The creeping dread of Mondays

Here are three of the week's top pieces of financial insight, gathered from around the web:

A totally new approach to hiring

"The Body Shop will start hiring the first person who applies for any retail job," said Adele Peters at Fast Company. The cosmetics retailer is going to skip traditional interviews, background checks, and drug screenings so that "nearly anyone who applies and meets the most basic requirements will be able to get a job, on a first-come, first-served basis." The concept, called "open hiring," was pioneered by Greyston Bakery in New York. After trying the practice in its North Carolina distribution center late last year, Body Shop found that its "monthly turnover rates dropped by 60 percent" and productivity increased — a result, the company says, of eliminating "biases in our recruiting system that are preventing good people from getting into the workforce."

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The creeping dread of Mondays

American workers have a bad case of the "Sunday scaries," said Joe Pinsker at The ​Atlantic. While "the contours of the standard workweek haven't changed for the better part of a century," the anxiety we feel about returning to the grind on Mondays has intensified. A 2018 LinkedIn survey found that on Sundays, "80 percent of working American adults" begin to fret about their upcoming workload. Researchers have even calculated the average time of onset of "Sunday syndrome" as 3:58 p.m. The exact worry varies — "it might be getting up early, or being busy and 'on' for several days in a row" — but it comes down to overestimating how hard it will be to get through the next week. This anxiety arises because Sundays have become "busier and behaviorally closer to weekdays."

Turning the tables on arbitration

DoorDash workers are forcing the company to go to arbitration in a "juridical man-bites-dog story," said Michael Hiltzik at the Los Angeles Times. "Arbitration typically favors the bigger parties," which is why employers thrust arbitration clauses on workers prohibiting them from taking a pay dispute to court. DoorDash's arbitration pact also "required workers to pay a filing fee of $300" if they wanted a ­hearing, with DoorDash paying $1,900. But when 6,000 arbitration claims were filed against the food delivery firm, totaling "more than $20 million in filing and administrative fees and arbitrators' retainers," the company "blanched." DoorDash sought to avert arbitration and to take the claims to court. A federal judge in San Francisco denied the motion last week, saying such "hypocrisy will not be blessed."

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