Watercooler Stories

LAST CONCORDE SEATS ON SALE

Seats for the final 20 flights of Britain's Concorde have gone on sale and the airline expects to break its seven-day record by carrying 2,000 passengers on the supersonic transport during its last week.

A roundtrip flight from London to New York costs almost $15,000 and a record number of bookings are expected, the London Telegraph reports.

"People have been calling us all summer about buying a seat for the final week and we are delighted that we can now begin offering them to people on our waiting lists," says Martin George, British Airway's director of marketing.

British Airways will operate 20 Concorde flights between Oct. 18 and Oct. 23, the eve of its final day in service.

LEADERSHIP BOOK WITH A TWIST

Books on leadership, such as former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's "Leadership," usually are big sellers.

Former North Carolina basketball coach Dean Smith will offer "The Carolina Way: Leadership Lessons From a Life in Coaching."

In March, a book with a new twist on leadership will appear -- "First in, Last Out: Leadership Lessons From the New York Fire Department," by fire battalion chief John Salka, the New York Post reports.

According to the publisher, "First in, Last Out," known as the firefighter's maxim, means, "Your people need to see you taking the biggest risk, as the first one to enter the danger zone and the last to leave."

OVERWEIGHT BIAS

Despite ever-expanding American waistlines, workplace prejudice against the overweight is as prevalent as it was decades ago.

But there is no federal antibias law, including the Americans with Disabilities Act, to protect obese or overweight people from workplace discrimination, the Boston Globe reports.

"This is one of the only groups where an employer could say, 'We don't want fat people,' and get away with it," says Massachusetts Rep. Byron Rushing, "Fat people are still targets."

The Democrat, representing South Boston in the state Legislature, wants to amend the state's anti-discrimination law to include protections against height and size bias.

Rushing says, however, he doubts it ever will become law because negative stereotypes about overweight people are just too ingrained.

ILLUMINATED HANDBAGS

Some have described the deep recesses of a women's handbag as a black hole swallowing lipsticks, compacts, cell telephones and keys.

The German-based leather and bag specialist BREE has designed the first business handbag with interior illumination and it will debut at a leather trade show in Offenbach, Germany, this week.

The illumination solution comes from "Smart Surface Technology," developed by Bayer Polymers using a method generating light without heat.

"In less than five years, interior light will be just as common in handbags as cell telephones are today," company presidents Axel and Philipp Bree, say in a statement.