MONDAY KETCHUP: Brattiest CEO, saddest stakeholder news, most dystopian headline, CEOs jailed, and a Friday roundup

Live from your CEO’s mega-mega-mega option grant, it’s yet another Manic Monday edition of Business Pants. Joined by Analyst-Holes. In today’s broken record called September 11, 2023: The Arbiter of Truth!

DAMION1

Arbiter of Truth Monday Mania

1. Brattiest CEO Story

1. The Airbnb IPO was a huge success, but CEO Brian Chesky says it was “one of the saddest periods” of his life:

1. “I had this image that if I got successful I’d have all these people around me, all these friends, I’d have all this love, all this everything, and my life would be fixed.” But actually, when Airbnb hit that $100 billion valuation and “everyone in high school” knew what he did, he was lonelier than ever

2. Boeing's CEO David Calhoun is commuting to the office by private jet, and some employees who have returned to the office are mocking him

1. Over the last three years, Boeings fleet of private jets have made around 400 trips to or from airports near his homes, one on the waterfront by New Hampshire's Lake Sunapee and the other in a gated South Carolina resort community, per the WSJ.

2. The Journal reports that several Boeing employees then began displaying "Lake Sunapee" signs in their offices, and others had souvenir mugs like one that read: "Love Lake Life."

3. Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen CEO Ryan Petersen announced on social media that his logistics company was rescinding dozens of job offers on Friday morning.

1. From X/Twitter (of course): “Flexport is rescinding a bunch of signed offer letters for people who were starting as soon as this Monday. I am deeply sorry to those people who were expecting to join our company and won't be able to at this time. It's messed up. But no way around it, we have had a hiring freeze for months I have no ideas why more than 75 people were signed to join. Or why we had over 200 open roles are on our web site. All of those have been canceled except for a handful of roles directly tied to our most important initiatives (eg improving timeliness of our freight services). A Flexport team member will reach out to each of you personally asap to explain the move. I hope you will forgive us someday and even consider coming to work here again once we get our house in order. But now would not be a good time to add more people and expenses to the company.

2. Best Grimes/Musk kid name: Elon Musk has confirmed that he and former partner Grimes have a third child together: 

1. X AE A-XII (“X”)

2. Exa Dark Sideræl (“Y”)

3. Techno Mechanicus (“Tau”)

3. Saddest Stakeholder headline:

1. Walmart cuts starting pay for new hires who prepare online orders, stock shelves: The discounter had hiked pay for those workers in March 2021, as e-commerce sales were soaring.

2. Wisconsin sawmill has agreed to stop hiring children after a 16-year-old died on the job

3. A mother is suing Peloton claiming her son was killed when his bike fell on him

4. Stupidest CEO headline:

1. Ex-Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz admits he once shunned the Frappuccino

2. David Solomon defends his leadership of Goldman Sachs on CNBC. 'I don't recognize the caricature that is painted of me.'

3. Even Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi thinks the company ‘sucks’ and treats its drivers like crap. That’s because he spent a day behind the wheel

1. He hosted an all-hands presentation for Uber staff titled “Why We Suck,” in which he detailed a “lack of quality” in the product.

5. Worst food headline:

1. Just 12% of Americans are eating half of the nation's beef — the 'Hummer of animal proteins.'

1. There's a good chance beef is on the menu, especially for men or people ages 50 to 65. These two groups were more likely to eat a disproportionate amount of beef in a day.

1. A "disproportionate" amount of beef was defined as four or more ounces a day.

2. Snack company behind 'One Chip Challenge' pulls its extra-hot tortilla chip from stores following the death of a 14-year-old

1. Harris Wolobah, a 14-year-old in Worcester, Mass., died after he ate a Paqui brand tortilla chip dusted with two of the world’s hottest peppers in a coffin-shaped box that bore an image of a skull with a snake coiled around it, his mother said. He bought the chip at a Walgreens

2. This is the challenge where you are supposed to eat one tortilla chip dusted with two of the hottest peppers in the world—the Carolina Reaper and the Naga Viper—and then try to go as long as possible without eating or drinking anything to ease the anguish.

3. Did Tobacco Companies Also Get Us Hooked On Junk Food? New Research Says Yes

1. The chemically addictive fatty, salty and sweet foods that make up 68% of the American food supply have historically been pushed to consumers by the nation's leading tobacco sales companies, new research shows, suggesting the same companies responsible for what has been called a “smoking epidemic” could also be partially blamed for a decline in Americans’ health.

6. Most dystopian headline:

1. Walmart is making an unusual move to deter theft by building a mini police station inside one of its stores:

1. Plans call for the Walmart in Atlanta's Vine City neighborhood to include a designated workspace for law enforcement officers when it reopens in May next year. The location has been closed for nearly a year after officials say shoplifters set fires in the store to distract from their thieving.

2. Burmese pythons are being spotted farther and farther north in Florida and could reach other states, experts warn. 'It really does feel like an alien invasion,' one scientist said. Warming temperatures from climate change could help pythons spread beyond Florida.

3. Billionaire VC Marc Andreessen welcomes the symbiotic AI future: ‘It’s going to be a much better way to live’

4. Climate change 'dystopian future already here', says UN rights chief Volker Turk

7. Most pointless corporate headline:

1. Google Will Require Advertisers To Add Disclosures For AI-Generated Election Ads

2. Tom Brady works for Delta now.

1. Brady will serve as a “strategic advisor” for the Atlanta-based carrier, helping develop employee teamwork-oriented training, contributing to some of Delta brand initiatives, and offering a host of other contributions to the company’s philanthropic and employee-focused efforts.

8. Best CEO in trouble with the law headline

1. CEO Arrested On Luxury Yacht After Woman Told Police She Did Not Feel Safe Onboard

1. CEO Scott Burke of a Colorado-based medical insurance company called Injury Finance was arrested on his 70-foot yacht in Nantucket on suspicion of gun and drug charges after police responded to a report of a distressed woman.

2. Already stripped from website

1. Today: no mention of burke on website

2. September 6:

1. Injury Finance, an Omni Healthcare Company, is the industry leader in medical funding. As one of the first companies of its kind, it was created to serve an uninsured and under-insured population in need of medical treatment.

2. In 2003, the Colorado legislature repealed its auto laws, going from a personal injury protection state to tort essentially overnight. This dramatic change in law left hundreds of thousands of individuals unable to secure the medical treatment they needed to recover from injuries sustained in automobile collisions caused by another negligent driver.

3. During this time, Scott Burke, MD, was practicing as a physical medicine and rehabilitation physician in Denver. He was devastated by what this legislative change would mean for his own patients uninsured and underinsured personal injury victims, and how it would hinder their ability to seek the treatment they needed to recover. Dr. Burke knew that he needed to act.

4. On a white board in the back of his busy medical office, he spent countless hours figuring out how to bring quality health care from a vast number of healthcare organizations to those injured through no fault of their own. They developed a plan for a business that would focus on building relationships that aligned the interests of individuals involved in personal injury cases, the law firms that represent them, and the medical providers that treat them.

5. Now, almost two decades years later, Injury Finance remains a leader in the healthcare funding industry and continues to operate with the same philanthropic values it did in the very beginning. Now a member of the Omni Healthcare family, Injury Finance is owned/operated by Lovell Minnick Partners.

3. His son Connor is CIO; daughter Jessica is Vice President of Business Development

2. CEO Faruk Fatih Özer of Collapsed Thodex Gets 11,196-Year Jail Sentence

1. Thodex was Turkey’s largest crypto exchange, but it went offline in April 2021, leaving 40,000 members in the dark

2. 11,196 years, 10 months, and 15 days

9. Failed Friday show redo:

1. Story of the week

1. Disney’s wildest ride: Iger, Chapek and the making of an epic succession mess

2. Glass Cliff Continues: Vanessa Hudson, the incoming Qantas CEO, faces big challenges in the years ahead: Qantas CEO Alan Joyce to Step Down Two Months Early

3. Elon Musk Blames Anti-Defamation League for Destroying Website He Ruined Himself

4. In Its First Monopoly Trial of Modern Internet Era, U.S. Sets Sights on Google

2. Goodliest

1. Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary hit with cream pies by climate protesters

2. Biden bars oil drilling across a wide swath of Alaska’s Arctic

3. Assholiest

1. Sharon Bentley-Hamlyn, Aubrey Capital Management: Has ESG Gone Off the Rails?

2. Ira Ehrenpreis, Chair of the Tesla Nominating Committee (5% influence)

1. You have “governance” expertise and “legal” expertise according to your skills matrix: In which case, why do you not FIRE THIS ASSHOLE BECAUSE ILLEGAL AND GOVERNANCE

3. Blaming the Jews

1. Adani blasts ‘Soros-funded interests’ after media raise new questions about business empire

1. Soros funded = 4% of total funding of an org that roots out corruption

1. Musk’s Epic, Antic Labor Day Weekend Against The Jews

1. Exhausting-est

1. Corporate obsession with productivity

1. Bosses are tracking how long you're working — and using it to judge your performance.

2. Leaked Microsoft documents reveal a new employee rating system only visible to managers

2. September 5th was Equal Housework Day: It’s Time for Women to Quit Housework (Again)

1. In the US, the average woman spends so much more time on chores than the average man that to equalize the load, women would have to quit the housework entirely on Sept. 5 for the remainder of the year. And that represents progress: The gender gap in chores narrowed a bit from last year, when women would have had to quit on Aug. 29

1. Men are doing 12 minutes more a day/women 5 minutes more