Office pools: The other March Madness
For Coach’s Corner owner John Henderson, March Madness is a slam dunk for business.
He knows today’s lunch crowd will resemble a Sunday throng in football season. So he loads up on chicken wings, makes sure the bottles of Bud Lights are cold, and prepares to unlock the doors to a different clientele.
“With Georgia playing, how many people do you think are going to cut out of work early?” Henderson said.
The NCAA tournament tips off around noon, coinciding with local college basketball fans’ pilgrimages to the Victory Drive establishment.
The Georgia Bulldogs play Xavier at 12:20 p.m.
Blue jean-wearing customers will mingle with the suits. Most will be focused on the televisions. They come armed with filled-out tournament brackets and scrutinize over their picks like accountants examine balance sheets.
Patrons will eat, drink and be loud.
Some will gloat after picking winners. Others will shake their heads after inevitably seeing last-second baskets shoot down their favorites.
Some will be ready to head back to work. Others will be a little late.
Some will make plans to be back later.
Others won’t leave.
Lost productivity from office pools
Twenty-seven percent of the U.S. work force, or 37.3 million people, have participated in NCAA tournament office pools, according to a 2007 Office Betting Pool Survey by online recruiting site Vault.com.
The job placement consultancy of Chicago-based Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. takes workers’ fascination with the tournament a bit farther and estimates a loss of $1.7 billion in productivity for every 10 minutes wasted by an employee during the business day.
At NCAA tournament time, those minutes are used filling out brackets, looking up results on the Internet or hanging around the break room to catch the scores of afternoon games.
No doubt that estimate is low. CBSSports.com boasted nearly 1.4 million visitors to its Web site, who watched 2.6 million hours (1.9 hours per user) of live video for last season’s tournament.
Tags: bracket, ncaa, results
And cut the defense budget by about half. Its outlandish.
Better information makes land usable for agriculture which otherwise might not be.E. g.
That’s about right, the logical consequence would be that Europeans, Chinese, Japanese, South East Asians, Arabs, Indians, Russians, etc., etc. would buy up your gold and land and maybe goods (if you still manufactured them–darn).However, as a European, let me also say that my personal experiences with US-American sellers have been less than flattering. There seems to be a perception in the US that greed is good and that it’s somehow morally acceptable to scam and con people as long as you can, and as long as you can still get their money. That, at least, has been my personal experience — I have been scammed and conned by less than reputable US businesspeople. I would definitely think twice before buying US-American again, so any US seller of hard assets to me would have a hard sell on their hands. Add to such (admittedly individual) experiences that there is a lot of widespread resentment vis-a-vis the US, largely for foreign policy reasons, and you’ll see that potential buyers around the globe might only consider buying US if the price is really, really low.Then again, I’m personally also right now an uncommonly broke European, so you’re not losing much by not being able to sell to me.
So was it fun while American companies bought assets all over the world and collected toll? International business is a two way road. If you can buy, then someone else has that power too.
Oldest trick in the book: create a crisis by conning people then capitalize on it. People knew this wwould be the end result for a long time.
The NCAA Brackets are Out! 03.17 2008 Read more here: http://video-info.info/BBC/The_NCAA_Brackets_are_O …
Now is when they buy up our infrastructures, like highways and bridges and national parks and airports, and put tolls on them.
As a fellow Paul supporter, please stop giving Hillary props, even if they are due…