揽瓜阁俱乐部第三期 Day10 2020.07.29
【社会科学-经济】 Starbucks’ Gathering-Spot Model Is Threatened by Coronavirus （935字 精读 必做篇）
For millions of people, visiting Starbucks is a daily ritual. But these are extraordinary times for one of the world’s most popular brands.
As the virus sickened tens of thousands of people in China, the company closed more than 2,000 stores. When it arrived in the United States, the first serious outbreak was in Washington, the coffee chain’s home state. And last Friday, Starbucks became one of the first major American companies to have an employee who tested positive for the infection.
The last few weeks have been “very challenging times for all of us,” said Rossann Williams, the executive who oversees the company’s 200,000 workers in the United States. “We’re all learning as we go.”
Starbucks has long marketed itself as a social gathering spot — a “third place” between work and home, a symbol of normalcy for millions of people who buy coffee every day. Its bustling cafes are designed to build community and promote interaction between customers and baristas.
In recent days, however, that philosophy has come up against the threat of a rapidly spreading pandemic that has made people anxious about gathering in public places and sent shock waves through the global economy.
Now cafes could start to empty out, as public health authorities urge people to work from home and avoid crowds. For service workers like the baristas at Starbucks, the threat of infection is especially severe.
To reassure the public, Starbucks has prohibited customers from using their own cups and established an intensive cleaning regimen, requiring employees to wash their hands and disinfect “high touch” surfaces every half-hour. Even stricter protocols may lie ahead if the situation worsens, Ms. Williams said, like mandatory gloves and face masks for employees or the removal of chairs and tables. She said stores in the United States could be temporarily closed in extreme cases.
The outbreak is already hurting Starbucks’ bottom line. While more than 90 percent of its stores in China have reopened, the company told investors last week that it expected sales in China this quarter to fall by around 50 percent, or as much as $430 million, from a year ago. The company said it was too early to say how the virus would affect its business outside China. Starbucks’ stock price has fallen more than 25 percent over the last month.
The virus’s toll on the company’s workers could also be significant.
“They’re the ones who are more likely to be exposed, because they’re out in the public, and also more likely to pass it on again,” said Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute.
Across the industry, they are also less likely to have health insurance or paid sick leave. “It exposes the economic inequality that already exists,” Ms. Gould said.
On March 5, Starbucks temporarily closed a store near the Seattle Art Museum after an employee tested positive for the virus. The news reached senior leaders at 9 p.m. By 9 a.m. the next morning, the store had been thoroughly sanitized, and it reopened on Monday. All the employees who had worked closely with the person who tested positive were told to stay home for two weeks, with pay.
In its marketing, Starbuck has long highlighted its efforts to promote the well-being of employees, whom the company calls “partners,” such as offering health insurance to part-time workers.
Even while its stores in China were closed, Starbucks continued to pay the majority of its salaried workers, a group that includes many baristas, according to a recent securities filing.
And on Wednesday, Starbucks told its workers in the United States that it would provide up to two weeks of paid leave to any employee who was infected with the virus or had extended contact with a co-worker or household member who tested positive. (Under its previously established policy, Starbucks allowed employees to accrue an hour of sick time for every 30 hours worked: A barista working 23 hours a week would accumulate about five sick days over a year.)
Still, in interviews, Starbucks employees expressed concern that the enhanced safety measures were at odds with on-the-ground realities. While few questioned the wisdom of the new protocols, some said the policies were putting more pressure on staff who already felt overworked.
A Seattle-area employee who requested anonymity to speak frankly about the company said it was unrealistic for employees to perform the full cleaning process every 30 minutes when cafes were busy. An Atlanta-area worker who also declined to be named said the cleaning duties had pulled workers away from the counter, creating longer lines and larger crowds that may have inadvertently increased the risk of contagion even as the company tried to defuse it.
Underlying the strain at Starbucks is the company’s so-called lean staffing model, a common feature of retail and fast-food outlets in which managers seek to minimize the number of workers assigned to each store, often with the help of software that predicts customer traffic. The goal is typically to have just enough workers to cover demand, and no more, leaving little margin for error.
Like many other companies, Starbucks gives managers strict “labor budgets,” and over the years some have said they were disciplined for exceeding them.
“The lean model can be quite unforgiving,” said Saravanan Kesavan, a retail expert at the University of North Carolina. “Store managers are going to have a lot more difficulty managing absenteeism in stores that employ lean staffing compared to other stores that do not.”
The fast-food and retail industries have long known that they are vulnerable to epidemics. But they have sometimes played down the threat.
Source: The New York Times
【社会科学-时事】 2 weeks after George Floyd’s death, Americans are still protesting （589字 3分55秒 精听 必做篇）
先做精听再核对原文哦~
The nation echoes again tonight with protests over police using excessive force against black Americans. And there are mounting calls for wholesale changes in policing.
All of this comes amid final farewells for the man whose death galvanized a movement.
White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor begins our coverage.
Lines of people snaked around Houston's Fountain of Praise Church, as family, friends, and strangers paid their final respects to George Floyd.
His death, it's changed the world. It sparked this world, this change. And no matter what, things have to change, and things have got to be different.
Separately, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden, and his wife, Jill, met privately with Floyd's family.
Meanwhile, in Minneapolis, Derek Chauvin, the now-fired police officer who pinned Floyd to the ground with a knee on his neck, had his first court appearance. He faces an upgraded charge of second-degree murder. Bail was set at $1 million.
Floyd's death two weeks ago has sparked nationwide and now global protests against police brutality and systemic racism. In the U.S., massive peaceful protests continue across the country, from small towns and suburbs to thousands in large cities, like Los Angeles, where an estimated 20,000 people came out on Sunday.
L.A. prosecutors today announced they will not charge thousands of protesters who've been arrested for curfew and other violations.
And in Washington on Sunday, Republican Senator Mitt Romney of Utah marched with protesters near the White House.
Today, in Washington:The world is witnessing the birth of a new movement in our country.
Congressional Democrats introduced a sweeping set of policing reforms in response to Floyd's death and protesters' demands.
The Justice in Policing Act bans choke holds, develops a national standard for use of force, limits the transfer of military weapons to police departments, defines lynching as a federal hate crime, establishes a national police misconduct registry, and limits qualified immunity, which protects officers from lawsuits over alleged misconduct.
Congressman Hakeem Jeffries of New York is among those leading the push.
And all we have ever wanted is to be treated equally, not better, not worse, equally. Why has that been so difficult to achieve? That's all we have ever wanted.
Today, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urged the Republican-controlled Senate to consider the bill.
For his part, President Trump has not put forward a plan to address policing and systemic racism. Today, he led a roundtable with law enforcement officials.
He and his campaign have attacked Democrats, including Vice President Biden, for wanting to — quote — "defund the police."
There won't be defunding. There won't be dismantling of our police. And there's not going to be any disbanding of our police. Our police have been letting us live in peace.
Today, Biden's campaign pushed back and said he — quote — "does not believe the police should be defunded."
In Minneapolis, nine of the 13 City Council members have called for dismantling the police department and replacing it with a new public safety system. Other proposals, backed by progressive activists and a few elected officials, do not call for police departments to be fully abolished. Instead, they push state and local governments to decrease police budgets, while increasing spending on things like education and housing.
Now outside the White House, people have gathered to protest for yet another day. They have been doing this for more than a week. They tell me that they are going to continue to peacefully gather here until America confronts in a meaningful way the devastating and often deadly impact of racism — Judy.
Source: PBS
【笔记格式要求】
精读笔记格式要求： 1.总结文章中心大意 2.总结分论点或每段段落大意 3.摘抄印象深刻或者觉得优美的句子 4.总结文章中的生词 5.记录阅读时间、总结时间、总时间
精听笔记格式要求： 1.逐句听写整篇文章 2.对照原文修改听写稿，标记出错原因 3.总结文章中心大意 4.总结精听过程中的生词 5.记录听写时间、总结时间、总时间
这里也给大家两点学习小建议哦~ 精读：如遇到读不懂的复杂句，建议找出句子主干，分析句子成分，也可以尝试翻译句子来帮助理解~ 精听：建议每句不要反复纠结听，如果听 5 遍都没听出来，那就跳过，等完成后再回听总结原因，时间宝贵，不要过于执着哦~
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发表于 2020-7-28 22:21:01
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