessarily a more affordable option: Rent increases have continued to outpace income growth, and around the country, nearly half of renters are spending more on housing than they can afford.
See more details for each metro area at HSH.com.
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Kate Abbey-Lambertz covers sustainable cities, housing and inequality. Tips? Feedback? Send an email or follow her on Twitter.
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Read more:
Scathing Resignation Letter Nails Silicon Valley's Housing Crisis
Million-Dollar Homes Are Taking Over These Cities At An Alarming Pace
Homeownership Has Plummeted In The U.S., But Not By Choice
The Cities Where A Six-Figure Income Is Barely Enough To Get By
Here’s How Much Income You Need To Afford Rent In Every State
Here's Why It Feels Like Rent Eats Up Your Entire Paycheck
The modern-day cover letter is your introduction—of any kind—to the employer.
A cover letter has three goals, which you can accomplish in four sentences. Check out the video along with the highlights.
Click here to download my free 4 Sentence Cover Letter with the exact format!
There are essentially three (non-verbal) means to introduce yourself to an employer:
Cover Letter
Email (with attached resume)
Applicant Tracking System (ATS)
Your “cover letter” has three goals:
Explain why you’ve contacted the employer.
Provide insight on who you are and what you offer.
Show enthusiasm and interest in hearing (back) from the employer.
You can accomplish these three goals in four sentences, which I discuss in the video. Grab this free 4 Sentence Cover Letter to see the exact format!
If you have haven’t seen How To Build the Ultimate Professional Resume, check it out because some of the cover letter content references your resume.
You can also get the Interview Intervention Book Experience FREE, which has much more and includes an eBook, audio, chapter note, guides, and many aids related to job interviewing!
About the Author
Andrew LaCivita is the Founder & Chief Executive of milewalk and the milewalk Academy. As an internationally recognized executive recruiter, award-winning author, speaker, and trainer, Andrew has dedicated his career to helping people and companies realize their potential. He frequently serves as a trusted media resource and is the author of Interview Intervention, Out of Reach but in Sight, and The Hiring Prophecies (the eLit Gold Award Winner for Best Business/Careers/Sales Book for 2016).
Andrew’s passion is serving as a coach and trainer via his top 100 HR and Careers Blog, Tips for Work and Life®, and his online training site, the milewalk Academy. On a daily basis, he circulates his Today’s Line to Live By™, which is a self-developed inspirational quote. You can find these daily dispatches of inspiration on his blog and social media platform.
To learn more about Andrew and get the many free resources, books, and other helpful aids he offers, see his full biography and resources page.
Quote from The 4 Sentence Cover Letter That Gets You the Job Interview. http://bit.ly/2bsiT9R
You’ve been studying Chinese for a few years, and you want to take your China-savvy to the next level: your career. But what do you do with it? There are few straightforward applications of this language—or any human language for that matter. Learn programming, and you can become a software engineer. Learn languages, and you… ?
What’s more, hundreds of thousands of Chinese students study in Anglophone countries each year, gaining professional fluency in English in addition to their already native grasp on Chinese. Based on language abilities alone, they have an absolute advantage over you. What do you do?
As an avid language-learner keen on applying my hard-earned skills, I was curious myself. So this past month, I interviewed ten early-career professionals who’ve begun building a career out of their Chinese skills.
WHO ARE THEY?
In order of seniority, of course.
Name
Undergrad
Jobs involving Chinese
KELSEY Broderick
Stanford U., 2011
Analyzes political risks of investing in China and Asia region at Eurasia Group, helped companies navigate China market at Albright Stonebridge Group
JOHN Urban
U. Wisconsin, 2011
coordinates academic affairs at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center and previously coordinated study abroad for American students at CIEE Beijing
ELIOT Kim
Yale U., 2012
Academic program manager at Dipont Education, interned at Congressional-Executive Committee on China
LOGAN Krusac
U. Georgia, 2012
Analyzes political trends in Taiwan at State Department, coordinated study abroad for US students in Taiwan
ALEC Baum
Yale U., 2014
Investment banking analyst at JP Morgan Hong Kong, intern at ChinesePod
KYLE Obermann
St. Olaf College, 2014
Environmental writing and photography, helped develop multilingual tool to scan email for trade secret leakage at Ingevity
ETHAN Schneider
Yale U., 2014
Helped Chinese immigrants in New York City with legal issues at Immigrant Justice Corps
NICHOLAS Clark
Georgetown U., 2015
College admissions counselor at Tiandao Education, runs company (DIVVII) that provides mentors for businesses seeking to enter new markets
PATRICK Farrell
U. Pittsburgh, 2015
Researched economies of China and Southeast Asia for Carnegie Endowment of International Peace
AZURAYE Wycoff
U. Colorado, 2015
Manages US business school trips to China, Hong Kong, Taiwan
WHAT KIND OF WORK DO THEY DO?
A number work in jobs that are reserved for Americans but require proficiency in Chinese. About a third of our interviewees, for instance, currently work for or have worked for the U.S. government. Such positions often involve doing research on Greater China for the State Department or Congressional committees. Smaller companies and organizations in the U.S. may also not have the means to go through the procedure of hiring a foreign worker. Ethan, for instance, worked at a non-profit where he did legal intake for low-income immigrants, 95% of whom were Chinese. Work that involves intellectual property similarly prefers U.S. citizens. Kyle worked alongside ex-CIA officers developing a tool that scans employee’s English and Chinese emails for possible leakage of trade secrets. He therefore had to research standard practices in the information security industry in Chinese. This would seem to be a job better suited for a Chinese native, but he believes that the American company he worked for placed greater trust in someone from their own country.
There are also many industries that need Americans and Chinese working in tandem. Most familiar to readers would be that of education consulting, in which American college grads helping Chinese students get into U.S. colleges. A third of our interviewees either currently work or have worked in this industry before. As a recent college grad, the college prep business is a nearly surefire way to procure a Chinese work visa, which usually calls for two years of work experience. Once there, it is possible to pursue other projects as well. Nicholas, who works at such a firm, concurrently helps run a company that connects entrepreneurs to mentors around the world.
In addition to helping Chinese students study in the U.S., U.S. college graduates can also help fellow Americans travel to or study in the Chinese-speaking world. Both Logan and John have coordinated study-abroad programs for Americans studying Chinese. Azuraye plans and accompanies US business school visits to mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan at a Colorado-based educational travel company. Knowledge of both cultures allows them to liaison the two sets of people they work with.
Analyst and researcher positions, which call for a wide range of perspectives, also benefit from a combination of talent from the U.S. and China. Both Kelsey, who has worked as an analyst at two consulting firms, and Patrick, who researched the Chinese economy for a foreign policy think tank, noted that they were never in competition with their Chinese colleagues.
This relationship mirrors Alec’s experience at JP Morgan in Hong Kong. “I could correct Chinese analysts’ English and they could correct my Chinese,” he said. Further, while he interfaced with clients in Chinese on a daily basis, he found that native proficiency in English often proved to be his greatest asset, enabling him to take the lead in projects involving South East Asia or Asian clients looking to buy U.S. assets.
Other than that, finding a job in Chinese boils down to finding your niche. John noted, “An American will never understand the Chinese world as well as a Chinese person, and they’ll probably want more money. If they want to be successful in the Chinese job market, they’ll need a skill so unique it can’t be replicated.” He cited the example of a bilingual American sports agent he knows who gets American players to play in the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA). And the example of Jimmy, an American who runs a local Tennessee-themed bar and greets his customers as they enter. “You’ve gotta have Jimmy,” John observes.
Kyle, who recently transitioned out of his intellectual property job, agrees. Combining his background in Chinese and environmental studies, he is working on a piece on environmental issues in his home state of Texas for China National Astronomy. He is also transitioning into full-time photography and has made use of his talents at a marketing position before and is now in touch with China National Geography. Though Kyle’s combination of environmental studies and adventure photography with Chinese may seem unique, he’s confident that anyone could take fuse their unique talents with Chinese to find a fulfilling career.
HOW DID THEY GO FROM LEARNING CHINESE TO USING IT?
In addition to university career center emails, many of our interviewees found their jobs through Chinese study abroad programs and other China-related communities. Kyle and Azuraye found opportunities through the Project Pengyou network, while Kelsey landed a teaching job through the Yale-China job board (now defunct). John joined a study-abroad organization after having spent his senior year in China with them.
Washington, D.C. stood out as a hub for jobs. Kelsey and Logan found opportunities there during their master’s programs in the city. Kelsey recalls that she heard of jobs “just by being in D.C.” Eliot, when enrolled in an international relations program at Johns Hopkin’s center in China, also found an internship with Congress.
A few of our interviewees believe that opportunities opened up for them specifically because of their knowledge of Chinese language and culture. “In the states,” John posited, “I would need a master’s degree to do what I’m doing now in China.” Kyle, who is transitioning into full-time photography, said, “This would not be a reality in the U.S. The competition is too great.” Back in the U.S., Ethan mentioned that he found his job by including “Chinese” as a keyword in his job search. Eliot noted that even within the same company, certain opportunities would open up to him as opposed to other American colleagues, because of his ability to understand Chinese.
CONCLUSION
Chinese may still not be as universally applicable as programming skills. But as we’ve seen, knowledge of this language and culture is versatile enough to adapt to a variety of careers—from travel and sports to business and law—in a variety of locations—Boulder and Beijing to Shenzhen and D.C. Those with a special skill set should be able to, given the right network, blend it with their knowledge of Chinese language and culture, while those less-specialized should look more broadly at positions that need Americans proficient in Chinese.
For the now-motivated, start assessing your strengths and weaknesses, reaching out to your network, and checking out these China-related job listing databases: Project Pengyou, LinkedIn’s Chinese Language jobs, Indeed.com’s Chinese Language jobs, Monster.com’s Chinese Jobs, Career Builder’s Chinese Jobs, Idealist.org’s Chinese jobs.
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Frances Chan is a language-learning consultant: she helps people learn languages. Her pieces on learning languages have helped thousands of people. She most enjoys teaching language-learners how to sound more like native speakers. If you are interested in a consultation session or just want to see what she’s written, check out her blog.
Ivanka Trump, who markets herself as a champion of working women and learned about business by walking her father’s construction sites, apparently does not pay interns at her namesake fashion and jewelry company in New York City, according to a blog post on IvankaTrump.com that also appeared on her official Twitter page on Thursday.
How to make it work as an unpaid intern: https://t.co/pwMIYWh4kw #nomoneynoproblems #interntips #internships pic.twitter.com/BRoWuO6bq7
— Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) August 18, 2016
Yes, that actually says #nomoneynoproblems, and comes from the Twitter account of the daughter of self-proclaimed billionaire and Republican nominee for president Donald Trump.
In the post, unpaid intern Quincy Bulin offers tips and includes advice from three of her unpaid colleagues ― all women, two named Mackenzie.
The advice includes finding a part-time job that actually pays, saving money during the school year, setting a budget and socializing cheaply.
Of course, Bulin leaves out the real key to surviving an unpaid internship: having well-off parents. Kids with families that can support them while they take on jobs for nothing are more likely to take on jobs for nothing.
Unpaid internships at for-profit companies are not legal in New York City, where Ivanka’s workers are based ― unless the positions are for college credit. And even then, there are a host of restrictions around how the job is structured. Regulations regarding unpaid interns at nonprofit organizations are slightly less strict.
Ivanka Trump is certainly not the only employer to use unpaid interns. In an email, Chief Brand Officer Abigail Klem told The Huffington Post, “We strive to create a fulfilling learning opportunity tailored to the unique interests and career goals of each intern. It is our goal that at the end of the program, our interns leave with experiences that will help guide them into choosing a fulfilling career path.”
The company didn’t respond to requests for comment on whether those interns also leave with school credit or some other kind of reimbursement. And Trump herself likely didn’t even send out the tweet yesterday. She’s vacationing in Croatia while her father’s campaign goes into full meltdown mode.
The notion that she would employ women without paying them is newsworthy for a couple of reasons, though.
@IvankaTrump what the hell do you know about being an unpaid intern? Or making it work? Why all your emojis black women?? #TrumpPence16
— bodhizwanya (@malikazwanya) August 18, 2016
Ivanka and her brothers sold themselves as in-touch with working-class people at the Republican National Convention last month, talking up their experience on their father’s construction sites when they were growing up.
Unpaid internships just aren’t the province of working-class people. An unpaid internship is “a handout that, best intentions aside, accelerates a cycle of privilege and reward,” Darren Walker, the president of the Ford Foundation, pointed out in a piece for The New York Times recently. Companies should get rid of unpaid internships, Walker argues, because they reinforce a lack of diversity. Unpaid interns land jobs eventually at these companies, and you wind up with a pretty homogenous workforce, which leads to all kinds of problems.
.@IvankaTrump is this a joke? Is all of this some sort of Kaufman-esque performance art piece?
— Chris Bea (@CJosephBea) August 18, 2016
Not paying these women for their work also looks off, coming from Ivanka, who is a self-proclaimed supporter of women’s equality in the workplace. Indeed, her website bills itself as the “ultimate destination for women who work.”
Unpaid internships lead to lower-paying jobs, according to research from the National Association of Colleges and Employers. For these unpaid interns, that first lower-paying job would start a cycle of under-earning of the sort that reinforces pay gaps between men and women.
Speaking of supporting women: Ivanka reportedly gives 8 weeks paid parental leave to her employees. That’s not terrible, considering the United States has no paid leave policy. Yet, it falls short of what most proponents of paid leave and maternal health researchers consider optimal. She recently came under fire because her label works with companies that do not offer any paid leave.
In all, not a great look for a fashion company.
This article has been updated to include additional information about regulations surrounding unpaid internships, and with a comment from the company.
Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.
To find someone with the same first and last name as you doesn't sound like too hard of a task. But when your last name is "Kuegler," this ups the ante significantly.
I saw a fellow Tom Kuegler, or "TK" as he likes to be called, across the way while doing a Google search. To my astonishment, his LinkedIn profile was number one in the results, while mine dangled just beneath.
I started to ask myself, "Who is this guy?"
I clicked on his name and something incredible happened. I saw that he was from Baltimore--my hometown. In fact, he ran for the state legislator there a year after I was born in 1994.
I kept reading.
It turns out he went to Loyola University Maryland, right down the street from me, and that he is the CEO of a very successful venture capital firm called Wasabi Ventures. Pictured below, TK has funded 200 startups since 2003 and among them was a company called Ustream, which was acquired by IBM in early 2016.
For a man as successful as he was, I thought reaching out to him might be feeble--but I emailed him anyway. I immediately got an auto-responder that said something like "I get 3,000 emails per day, I'm trying to get away from it as much as possible, but feel more than welcome to reach out to me on Twitter."
So I did.
I wrote "It's a nice name we got, isn't it?"
An hour later I got his response, and he was more than happy to sit down for an interview with a young 23-year-old kid like me. After all, I do have his name.
Leading up to it was terrifying. What if I don't ask any good questions? What if I waste his time? If he gets 3,000 emails per day, he must be pressed for time.
I dug my head into the internet and researched everything I could. I was on LinkedIn, YouTube, and I took a glance at a few of his other interviews he had given.
I was pleasantly surprised at the man I saw reflected in these digital words, but what would talking to him actually be like?
Suddenly it was one minute before two o'clock, our scheduled time. All the thoughts culminated in my mind as I typed in his number with shaky fingers. There they were, staring back at me, and my thumb finally made its final descent toward the green button to make the call.
Contact.
All of a sudden the room went silent and all I could hear was the ringing of the phone. I was about to meet myself. A few rings later, he answered.
"Hello this is TK," he said.
He had a warm voice--an enthusiastic one--the kind that you know is just as happy to talk to you as you are with him.
I introduced myself, and how I got to write at Huffington, and how my Mom actually told me about him three years prior.
He goes by "TK," which is something I actually went by in elementary school as well. He explained, saying, "Fifteen years ago I bought a smaller company out in San Francisco, and three of the people in the company were named Tom."
"So the CEO of the company said he couldn't call me Tom, and from then on I would be called TK."
It's all in a name.
It was now that our conversation would take a majorly unexpected turn. He chimed in, "Now are you related to the Thomas Kuegler--the wrestler?"
These words shocked me. He knew who I was too? What kind of sorcery was this that a big name businessman knew who I was? It's true that I wrestled in Maryland and won a state dual championship with my team. I had done well for myself while it lasted, yes.
"You are the only Tom Kuegler I have ever been confused with," he continued.
"Because of your wrestling accolades, I followed you very closely from afar. To flip this around it's kind of an interesting honor for me to chat with you."
Here I was thinking the honor was all mine. What a twist to this story.
Pictured above is me wrestling during my senior year of high school.
On that same note I had to ask him whether he was German, as Kuegler is about as German of a last name as you can get. He said yes, and that we must be related somehow or another.
It was here that I really sunk into the conversation. We were talking with each other like old friends. In fact, it felt like we had so much in common that it was hard for me to pick what I wanted to talk about next.
I found that he was an All-American lacrosse player and that he coached Campbell High School to a state title as the Offensive Coordinator. Lacrosse is big in Maryland, and so is our Baltimore Orioles, so I asked him about that. Here's how our conversation went.
Q: Are you an Orioles fan? If so, who was your favorite player back in the day?
A: Oh yeah. I'm a Baltimore sports fan. I haven't lived in Maryland for 20 years, but I'm a Ravens fan, I'm an Orioles fan, I'm a Baltimore kid. As a young kid I was a huge Al Bumbry fan. When I was in middle school he played center field. And then I also liked Cal Ripken when he came in. It's tough to not be a Cal Ripken fan.
We then geeked out on how much we both liked Manny Machado. For everyone not from Baltimore, just keep moving along.
Q: You ran for the state legislator in 1994, what made you want to get into politics?
A: I gave my commencement speech in high school, and a politician by the name of Mike Davis came up to me and told me that I gave a great speech and that I should run for office. I'm just an 18-year-old kid from high school at the time. He ran for office two years later, and so I saw his lawn sign and thought I'd call him up to stuff envelopes to help in any way I could. I was just trying to be helpful to somebody who was nice to me. I did get to help him out, and it set me on a path for about four years where I was super active in politics. I got involved in all kinds of campaigns. And then the next logical progression was for me to run for myself. I ran and I lost. I thought I'd get involved in politics because I would get to meet fun, smart people. I fell in love with the idea of what politics should be, and what I found was anything but that.
Q: Are you happy with how your life has turned out now?
A: As you get older you go through these 'what if' moments in your brain. I can't say that sometimes I don't think about what if I won that campaign. I don't think about it too much, but it does cross my mind every now and then.
Q: I saw you met with Martin O'Malley on YouTube, how was that?
A: Yeah! He came into our office. Because every presidential candidate comes to New Hampshire, and because we're a high profile company with an office downtown in Manchester, every candidate wants to look like they're pro-business. So they come into our office, and this year I had every single candidate come into our office--democrat or republican.
Q: What's the difference that you see between my generation and the generation you grew up in back in 1994?
A: I think, and I grew up in Essex, which is low to middle income. I come from a completely blue-collar family. So kids I grew up with are still living in the same place that they lived when I grew up. They haven't left. The biggest difference I see in this generation is that kids of this generation dream bigger, much much bigger, than my generation. My generation tended to dream small, because the world was small. Your generation dreams huge, but doesn't necessarily understand the work that has to happen that goes into it to making the dream come true. Nobody in my generation would've thought to take the trip you just took. I know tons of people of your generation who do trips like that. The world is insanely flat now. It's because you can instantly go online and grab any piece of information you need, on any topic. 20 years ago that wasn't possible. And now everyone can do it.
Q: I was reading your weekly posts on LinkedIn, and you wrote, "Like many great gifts, the giver doesn't even know the value they are offering to the recipient." What's one of the best gifts you ever received?
A: You'll appreciate this. I had a guy come up to me and he said, "You don't know who I am, but I was in the audience one time when you were giving a speech, and I didn't want to come up to you after because there was a whole bunch of people around, but I took one thing that you said out of that and I completely changed my entire life." He thought that I was giving him a gift, but in all actuality when he told me he changed his life because of something I said, he was giving me a gift. The greatest gifts are almost all these things that you never, ever knew you got. You don't always know the impacts that you're having.
Q: I'm 23, about the same age as you in 1994 when you ran for state legislator, if there's one thing you could tell your younger self, what would it be?
A: Take more chances. If I could tell my younger self anything it would be to not be scared or show any trepidation towards anything. Take more chances. When you think you should take the safe route, take the other route. When you're older you don't ever want to look back and say I wish I could've done this. Just go do it.
Q: You talk a lot about pitches because you listen to them every day being the head of a Venture Capital firm. What's the best pitch you've ever given? A: I would say that the best pitch I ever gave was convincing my wife that she should marry me. I think making that convincing argument was a key thing.
It was then that my questions had run out, but our conversation had been going on for an hour, so it was only fitting that I let myself(him) get on with the rest of my(his) day.
I came away from this experience overjoyed. I suppose this story isn't just about coincidence or the weirdness of fate, it's about how we're all connected. It's about how our names aren't the only thing that make us similar.
I felt like I was reaching through time to talk to an older version of myself--even though I'm sure I won't accomplish even a quarter of what he has by the time I'm that age. His words shocked me. They were so visceral and direct that my life seemed to swell with purpose when I got off the phone with him.
I told him I'd love to meet him one day. He told me his door was always open and that he would be in Baltimore at least one week out of every month.
It really is a unique place, and I know it's where at least two Tom Kuegler's call home.
You can follow Tom further on his travel blog and see what he's up to on his Facebook page.
Companies spent more on acquisitions in 2015 than ever before, and it seems safe to assume that the working world of the future will be dominated by big businesses.
Yet many large companies are increasingly finding that real success may actually come from thinking small. According to PwC's “Future of Work” study, which surveyed over 1,300 workers and 200 C-level executives, employees at small businesses are significantly happier than their counterparts at larger corporations are, thanks to less red tape, more flexible work arrangements, closer-knit company cultures ― not to mention the latest communications technologies helping to make those workplace communities a reality. These feelings of meaning, satisfaction and independence can lead to greater productivity and innovation on the part of workers, and big businesses are taking note. Now, with the help of data-sharing platforms and collaboration tools, enterprises are achieving the best of both worlds: the intimacy and personal touch of the small-business approach, expressed across an international organization and bolstered by deep pockets.
As part of the What’s Working: Purpose + Profit platform, we partnered with PwC to profile the emerging technologies that big business are using to build the workplace of tomorrow. By emulating the perceived benefits of smaller companies, these big firms are boosting employee morale and productivity, as well as increasing satisfaction among workers and customers.
Replace Water Cooler Conversations With New Communication Tools
Eric Audras via Getty Images
In a small office, you can merely walk down the hall to catch up with Steve in Marketing. But having that check-in about the latest sales strategy or your March Madness bracket becomes a more onerous task when Steve is based on the other side of the country. That is, unless you have a powerful enterprise social networking tool at your disposal. Virtual coworkers can feel free to discuss sensitive company information or fire off one-liners about more lighthearted matters ― the network’s private, so you only see what’s in your channel.
This ability to keep lines of communication wide open, strengthening an employee’s connection to her team and company, is catnip to C-suite decision makers: 85 percent of Fortune 500 businesses are using services like these to bolster internal networks.
Let Employees WFH (Finally!)
LDProd via Getty Images
It’s not just about being able to video conference into a meeting in your pajamas. Working from home means fundamentally tipping the scales of work-life balance in favor of quality of life. Things like a stress-free commute and greater childcare options are becoming bigger priorities for employees, and can actually lead to greater productivity. But according to the PwC study, workers at larger companies don’t get to exercise this option the way their counterparts at smaller businesses do: Only 26 percent of employees at large companies report having the opportunity to work from home, while over half of small-business workers say they do.
With sophisticated telepresence tools now on the market, big businesses can mirror the flexibility inherent in smaller companies when it comes to allowing employees to work from home. A popular (though now defunct) “always-on” group video chat that streamlined the process of connecting co-workers paved the way for other tools that create virtual workplaces.
Nurture The Startup Innovation Mentality
monstArrr_ via Getty Images
These days, it goes without saying that large companies have a healthy respect for the startup model. They’ve been disrupted by it enough times to see that staying nimble, eschewing bureaucracy and teasing out innovative ideas from unlikely places can reap serious dividends. That’s why they’re creating startup environments within their ranks, hiring smaller companies as mentors and designing employee incentives to encourage outside-the-box ideation.
That brainstorming process gets a big boost from enterprise services that facilitate collaborative coding. As the preferred tool of developers who dream of building the next industry-leading company, this system is a natural fit for big businesses that are looking to tap into the entrepreneurial spirit. Its repository hosts projects and keeps track of revisions, helping users collaborate as efficiently as possible.
Track Team Spirit
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As popular wisdom would have it, a happy employee is a productive employee. And productive equals profitable: There’s a considerable payoff for an employer if she can figure out the magical formula for worker satisfaction. For small businesses, it’s easy to check in with employees and stay engaged. But what’s an executive to do when you have to ask 10,000 people how you’re doing?
Enter apps that employ the now-ubiquitous swipe-to-match model to gauge employee satisfaction: Swipe right if you’re happy with the status quo or left if you’d like to see some changes. Companies can customize the platform to include more built-out surveys, and can also seek a yea-or-nay on specific issues, such as whether staffers think the office is overdue for a good cleaning. Though it may seem simplistic, this approach is easy to scale, which may make it an attractive option for big companies hoping to discern if they have happy ― and therefore productive ― employees.
Create A Personal Connection With Customers
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In sales, size can be both a blessing and a curse. A mom-and-pop store doesn’t have the deep pockets of a national retailer, but because it’s small, mom and pop have a clear advantage when it comes to cultivating personal, profitable relationships with customers and sharing their purpose. According to PwC’s “Putting Purpose to Work” survey, both consumers and employees want to hear about an organization’s purpose and impact via social media
It’s this personal touch that certain startups are looking to replicate on a large scale. By analyzing publicly available data from other social media networks, this company assigns people personality types and then suggests the preferred and less appealing ways to communicate with them. For example, would a potential international client prefer a more formal greeting, or would she be more receptive to your pitch if you dropped the stuffy “Dear” in the salutation of your email? Technology can guide you on this point and a number of others, optimizing the relationship-building process.
The workplace of today is rapidly evolving, but PwC can help you map your company’s path forward. For more information, click here.
August is a bittersweet month. Summer is winding down, and the days are getting shorter. At the end, kids go back to school, and adults have to turn their full attention to work. But first, everyone tries to squeeze in as much summer as they can. We think you should also squeeze as many benefits as you can out of your credit cards this month.
Every month, the Nerds round up a new set of tips to help you maximize rewards and minimize costs with each use of your credit card. Here are our tips for August 2016.
Find back-to-school shopping bargains
Back-to-school shopping is "the second-largest retail event of the year, behind only the winter holiday shopping season," according to Mintel, a market research company. Obviously, people are buying a lot more than pencils and erasers. If your kids -- or you -- are heading back to school, your shopping list may include school supplies, books, computers and clothing. For college-bound teenagers, outfitting a dorm room or off-campus apartment can put a dent in the budget.
Save some money or earn cash-back rewards by choosing the right credit card when you shop. A flat-rate card gives you rewards on everything you buy. If you have a cash-back card with rotating bonus categories, know where to go to get maximum value this quarter -- it might be wholesale clubs, for example, or Amazon.com, depending on your card. You can also save a little by taking advantage of a sales tax holiday. This is a period during which some states don't charge sales tax on back-to-school items. Read our guide to choosing the right credit card for back-to-school shopping, which also includes a list of sales tax holidays.
Teach students about credit
People go to college to prepare themselves for the work world -- but few students learn the financial information they need to know for living in the real world. That's where moms and dads have to be teachers. Students in college should learn the basics of building credit and using credit cards before they graduate. There are three ways to go with credit cards: get a student credit card, become an authorized user of a parent's card or get a secured card.
Most of the major credit card issuers offer student credit cards, which are designed for college students with limited credit. They can be difficult to qualify for, however. If your student doesn't qualify, you may need to co-sign for the credit card. This means you agree to pay the balance if your student does not, so any misstep can hurt your credit, too.
Another option is to make your child an authorized user of your card. You're still liable for any charges made by the authorized user, but your child will be building credit. Make sure your card issuer reports authorized user activity to the credit bureaus.
If neither of those options seems like a good fit, consider a secured credit card. Your student puts up an amount of money -- usually around $300 -- and this becomes the credit limit. (A low credit limit also limits the potential for getting into trouble with debt.) The card issuer holds the money as collateral in case the student doesn't pay the bill; when the account is closed or converted to a regular card, the issuer refunds the money. Before applying, be sure that the card reports to one of the credit bureaus so that you achieve your goal: to build your child's credit file. Managing a secured card responsibly for several years will make it easier for your child to get an unsecured card after college. Be aware that just like any credit card, a secured card requires the student to have a source of income.
Whichever route you go, be sure your child learns the right way to manage credit. Explain the importance of looking at the monthly statement, paying the bill on time and not maxing out the credit line.
Another good teaching opportunity is to get your credit report and go over it with your child. Every consumer is entitled to a free credit report from each of the credit bureaus once a year. You can download yours at AnnualCreditReport.com. Once you've scrutinized the credit report, get your credit score and show your child how to get his or her own. There are many places for consumers to get free FICO scores these days; take advantage of them.
If you want to give your children a credit head start, begin teaching them about credit in high school. A 2016 survey by the Council for Economic Education found that only 17 states require high school students to take a personal finance course. If you don't live in one of those states, it's up to you to be the personal finance guru. People under 18 can't apply for student credit cards, but they can be authorized users on your card, or you can co-sign for a card. In addition to reviewing credit reports and scores, you can show them how you check your transactions and balance throughout the month, and pay your bill on time. By the time they head to college, they'll be credit scholars.
Consider applying for a hotel card
Vacation season is winding down, but if you want to eke out one more trip before summer ends (or get started with planning for your next one), think about applying for a hotel credit card. August is the best time to apply for a hotel card, according to a NerdWallet study, because that's the month when hotel credit cards make the most special offers. What's a good offer? A sign-up bonus that runs from 25,000 to 80,000 points after you spend a certain amount within a specific time period. Hotel cards usually offer bonus rewards for money spent at their properties, and many offer perks like a free night's stay each year. Check out NerdWallet's comparison of hotel rewards programs to help you make a good choice.
Ellen Cannon is a staff writer at NerdWallet, a personal finance website. Email: ecannon@nerdwallet.com. Twitter: @ellencannon.
Pam Walter took a job as a banquet server at the Hilton Garden Inn in Missoula, Montana, in 2006. At first, she was paid an hourly wage plus a share of customers’ tips. But Walter said those tips didn’t last long.
The gratuities earned by servers like herself at several Montana hotels were renamed “service” or “setup” fees, according to a class-action lawsuit Walter filed last year. The hotels continued to add these automatic charges to their customers’ bills, but instead of dispersing the cash among the servers, the house started pocketing it.
Now, that money is finally making its way back to Walter and her fellow servers. Earlier this month, they reached a $4 million settlement with the hotels’ owners and a common subcontractor, according to a settlement agreement approved by a Montana state judge. The lawsuit involves more than 500 workers.
Many of them will receive just a thousand bucks or so, but some will recoup as much as $80,000, depending on how long they worked for the hotels.
“We’re very happy,” said Jason Armstrong, one of the lawyers representing the servers. “The named plaintiffs were very brave in putting their names on the complaint. Any time you go up against your employer you’re putting yourself at risk. They held their [employers’] feet to the fire.”
The Huffington Post first reported on this dispute last year, when a hotel worker in Bozeman, Montana, filed an unrelated lawsuit against the Hilton Garden Inn there. Laurie Zabawa said the hotel switched to “service” fees in 2012, after it outsourced the banquet work to a subcontractor called Gateway Hospitality Group. The policy change meant the workers themselves no longer received the gratuities attached to banquet bills, she said. As banquet manager, Zabawa was tasked with enforcing the new policy.
“It was awful,” Zabawa told HuffPost at the time. “Just imagine working there with those people for years. They were my family. It was horrible to go through, and I had no options.”
What happened at Zabawa’s hotel is surprisingly common these days. Many businesses in the service industry have pocketed as “fees” the money that customers likely thought they paid as tips for frontline workers. In 2010, catering employees who worked the U.S. Open in New York accused the concessions company of swallowing a 21 percent fee that was tacked onto customers’ bills. The workers said the service fee looked to customers like a gratuity. They settled the lawsuit for $600,000.
As HuffPost reported in 2011, Yankee Stadium was accused of pulling a similar move. Beer and hot dog vendors said the stadium’s concessionaire, Legends Hospitality, was tacking a 20 percent service fee onto the drink and food orders in the stadium’s luxury boxes, while giving the vendors only 4 to 6 percent in commission. The difference, they said, went to Legends, which at the time was jointly owned by the New York Yankees, the Dallas Cowboys and Goldman Sachs.
Big pizza chains have gotten into the act, too. As HuffPost reported in 2014, Pizza Hut, Papa John’s and Domino’s now commonly add nominal “delivery fees” to the tabs for delivery orders. The fees, which range from $1.50 to $3 a pop, don’t go to the drivers ― even though many customers assume they do.
Adding such service fees allows companies to raise their real prices without raising their sticker prices. By implying the fees are tips for services rendered, they leave customers with the impression that the money goes to the workers. To critics like Armstrong, the practice cheats both workers and customers.
Montana is one of a handful of states that have tried to solve the problem by mandating that any such fees go to workers. The state law under which Walter sued her hotel defines a service fee as “an arbitrary fixed charge added to the customer’s bill by an employer in lieu of a tip.” Such a fee “must be distributed directly to the nonmanagement employee preparing or serving the food or beverage or to any other employee involved in related services.”
Hawaii, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York and Washington state have their own laws addressing service fees. The Washington law allows businesses to charge a service fee but requires them to note on the receipt exactly how much the employee will receive.
In the Walter case, the hotels and the subcontractor agreed to cough up the employees’ shares of the original gratuities, plus a surcharge in penalties. Of the $4 million settlement, around $1 million goes toward the plaintiffs’ attorney fees.
Armstrong said it would have been hard to recoup the fees if state law hadn’t clearly established that they belonged to the workers.
“The laws in the state of Montana protect vulnerable people from this type of wage-and-hour violation,” he said. “These workers are relying on their tip income to pay their rent and buy their food.”
Yes -- it boggles the mind. Entrepreneurs will go to extraordinary lengths to connect with people who can help them -- potential investors, mentors, partners, employees, customers -- and then permanently damage these relationships with unnecessary mistakes.
What mistakes are these? I give you three of the worst -- and better yet, I talked to two expert relationship builders to show you how to fix them.
First up: meet Ryan Westwood, founder of a software company called Simplus, contributing writer on Forbes, and organizer of Evening on the Terrace -- an event which brings together people from many different backgrounds, to take part in a meal and talk about anything except their work.
Turns out, the foundation of valuable conversations is simple: stop and listen.
1) Don't pitch. Listen as if your life depends on it.
Never made sense to me: an entrepreneur finally manages to reach an experienced person in their field, and then talks over them. Worse, they even try to pitch. Yikes.
Westwood suggests the exact opposite. While interviewing people for Forbes, he realized the value of such conversations.
"I feel like I've accelerated my growth as an entrepreneur by doing these interviews better than any school I did, or anything else."
"It was the best way for me to get educated as quickly as possible and with the smallest number of mistakes by simply listening to people with experience."
And hence, he founded Evening on the Terrace, to take this personal and business growth to the next level.
The point? The atmosphere of trust and cooperation at these gatherings made it easy for people to discover new ways to attack old problems.
For instance, at one such event, when Westwood put a problem into play in the conversation -- something he and his staff at Simplus struggled with for some time -- it gave him a fresh look on his business. Novel angles to a current problem, discovered only because he listened like crazy.
Same for you. Take this to heart: when the other person talks, you listen. Mouth closed, ears open. Full attention on their words and message.
Make sense? Good -- because if you fail at this, you lose on two counts. Once, because you can't learn anything, and then again by wasting the other person's time.
2) Do not let relationships die. Nurture them.
Sad fact: many entrepreneurs connect with influential people once, and then never again. Huge waste of potential.
Our second expert, Cheryl Snapp Conner, founder of SnappConner Public Relations, shared a powerful story with me.
While running her firm, she connected with Tom Post, who at the time ran the Entrepreneurs content channel on Forbes, and asked if she could have a column on his platform.
He agreed. Several years later, she made him a job offer...and now Post acts as SnappConner PR's "feet on the street" in New York.
How did this happen? Conner had a gut sense Post was ready to become an entrepreneur himself. Plus, due to internal changes at Forbes, Post now faced a long daily commute. And Conner was attuned to all of this.
See the point? To nurture a relationship, you need to tune into the other person's world. To continually support them on their journey. You must ask yourself: since they live in their world, and you in yours, where can the two connect such that the other person gains from it?
Try this: pick 10 people you respect and would love to build relations with. Now go and see what they've been up to for the past couple months. Can you spot an opportunity to be helpful to some of them?
But look -- you can touch base in small ways. Congratulate them on a recent achievement, thank them for something they helped you with, or just take the time to thoroughly read something they wrote and then tell them about it -- any of these count.
Once you identify a way to provide value for them, go for it -- and better yet, don't expect to get anything in return.
3) Take the self-interest out of it.
Conner nailed this one. She told me:
"When something is genuinely given, nobody has to keep score."
True. To constantly keep score means you did not truly commit to giving.
As an entrepreneur, you need to "take the self-interest out of it," as Conner puts it. She sees this in many of her clients: they set out to get published on various platforms, to achieve their own business goals, rather than provide value for readers.
Bottom line? Sounds strange, but it rings true: you rise above the noise when you genuinely help another person. Barriers vanish which you couldn't even see before.
Westwood sums it up for us. The most valuable asset is not money, but human relationships:
"My view: relationship capital trumps actual capital. If you have the right relationships, it will pay immense dividends in the long run."
Now -- guess what? When you do all the above with diligence, things change. People start to take you seriously. The strength of your relationships will no longer take a nosedive every time you talk.
Actively managing your credit card account can save you money, improve your credit scores and help you manage your overall financial life. If there's something your credit card issuer can do to make things easier, it never hurts to ask. You might be surprised at what they're willing to do to give you a little help.
Here are six questions to ask your card issuer. The worst thing that can happen is you get a "no."
1. Will you forgive a late payment?
Obviously, paying on time every month should be a priority -- but sometimes life takes a sharp turn. Say you miss your payment due date for some reason. "If you have a good record with your credit card company, and you miss a payment due to illness or moving or something, ask them to let it slide and ask to have the fee removed," says Beverly Harzog, credit expert and author of "The Debt Escape Plan."
Some card issuers make forgiveness a policy. Others give their cardholders tools to make late payments less likely.
Discover, for example, doesn't charge a late fee on the first late payment or raise your interest rate, says spokesman Derek Cuculich. "We do not have a penalty APR, so the second missed payment would not result in a raised APR, but it would come with a fee."
Citi offers a card that doesn't charge late fees or a penalty annual percentage rate even after multiple late payments.
Capital One is trying to make sure customers don't pay late. "About a year ago, we automatically enrolled every customer in the payment-due alert," says Jennifer Jackson, managing vice president of Capital One's U.S. card division. "We're designing products and services to help our customers succeed. We're measuring the impact, and we know that it's impacting customer behavior."
Even if you do get a late fee set aside, be aware that the missed payment itself could still be reported to the credit bureaus, which would hurt your score. Usually, payments are reported to the bureaus once they're 30 days late. Whatever happens, consider it a learning experience and work to avoid repeating the mistake. Paying late is a terrible habit to get started.
2. Can I choose my payment due date?
One of the best ways to ensure you pay on time while managing your cash flow is to choose the date your payment is due each month. When you can pick your own due date, you can set it for a time when money isn't as tight. All major card issuers allow you to choose your own due date; some even let you do it online.
"When people can change their payment due date, they can set it to stay on track with their overall finances," Jackson says. "They can decide how they want to manage payments."
One thing to be aware of: You usually can't choose a due date of the 29th, 30th or 31st because not every month includes those dates.
3. Will you lower my interest rate?
If you've been a good customer and you're carrying a balance, consider asking your issuer to lower your interest rate. Harzog says there's another signal that it's time to ask for a lower rate: "If you start getting offers in the mail for premier cards, it means your score has probably gone up. You can call your issuer and tell them the offers you're getting, and leverage that to see if they can match it."
4. Will you raise my credit limit?
You can always ask for an increase in your credit limit -- but be sure you know both the upside and downside. A higher credit line gives you access to more borrowing power, and it can improve your credit score by lowering your credit utilization ratio. The downside is that the issuer may pull your credit report, which could ding your credit score.
"You can decide whether you want to take that short-term hit to your credit," Harzog says. "If you're close to the next level up -- from average to good, for example -- a hit of even five or 10 points could hurt you, especially if you're planning to apply for a mortgage or other large loan."
Asking for a credit line increase can also produce unintended consequences. Harzog says she knows someone who asked for a credit line increase and it backfired. "When the issuer looked at his credit history and saw some black marks, they actually decreased his credit line. If you don't have a good record, you don't want to ask them to look at your credit account."
Many times, issuers have mechanisms in place to boost your credit limit when they think you're ready.
Jackson says Capital One has a "credit steps program" to increase customers' credit limits. Customers "have to do two steps to get a credit line increase," she says. "Use your card, pay on time for the first five statements, and on the sixth statement you will get a credit line increase. We continue to evaluate accounts over time for additional increases, looking at on-time payments and the ability to pay. We want to make sure our customers won't inadvertently get into trouble. And we don't extend lines where we don't think they will ever be able to pay it off."
5. Which credit score do you use?
To reduce your chance of having a credit card application rejected, check your credit report and credit score before you apply. These days, you can get your credit score for free from many credit card companies. Discover and Capital One will give you your score even if you're not a customer. Once you know which card you want, call the issuer to see which score it uses when considering applications.
Here's why it matters: Each credit bureau collects its own information and calculates scores based on that information, so scores can vary from one bureau to another.
"You can ask which bureau they pull from," Harzog says. However, she adds, "I've noticed in the past few years, some issuers have changed their policy and don't tell you. The best strategy is to be sure all your credit reports are good so you don't have to worry which bureau is being pulled."
Federal law entitles you to a free copy of your credit report from each of the three credit bureaus once a year. You can access those free reports at AnnualCreditReport.com.
6. When do you report account information to the credit bureaus?
"If you're trying to raise your score, paying off your credit card balance before the issuer reports it to the credit bureau will help by lowering your utilization ratio," Harzog says.
Call your issuer and ask when it reports account information. If you don't want to call, your best bet is to assume it reports that information on your statement closing date, which you can find on your statement. It could take a few days for the credit bureaus to update their data. If you're working hard to raise your credit score, another alternative is to pay your credit card more than once a month so your utilization ratio is lower throughout the month.
The common thread of these six questions is this: Getting the most out of your credit cards means managing your accounts so they put you in the most advantageous position. Don't just passively accept what your issuer gives you. Ask your issuer to work with you to produce the best financial results for your situation.
Ellen Cannon is a staff writer at NerdWallet, a personal finance website. Email: ecannon@nerdwallet.com. Twitter: @ellencannon.
Unlike laws for drunk driving limits, which are fairly uniform across the U.S., regulations on driving with marijuana in your system vary from place to place. Six states enforce specific limits on how much THC, the main psychoactive element in marijuana, drivers can have in their blood. Twelve others have zero-tolerance policies. Most states, however, still lack concrete marijuana laws for motorists, according to the Governors Highway Safety Association.
The point at which stoned drivers are considered "impaired" fluctuates by state, but if you're found guilty of driving under the influence of drugs, or DUID, you will likely face an increase in car insurance rates at your next renewal time, no matter where you live.
To give you an idea of how high your rates could leap, NerdWallet looked at car insurance quotes in five states for drivers with a DUID, which can encompass other substances as well as marijuana. Check out the results here.
» COMPARE: Car insurance quotes
California car insurance rates were the most affected in our price sampling. Our research found that rates in the Golden State jumped by more than $1,500 per year for a first DUID conviction. Ohio had the smallest increase, $336 per year on average.
Higher auto insurance rates are just one of the possible costs drivers face if charged with a severe moving violation. Those convicted of driving high could also have to pay steep legal and court fines, drug-treatment program costs and a driver's license reinstatement fee, among other penalties. All told, a single DUID could mean thousands of dollars down the drain.
» MORE: Arbitrary marijuana limits on drivers impair legal judgment
We also tested rates for drivers who receive a repeat DUID citation within a year of their first conviction. Here are those results.
If you're hit with a second DUID conviction, expect rates to spike by several hundred dollars again. Having multiple serious moving violations on your record also increases the chances that your car insurer will drop you at renewal time. If you have trouble qualifying for a policy with another company, you may end up looking into coverage for high-risk drivers.
Shop around if you have an imperfect driving record Because insurance companies treat accidents and violations differently, consider shopping around if you've recently been convicted of driving under the influence of marijuana. The company that offered the cheapest rate the last time you searched for a policy may no longer have the best deal.
NerdWallet's car insurance comparison tool lets you view quotes from multiple companies.
Alex Glenn is a staff writer for NerdWallet, a personal finance website. Email: aglenn@nerdwallet.com.
METHODOLOGY
To estimate the car insurance increases after a DUID, we first ran rates for 30-year-old drivers with no accidents or violations, then we ran rates for those with one and two convictions. We did this by averaging the three lowest rates from the largest insurers across 10 ZIP codes in California, Colorado, Ohio, Texas and Washington.
Coverage included 100/300/50 liability insurance limits, 100/300 uninsured motorist bodily injury coverage, and collision and comprehensive with a $1,000 deductible. We used a 2012 Toyota Camry in all cases. These are sample rates generated through Quadrant Information Services. Your own rates may be different.
If you're one of the billions of people around the world following the 2016 Rio Olympic Games in any form, you're probably aware of its most talked-about sports moments. Simone Biles of the United States (with dual Belizean citizenship) confirming her spot as the world's best gymnast. The Fiji men's rugby team's emotional gold medal win - the first in their country's history. French gymnast Samir Ait Said's horrible leg injury during the men's qualifying rounds.
You may also have noticed a flood of social media posts using hashtags like #Rio2016, #Olympics or #TeamUSA. Given that the 2016 Olympic Games have been dubbed the "most watched and talked-about Games on social media yet," this isn't surprising. What may be, though, is the silence of most companies regarding the games.
Whether on television or the internet, the vast majority of businesses are blocked from nearly any mention of the 2016 Olympic Games - whether in conjunction with promoting their own products or even just saluting their national teams. The reason for this silence is rooted in U.S. trademark law and other laws around the world created solely to protect the Olympics.
As a trademark law professor and director of Drake University Law School's Intellectual Property Law Center, I believe these laws have been stretched too far. As currently applied, it's hard for companies, especially small businesses, to know when their activities are illegal. And it's increasingly difficult to obtain permission to do the right thing.
Olympic properties under lock and key
The International Olympic Committee (IOC), which organizes the Olympic Games, owns many Olympic-related trademarks - commonly referred to as the "Olympic properties." These include the interlaced ring symbol, flag, anthem, motto, emblems, mascots, the word "Olympic" and other Olympic-related terminology. As one might imagine, this list could include hundreds, or thousands, of items. While there is no official count, the IOC provides some guidance regarding permitted uses.
In the U.S., protected trademarks include the Olympic rings, torch designs, the words "Olympic," "Paralympic" and "Pan American" as well as any other word or symbol that suggests an association with the USOC, the American team or the Olympic Games themselves. A recent search of the United States Trademark Electronic Search System reveals more than 200 trademarks, including "Olympian," "future Olympian," "road to Rio," "rumble in Rio," "train like an Olympian," "let the games begin" and "go for the gold."
These trademarks are protected through the same domestic trademark laws that apply to any other entity doing business in a country. Most companies protect their trademarks to identify and distinguish themselves in the marketplace. If anyone uses that protected trademark without permission, a company has to sue and prove that consumers are likely to be confused by that unauthorized use.
But the IOC has also obtained unique, heightened protections that don't extend to other companies. First, a 52-country international agreement guards the interlaced ring symbol against commercial use without the IOC's consent. Each signatory nation can receive a portion of the revenues generated domestically if the IOC does consent to specific uses of the symbol. Between the 1988 Seoul Games and 2004 Athens Games, more than US$300 million was generated in licensing royalties, some of which went to the host countries.
Second, countries that host the games often create new, special laws to safeguard the Olympic properties above and beyond other existing law. These laws prohibit certain marketing tactics by companies that aren't official sponsors. Any new law typically provides much broader protection than basic trademark law and makes it easier to stop unauthorized activities. One day before Rio de Janeiro was chosen to host the 2016 Olympic Games, Brazil enacted the Olympic Act; it includes language that specifically protects the Olympic properties from unauthorized uses.
Illegal packets of cocaine marked 'Rio 2016' are an extreme example of what's not good for the brand. Reuters Handout
Don't cross the IOC
The IOC is notorious for its aggressive protection of the Olympic properties. Its stated purpose for this fierce vigilance stems from a desire to make sure "the integrity and value of the Olympic properties are respected."
This stance also extends to country-specific Olympic organizations. The United States Olympic Committee (USOC), for example, has stated it's intensely protective of its Olympic properties because it does not receive federal money to support athletes; it's left to generate funds primarily through licensing, sponsorships and partnerships based on the properties.
Unlike in other countries, American Olympic athletes are not financially supported by the government. There are no comprehensive statistics about how much these athletes get paid from the USOC, but media report their salaries are paltry. One study found that half of elite American track and field athletes make less than $15,000 a year.
Fierce patrolling of the Olympic trademarks has led to significant clashes between the IOC, USOC and the public. In perhaps the most famous American case, the USOC successfully sued San Francisco Arts & Athletics, Inc. in 1982 to stop it from using the word "Olympic" in its Gay Olympic Games. The USOC has also threatened lawsuits against and forced name changes for the Ferret Olympics, Rat Olympics and Olympets, among others.
So who can actually use Olympic properties legally? Regular people, news entities and official sponsors are in the clear. TV companies have paid more than $4 billion to broadcast the 2016 Olympic Games. This year, the 11 official sponsors are poised to make more than $9 billion in marketing revenue, and much of this value comes from keeping everyone else out.
Other businesses and brands, including an athlete's individual sponsors, are severely restricted. The IOC did change its rules this year to allow athletes, for the first time, to tweet about their nonofficial sponsors and do generic commercials that do not refer to the Olympics or use any Olympic properties. Olympic track star Allyson Felix, for example, has tweeted her ad for Bounty paper towels in this manner.
Cease and desist your retweets
Even with these changes, the IOC and USOC make it difficult for nonsponsoring businesses. Just weeks before the 2016 Olympic Games began, ESPN revealed that the USOC sent reminder letters to businesses that have endorsement deals with Olympic athletes but which are not official sponsors of the games. The letters reiterated that such companies "may not post about the Trials or Games on their corporate social media accounts," including using "hashtags such as #Rio2016 or #TeamUSA."
In addition, unless the company is news-oriented, it is not allowed to speak about Olympic results, share photos taken at the Olympics, or retweet or share anything from official Olympic social media accounts.
Oiselle, an athletic wear company, is one nonofficial sponsor that recently found itself at odds with the USOC. It received a takedown letter from the USOC after posting a photo of Kate Grace, a runner with an Oiselle endorsement deal, when she won the 800-meter race at the summer trials. According to the company's CEO, such behavior is frustrating for smaller companies who contribute to individual athletes but cannot afford to be an official Olympic sponsor - that club is limited to 11 deep-pocketed multinationals including McDonald's and P&G. It also harms athletes without big endorsement deals, who could better capitalize on their success if the boundaries were relaxed.
Most American Olympic athletes have day jobs and scramble to make a living while pursuing their sport. While protecting Olympic trademarks helps keep the properties valuable, these aggressive tactics keep companies with real connections to Olympic athletes from participating in the excitement of the Olympic Games. Maybe loosening control a bit would allow more money to get to the athletes themselves. After all, it's their amazing accomplishments that add the real value to the Olympic Games.
Shontavia Johnson, Professor of Intellectual Property Law, Drake University
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
