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You may see more smiles next time you walk into a Target. That’s because the big box retailer is hoping to provide an “elevated” customer experience with it’s new “10-4” policy, requiring staffers out on the floor to smile, wave, and welcome customers within 10 feet—and greet those just 4 feet away, USA Today reported. Fast Company has reached out to Target for comment. The policy comes less than three weeks before Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, which officially kicks off the busiest and most profitable time of the year. Many stores, including Target, have already begun to roll out their Black Friday sales this year. Target’s early 2025 Black Frida…

America is in an overstock and returns crisis. Every year 8.4 billion pounds of products are returned to online sellers, according to the National Retail Federation. The typical solution from retailers is to send the roughly 17% of their inventory made up of returns to a landfill, regardless of the condition of the products. It’s a problem that sellers have little incentive to solve. Since dumping product can be written off as the cost of doing business in profit and loss statements, companies don’t invest in a complex reverse supply chain or inspect items for potential resale value. But recommerce site Rebel just raised a $25 million series B round to fuel its wo…

Growing up, WNBA star Paige Bueckers says she was “huge” on sports memorabilia. She collected items across a range of sports from her favorite players, including their posters, autographs, and jerseys. Today, she’s having a full circle moment: Bueckers just announced an exclusive, multi-year deal with Fanatics, which will make the sports apparel juggernaut the sole provider of her memorabilia and collectibles. The Paige Bueckers Fanatics collection pulls from both her collegiate career with the UConn Huskies (which she led to four Big East Tournament wins, four Final Four appearances, and a National Championship title) and her current professional career as a guard on…

Six hundred employees just packed up their desks and quit their jobs at Paramount Skydance. The mass exodus happened after the company, formed by Skydance Media’s takeover of Paramount Global, told employees that they were instating a five-day back-to-office mandate, set to begin on January 5. The company, led by new CEO David Ellison, let staffers know that if they didn’t plan to come back to the office, they could take a buyout deal starting on September 15. However, the media giant likely didn’t expect to be handing out quite so many severance packages. According to company disclosures filed on Monday, around 600 employees in the Los Angeles and New York …

Last week, Fast Company reported that regional banking giant TD Bank is planning to close more than 50 U.S. locations by the end of January. But TD Bank isn’t the only regional bank closing branches. In October, Citizens Bank disclosed that at least 14 branches throughout the United States will shutter, according to public filings. Here’s what to know and where they were located. Why is Citizens Bank closing branches? Reached for comment by Fast Company, a Citizens Bank spokesperson said its retail footprint is constantly changing along with people’s banking habits. “We regularly review customer banking patterns and make thoughtful adjustments, opening ne…

Discovering that a colleague with the same job title is earning more than you is never fun, though it is quite common. According to a global survey of 1,850 workers by résumé building platform Kickresume, 56% have discovered that someone with the same job at their company is earning more than them, and another 24% have their suspicions. “People are much less willing to discuss their salaries than we thought they would be—there’s still quite a stigma around it,” says Kickresume’s head of content Martin Poduska, who helped conduct the study. “The weirdest thing is that we didn’t identify a good reason for it.” Poduska explains that compensation is far from a pre…

Jack Schlossberg announced he’s running for Congress. And instead of using his last name in his campaign logo, the 32-year-old—born John Bouvier Kennedy Schlossberg—is using the nickname he shares with his famous grandfather, John F. Kennedy. Schlossberg’s “Jack for New York” logo underlines the “New” in the city’s name in red as if to emphasize a new generation. A red “12” appears in small print at the top right of “New York” to indicate he’s running to represent Manhattan’s 12th District in the U.S. House. Schlossberg tagged designer and Only NY cofounder Micah Belamarich in a social media post showing the logo. Belamarich did not respond to a request for commen…

Forty-three days later, the U.S. government shutdown has come to an end. While it wreaked havoc on government services, flights, and paychecks for federal workers, stock market appears to have come through it unscathed. In fact, by some measures, it improved. The Dow Jones Industrial Average reached 46,441.10 on the first day of the shutdown. Since October 1, it has grown over 4%, reaching over 48,000 for the first time on Wednesday, November 12. While the record number came as the shutdown’s end became a sure thing, the Dow had continued to rise throughout the period. The S&P 500 also followed a mostly upward trajectory throughout the shutdown. It …

Last June, LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky took on a second job. Microsoft, the social network for business professionals’ owner since 2016, expanded his responsibilities to include Microsoft 365—the suite still better known by its former name, Microsoft Office—and its Copilot AI assistant. The role charges him with making AI useful in a productivity context, a goal that’s still very much a work in progress. But Roslansky also remains in charge of LinkedIn, a place whose entire reason for being springs from the network effect of its billion-plus members. Their unique connections, learnings, and willingness to help other people can’t be fed into an LLM and reprocessed into the…

After years of living on the street and crashing on friends’ couches, Quantavia Smith was given the keys to a studio apartment in Los Angeles that came with an important perk—easy access to public transit. The 38-year-old feels like she went from a life where “no one cares” to one where she has a safe place to begin rebuilding her life. And the metro station the apartment complex was literally built upon is a lifeline as she searches for work without a car. “It is more a sense of relief, a sense of independence,” said Smith, who moved in July. She receives some government assistance and pays 30% of her income for rent — just $19 a month for an efficiency with a fu…

Disney reported $22.46 billion in revenue for the quarter, which just missed analyst expectations and resulted in a 5% drop in premarket trading on Thursday. The entertainment division—which includes the company’s streaming, linear networks, and theatrical business—saw a 6% drop in revenue. Streaming did see some gains: Disney+ and Hulu ended the quarter with 196 million subscriptions, an increase of 12.4 million subscribers from the previous quarter. However, Disney’s linear networks dropped 16% to $107 million, compared to this time last year, while operating income fell 21%. The company’s theatrical releases also saw declines with both the drop in linear …

Is there such a thing as being too attractive? For fitness influencers, it turns out there might be. Contrary to popular belief, new research suggests that being too good-looking can actually be a disadvantage, particularly in the online fitness space. The study, coauthored by researchers at the University of Dayton and University of Oregon, found that the more attractive the influencer, the lower the engagement they received on their social media posts. The reason? It all comes down to a sense of relatability, and what researchers have termed the “beauty backfire effect.” In the study, researchers showed 299 U.S. adults mock Instagram posts featuring …

The stock market survived the longest government shutdown in U.S. history with minimal impact. But it tumbled on Thursday, November 13, amid a sell-off of tech stocks as worries about overinflated values and interest rate cuts grew. Take the S&P 500, which shrank 1.66% to 6,739.49, or the Dow Jones Industrial average, which went down by 1.65% to 47,457.22—both at their lowest in over a month. It was only the day before that the Dow had surpassed 48,000, reaching a new record high. The Nasdaq composite met a similar fate, dropping 2.29% to its month low of 22,870.36. Many tech stocks felt the effect. Shares of electric vehicle maker Tesla (Nasdaq:TSLA) dr…

Emerging like a mirage in the desert outskirts of Dubai, a sight unfamiliar to those in the Middle East and Asia has risen up like a dream in the exact dimensions of the field at Yankee Stadium in New York. Now that it’s built, though, one question remains: Will the fans come? That’s the challenge for the inaugural season of Baseball United, a four-team, monthlong contest that will begin Friday at the new Barry Larkin Field, artificially turfed for the broiling sun of the United Arab Emirates and named for an investor who is a former Cincinnati Reds shortstop. The professional league seeks to draw on the sporting rivalry between India and Pakistan with two of …

Frequent flyers and travel hackers who visited SeatGuru on October 31 were met with an unpleasant surprise: a shuttered website directing them to Tripadvisor’s homepage. After nearly a quarter-century in operation, the beloved website that helped fliers determine which seats to grab, and which to avoid, is gone. Here’s why, and three SeatGuru alternatives to try now. What was SeatGuru? SeatGuru was a website highly regarded by frequent fliers. The site hosted seatmaps for thousands of airplanes and categorized every seat on each aircraft in order to help fliers figure out which to book and which to avoid. “Good” seats were those with qualities like the most legroom…

This week’s biggest business news is perhaps that the U.S. federal government shutdown finally ended; however, that ending didn’t come without more than a few noteworthy concessions. Meanwhile, a beloved coffee chain walked straight into a strike on one of its biggest promo days, and a regional grocer found a way to turn literal loose change into both PR and foot traffic. In the background, the tech world reminded everyone that hype cycles come with fine print. CoreWeave, one of the hottest names in AI infrastructure, delivered blockbuster revenue but still saw its stock sink on news of a delayed data center. IBM, facing louder rivals in quantum computing, rolled out …

If you work in an office, your next coworker might not be human at all. Workers are already well-acquainted with artificial intelligence in the office, using AI tools to take notes, automate tasks, and assist with workflow. Now, Microsoft is working on a new kind of AI agent that doesn’t just assist, but acts as an employee. These “Agentic Users” will soon have their own email, Teams account, and company ID, just like a regular coworker. “Each embodied agent has its own identity, dedicated access to organizational systems and applications, and the ability to collaborate with humans and other agents,” states a Microsoft product roadmap document. “These agents ca…

Sunbridge appears to be a quintessential example of 21st century sprawl. A 27,000-acre residential mega-development taking shape outside of Orlando, Florida, it’s set to include more than 30,000 new homes in total when complete—a few neighborhoods, miles of trails, and a K–8 school have already been completed. It’s riding a growth boom in Central Florida; this fast-growing section of the Sun Belt has added more than 1,000 people every week in recent years. But within the different subdivisions being constructed at Sunbridge over the next 30 years, a landscape will emerge with each new home and green space that’s much more wild, native, and sustainable than the stereot…

It’s not just executives or knowledge workers in offices who are using artificial intelligence. It’s being adopted in fields like healthcare, retail, hospitality, and food services, too. But frontline workers often aren’t prepared for AI adoption. In fact, many are completely unaware that it’s being implemented in their workplaces at all. Workplace management platform Deputy surveyed 1,500 frontline workers across the U.S., U.K., and Australia for its “2025 Better Together Survey: How AI and Human Connection Will Transform Frontline Work.” The survey found that nearly half of workplaces (48%) use AI. However, only 1 in 4 workers say they regularly interact with it. B…

The most enduring leaders aren’t the ones with flawless résumés. They’re the ones who’ve been tested, humbled, and reshaped by failure. From an early age, I trained intensively to become a professional ballet dancer. Ballet wasn’t just a passion. It was my identity, my future, my entire world. Until an audition in Vienna changed everything. A sudden injury ended the career I had spent years building. That moment could have marked the end of my story. Instead, it became the beginning of a new one. I pivoted into finance and marketing, building a career at American Express and Amazon. Today, I advise boards and CEOs on succession, governance, and talent strategy at …

Imagine you’re watching a basketball game. You’re not focused on the stat sheet—you’re watching how the players read the court, pivot when a play breaks down, and celebrate their teammates. Those moments tell you a lot more about how someone performs under pressure than any metric ever could. I think about hiring the same way. Like a stat sheet, a résumé might list someone’s achievements, but it won’t show how they adapt under pressure or support a team. Yet in the age of AI, companies often overlook that, prioritizing technical skills instead. According to a 2024 report from Microsoft and LinkedIn, 71% of employers said they would choose an AI-fluent candidate wi…

Before Waymo was Waymo, it was Google’s self-driving car project. Starting in 2009, the effort spent many years in test mode—with humans in the driver’s seats ready to take over, just in case—that its vision of vehicular autonomy often felt far from practical reality. Since last year, however, Alphabet’s robotaxi service has begun to scale up quickly. It’s now fully open to the public in Atlanta, Austin, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and the San Francisco Bay Area. And today the company is announcing that it’s testing fully autonomous trips, sans human driver, in Miami, and plans to do so in Orlando, Florida; Dallas; Houston; and San Antonio in the coming weeks. For now, …