Word: fewer
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...profit establishment out to make money. The so-called market should take care of it. They just need to hire more people to keep the place spic-and-span, or else have customers vote for Burger King with their feet. Perhaps it was part of a secret plot: Hire fewer people in order to put pressure on the customer to look after his own garbage. At first folks might grumble a bit, but eventually they would comply and adhere to some unspoken ethic of self-service in order to save McDonald's money...
...even consciousnesses that we experience in our heads as we navigate multiple worlds" - is fascinating. So is another useful but slightly silly neologism: "weisure," Conley's term for our increasing tendency to work during leisure time, thanks to advances in portable personal technology. As Conley writes, there are fewer and fewer boundaries in the world of the middle- to upper-class professional. "Investment v. consumption; private sphere v. public space; price v. value; home v. office; leisure v. work; boss v. employee" - the walls between them all are increasingly blurring or falling altogether. We seem to work all the time...
...meantime, green groups are pressuring electronics manufacturers to take responsibility for the afterlife of their products. The strategy is working. By reducing toxic metals like mercury and using fewer small pieces of aluminum and glass, companies like Apple now design their laptops to be more easily recycled. Sony has pledged to work only with recyclers that pledge not to export e-waste. And Dell, which since 2004 has offered free recycling for its products (customers arrange shipping online), recently announced an in-store recycling program with Staples. To confirm that its recyclers are really recycling, Dell uses environmental-audit firms...
...Cuba needed a new law on pensions for the best of reasons. Cuba’s life expectancy had increased. Cubans live on average as long as Europeans or North Americans. Such heightened life expectancy summarizes many of Cuba’s achievements of the past half-century. Fewer infants die at birth in Havana than in Washington, DC. Over the decades Cubans acquired better access to nutrition, curative and preventive health care free of charge, schooling to obtain the information needed to lead healthier lives, options for physical exercise in state-supported athletics and sports, and all under conditions...
...first wave of 3,685 workers effectively retired on Dec. 31, while about 4,000 more will exit in February. Several thousand more departures are expected in March. The retirees will not be replaced. These reductions are accelerating a trend: before they began, there were already 100,000 fewer postal workers than there were about seven years ago, with automated sorting technology picking up much of the slack. Meanwhile, part-time employees will be limited to working fewer hours, temp hiring will be cut back, and contract employees may be eliminated altogether...