Word: americanizing
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...seat Alice Busch Opera Theater. This makes it possible for productions to be opened and polished in Cooperstown, then moved to New York City, where they can be seen by bigger audiences (and telecast over PBS). The two companies also share an ensemble of theatrically savvy young American singers, foremost among them soprano Lauren Flanigan, whose Olivier-like immersion in her roles has won her a well-deserved reputation as the thinking person's diva. Flanigan sings two sharply contrasting parts in Central Park--a frustrated divorce in The Festival of Regrets (book by Wasserstein, music by Deborah Drattell...
...tough to imagine the CEO of a lean, mean operation falling for that one five years ago. It's tougher still to imagine that it would work, as a lot of CEOs apparently now do. Major businesses like Pfizer, American Express and Southwest Airlines, along with much smaller outfits, are laying out more than $55.3 billion annually--almost twice what they spent in the mid-1980s--on training. And the hottest new training device is the offsite, a company- or department-wide session away from the office. But today's offsite isn't a few meetings in a windowless hotel...
...advantages are momentary and a slight shift in the business model can mean either big bucks or doom. "Because of all the complexity and chaos that we face in this era, we have to look for nonlinear ways to learn," says Laurie Bassi, vice president of research at the American Society for Training and Development (A.S.T.D.), a not-for-profit professional society. "What we are seeing is a lot of experimenting with other ways of enhancing productivity...
...same way that banks are bombarding customers with ATM and service fees, giants like Citigroup, MBNA, Bank of America and American Express are raising fees, to $20 or $30, for being late or over limit. They're also shortening and rigidly enforcing grace periods on bill payments, upping foreign-transaction fees and imposing penalty interest rates of 20% or more. Some bewildered customers are being punished for not charging enough (inactivity fees). And even if you pay your MasterCard, say, but fall behind on your Discover charge, the MasterCard issuer might raise your interest rate, because you're deemed...
...Even American Express, which makes much of its money from merchants on its credit and charge cards, is using its popular Membership Rewards program as a fee generator. The company has hiked annual fees in the program 60%, to $40. If you want to link your personal card with your corporate card, that's another $10, please. And if you're late with your card payment, you pay a fee of around $15 and forgo your points for that month--unless you ransom them for another $15. Like many issuers, Amex has added a mandatory-arbitration clause, so customers...