Latest news with #JasonAlexander
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Tacoma cocktail bar known for gin has closed for good. ‘Just time to move on'
Gilman House Room 428, a gin-focused cocktail bar that moved into a smaller speakeasy-style space last year, closed permanently after service on May 24. Its sister bar, tiki haven Devil's Reef, isn't going anywhere, confirmed co-owner Jason Alexander in a phone call on Tuesday. In fact, they just renewed that lease, he said. The story was different at Room 428 in the Stadium District. He and his wife Robyn Alexander originally took over the corner storefront at 12 N. Tacoma Ave. in early 2020. That first edition of Gilman House, which opened later that year amid pandemic limitations, garnered a positive reputation for its veg-friendly fare, top-notch cocktails and, somewhat inadvertently, as a brunch hot spot. In a sense, it became more of a restaurant than the bar-with-food they had intended to offer. Eventually, the now-owners of The Powder Room Champagne Bar approached them about taking over the space. They arranged a sub-lease agreement with the Alexanders and a kitchen-sharing setup, allowing Gilman House to downsize into the more intimate cocktail lounge through a separate entrance. But as the lease came up for renewal this year, said Alexander, they decided it was 'just time to move on.' 'It ran its five-year course,' he continued. 'We were happy. We had a good time there, learned a lot about building out, running two different spots in one space. It was a really good learning opportunity.' Business was decent, he said, but the neighborhood often seemed sleepier than a cocktail bar needs to really thrive. Their staff of about five people were informed prior to the closure and left on good terms, according to Alexander. Some had personal pursuits while others had a job lined up. The closure won't impact The Powder Room, confirmed co-owner Cameron Gilmore in an email this week. 'I am in the process of negotiating my own lease agreement for the space now,' she said Thursday. 'We plan to stay put.' That's a silver lining for the Stadium District, which in May lost daytime stalwart Art House Cafe and Moshi Ramen Bar, where new owners are planning another concept. Technically with the address of 8 N. Tacoma Ave., Gilman House Room 428 debuted in June 2024. Alexander described it as 'a dark, shadow-filled experience with no windows and no doors and maybe you'll escape and maybe you won't,' in a nod to the H.P. Lovecraft stories that inspired both this bar and Devil's Reef in Opera Alley. (That description defies the original corner space, which has lots of windows.) Like all of the Alexanders' bars over 15-plus years in Tacoma, the new one was built from the ground up, featuring custom booths adorned with pillows and furs, dim lighting and a sensation that you had tucked into a discrete haunt down a dark alley in an 18th-century port town. They shared a kitchen with The Powder Room, serving drink-friendly food with a vegetarian bent: roasted veggies with housemade hummus, salade Nicoise, a portobello burger and pudding pots. Cocktails have long been the focus for Alexander, though, and Room 428 was no exception. Some, such as the Serranian Sling (gin, cassis, spices and citrus), can still be relished at Devil's Reef. ▪ 706 Opera Alley (Court C), Tacoma, ▪ Wednesday-Thursday 5-10 p.m., Friday-Saturday 5 p.m.-12 a.m. ▪ Details: tiki bar open since 2018 serves some Gilman House cocktails but focuses on carefully concocted rum drinks
Hamilton Spectator
3 days ago
- Business
- Hamilton Spectator
Sawmill employees' petition presented to Valemount Council
Employees of Valemount-based sawmill Cedar Valley Holdings are still in limbo as the company anticipates an interruption in work – and possibly closing altogether – by the end of June. Owner Jason Alexander says the expected closure is due to difficulty in getting an adequate supply of cedar, and that the Valemount Community Forest board has not responded to his offers to purchase its cedar harvest. Following the announcement of the possible closure in late April, Cedar Valley employee Simon Heiniger began circulating a petition calling for more transparency among the community forest board. The petition claims that the community forest has been sending cedar logs to pulp mills in Prince George, and asks that local manufacturing and milling is prioritized in future timber sales. The Goat has been unable to verify these claims with the community forest and Prince George-based pulp mills. Heiniger presented his petition during the most recent Valemount Council meeting on May 27th. According to him, the online and print versions of the petition have a total of around 360 signatures. Council voted to receive the delegation but did not ask Heiniger follow-up questions. In a follow-up interview with The Goat, Heiniger said he did not expect Council to respond to his petition during the delegation. 'I knew they weren't going to do anything with [the petition] there. It was clear that I'm not supposed to ask any questions as a delegation,' he said of councillors' reaction to his presentation. Heiniger added that CAO Anne Yanciw has offered to discuss his concerns in an informal meeting with him, which he takes as an encouraging sign. While he said he understands that the Village will need time to decide on a course of action, he hopes for a quick resolution before the company has to lay off employees or temporarily stop work. According to him, it is highly likely that Cedar Valley will have an interruption in production towards the end of the month, though it may not close down permanently. In a phone call with The Goat, VCF General Manager Alana Duncan said the organization cannot comment on the situation as legal proceedings are ongoing. During her report to the VCF board on May 28th, Duncan said the community forest has not yet resolved its conflict with Cedar Valley. The Ministry of Forests has declined to comment on Heiniger's petition, saying that it concerns a business-to-business relationship which the Province is not involved in. The Goat will continue to follow this story as it unfolds. Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again. You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google privacy policy and terms of service apply. Want more of the latest from us? Sign up for more at our newsletter page .
Yahoo
29-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
What is ‘ghostworking'? Most employees say they regularly pretend to work
There's nothing spooky about ghostworking, apart from how popular it may be right now. The newly coined term describes a set of behaviors meant to create a facade of productivity at the office, like walking around carrying a notebook as a prop or typing random words just to generate the sound of a clacking keyboard. (Some might call this Costanza-ing, after Jason Alexander's example on a memorable episode of Seinfeld.) Spicy AI-generated TACO memes are taking over social media because 'Trump always chickens out' Lego's first book nook is an addictively interactive diorama Forget quiet quitting: I'm using 'loud living' to redefine workplace boundaries Pretending to be busy at the office is not something workers recently invented, of course, but it appears to be reaching critical mass. According to a new survey, more than half of all U.S. employees now admit to regularly ghostworking. That statistic doesn't necessarily mean, however, that the American workforce is mired in permanent purgatory. Conducted by top resume-building service Resume Now, the report is based on a survey of 1,127 U.S. workers this past February. The results show that 58% of employees admit to regularly pretending to work, while another 34% claim they merely do so from time to time. What might be most striking about the report's findings, though, are some of the elaborate methods workers use to perform productivity. Apparently, 15% of U.S. employees have faked a phone call for a supervisor's benefit, while 12% have scheduled fake meetings to pad out their calendars, and 22% have used their computer keyboards as pianos to make the music of office ambiance. As for what these employees are actually doing while pretending to crush deliverables, in many cases it's hunting for other jobs. The survey shows that 92% of employees have job searched in some way while on the clock, with 55% admitting they do so regularly. In fact, some of those fake calls employees have made while walking around the office may have been on the way to making real calls to recruiters, since 20% of those surveyed have taken such calls at work. While ghostworking may overlap in some ways with the quiet quitting trend that emerged in 2023, there's a clear distinction between them. It hinges on the definition of the word 'perform.' 'Someone who is quiet quitting has essentially checked out of their job mentally and is performing the bare minimum of work necessary,' says Keith Spencer, a career expert at Resume Now. 'They are flying under the radar and operating in a way that avoids any attention. Ghostworking, on the other hand, is a performance. It involves actively projecting an appearance of busyness without actually engaging in meaningful work.' If quiet quitting was a response to pandemic-era burnout and an abrupt surge in return-to-office mandates, ghostworking appears to be a response to, well, everything that has happened since. Even before the newly created DOGE began decimating some government and contractor offices around the country in late January, the waves of layoffs starting in 2023 have continued to gain momentum in the tech world and beyond. Unemployment is still fairly low at 4.2%, not counting those workers who are 'functionally unemployed,' but workers everywhere are worried about a recession. Meanwhile, the drive to incorporate AI into workflow at most companies has created a palpable sense of uncertainty around exactly how to perform jobs in the present, and whether those jobs will even exist in the future. It's no wonder a recent LinkedIn Workforce Confidence Survey found that U.S. workers' faith in their job security and ability to find new work has plummeted to its lowest level since April 2020, during the onset of the pandemic. Adding to this decline in morale and engagement is a recent decrease in clarity of expectations. According to a Gallup poll from January, just 46% of employees clearly know what's expected of them at work these days, down 10 points from a high of 56% in March 2020. Many workers now live with the tacit understanding that they will have to work harder than ever to avoid getting caught in an impending cull, but without quite being aligned with management on what that work entails. It's in this kind of office environment that ghostworking seems to thrive. 'The workforce is currently under immense pressure to appear productive, even when it's counterintuitive to actual productivity,' Spencer says. 'These behaviors point to a deeper disconnect between how productivity is perceived and how it's actually delivered. In many cases, the appearance of working has become just as important as the work itself.' The Resume Now survey indicates that 69% of employees believe they'd be more productive if their manager monitored their screen time. However, this invasive approach to task visibility seems destined to backfire. A 2023 report from analytics firm Visier found that employees faced with surveillance tools were 'more than twice (and in some cases three times) as likely to commit the most egregious performative behaviors, like keeping a laptop screen awake while not working, asking someone to do a task for them, and exaggerating when giving a status update.' Even if surveillance did prove effective against ghostworking, it would be an attack on its symptoms, rather than the root causes. The ongoing return-to-office resurgence has left many employees feeling like they're working inside of a fishbowl, right as other external factors have made their jobs more challenging and less stable. Some data shows that workers are just as productive while working from home as at the office, while other studies find workers are even more productive at home. Still, for some leaders, a full office humming with deskside chats that could possibly be brainstorming sessions is the only productivity metric that matters. Employees sensing a greater need to broadcast that they're getting work done than to actually do the work at hand suggests managers may be rewarding performative work. Whatever the solution to the ghostworking trend might be for any individual company, it will likely have to come from those managers shifting their thinking. As Spencer notes, 'when managers offer more trust, flexibility, and space to do meaningful work—instead of focusing on constant visibility—teams are more likely to stay engaged and actually deliver.' This post originally appeared at to get the Fast Company newsletter: Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Fast Company
28-05-2025
- Business
- Fast Company
What is ‘ghostworking'? Most employees say they regularly pretend to work
There's nothing spooky about ghostworking, apart from how popular it may be right now. The newly coined term describes a set of behaviors meant to create a façade of productivity at the office, like walking around carrying a notebook as a prop or typing random words just to generate the sound of a clacking keyboard. (Some might call this Costanza-ing, after Jason Alexander's example on a memorable episode of Seinfeld.) Pretending to be busy at the office is not something workers recently invented, of course, but it appears to be reaching critical mass. According to a new survey, more than half of all U.S. employees now admit to regularly ghostworking. That statistic doesn't necessarily mean, however, that the American workforce is mired in permanent purgatory. Conducted by top resume-building service Resume Now, the report is based on a survey of 1,127 U.S. workers this past February. The results show that 58% of employees admit to regularly pretending to work, while another 34% claim they merely do so from time to time. What might be most striking about the report's findings, though, are some of the elaborate methods workers use to perform productivity. Apparently, 15% of U.S. employees have faked a phone call for a supervisor's benefit, while 12% have scheduled fake meetings to pad out their calendars, and 22% have used their computer keyboards as pianos to make the music of office ambiance. As for what these employees are actually doing while pretending to crush deliverables, in many cases it's hunting for other jobs. The survey shows that 92% of employees have job-searched in some way while on the clock, with 55% admitting they do so regularly. In fact, some of those fake calls employees have made while walking around the office may have been on the way to making real calls to recruiters, since 20% of those surveyed have taken such calls at work. Subscribe to the Daily newsletter. Fast Company's trending stories delivered to you every day Privacy Policy | Fast Company Newsletters While ghostworking may overlap in some ways with the quiet quitting trend that emerged in 2023, there's a clear distinction between them. It hinges on the definition of the word 'perform.' 'Someone who is quiet quitting has essentially checked out of their job mentally and is performing the bare minimum of work necessary,' says Keith Spencer, a career expert at Resume Now. 'They are flying under the radar and operating in a way that avoids any attention. Ghostworking, on the other hand, is a performance. It involves actively projecting an appearance of busyness without actually engaging in meaningful work.' If quiet quitting was a response to pandemic-era burnout and an abrupt surge in return to office mandates, ghostworking appears to be a response to, well, everything that has happened since. Even before the newly created DOGE began decimating some government and contractor offices around the country in late-January, the waves of layoffs starting in 2023 have continued to gain momentum in the tech world and beyond. Unemployment is still fairly low at 4.2%, not counting those workers who are 'functionally unemployed,' but workers everywhere are worried about a recession. Meanwhile, the drive to incorporate AI into workflow at most companies has created a palpable sense of uncertainty around exactly how to perform jobs in the present, and whether those jobs will even exist in the future. It's no wonder a recent LinkedIn Workforce Confidence Survey found that U.S. workers' faith in their job security and ability to find new work has plummeted to its lowest level since April 2020, during the onset of the pandemic. Adding to this decline in morale and engagement is a recent decrease in clarity of expectations. According to a Gallup poll from January, just 46% of employees clearly know what's expected of them at work these days, down 10 points from a high of 56% in March 2020. Many workers now live with the tacit understanding that they will have to work harder than ever to avoid getting caught in an impending cull, but without quite being aligned with management on what that work entails. It's in this kind of office environment that ghostworking seems to thrive. 'The workforce is currently under immense pressure to appear productive, even when it's counterintuitive to actual productivity,' Spencer says. 'These behaviors point to a deeper disconnect between how productivity is perceived and how it's actually delivered. In many cases, the appearance of working has become just as important as the work itself.' advertisement The Resume Now survey indicates that 69% of employees believe they'd be more productive if their manager monitored their screen time. However, this invasive approach to task visibility seems destined to backfire. A 2023 report from analytics firm Visier found that employees faced with surveillance tools were 'more than twice (and in some cases three times) as likely to commit the most egregious performative behaviors, like keeping a laptop screen awake while not working, asking someone to do a task for them, and exaggerating when giving a status update.' Even if surveillance did prove effective against ghostworking, it would be an attack on its symptoms, rather than the root causes. The ongoing return to office resurgence has left many employees feeling like they're working inside of a fishbowl, right as other external factors have made their jobs more challenging and less stable. Some data shows that workers are just as productive while working from home as at the office, while other studies find workers are even more productive at home. Still, for some leaders, a full office humming with deskside chats that could possibly be brainstorming sessions is the only productivity metric that matters. Employees sensing a greater need to broadcast that they're getting work done than to actually do the work at hand suggests managers may be rewarding performative work. Whatever the solution to the ghostworking trend might be for any individual company, it will likely have to come from those managers shifting their thinking. As Spencer notes, 'When managers offer more trust, flexibility, and space to do meaningful work—instead of focusing on constant visibility—teams are more likely to stay engaged and actually deliver.'
Buzz Feed
10-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Buzz Feed
Here's Every Super Bowl LIX Celebrity Commercial That Aired During The Big Game
Dunkin commercial with Druski, Ben Affleck, Casey Affleck, Jeremy Strong, and more: Orlando Bloom and Drew Barrymore for MSC Cruises: Eugene Levy for Little Caesars: Dan Levy and Morgan Freeman for Chris Hemsworth and Chris Pratt for Ray-Ban and Meta: Adam Devine for Cirkul: Willem Dafoe and Catherine O'Hara for Michelob Ultra: Michael Shannon, Aubrey Plaza, and Bad Bunny for Ritz: Barry Keoghan for Squarespace: Jason Alexander (and Jason Alexander, and Jason Alexander, and...) for Mike's Amazing Mayonnaise: Becky G and Seal (as a seal) for Mountain Dew Baja Blast: Snoop Dogg and Tom Brady for Foundation to Combat Antisemitism: Matthew McConaughey, Charli XCX, Greta Gerwig, and Martha Stewart for Uber Eats: Issa Rae for TurboTax: Gordon Ramsay and Pete Davidson for Hexclad: Glen Powell for Dodge Ram trucks: Billy Crystal, Meg Ryan, and Sydney Sweeney for Hellmann's: Adam Brody, Nick Offerman, James Harden, and Chiefs coach Andy Reid for Pringles: Elmo and Roger Federer for On: Shaboozey for Nerds: Kieran Culkin for Nerdwallet: Vin Diesel, Ludacris, and Michelle Rodriguez for Häagen Dazs: Post Malone and Shane Gillis for Bud Light: Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson for Salesforce: Harrison Ford for Jeep: David Beckham and Matt Damon for Stella Artois: And, finally, Antonio Banderas for Bosch: Check out the rest of our Super Bowl coverage here.
