A n d r e w s G u m W o r l d

The current online issue of Reliable Plant magazine reports on some recent research on workplace stress conducted by Eclipse gum and the Institute for Corporate Productivity.

It described many of the culprits that you might suspect…time pressure, office politics, deadlines and bosses…and some ways that employees themselves are trying to cope with that stress.

It’s a big problem, as the workforce leadership expert from the Institute for Corporate Productivity notes in the article, with two out of every three employees feeling as though they’re not getting the support they need from their employers.

That expert, Mary Key, suggests there are, at least, some small things that employees can do, and we’re happy to note that (perhaps not surprisingly, given one of the research’s sponsors) chewing gum has a role to play:

“The ability to cope with stress plays a large role in employee performance,” says Mary Key, workforce leadership expert for the Institute for Corporate Productivity. “We found that 65 percent of respondents do not feel their organization is effective in helping them manage stress. That leaves stress management to individuals. While alleviating the time pressures or getting a new boss may not be an option, people can use small tools to beat daily stresses at work, like going outside for a breath of fresh air, closing their eyes while slowly counting to fifty or chewing a piece of gum.”

While chewing gum may not have the same effect as a vacation, new research suggests it is an easy tool employees can turn to when they’re feeling stressed. A study presented August 30 at the 10th International Congress of Behavioral Medicine examined the effects of chewing gum in response to a stressor and found that the use of chewing gum was associated with reduced stress, improved alertness and relieved anxiety.

 Our friends at Wrigley Airwaves are the official chewing gum sponsors of the FIA World Rally Championship, and are also now supporting FSTi (Fiesta Sporting Trophy International), as reported today on the Italian website DueMotori.com.

This is good news for those who win, as Emre Yurdakul of Turkey discovered after coming in first in this weekend’s Rally RACC Catalunya – Rally de España.

Besides the fame and glory of winning this round, there’s gum to be had, and lots of it:

Following the recent announcement that Airwaves® has become the Official Chewing Gum Sponsor of the FIA World Rally Championship (WRC), the brand (who also count Stobart VK M-Sport Ford Rally Team’s Matthew Wilson amongst their ‘Airwaves® Pro’ line-up), increased their involvement in the WRC this weekend by supporting FSTi and awarding Yurdakul the Airwaves Award of a year’s supply of Airwaves chewing gum for his victory.

IMAGE: Los Angeles Times

Anne Kilkenny (pictured above), who lives in Wasilla (hometown of Sarah Palin), decided to write to 40 of her friends to share her impressions of fellow resident, former mayor, current Alaska governor, and now John McCain’s vice president candidate.

Since it was e-mail, it didn’t stop there, and by the time the Los Angeles Times reported on it last week, she had 13,700 e-mail responses, half a million Google hits (and, one presumes, counting)….an e-mail that had gone viral as only these things can do (you can make it 500,001 by reading it here).

As the Times article notes, Kilkenny crossed paths with Palin, in particular, because of a driveway proposal that needed City Council approval:

It was Kilkenny’s firsthand experience with Palin — who was elected to the council in 1992 and became Wasilla’s mayor in 1996 — that inspired her to craft the e-mail that made her famous.

“I wanted people to be informed,” Kilkenny said. “I wasn’t trying to make a judgment call.”

A 70-foot-long and 30-foot-wide smooth slab of concrete fans out from the garage of Kilkenny’s home to the street. She glances through the window of her tidy kitchen plastered in dandelion-yellow and pumpkin-orange wallpaper. Most of what she knows about local politics started with her fight to pave that driveway.

Until then, Kilkenny rarely paid attention to city issues, though she did vote to put Palin on the City Council. Four years later, the city of Wasilla announced it was going to pave Kilkenny’s street.

She had a fondness for municipal development because her father had been a civil engineer. The family used to drive around their neighborhood in Contra Costa County, Calif., to check out new building projects.

Kilkenny sketched a drawing of how she wanted her driveway apron to look and showed it to planning officials. It was rejected because the footprint was too wide.

“They said, ‘You can only have 12 feet,’ ” Kilkenny said.

At a council meeting, an attorney told her the only way to appeal the ordinance was to rewrite it.

So she did.

Kilkenny showed up at each City Council meeting with her typed driveway ordinance, trying to get it approved. The sessions were held inside a refurbished high school gymnasium. Six council members sat around a horseshoe-shaped table; in the center was Palin, often chewing a wad of gum.

 Last week’s Stuff news site from New Zealand reported that a new round of tax cuts were safe, unlike the “chewing gum tax cuts” that were cancelled two years ago (so called because they brought the average tax payer the equivalent of about 67¢ a week, enough to buy a pack of gum). The cuts in the past had also moved up into block of cheese territory, and at the very least, the Finance Minister assures the Kiwis these new cuts are here to stay, as the article reports:

Finance Minister Michael Cullen reiterated yesterday that tax cuts, due to take effect from today with further cuts scheduled from April 2010 and April 2011, were locked into place by law. That gave people “certainty”, he said.

His comments came after National’s finance spokesman Bill English questioned Labour’s commitment to tax cuts and revived memories of the “chewing gum” cuts, which were cancelled in 2006.

IMAGE: Financial Times

We’ll readily acknowledge that AndrewsGumWorld is not Jeopardy, but we’ll pretend, for a moment, that we are.

Question: How did Warren Buffett begin his journey towards becoming the second richest man in America?

Last week, the Financial Times began a series of articles about Warren Buffett (as well as a link to a review of his biography, “The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life”), and we were nothing less than pleased to discover that his fabulous success in the world of business began quite simply, and that his first profits were made from selling our favorite brand of gum:

The first few cents Warren Buffett ever earned came from selling packs of chewing gum. And from the day he started selling – at six years of age – he showed an unyielding attitude toward his customers that revealed much about his later style.

“I had this little green tray, which had five different areas in it. I’m pretty sure my aunt Edie gave me that. It had containers for five different brands of gum, Juicy Fruit, Spearmint, Doublemint, and so on. I would buy packs of gum from my grandfather and go around door to door in the neighborhood selling this stuff. I used to do that in the evening, largely.

“I remember a woman named Virginia Macoubrie saying, ‘I’ll take one stick of Juicy Fruit.’ I said, ’We don’t break up packs of gum’ – I mean, I’ve got my principles. I still, to this day, remember Mrs Macoubrie saying she wanted one stick. No, they were sold only in five-stick packs. They were a nickel, and she wanted to spend a penny with me.”

Making a sale was tempting, but not tempting enough to change his mind. If he sold one stick to Virginia Macoubrie, he would have four sticks left to sell to somebody else, not worth the work or the risk. From each whole pack, he made two cents profit. He could hold those pennies, weighty and solid, in his palm.

 Yesterday’s The Times in London reported on the production of a new series of radio sci-fi comedies based on the late Douglas Adams’ stories and produced by Dirk Maggs. The new series, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, promises to be of high quality, the article notes, and to make this point, they invoked Beatles chewing gum:

During the height of Beatlemania you could buy Beatles chewing gum. It cost twice as much as competing brands, but it was worth it. Not only did you get an exclusive colour picture of the Fabs, but the colours were brighter, the taste better and more varied. Or so we thought. As with their music, the impression was given that Beatles gum was a superior product. Care had been taken.

The producer Dirk Maggs is the radio comedy equivalent of Beatles gum.

Hello kitty bubble gum♥♥ , originally uploaded by PINKWORLD♥♥.

chewing gum art., originally uploaded by urzzz.

AndrewsGumWorld repeats this evocative image not because it’s forgetful about what it has posted before, but because it joins with New York City (and not in a glib way either; there is absolutely no connection to be made between chewing gum and the horrific event that happened on this day seven years ago) in thoughts and prayers as the city, a country and this world remembers and honors the terribly sad anniversary of 9/11.