❗Let's close the gap: We still need your help to raise $40,000 by April 1. Donate now

Small talk: Baseball beers and surfing the Internet at work

Marketplace Contributor Sep 16, 2011
HTML EMBED:
COPY

Small talk: Baseball beers and surfing the Internet at work

Marketplace Contributor Sep 16, 2011
HTML EMBED:
COPY

Kai Ryssdal: This final note of a Friday, a moment to step away from the news of the week and hear a bit of what didn’t make the headlines. Courtesy of Rico Gagliano, Brendan Francis Newnam and the rest of the Marketplace staff.


Rico Gagliano: Jennifer Collins, reporter. What story are you going to be talking about this weekend?

Jennifer Collins: So you’ve heard of these viral videos that show baseball fans demonstrating that a small and large cup of beer at their favorite stadiums hold basically the same amount of beer?

Gagliano: I have, actually. It’s kind of amazing.

Collins: So these intrepid reporters in Phoenix went down to their stadium to figure out that if you’re ordering small beers — two small beers — you get four ounces more liquid, $1 less.

Gagliano: Than a large beer.

Collins: Yes.

Gagliano: Let me ask you: Has baseball become less exciting, or something? I mean, it just seems like fans are having more fun during cost-ratio analyses than watching the game.

Brendan Newnam: Avishay Artsy, assistant producer of Marketplace. What’s your story?

Avishay Artsy: Microsoft has their newest version of Windows, Windows 8. And it’s got a feature that a lot of people are talking about. It’s an update to the blue screen of death.

Newnam: Which is when your computer freezes and it just goes all blue.

Artsy: Right. Except now they’ve updated it so you’ve got this frowny face emoticon, and then you have the words, “Your PC ran into a problem that it can’t handle, and now it needs to restart.”

Newnam: That does sound a little nicer. But you know, if the buzz around your new product is that its failure screen is updated, I think your company might need to restart.

Gagliano: Jonathan Karp, senior editor. What story are you going to be talking about this weekend?

Jonathan Karp: It’s legal in Canada to surf the Internet at work on the company’s loonie.

Gagliano: Another reason to move to Canada.

Karp: Absolutely. Franklin Andrews, a government bureaucrat, was apparently spending more than half of his day surfing the Internet. He was downloading lots of pornography.

Gagliano: Really?

Karp: But he got fired — and keep in mind, this is Canada — for time theft.

Gagliano: But it didn’t stick?

Karp: No, the court ruled that he had met all of his obligations. The government didn’t give him enough work, so he wasn’t stealing any time at all.

Gagliano: May I ask where did you find this story? On the Internet, perhaps? Are we not keeping you busy enough?

Karp: Talk to my boss about that.


Ryssdal: There’s more where that came from. It’s a podcast Brendan and Rico do called Dinner Party Download.

There’s a lot happening in the world.  Through it all, Marketplace is here for you. 

You rely on Marketplace to break down the world’s events and tell you how it affects you in a fact-based, approachable way. We rely on your financial support to keep making that possible. 

Your donation today powers the independent journalism that you rely on. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you.