Trader Joe's is a grocery store chain with 450 locations in the United States. The chain has thrived by offering a wider variety of food than their competitors at reasonable prices. But there are lots of procedure that go on behind-the-scenes that make the store what it is. That includes the benefits that go to employees, several of which involve food.
10. THE BREAK ROOM KEEPS THEM WELL-FED.
Trader Joe’s customers enjoy visiting the store’s sample station for food and coffee, and employees enjoy their own grub in the break room. “We are always cooking things up,” a Trader Joe’s employee tells Forbes. “When we get new foods in, we try them out. We eat and drink throughout the day here.” Because employees are constantly tasting new products and familiarizing themselves with older ones, they can recommend certain products to customers and speak genuinely about the flavors, textures, and overall tastiness of the food. And just like customers, Crew Members also definitely hit up the sample station. “I can’t even begin to tell you how many teeny tiny cups of coffee I chugged or samples I inhaled in a given shift,” Royal says.
This is not an old music video. Believe it or not, it's brand new. Yet the costumes, dancing, and even the production values are right out of the mid-70s disco era.
"Guardians’ Inferno" is the song that played over the end credits of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, and appears on the soundtrack album. Now it has a video, featuring David Hasselhoff, and a cameo appearance by Stan Lee. This video is a bonus feature on the home video version of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. -via Geeks Are Sexy
We've mentioned a few times that the rules and regulations we have today normally originate from some horrible precedent. The many rules and regulations regarding air travel come together to make flying the safest mode of transportation per mile, so you know that the mistakes of early aviators and plane designers contributed to what we know about safety. However, those mistakes were tragic.
Upgrade: Retiring tin
As Aloha Flight 243, a weary, 19-year-old Boeing 737 on a short hop from Hilo, Hawaii, to Honolulu, leveled off at 24,000 ft., a large section of its fuselage blew off, leaving dozens of passengers riding in the open-air breeze. Miraculously, the rest of the plane held together long enough for the pilots to land safely. Only one person, a flight attendant who was swept out of the plane, was killed.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) blamed a combination of corrosion and widespread fatigue damage, the result of repeated pressurization cycles during the plane's 89,000-plus flights. In response, the FAA began the National Aging Aircraft Research Program in 1991, which tightened inspection and maintenance requirements for high-use and high-cycle aircraft. Post-Aloha, there has been only one American fatigue-related jet accident—the Sioux City DC-10.
Did you ever get the feeling that Luke Skywalker was dealt a truly raw deal, having to grow up on Tatooine, raised by a moisture farmer? Meanwhile, Leia, who wasn't his twin sister until Return of the Jedi, was adopted by planetary royalty, eventually becoming a senator! It turns out that Lucas had an even bigger vision for Leia than all that.
Hang on wait what... Leia had a PhD in Star Wars? Christ can you imagine having everyone call you Princess when you were actually Dr Organa pic.twitter.com/HYertPJqWU
Wow, talk about an overachiever! A PhD at 19 is almost unheard-of in our galaxy, outside of a few child prodigies who clepped through high school at a ridiculously young age. This tidbit gives Leia another title in addition to General, Senator, and Princess. We can call her Doctor.
We have clearly, clearly all been doing our PhDs in Alderaan places....
We can tell ourselves that what Luke didn't get in genetic brains, he made up for in his sensitivity to the Force. That is, as long as you ignore midi-chlorians. Which we all do. -via Buzzfeed
Azerbaijani photographer Kamal Bagirli traveled to Milan, Italy, to find the spot where a photograph was taken in 1964. He managed to line up the photo with the spot and the train. There are a few differences. The train is different, and we cannot imagine that they'd have had a woman conductor in 1964. Some Italians quipped that the train is the same one, delayed for 50 years as expected. Bagirli has done quite a few of these old photograph with modern framing projects. Check out more of his work at Instagram.
Have you ever dreamed of living by the shore, but thought you could never afford a home there? You might want to rethink that dream, since the U.S. General Services Administration has six lighthouses up for auction right now, with bids starting as low as $10,000 to $15,000. They are all historic buildings on the waterfront. There is a catch or two: the auctions are for the buildings only, and the government will retain ownership of the land beneath them (which is underwater). Also, you must agree to restore and even upgrade the lighthouses.
One lighthouse being auctioned off, the historic Chesapeake Bay lighthouse, is just two miles from the Baltimore shores. The other five being sold are on Michigan’s Great Lakes. The most expensive, by far, is the Minneapolis Shoal Light which is situated on the Great Lakes Public Trust bottomlands in Lake Michigan. Its bidding will extend until August 15th. The Craighill Lower Range Front Light Station, located off North Point State Park in the Chesapeake Bay, is also for sale and will be auctioned until September 15th.
There was a time when Dunkin' Donuts was known for their donuts. But the times, they are a'changin', and coffee culture is where the money is in the 21st century. The company is considering a pivot that will cement their focus on coffee as opposed to their donuts. Several locations, beginning with Pasadena, will rebrand as just "Dunkin'" in a test run of the new, shorter name.
The company does not consider this a departure from current branding.
“We have been referring to ourselves simply as Dunkin’ in our advertising for more than a decade, ever since we introduced our ‘America Runs on Dunkin’ campaign,” said the spokesperson.
The trial run on the rebranded name may become part of a larger redesign that is set to roll out during mid-late 2018, and Dunkin’ Brands plans to determine “Dunkin’s” permanence at that time.
The world as a whole may have stepped back from nuclear buildup, but the new weapons being developed are increasingly terrifying for reasons other than world destruction. The testing is terrifying enough. Was that guy a volunteer?
Neill Blomkamp's latest Oats Studios short is less than five minutes long, which is unusual, but the video is entirely computer-generated. Why? It's an experiment. Surely this would have been cheaper to make just by filming actors. The story is as gripping as any other. However, there's no punch line. The next episode in a proposed series will be made if they raise enough money to make it. -via Digg
A litter of eight baby hedgehogs (hoglets) became orphans when their mother was killed in a lawnmower accident. The hoglets were found and taken to a lactating cat named Musya.
Musya nurtures and feeds the hoglets like they were her own. She might have a little difficulty in grooming them. She probably feels sorry for these ugly kittens. -via Laughing Squid
Slack Wyrm is a fire-farting dragon. It's also the name of the continuing comic series by Joshua Wright (previously at Neatorama) that the dragon stars in. However, many of the comics can stand on their own, like this one. Never has a chicken held so much power in her hands! Er, wings.
If you want find out what happened after Janet's judgement, see the next comic. Afterward, Slack Wyrm turned a new leaf and is now on a quest with a wizard to find the kingdom's worst troll. Yeah, he's an internet troll. You can read the entire series starting here. -via Geeks Are Sexy
The original 1984 Karate Kid reached its climax when our hero Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) faced his nemesis Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) in the All Valley Karate Tournament. Although the sequels went on to other adventures, and Jaden Smith starred in the 2010 reboot, we will never forget that first rivalry, in which Johnny was encouraged to "sweep the leg!" And now the two are back together. A new 10-episode series called Cobra Kai is slated to run on YouTube's subscription service YouTube Red. Macchio and Zabka will reprise their roles as Danny and Johnny.
The series, set to bow in 2018, is set 30 years after the events of the 1984 All Valley Karate Tournament and revolves around a down-and-out Johnny who, seeking redemption, reopens the infamous Cobra Kai dojo. It reignites his rivalry with a now-successful Daniel, who has been struggling to maintain balance in his life without the guidance of his mentor, Mr. Miyagi (the late Pat Morita). The half-hour comedy follows the duo addressing demons from their past and present frustrations — through (what else?) karate.
American history might have been written in French or Spanish. Here’s part of the reason it wasn’t.
PLUNDERERS FOR HIRE
In 1562 some French Protestants known as Huguenots landed on what is now Parris Island, near Beaufort, South Carolina. Like the English Pilgrims who would arrive a half century later, the Huguenots wanted religious freedom. This group, led by Captain Jean Ribault, also wanted riches: They were privateers. In an era when navies were smaller than they are today, countries hired armed private ships and crews to do much of their pillaging and plundering for them. Privateers were an accepted part of naval warfare: Under admiralty law, if captured they were supposed to be treated as prisoners of war, even if what they were doing looked like piracy.
The Huguenots were going to do their pillaging under the French Crown. After raising a stone marker on Parris Island and claiming all the surrounding land in the name of King Charles IX, Ribault sailed back to France for supplies. He left behind 28 men to establish a fort, with enough food for six months and sufficient arms and munitions for defense. The men immediately set to work building a shelter made of wood and earth, with a straw roof. They dug a moat around it and added four bastions- bulwarks from which they could defend the new settlement. Then they waited …and waited …and waited. But Ribault did not return. The problem: By the time Ribault reached home, France was embroiled in a full-blown religious war between Protestants and Catholics and had no money to spare for his resupply mission. So Ribault sailed on to England, hoping to find a sponsor there. Instead, he ended up imprisoned in the Tower of London by a suspicious Queen Elizabeth I.
WE’LL NEVER HAVE PARRIS
When their supplies ran out, the abandoned men panicked.
One measure of the desirability of a sports car is whether or not it has teenagers drooling over it before they’re even old enough to drive. Here’s the story of one of the most drool-worthy cars in auto history. (See how long it takes you to guess which car we’re talking about.)
THINKING SMALL
In the early 1950s, Harley Earl, the legendary head of General Motors’ Styling department, began to notice an uptick in interest in small, imported sports cars. The soldiers who fought in World War II had taken a liking to the Fiats, Triumphs, Jaguars, Morgans, and other convertible roadsters they had seen in Europe, and they’d been buying modest numbers of them from import auto dealers ever since. When Earl went to auto races, he was struck by the affection that drivers had for their little sports cars, and now even his own employees were beginning to drive them to work.
Earl had devoted his entire working life to making GM’s cars ever longer, wider, lower, more powerful, more streamlined, and more fanciful, as his automobile designs drew inspiration from everything from locomotives to bombers to rocket ships. He’d worked on plenty of cars that might be considered sporty, but he’d never really designed a sports car, at least not one that had found its way into dealer showrooms. Sports cars may have looked pretty and been fun to drive, but they didn’t sell very well. Of the more than 4.6 million vehicles sold in the U.S. in 1952, barely 11,000 of them were sports cars. That’s less than ¼ of one percent.
It had been years since any of the major American auto companies bothered to make any kind of a two-seater, let alone a sports car, and this was undoubtedly one of the things that crossed Earl’s mind. How can consumers be expected to buy many roadsters if there aren’t any on the market? Remember, the auto industry was a lot different in the 1950s: Together, GM’s five automobile divisions (Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick, and Cadillac) manufactured roughly half of all the automobiles sold in the United States each year. Ford, Chrysler, and a handful of other small U.S. companies sold nearly all the rest. Few Americans had ever owned a foreign-made car or would have considered making such a purchase—the image and perceived superiority of the American automakers was that dominant in those days. But with no domestic sports cars available, customers who wanted to buy one had to get it from a foreign automaker or go without.
Earl didn’t know if sports cars would ever be a major segment of the U.S. auto industry, but he did understand that they had a great deal of appeal with young people. GM was a big company and made big profits year after year. Why not spend a tiny fraction of that money on an American sports car that would appeal to the kids who bought MGs and Triumphs? Once they were in the GM fold, Earl figured, when the time came for them to trade up to a four-seater, they’d be much more likely to buy it from GM.
A confusing traffic detour leads to the entrance of Rosslare Harbour ferry port, in County Wexford, Ireland. Or at least it did when this sequence was recorded. There should have been warning signs posted further back, but if there were, no one read them. At 1:45 a car stops for a reason other than confusion.
The YouTube description says that this junction has been changed since the video was recorded. That's a good thing. A more recent video shows that all the traffic is coming directly off a roundabout, so there really was no way to warn these drivers before having to suddenly make their decision. -via reddit
This past Wednesday and Thursday, Boeing made an 18-hour endurance test flight of their 787-8 over 22 states. The route they selected was designed to draw the outline of a Boeing jet in the skies! The live flight tracking app Flight Aware caught the entire outline. Notice that the nose of the plane is pointing toward Boeing's headquarters in Seattle. Why would they do this? Because they could. Oh, then there's the publicity, of course. -via Atlas Obscura
