Person Facts About Business

The average office worker spends 50 minutes a day looking for lost files and other items.

There are two credit cards for every person in the United States.

In Japan, condoms are commonly sold 'door to door'!

There’s a company that provides private flights for individuals who want to join the “mile high club”. For $425.00 you get a 1 hour flight, chocolates, champagne, and a curtain.

FedEx was days from collapse. $5,000 left in the bank. Founder Fred Smith flew to Las Vegas and bet it all at blackjack. By morning he had $32,000. Just enough to keep the planes flying one more week. In that week, he closed an $11 million deal. FedEx now makes over $90 billion a year.

In 1975, advertising executive Gary Dahl invented the Pet Rock. Each one was a smooth stone from Rosarito Beach, Mexico, packaged in a cardboard box with air holes and a 32-page instruction manual. He sold 1.5 million of them at $3.95 each and became a millionaire within six months.

A recycling worker cracked open an old TV set in Ontario and found over $100,000 stuffed inside. He reported it. Police traced documents in the cash to a 68-year-old man who had hidden the money decades earlier - then forgot about it when he gave the TV to a friend. The owner got his inheritance back.

In 2005, graffiti artist David Choe was hired by Sean Parker to paint murals inside Facebook's first office in Palo Alto. He was offered $60,000 in cash. He took stock options instead. When Facebook went public in 2012, his shares were worth approximately $200 million.

In 1978, Richard Branson tried to impress his girlfriend by pretending to buy a Caribbean island listed at $6 million. He jokingly offered $100,000 and was thrown off the island — but a year later, with no other buyers, the desperate owner accepted just $180,000.

Usha Ram had cooked at Burger King for 24 years. One night she forgot her wallet and asked her manager in Hindi if she could take a fish sandwich, fries, and a drink home. After staff discount the food was worth about 50 cents. They fired her for theft. She sued. A B.C. Supreme Court judge ruled there was no intent to steal. She walked out with $46,000.

Everyone thinks the McDonalds hot coffee lawsuit was a joke. Stella Liebeck was 79. The coffee was 190 degrees - hot enough to cause third-degree burns in 3 seconds. She needed skin grafts. She only asked for $20,000. McDonalds offered $800.

A secretary in Dallas kept making typing errors, so she started painting over them with white tempera paint. She offered the idea to IBM - they said no. She built Liquid Paper into a company doing $38 million a year. Gillette bought it for $47.5 million. Her son was in The Monkees.

25,000 grocery workers walked off the job to save the CEO their board had just fired. No union. No pay. No budging. Market Basket's board sacked Arthur T. Demoulas for paying workers too well. 71 stores emptied. Sales crashed 95% in six weeks. Customers drove past Market Basket to shop at competitors. The board folded and Arthur T. bought the company back for $1.5 billion.

Jo Malone built her fragrance brand from scratch in her kitchen. She sold it to Estee Lauder in 1999 - and the deal included her own name. She cannot use "Jo Malone" to sell fragrances again. Her second brand is simply called Jo Loves. Selling her name is the one thing she says she regrets.

Ferruccio Lamborghini owned several Ferraris but kept burning out the clutch. He drove to Maranello and told Enzo Ferrari the clutches were rubbish. Ferrari dismissed him - a tractor man had no business criticizing his cars. Ferruccio went home and built a rival brand in four months. Three years later, his Miura was hailed as the world's first true supercar.

Grady-White has built offshore fishing boats in Greenville, North Carolina since 1959. Eddie Smith was 26 when he bought the near-bankrupt shop in 1968. Buyers later offered him more than $400 million. He turned them down and gave the company away: voting control to a trust, the profits to a charity. Then he paid every worker a bonus scaled to years of service. The hulls are still laid up by hand.