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Grating coworkers, tone-deaf bosses, a ninth ask for revisions on a PowerPoint deckas the workday annoyances pile up, its only a matter of time before every worker hits a boiling point. And when they do, they often hit up a trusted colleague to vent to in a direct message on a platform like Slack or Teams. So often you’re sitting in a meeting, you’re hearing something, and you’re like, Am I crazy, or are they contradicting themselves? Did they change the strategy again? Can you believe they just said this thing? says one former employee at a consulting firm, who agreed to speak to Fast Company anonymously. Sounding off to coworkers in DMs feels like both an outlet and validation: It’s for your mental health, right? The problem: While this act feels like the equivalent of a private, hushed conversation in the hallway or sharing a drink at happy hour with a confidante, theres a risk in kvetching on your companys official corporate communications channels. Your bosses have ways to get their hands on your messages. On Slack, DMs can be accessed if the company provides Slack with a reason for the download. With Teams, your historys pretty much accessible whether or not a DM is private. Plus, AI is making it easier for companies to snoop on DMs as well, with at least one tool that can track employee sentiment and trends in public (and otherwise private) chats. You may think switching over to personal text messages is a safer method. After all, in the U.S., policies prohibiting extracurricular conversations are rarely legal. But complaining about a coworker may not come with a ton of protection: States with at-will employment rules provide companies with a wide berth for when and why they fire employees, which can include no-texting policies. In these situations, companies can treat backchanneling as a violation of company rulesor simply fire you without tying your termination to outside communications. Backchanneling beyond the gripe Venting is a big part of backchanneling. There’s complaining about the guy who always cooks shrimp in the microwave, or ranting about a boss who tells you to hire a babysitter so you can come to the office during a blizzard But in other circumstances, you may move off company-sanctioned comms platforms when you need to support coworkers during turbulence at workor even let them know when their jobs might be at risk. In such cases, backchanneling may be less about talking smack, and more about sharing vital information. When the consultant’s company initiated mass layoffs, few staffers knew what was happening. The company made no internal announcement, which led to most employees sharing and finding out details through conversations on anonymous networking app Fishbowl. When [they] finally acknowledged it, they provided absolutely no details. They said, We don’t know when we’re going to do it. We don’t know how many people it’s going to be. We’ll keep you posted, says the former employee. Thats when the information sharing began. Both partners and contractors began posting what theyd heard on Fishbowl, rumors of which departments could be impacted, and even when the rollout would begin. If I didnt have that, I would have been in the dark completely. […] I knew what day to wake up early to see if I had the email for the meeting that was going to lay me off, the source continues. Some employees also choose to backchannel for other important reasons, such as communicating about real, problematic workplace conditions. That could be toxic or abusive management, discrimination, or any other serious violations. While most private sector employees can be fired for any reason, including no reason, says Jason Solomon, Director of the National Institute of Workers’ Rights, having unsanctioned conversations with your coworkers about unfair, even illegal work environments fall into the situations in which you may be legally protected. It cant just be venting. It has to be more like, Were talking about this, and we might do something about it. The National Labor Relations Act calls these conversations concerted activity. This typically covers discussions ranging from reporting unsafe working conditions to union organizing. Even though you may theoretically be protected by law, only a few cases make it to court. That means that if employers find out about backchanneling, they might not hesitate to ding you for the messagesor worse. At-will employment, standard in the U.S., allows employers to fire you for any (or no) reason, which in many cases can create soft barriers that might make you think twice about hitting send. If you find that your conversations with coworkers are bringing up real issues, however, there are two things to keep in mind. First, remember that official channels do exist for filing workplace complaints. But if youre not ready to go that far, there may be strength in numbers: Try to enlist as many of your coworkers as possible, Solomon says. The boss is not going to want to fire everybody. The point of going off company-sanctioned channels is so you dont have to watch what you say and how you say it. But experts say you should still use discretion. You cant ever exactly know where your communications could end up, even if you think theyre safe at the time. In 2011, the NLRB sided with an employers decision to fire a bartender for venting in a Facebook DM about not getting raises and being forced to share work without tips, among other complaints. Although the message mentioned workplace pay practices, the NLRB decided it wasnt protected concerted activity: No coworkers participated, and no group organizing was considered. The message never went beyond private venting, so it was fair game for termination. What complicates things even further is a post-pandemic workforce. With the rise of remote work, more things are forced to be put into writing, since many workers simply spend less time in person. It takes so much longer to get to know peoplethat element of trust, says the former consulting employee. Pre-Zoom, it would be a walk-and-talk. In the past, a venting session used to be a muffled conversation in the breakroomnow, its become a video call, chat, or other documentable forms of communication. On the other hand, some workers have given up on griping altogether, even if theres plenty to discuss. Another worker at a software company tells Fast Company, I only do it with people who are no longer with the company. I consider that to be safer. They have worked with their company for four years, and arent interested in taking any chances with their career. You never know if peole can turn that against you. Not everyone is going to be your friend. If you say something that might offend people, that is going to travel faster than light.
Category:
E-Commerce
In the latest chapter of the pizza wars, Papa Johns announced it is closing hundreds of North America locations during a fourth-quarter earnings call on Thursday. It will also cut about 7% of its workforce. In that call, Papa Johns’ chief financial officer and president of North America Ravi Thanawal said the company plans to shutter a total of 300 underperforming restaurants in North America “that are not meeting brand expectations or lack a clear path to sustainable financial improvement, as well as locations where we can effectively transfer sales to a nearby restaurant.” The closures will happen by the end of 2027, with the first two-thirds closed by year end. According to the company’s annual report, it had about 3,500 locations at the end of 2025, per CNN. Papa Johns International (PZZA) was trading down over 8% at the end of Thursday’s trading day. Fast Company has reached out to Papa Johns for a list of locations that will be closing. The news comes just three weeks after Pizza Hut said it, too, was closing 250 “underperforming” locations in 2026 as fast-casual restaurant chains struggle, with consumer spending dropping amid higher inflation and a high cost of living. Pizza Hut plans to shut those 250 locations, which amount to about 3% of its U.S. locations, in the first six months of this year. The chain cited competition from rival Dominos Pizza and declining store sales. Speaking of Domino’sunlike Pizza Hut and Papa Johns, its earnings beat expectations, and its success proves people are still eating tomato pies, even as the competition falters. What’s the secret sauce? As Fast Company previously reported, Dominos chief financial officer Sandeep Reddy mentioned the company plans to capitalize on Pizza Hut’s recent store closings. With overall pizza-eating up somewhere between 1 to 2%, the question remains: Who can capture these consumers, given their current nuanced purchasing behavior? “The total number of pizzas sold [is] actually increasing 1%, as well as improvement in orders that included multiple pizzas . . . [but] single pie orders declined during the quarter, and total pizza sales declined low single digits as our order mix shifted towards smaller, non-specialty pizzas,” Papa Johns CEO Todd Penegor explained during Thursday’s earnings call. Papa Johns reported fourth-quarter earnings results with revenue missing expectations, coming in at $498.2 million, below estimates of $517.9 million; and adjusted earnings per share (EPS) coming in at 34 cents, beating the expected 33 cents.
Category:
E-Commerce
If the 1990 classic movie Ghost is any indication, the dead love a good tune. We all remember when the recently deceased Sam (Patrick Swayze) had his infamous pottery session with his very alive partner Molly (Demi Moore). Now, Liquid Death and Spotify are aiming to use music in a similar way, by giving a few hundred of the recently deceased the opportunity to hear their favorite music for all of eternity. The two brands have collaborated on what they claim to be the first-ever Bluetooth-enabled speaker urn. The tasteful white urn has a top outfitted with a Bluetooth speaker. Spotify is also introducing the Eternal Playlist Generator in the U.S., where you can answer a few questions and prompts to generate a personalized mix for your ashes to enjoy for all of eternity. Liquid Death is producing a few hundred of the urns, which will sell on its site for $495. Liquid Deaths senior vice-president of marketing Dan Murphy says that the idea came out of informal conversations between the brands. Murphy had worked with Spotifys senior director of global brand and marketing, Lauren Solomon, and there were other connections between brand leaders. It just started as, Our brands should work together sometime! says Murphy. Soon we were doing our Liquid Death thing, which is always the same: If you take another brand or celebrity into the Liquid Death universe, what is the one right answer? And so of course, it was the Eternal Urn powered by a Spotify custom playlist that’s going to fuel it. The quirky collab strategy Liquid Death has made a habit of creating quirky collabs with unlikely partners, but has stepped up its game over the past year. What started with a Martha Stewart candle has evolved into making a faux leather adult diaper for dive bars with Depends (The Pit Diaper), a coffin-shaped Death Trap snowboard with Burton, and Corpse Paint makeup with e.l.f. Cosmetics. Most sell out in minutes. The Corpse Paint ad, for example, hit 12 billion impressions in two weeks, and the limited-edition collab sold out in less than 45 minutes. Murphy says the collabs have evolved significantly over the last two years, to include global brands like Amazon and Spotify. We’ve established our place in culture and creativity such that maybe two or three years ago, it might’ve been deemed a little too risky to work with us, or maybe we weren’t big enough or interesting enough, but now we’re kind of doing it in our sleep. A month before Ozzy Osbourne died, he collaborated with Liquid Death on a collection of cans containing his DNA. For “Infinitely Recyclable Ozzy,” he drank 10 cans of the brand’s iced tea, leaving “trace DNA from his saliva” on the now-precious metal, which originally sold for $450 each. Weeks later, one sold on eBay for $4,655. Murphy says that the brands collaboration strategy has been to create a brand halo for Liquid Death by using these unexpected collabs to reach new audiences. We find a lot of brands are interested in our unique audience and our creativity, says Murphy. We film and produce and direct these things in-house, so they get that value, and then we’ll find brands that will allow me to extend my marketing budget, jump in on their audience, level up the PR with major household names, that bring what they do best to the table. The companys last valuation was $1.4 billion in 2024, and in early 2026 it launched into the energy drink category. The company started with spring water, expanded to flavored sparkling water in 2021, juice-spiked iced teas in 2022, soda-flavored sparkling water this year, and nowmuch like Liquid I.V.sees opportunity in energy drinks. We might not do as many collabs next year, so I think it’ll be even just a fewer, bigger, better strategy, says Murphy. As we move into a fourth category of healthy, better-for-you energy, it’s that next level of complexity of customer and occasion and strategy. So it’ll take a little bit more focus on the core product. We’ve never taken our eye off that ball, but I think as a consequence, we’ll just look to a few fewer and always bigger and better. That’s what we’re trying for. The Pantheon Bigger and better is getting tougher to reach after a few years of bigger and slightly unhinged collab ideas. Heres my Top 5 Pantheon of Liquid Death Collabs: 5. Deathtrap snowboard x Burton No camber, no sidecut, absolutely should not be taken down a hill. Only 50 of these casket-shaped snowboards were made, and its a lock that all 50 are hanging on someones wall for wine and burrata night. 4. Death Watch x Nixon Classy and timeless, and for the one-time low price of your eternal soul. The Death Watch started in 2021, and is still ticking, selling its fourth iteration in 2024. 3. Pit Diaper x Depends Sometimes the Liquide Death creative team comes up with an idea and then approaches a brand to collaborate with on it. This faux leather dive bar diaper holder is one such example. 2. Corpse Paint x e.l.f. Cosmetics One of the most unintuitive collabs ever made, but its numbers speak for itself. Absolute gangbusters for both brands. Eternal Playlist Urn x Spotify The weirdest, most useless, yet kind of amazing product we didnt know we needed. Steve Jobs once said, A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them. Damn you, Bluetooth speaker Urn, damn you.
Category:
E-Commerce
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