SPEAKER_01 0:00

No one ever tried to pull the old wool over me. Yeah, slip you the slip you the pickle.

SPEAKER_00 0:08

I've been slipped a lot of pickles, but that's not what you're asking.

SPEAKER_01 0:13

Welcome to another episode of Smells Like Humans. This is the podcast where we explore the curious things that people do, the very human things that grab our attention, and cause us to wonder why and why. I'm Ross, your host, and today's guest is my all-around Sunday go-to meeting and ever-charming friend, the fabulous Amy. Hi, Amy.

SPEAKER_00 0:38

Hi there, Ross.

SPEAKER_01 0:40

And welcome to the show, everyone. Thanks for joining us. We really appreciate that you're listening. Our community is growing, and why is that happening? Because you are helping us, and we really still need your help. The number one thing you can do is share the show any way you can with anyone you can. You could share it with a friend, a family member, a complete stranger. People have told me they do that. We appreciate that. The other thing that you can do that takes just a little bit of effort is to rate us, give us a high highest rating on an app that allows ratings and a sparkling review. That really helps people find the show. So we'll talk more about that again at the end, but let's get started. Now, Amy, we know that COVID, that's a thing, it's shaken up everything, perhaps especially what we call or used to call the workplace. Tons of people are working remotely, and uh not too many of them are crazy to come back to the nine to five grind, the commuting, the sitting in a cubicle, doing all the office things, eating birthday cake in the break room. At least for now. A lot of people are just clinging on to that whole sweatpants at home thing. But some people, while they dig the work at home vibe, they feel a little out of sorts.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

Sure, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:09

Now, for many years I have worked at home. I just had that kind of job where you could work at home. And I found initially when I first started working at home, for me, the hardest thing was to stop working. Because you're always at work when you work at home. You're whatever your setup is, whether you have a designated office space or you just have a little corner of the kitchen or whatever, it's always sitting there beckoning to you. Hey, check your email. Hey, why don't you just work a little bit more on something? And uh it's hard to initially for it was hard for me to kind of break away from it and set up some structure. But the thing that was interesting to me is one of the early stories I read when people started working remotely, when people were trying to figure out what do we do. You know, it's obviously COVID's gonna go on for a long time. What do we do? I started reading articles about bosses and managers being worried about how they're gonna monitor people at home.

SPEAKER_00 3:16

Bosses like to watch people.

SPEAKER_01 3:19

I know, but it's like it was like, like, why I don't think that's good. Yeah, why is that so important, right?

SPEAKER_00 3:26

No, no, no.

SPEAKER_01 3:27

Because they're so low trust that think people are gonna be what they used to call gold bricking. Is that like when you sit and play free sale all day instead of doing your playing free sale, you're goofing around, you're burping babies, whatever it is, they're worried, you know, that people aren't going to be grinding it out. Because my philosophy always was if I get my work in, who cares how I do it? If I'm getting it done, it's good quality and it's done on time. It does it matter if I'm doing it in the middle of the night. What's more important, the control of me or the quality of the work?

SPEAKER_00 4:02

Yeah, quality of the work, 100%, all day, every day.

SPEAKER_01 4:06

The only problem I had working at home was my then wife did not fully appreciate that I was working since I was at home. Yep. We had discussions. We we set some ground rules that when I'm working, I need to like just you know pretend that I'm actually at an office, even though you can see me sitting there. And yet there would be times more frequent than I would have liked, where she would say, Well, you know, I've got to go out, but the plumber's coming. Can you let him in? But you know, that's not you can't just let a plumber in because then you know the plumber's got questions.

SPEAKER_00 4:48

And you gotta talk about the pipes, you gotta show them where the pipes are.

SPEAKER_01 4:51

You gotta talk about the pipes, then you know the plumber's got some stories, and then they have questions. Hey now, excuse me, but uh I've got a question about these pipes. And for her, it was like, yeah, I know you're working, but you're right there.

SPEAKER_00 5:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:04

And you can really help me out. I don't blame her for trying to recruit me, but that was the biggest problem. But you know, getting the work done was not that difficult, and I didn't need anybody watching me. But I recently found out that some people really miss having other people around to make them feel accountable.

SPEAKER_00 5:28

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 5:30

And I'm not talking about bosses or supervisors or any of those clowns. I shouldn't call them clowns. There are many.

SPEAKER_00 5:36

There's also a high number of them that are clowns as well. So it's it fits.

SPEAKER_01 5:40

There's a clown factor. There's a clown factor. There's a clown factor. I think it's 0.68.

SPEAKER_00 5:44

Uh that's that's uh my research shows the same.

SPEAKER_01 5:47

Yes, thank you for confirming. So these the uh there are a number of people who work remotely. They kind of miss having people around, not their boss, not a supervisor. Nobody's really missing those hand bones. Uh, but they kind of miss that the milieu, you know, the work milieu where you're in your cube.

SPEAKER_00 6:08

The cubes are the worst, right? Cubes are the worst. Oh man, they really are.

SPEAKER_01 6:13

Those big open spaces, and everybody has cubes, and then yeah, they decorate their cube with a few sad pictures of their family and maybe a vacation. It's just like people shouldn't have to work like that. People should not have to work inside where they don't have access to a window. You need you need a view of a tree to be productive. I come on, like uh you need some windows. So the cubes are bad, wouldn't you agree?

SPEAKER_00 6:41

Absolutely. I I worked at the University of Florida, Florida State University, but I didn't make enough money to make ends meet, so I took this side gig uh selling newspapers over the phone. So you were cold calling people on the phone to sell newspapers, which it was a long time ago, but it's still nobody wanted to buy the newspaper. It was not interesting to people.

SPEAKER_01 7:03

Right.

SPEAKER_00 7:03

Um, and you it was we were in a big open room, and there were, I don't know, 10 or 12 or 15 desks. Wasn't super huge, but there were, you know, maybe 15 or so people in this room. The lighting, probably the best words to describe the lighting there is like electronic jaundice. It was like this yellowish, like it was it's truly the worst. Like, no one looked attractive in this light. And no one looked healthy even. Forget attractive. We just all looked like we we uh uh were undergoing chemotherapy or needed our Billy Rubens checked. But we would sit at these desks, these like enormous metal, you know, from like the 1950s desk, and they didn't even have walls for us. What they had were these cardboard partitions that you put around your head. So they went around you, they were you could move them around. So they went around your head. Right. So they sat on the desk and they folded around you.

SPEAKER_01 8:04

Oh no.

SPEAKER_00 8:04

So your arms could still be out in the jaundice light, but your head was inside this this cardboard partition. Oh, and on the walls of the cardboard partition were um was the script with the various, it was like choose your own adventure script. Yeah. So you would sit there and you'd go through your script, and mostly people hung up on you and or just cursed you out. Uh I think I sold about four newspapers in the time that I was there. I knew for sure whatever else happened, I never wanted to do that kind of job again.

SPEAKER_01 8:37

So it sounds very to me, it sounds very uh stressful and unpleasant.

SPEAKER_00 8:42

It was awesome.

SPEAKER_01 8:43

And to just to put that thing around your head.

SPEAKER_00 8:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:46

Um, I remember seeing a uh drawing of an invention that someone had to give you solitude, which was some giant like helmet you'd wear on your head, and there was a breathing tube, and it wasn't a joke. Oh my. It's like somebody invented it so like you could work undisturbed, and that sort of sounds like what you were doing, and it's all just sounds very unpleasant. A lot of the stuff that's unpleasant about work is because workers aren't trusted, I think. And there's it's all these control mechanisms, you know. Anyway, some people are missing some aspects of that, not so much the cubes, but right the other people. So, of course, you know, peep there are companies that jumped in ready to fill that need, for example, for a fee of $39.99. You can schedule sessions in a Zoom cave where you can watch other workers as they work.

SPEAKER_00 9:43

Okay, talk to me about what a Zoom cave is, because I think I know, but the word it sounds it sounds like I'm back in my cubicle. What is a Zoom cave?

SPEAKER_01 9:53

Well, it's like just a sp a place where you're with other people, but you don't really interact with them. You just can see them.

SPEAKER_00 10:00

Like on a like on your screen, like you were in a zoom call, but you're just not you're muted or whatever. Right.

SPEAKER_01 10:06

You're just in a cave with other people. There's some bones.

SPEAKER_00 10:09

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:10

There's some wild animals.

SPEAKER_00 10:10

There's I honestly think an actual cave with bones would be better.

SPEAKER_01 10:14

So these people in the zoom cave, they're not in your company, they're not doing what you're doing, they're doing something else, whatever they're working on. They're just there online while you work. You pay for that.

SPEAKER_00 10:29

You pay for that. You pay forty dollars.

SPEAKER_01 10:31

$40. Yeah, but all it is is so you can feel somewhat that you're in a workspace with other people, even though they don't work with you and they aren't doing what you're doing. They're doing they're working on their own thing.

SPEAKER_00 10:48

Can I I don't know how much you know about it, but like let's say I look over and I see somebody, I'm like, they look interesting. Can I like private message them or message them or hold up a sign that says, hey, red shirt, you look fun, or anyone can communicate?

SPEAKER_01 11:03

Well, on some of these, you can apparently, they didn't explain exactly how, but they're in the article I was reading about this technology and how people are using it to feel like they're working with people, there was a hookup story. So obviously, someone kept seeing the same person in their workspace, and then you know they advanced it from there, and now they're dating, they're in a relationship.

SPEAKER_00 11:29

Life finds a way, right?

SPEAKER_01 11:31

Yeah, yeah. So, but I don't think that's exclusively, and I don't think it's an efficient way to meet someone, but you know, that's how you meet people in real life. In the old days, organically, you'd usually meet them at work. Yeah, you'd see them across the cubicle. You'd look over, you'd look over the top of the cubes, you'd pull down your your head, head surround, whatever that thing was called.

SPEAKER_00 11:52

Take off your headgear.

SPEAKER_01 11:54

Take off your helmet, you'd gaze across the cubicle space, and you know, a couple hundred yards away, you'd catch a glimpse and a sparkle, and you'd say, hmm, maybe that could be the one. Yeah. That was the way that people, most people would meet each other. Um, but now, yeah. So apparently that's possible, although again, it's not the main function or even something that they've really tried to promote. It's called virtual co-working. Do you need people around you to feel like you're accountable, or do you just want to do your thing?

SPEAKER_00 12:29

You know, I have some of both. I think I too often give that answer that it's both things for me. But like today, I I was thinking, you were saying earlier, uh, you know, being at home, um, you you really get into your work. I have to get away from my home. And I have the great fortune, my work isn't open yet. So I can sit, I come to my empty office space to work. Um, because when I'm at home, I'm distracted by my housework duties.

SPEAKER_01 12:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:57

Um and uh but I'm a little ADHD, like I'm a little easily distracted for sure. And sometimes people around me can I I can't get stuff done if there are people around, but I like interacting with people socially. I like to meet somebody for lunch, I think.

SPEAKER_01 13:14

But not I was talking about. That's a different thing. You just want to go to lunch.

SPEAKER_00 13:21

Yeah. I like to well, I would like to have lunch all day long for for most days, but yeah. I yeah, I want people to come visit, but I don't need somebody to be there. I think that's the the most correct answer.

SPEAKER_01 13:33

So here's the interesting thing. This is in particular popular with freelancers, entrepreneurs, and people with ADHD. There are people that in their normal space where they're working remotely, whatever that is, feel like they're easily distracted. But if they have people that they can kind of pretend are their coworkers, they feel like they are responsible, you know, they feel more responsible for focusing on the task that they're doing.

SPEAKER_00 14:04

Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 14:05

You can go into these work sessions at any time with people all over the world. You can be working anytime with these people because you know there's different time zones. You might have heard of that. And uh one user said that she found the experience on the plus side of neutral.

SPEAKER_00 14:28

And you know, really lowered our bar for what classifies as positive.

SPEAKER_01 14:33

I never heard that expression, but I kind of get it.

SPEAKER_00 14:36

I like it.

SPEAKER_01 14:36

Yeah, it's the plus side of neutral.

SPEAKER_00 14:39

Yeah, it's just better than neutral. I mean, that's where we want to live most of our lives, right? If you live 80% of your life at the plus side of neutral, you're doing pretty good.

SPEAKER_01 14:47

Um, next time somebody asks me how I'm doing, I'm gonna say the plus side of neutral and see what happens. Um, I totally get it. The some of the companies, Cave Day, Flow Club, Focus Mate. Here's one preacher's block.

SPEAKER_00 15:01

Is that for ministers?

SPEAKER_01 15:03

Yeah, priests writing sermons. They feel better if they are around other people. It can be other priests, you know, kind of working on their sermons. Everybody's there, and I just imagine them all there in their robes. One user said it gave them a fake sense of accountability.

SPEAKER_00 15:22

I guess a fake sense is good enough, though.

SPEAKER_01 15:25

Yeah, it's good enough. Um, and I started thinking about it, and and the article somebody mentions this, so it's not a completely original idea, but it does resonate. For a while, I was going to a spin class and doing the whole spin class thing. Um, I was excited about it. I was doing it like two or three times a week. It's very addicting, but I would never like ride a bike at home, a stationary bike. I would never do that ever. But if I'm in a class, yeah, it's it's a different experience. It's quite motivating. So it's it's the kind of it kind of sounds like that to me. Like for some people, sitting alone at home is it's really hard for them to focus or feel accountable, and they don't want their boss there hovering, but they do like the idea of having other fake co-workers around. You know, one of the advantages of not being around people is that you don't have like the office politics, the drama, the office drama. Yeah, the drama. But then again, for a younger person, isn't it important to learn those lessons though, about how people can be? I think so. I got a job, I was like 19. I got a job as an intern for a big company, and they gave me a a job in what was called a trial support library. So this big company was involved in a huge l civil lawsuit. And so this was back before computers, okay, before you know, personal computers and all the things we have now. So when the lawyers working on the case for the company needed to see a document, they would call over to the trial library and say, I need, and then they would describe, you know, using numbers and letters, a particular document. We would pull the copy from the shelves. It would be Xeroxed, you know, because sometimes they would want multiple copies, you know. And these were big, giant like legal depositions and stuff, like hundreds and hundreds of pages. So they'd have to be copied, assembled into binders, and then carded over to the other building because the library was in a different building. It was all downtown LA, okay? So it sounds pretty rudimentary, which it was in a sense, but you have these high-powered lawyers, they're very demanding, and you had to make sure like every page was copied. You couldn't send them, you know, a 500-page binder and there's a page missing, or it didn't copy well. Right. Um, or the pages are out of order. This was all like bad, bad. So there was a kind of certain amount of pressure. So there were a couple of us that were these college kids who were hired as interns, and we were basically gophers, but we wore suits.

SPEAKER_00 18:21

Nice. We wore suits every day, yeah, but we were the gophers.

SPEAKER_01 18:26

The people, there was a manager of the library, and then there were some other people, and then there was a group of people, all they did is Xerox work, they just ran the machines, and those people did not wear suits. Okay, they were not employed directly by the company, but they were from an employment agency. And when I got there, even though they were essentially contractors, they kind of ran everything. They were in charge of everything.

SPEAKER_00 18:56

Well, sure. They got the they got the Xerox machine at their fingertips, right?

SPEAKER_01 19:00

And they've just been doing it longer, and they were they sort of even bossed the boss around.

SPEAKER_00 19:05

Plus, they got a lot of neck movement because they're not wearing a suit, so they can turn their heads around a lot faster.

SPEAKER_01 19:11

They got the neck movement, they're not in cubes, they're not having helmets on their heads, they don't have anything boxing them in. And they were pretty, you know, they were pretty uh they had the run of the place. Yeah, they had what uh they call functional authority, which the authority you get by being proficient at your job, you know all the things. And so you even though you're technically not in charge, people defer to you.

SPEAKER_00 19:36

I love that.

SPEAKER_01 19:37

So so yeah, so that's a good thing to have, by the way.

SPEAKER_00 19:41

I want to do that.

SPEAKER_01 19:42

In any job is to is to know more than anyone. And then, you know, you can then you know the most, and then you can become queen. Oh yes. So one day I get a call, I take a call, I was on my gopher jobs, answer the phone, the lawyer tells me what they want, I write it down, I go get it, I give it to them the copy. They cut it's like a million copies, takes them half a day, they get it all done, it gets all packed up, it's sent over there. Within a certain amount of time, we find out that it's wrong.

SPEAKER_00 20:15

Uh-oh.

SPEAKER_01 20:16

That we got it wrong.

SPEAKER_00 20:17

There's pages missing, or no, the whole order is wrong.

SPEAKER_01 20:20

It's not what they wanted.

SPEAKER_00 20:21

Oh, I see.

SPEAKER_01 20:22

And so immediately I'm blamed for two reasons. One, I'm 19. There's no three multiple reasons. One, I'm 19. Two, I'm wearing a suit.

SPEAKER_00 20:33

Yep, suit guy.

SPEAKER_01 20:35

Three, I don't know anything. I'm, you know, a college kid, don't really know anything, which is different from being 19, because some 19-year-olds are quite competent. And it didn't matter that I said, no, this is exactly what the person asked for. Like I wrote down exactly what they said. What happened is they I think they told me the wrong thing. Doesn't matter. I'm being blamed. And these contractor workers, I can hear them because you have all these libraries, you know, library stacks. So you kind of meandering in and out, and you can hear them complaining about me and blaming me and calling me names and all this stuff. Really? So now I've become like the uh, in my view, I'm a sc I've been made a scapegoat. Of course, it's conceivable I made the mistake, but it's also to me equally conceivable that the lawyer asked for the thing that they did, they got it wrong. So, anyway, I feel horrible all day. I just feel bad. Like I've screwed up, I'm nobody likes me, I'm the office bum. Next day I show up, I'm still wearing a suit. The contractors are gone.

SPEAKER_00 21:50

What?

SPEAKER_01 21:50

They're gone.

SPEAKER_00 21:51

Where'd they go?

SPEAKER_01 21:53

I think they were fired. Oh but there's more.

SPEAKER_00 21:59

Okay. So

SPEAKER_01 22:00

There's new contractors, and of course, they don't have any functional authority because they never been there before.

SPEAKER_00 22:04

Now I don't know stuff.

SPEAKER_01 22:06

I've got more seniority than they do, but not only that, the manager of the place he's he was the manager, he's fired or reassigned.

SPEAKER_00 22:17

What?

SPEAKER_01 22:18

But the the two college guys in the suits, the 19-year-old intern kids, we're still there. And not only that, we're promoted to run the thing.

SPEAKER_00 22:29

Wait, what?

SPEAKER_01 22:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:32

They they this bizarre.

SPEAKER_01 22:34

Yeah, they cleaned out so they had this mishap. Their heads had to roll. All the heads rolled. The two kids who should have been chopped, or at least me. We didn't only not only did we not get chopped, but now they said you're running this library and you're in charge of everybody and everything.

SPEAKER_00 22:53

That's crazy.

SPEAKER_01 22:54

And so for the rest of this summer internship, I and this guy, Wayne, were in charge, and I gotta tell you, it went okay. Now, I don't remember actually managing anything, but it somehow things work. We never had another snapoo like that. And I'll tell you something else. It was a pretty high building, so uh we would make uh paper helicopters and fly them out the window a lot. We were wearing suits. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 23:30

Yeah, sure. There's the balance. What's a paper helicopter? I know what a paper airplane is, but what's a paper copy?

SPEAKER_01 23:36

Airplanes too, but helicopters are more fun when you're in a tall building downtown because it's just you you you tear a paper, uh piece of paper in a way so that it you have uh a couple of blades and then you have a dangly part that's you know, you you make sure it has a little weight to it, so then when you put it out the window, it spins. And depending on the updrafts, it can like go up pretty far and travel.

SPEAKER_00 24:02

That sounds like a fun thing to do, especially as a 19-year-old.

SPEAKER_01 24:05

Sometimes we put notes on them and stuff. So when they hit the ground, people would you know, would say things like being held captive. Anyway, so so you know, I just feel like those experiences were real big life lessons for me about office politics and and just it was always a surprise to me when I was younger. Things can happen. Oh, yeah. Did anything like that ever happen to you? Did anyone ever try to sabotage you?

SPEAKER_00 24:33

Oh my gosh, sabotage.

SPEAKER_01 24:34

Did they try to set you up to fail?

SPEAKER_00 24:39

I can't think of anything.

SPEAKER_01 24:42

No one ever tried to pull the old wool over me. Yeah, slip you the slip you the pickle. That's it.

SPEAKER_00 24:51

I've been slipped a lot of pickles, but that's not that's that's not what you're asking.

SPEAKER_01 24:55

That's not a thing. They didn't try to they didn't try to pull the old bamboozler.

SPEAKER_00 25:00

I don't think so. You know, it occurs to me as we're thinking about this. I have not I a lot of the jobs that I've had, I work individually. I teach improvisation at a at a college, and one of my students, they they had missed a lot of classes. I think there were, let's say they're 30 classes, and they had missed 22 of them. So they were really just not gonna pass. There was just no way.

SPEAKER_01 25:26

Um, and they had a lot to miss.

SPEAKER_00 25:28

It's a lot, and this is during COVID. So, you know, we had really tried to be pretty lenient, but but you can't be that. I mean, she she just didn't, there's no way she could know the material at that point. I don't like failing people. I think people should pass, especially improvisation.

SPEAKER_01 25:44

But um she'd give she you get an F in making things up. I know. Well, and that's part of it.

SPEAKER_00 25:51

Like, you gotta, you know, can you come up with a good excuse at least? Can you be creative? Like, this is your opportunity just to prove me wrong.

SPEAKER_01 25:59

Jane, I'm gonna give you an F unless you can make up an excuse right now.

SPEAKER_00 26:03

It has to be sorry, teach. I got nothing. Yeah, right. You know why? Because you never came to class. So she I was really trying to work with her as much as possible. And my plan, the plan, the deal I had made with her was if she came to the final performance and she finished her final project, which was a research paper, if she did those two things, then I would I would give her a D, basically. So she wouldn't fail and have to retake the or lose the credit.

SPEAKER_01 26:33

What could she get if she put a little cash on the on the deal?

SPEAKER_00 26:36

Depends on how much cash. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 26:38

Well, that's what I was wondering. Yeah. Did you leave that open as an option?

SPEAKER_00 26:41

I make very little as an adjunct professor, so uh basically anything would double what I was doing.

SPEAKER_01 26:47

I always I always feel like there should be a cash option for students.

SPEAKER_00 26:52

Um yeah, and I think they're uh they feel like because they pay for the class already, that their cash option is up front. But it doesn't work that way.

SPEAKER_01 27:02

Yeah, well that's just that's just the entry fee. But anyway, so you get so she had that deal, you gave her a very generous deal way out.

SPEAKER_00 27:09

Yeah, I'll try to I'll try to work this with you. So the the very last thing that they had to do in class was a little improv show. I say little, but their peers were invited, um, part mostly because it was COVID. Um, so we're getting ready to do the show, and I've I've kind of already got a her, she there each of the teams is or the class, sorry, is broken up into two teams. So her team is waiting for her to arrive and she's not she's not showing up. And um, so they had a plan B ready because this person was very unreliable. So about eight minutes before we're getting ready to start, she she comes in, she has she's used a lot of eyeliner to draw eyes on her eyes. Now, what I mean by that is so that when she closes her eyelids, there's a set of eyes drawn in eyeliner on her eyelids.

SPEAKER_01 28:10

Yeah, yeah, it's disconcerting.

SPEAKER_00 28:12

It's disconcerting, but that's what's happening. She shows up, she seems not at all affected by the idea that she is about 45 minutes late to the class, the last class for which she is on very thin ice, right? And she announces uh, hey guys, you know, gosh, it's been such a crazy day. This is one of these people that always has a crazy day. This has been such a crazy day. I was out at the target buying some things for the summer because we're going into summer. And I realized I look down at the time and I'm like, oh, expletive. My improv class is getting ready to start. So I hop in my car and I realize I haven't eaten today. So a real quick stop at the cookout, which is a burger restaurant, and the line is super long, so it takes forever to get my food. And then, you know, I don't want to drive and eat, so I pull over to eat my my burger before I come this way. So this chick realized she was late, stopped for food, ate it, showed up late, and then was like, yeah, no apologies, by the way.

SPEAKER_01 29:33

These are I was hoping, I was hoping you're gonna tell me this was her improv performance. Like all of this was improved.

SPEAKER_00 29:39

Oh man, that sh I probably would have given her the D if that had been a pro no, that was the real life.

SPEAKER_01 29:45

Oh no, that was the real thing. And did she explain the eyes on eyes situation?

SPEAKER_00 29:49

Nothing, nothing.

SPEAKER_01 29:50

Did anyone ask her, hey, what's with the eyeballs?

SPEAKER_00 29:53

No, I think everybody assumed that she was um probably insane, so that we should probably just not mention it at all.

SPEAKER_01 30:00

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 30:01

So she did fail. It's uh I've only failed two people, and she was one of the two.

SPEAKER_01 30:05

So that's well, that's a good that once you have that really clear example of what a fail is, yeah. Then you can measure everyone else very accurately. It's like are they better than that?

SPEAKER_00 30:16

Yeah, most are.

SPEAKER_01 30:18

Oh, I really thought you were gonna, I thought the punchline was gonna be that she uh she said, and that's my final exam.

SPEAKER_00 30:26

Drop the mic. Drop the mic, exactly. No, I I really think that um thinking was not her strong suit.

SPEAKER_01 30:32

She wasn't into it.

SPEAKER_00 30:33

No, it wasn't her thing.

SPEAKER_01 30:35

Now, you know, I knew people like that in college, who were just they weren't there to really do anything, and I was one of them. I was one of them. Um, but I knew this guy, Jim, man, in freshman year. Oh my gosh. He didn't go to any classes. Wow, he just didn't care. And he lasted exactly one. Well, we used to it was we were on a quarter system, three months. He lasted one one quarter, and he was gone. But he'd never painted eyes on his eyes. Well, he did used to smear toothpaste all over his face at night.

SPEAKER_00 31:17

What?

SPEAKER_01 31:17

Why he believed that that helped with acne.

SPEAKER_00 31:22

Oh no, I've heard that before, though. It dries it out.

SPEAKER_01 31:26

Maybe it maybe it does. It looks really weird, like if there's a fire alarm, which there was one night, and he came out and he was like in whiteface, and everybody was like, What is happening with you, man?

SPEAKER_00 31:37

That's too much, man. What was his name? Jim?

SPEAKER_01 31:39

Jim. Jim had to explain it. He had to explain it to everybody. Yeah, I think the we're missing these cool interactions now with so much remote stuff going on. So we're relying on, you know, texts and emails uh much more than we even were before COVID.

SPEAKER_00 31:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:55

I've kind of found that if you don't use an exclamation mark on everything that people think you're mad or being sarcastic.

SPEAKER_00 32:03

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 32:04

Like you can't say thank you with no exclamation mark.

SPEAKER_00 32:07

No. And I also, this is my my kids are always getting that when I send texts, or yeah, if you use no punctuation, uh, and I know texts are more informal, but then but if you use like periods, yeah, that conveys that you're angry.

SPEAKER_01 32:26

Yeah, or just yeah, or just not enthusiastic enough.

SPEAKER_00 32:30

Yeah. So my emails look ridiculous right now. It's like, hello, exclamation point. Statement of fact, exclamation point. It's it there, it is strange. I hadn't I know that I know I've been doing it, but I didn't realize why. That's interesting.

SPEAKER_01 32:46

Yeah, it's out of control, is what I think. And then there's so many variations on this, like you can't just say okay anymore either. If you say okay, that's wrong, you have to say K.

SPEAKER_00 32:58

Oh. K.

SPEAKER_01 33:00

Just the K. K means I'm good, like everything's fine. Okay is taken like it's a sarcastic. Okay. Okay, fine. What about somebody? So I read I'm on a little friend text group, you know.

SPEAKER_00 33:15

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 33:17

And one guy, it was his birthday, and another guy writes, happy birthday. No exclamation mark. That can't be okay. That can't be okay. Come on, happy birthday.

SPEAKER_00 33:37

Sure, yeah. Well, that's how it reads.

SPEAKER_01 33:39

Uh you don't even come on. I mean, at least you so I'm I'm not a bit I don't I'm only using exclamation marks now defensively because I don't want people to think I'm being sarcastic or unappreciative. But on a happy birthday, even before all of that, I think you need an exclamation mark.

SPEAKER_00 34:00

I think you need an exclamation mark. I think the very least, yes. You need an exclamation mark after happy birthday.

SPEAKER_01 34:08

Yeah. Yeah. And then what and then so the other thing people do is then they'll put a str instead of all of that, they put a string of emojis. Oh so you get like, you know, thank you, and then 16 emojis. And they all have some meaning. I never know what they mean.

SPEAKER_00 34:27

I don't either. And my kids are always trying to tell me, and I I just I I feel not invested in finding out because I feel partially like it's a secret language that is uh used against people. Your lack of knowledge about about emojis is like it's it's like a secret society.

SPEAKER_01 34:53

It's like pig Latin.

SPEAKER_00 34:55

It's like Google workspace. I don't understand how to work it. And people keep trying to explain it to me, but I feel like it just keeps changing.

SPEAKER_01 35:03

So when it becomes relevant to me is if I'm like like texting with someone I just met, like a like a dating situation, but it's not even we're not even there yet. And they're sending me little emojis, and I don't know what they mean. And I'm trying to figure out does this mean they like me? Is this a like a sex emoji? How do I know what I like? What am I looking at? And so you go online and you can like there's like dictionaries of emojis.

SPEAKER_00 35:33

There's like a Rosetta Stone for emojis.

SPEAKER_01 35:35

There's a Rosetta Stone or something, and I and that, but it never helps me because I never know, like, well, it can mean that the person likes you or they want to kill you. Either one, right?

SPEAKER_00 35:44

Those see, those should be different emojis. They that shouldn't be the two definitions for a specific dinosaur holding a hoagie means meet me at subway. I'd like a foot long, literally, no sexual intention.

SPEAKER_01 36:02

Yeah, no sexual intention. Because and that's implied by the dinosaur wearing a hat.

SPEAKER_00 36:07

Oh, yeah. I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_01 36:08

Without the hat, it's a total it's a total sex thing. Yeah, yeah, I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 36:13

Look for that.

SPEAKER_01 36:13

So, but but a lot of people are using that as a way to show that hey, it this is a fun and light email, even though I've just told you you have to work overtime. Like you got to work this Sunday, like dinosaur with a hat, two pinching pelicans, cactus face. You know, so so you're like, okay, why it just doesn't make me feel better. We're in this transitional space. Um, I don't know where it's going, this whole work thing. I know some people have gone back into the office, but there most people I talk to aren't going back every day. Some are going like once a week or they go once a month. Some people don't go at all. Some people have to go into work because their job requires being there, like, you know, somebody working in a restaurant or something. But I wanted to talk to you about this because I always feel like you're uh the voice of wisdom and clarity.

SPEAKER_00 37:06

Oh, no one ever says that about me.

SPEAKER_01 37:08

Well, then maybe it's not true.

SPEAKER_00 37:10

It's probably not.

SPEAKER_01 37:12

You you have a good sense, you have your finger on the pulse of humanity. And that's what we're trying to do in this podcast. Just try to understand what people are doing. I as I say, I think we're in a transitional time right now where we're still figuring out lots of things. So, you know, I'm sure we're we haven't seen uh the final mutation of what work is going to be. But thanks for being here, Amy, and thank you everyone again for joining us for this episode. If you like what we're doing, we would love your help. As I said, share the show. Give us the highest rating on an app that allows you to rate us. Um give us a sparkling review. That really helps us. You can support us on Patreon. We are independent and we appreciate any help you can give us financially. And you can reach out to us with questions or uh comments or compliments. We'd love to hear what you like about the shows that we're doing. And if you have suggestions for topics you want us to cover, uh we cover all the topics, so we'd love to hear that too. And we hope you will tune in to another episode because whether you are a preacher with ADHD or just someone showing up late for class with eyes on top of your eyes, it's important to remember that we all smell like humans. Goodbye, everybody.