Speaker 1: We have a lot of opinions about how things around
Speaker 1: the office should be. For example, chivalry and the elevator
Speaker 1: is totally misguided, the case for not properly shutting down
Speaker 1: your computer, and why you should upgrade your work lunch tupperware.
Speaker 1: Today we're devoting our entire episode to half baked takes.
Speaker 1: This is game plan. Hi. I'm Francesca Leasy and I'm
Speaker 1: Rebecca Greenfield, and today is our first half baked take
Speaker 1: a thon Becca. It's so summer right now, Yes, still
Speaker 1: LI four. It has happened here and people are either
Speaker 1: actually on vacation or in our brains they're on vacation.
Speaker 1: Vacation mind has said in everyone's phoning it in, there's
Speaker 1: a kind of an acknowledged thing that no one wants
Speaker 1: to be here, or like no one minds being here,
Speaker 1: but just your mind is not better outside, you know.
Speaker 1: And every week we do a segment called half Bag Takes. Um,
Speaker 1: We've been doing it from the start and it's it's
Speaker 1: our favorite segment. Yeah, it is your baby, So I'll
Speaker 1: let you explain exactly how that works. Half bag takes.
Speaker 1: That could be a complaint. They often are something office related,
Speaker 1: but it could also just be like an observation or
Speaker 1: a weird thing you notice at work, or a funny
Speaker 1: office tick you have. But the basic idea is that, like,
Speaker 1: that's all it is. It's just a thought that you,
Speaker 1: for some reason feel passionately about. But it really doesn't
Speaker 1: deserve as much air time as we give it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's not much to it. So like your tupperware halfy
Speaker 1: take that I mentioned in the intro, what was that again? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I really just think that your work lunch is
Speaker 1: so much better if you have nice tupperware. I have
Speaker 1: these last Tupperwars tuper To get into it, you can
Speaker 1: listen to an old episode but that we were for
Speaker 1: you to aquint essential half big take. So's an idea
Speaker 1: I had and you should follow it because that's great. So,
Speaker 1: in the spirit of summer and being half here mentally,
Speaker 1: we decided to turn this episode over to our bloom
Speaker 1: Brick colleagues and ask some of our favorite people around
Speaker 1: the office for their half big takes. And here it
Speaker 1: is happy fake takes. Josh hit us with your half
Speaker 1: big take. I want to know why men aren't allowed
Speaker 1: to wear sandals in public? When you say aren't allowed,
Speaker 1: I think you mean there's some kind of taboo around it.
Speaker 1: There's a taboo around exposing men's feet, specifically in a
Speaker 1: corporate environment, and I don't think it's totally fair more
Speaker 1: because I have to spend the entire summer sweating and
Speaker 1: dying in my little sock prison, and everyone else around
Speaker 1: me gets wear open to choose and sandals, And you
Speaker 1: say everyone by everyone everyone else, ladies, Ladies, are you
Speaker 1: ranking sandals right now because I am I am wearing
Speaker 1: a sandal heel things that do reveal a toe. And
Speaker 1: I actually think ladies do make a calculation, which is like,
Speaker 1: like you should no one should ever wear flip flops
Speaker 1: in the office. That is really not okay, So like
Speaker 1: there is such a thing as too much toe for everyone. Um,
Speaker 1: but yes, I do make a judgment call. There must
Speaker 1: be some women who are so conservative about it that
Speaker 1: they don't even think the open toe choose are okay
Speaker 1: for anyone. That reminds me of a news article I
Speaker 1: saw the other day on the internet. Maybe it might
Speaker 1: have not even been real because I only saw the headline,
Speaker 1: so really happy take of me. But I saw something
Speaker 1: that said a man showed up to the office in
Speaker 1: shorts someone sent home, so he came back wearing a dress,
Speaker 1: Which is a similar argument, which is women can wear
Speaker 1: things that are more cooling in the office. They can,
Speaker 1: which is completely fine. I just the sandal thing is
Speaker 1: what gets me. The shorts argument makes a little more
Speaker 1: sense to me. Like I do think that men should
Speaker 1: be given permission to not have to wear pants in
Speaker 1: the summer. That's just awful. I think that's a personal choice.
Speaker 1: Like a lot of men don't feel entirely comfortable wearing
Speaker 1: shorts in an office environment, whereas I feel a lot
Speaker 1: of men would feel comfortable wearing sandals. Do you think
Speaker 1: a man wearing sandals is obligated to to sort of
Speaker 1: up his foot care game a little bit, maybe more
Speaker 1: than they should. They should be presentable there, you know, grunge, gunk,
Speaker 1: whatever you want to call unpleasant to sites should be
Speaker 1: taken care of. What sandals would you wear if not
Speaker 1: flip flops? Like, what kind of sandals do men wear
Speaker 1: that aren't tvas, tvas, tacos, vomitous. If you're not on
Speaker 1: a rapping trip, if you're not on a rafting trip,
Speaker 1: tva should be bad. What mandals are you dying to wear?
Speaker 1: I think burgen stocks come in and out of fashion.
Speaker 1: Those are probably acceptable at all different times, because I
Speaker 1: don't really care if they're in or out of fashion.
Speaker 1: I'm sure to pursue team would have a whole list
Speaker 1: of options for us if we were to ask them
Speaker 1: to investigate this issue. Honestly, that half big ticket is
Speaker 1: turning into a full story is getting a little baked, Danny,
Speaker 1: what is your half big take? All right, this is
Speaker 1: about fidget spinners. I guess they're they're cool and for
Speaker 1: all the kids now in classrooms. But I keep hearing
Speaker 1: them in the newsroom, which I know is a little
Speaker 1: bit ridiculous because how much noise could they make? But
Speaker 1: when it's quiet I'm trying to write, I just hear
Speaker 1: this gentle like sound that they make, and I just
Speaker 1: know what they are, and it's very distracting. I didn't
Speaker 1: even know adults use them. Yeah, I didn't know that
Speaker 1: the adults use them. Is it like the modern day
Speaker 1: stress ball? I think so. But the one I saw,
Speaker 1: who the owner of it will remain nameless, is like
Speaker 1: a neon color, So even the look of it is
Speaker 1: very distracting. I don't know. I feel like maybe do
Speaker 1: do some suducu if if your board do something that's
Speaker 1: a little doesn't have noise, and I like, I like
Speaker 1: the idea of a visual distraction, like you know, you know,
Speaker 1: somebody like tapping their foot endlessly is going to be
Speaker 1: really annoying or making some annoying mouth noise. But there's
Speaker 1: also like you can do stuff. There's a new way
Speaker 1: to distract your coworkers with your idle habit also, as
Speaker 1: in fidget spinner supposed to be something that people use
Speaker 1: themselves to concentrate, is that they use it to like
Speaker 1: ground don't understand the fidget spinner at all. I feel like,
Speaker 1: you know, I feel like it is a stress ball
Speaker 1: kind of thing, but they don't realize how it's affecting
Speaker 1: the people around them. Fidgets spinners have consequences. And then
Speaker 1: you know, you have to get an earful of where
Speaker 1: they bought the fidget spinner down at the bodega somewhere.
Speaker 1: Spinners their kids exactly exactly the colors, the ones that
Speaker 1: light up fidget spinner talk is definitely a thing. There's
Speaker 1: a fidget. One of our colleagues wrote a fidget spinner
Speaker 1: story not too long ago, and then multiple editors for
Speaker 1: multiple days were like sampling fidget spinners, explaining to each
Speaker 1: other what fidget spinners were like, I don't need to,
Speaker 1: but I don't want your fidgets, you know. I'd also
Speaker 1: argue there's a health risk involved, because wasn't there some
Speaker 1: whole issue with counterfeit or knockoff fidget spinners that were
Speaker 1: coming into the US, that maybe we're made from flammable
Speaker 1: products or something like that. I don't like, don't like it.
Speaker 1: Who do you have? Big takes? Could be a public service?
Speaker 1: Thank you, Danny, You're welcome. You're welcome, Polly, what is
Speaker 1: your half pick take? My half pig take is that
Speaker 1: you should be able to drink coffee all day, no
Speaker 1: matter the time, caffeinated coffee. So if you want to
Speaker 1: have coffee at three in the afternoon, it will not
Speaker 1: impact your ability to go to bed. I will not
Speaker 1: impact you, know, how you're gonna sleep or what you're
Speaker 1: gonna do that evening. I have no scientific evidence. In fact,
Speaker 1: I think there's a lot of evidence that disagrees. But
Speaker 1: I personally drink coffee all day until five o'clock in
Speaker 1: the evening and I go to bed just fine. So therefore,
Speaker 1: this is right. Actually having no scientific evidence makes it
Speaker 1: a perfect hapic take. Yeah, this is my favorite kind
Speaker 1: of happy take where it's like that my anecdotal experience,
Speaker 1: uh disagrees with the science on this. So I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure the science is wrong and I'm totally the same way.
Speaker 1: I'll have an after dinner espresso and I just so European,
Speaker 1: what can I say, very cosm of Walton, But I
Speaker 1: don't see any effect on my sleep. I don't like
Speaker 1: drinking caffina the afternoon and upsets my stomach. But actually,
Speaker 1: yesterday I had a tie iced tea which I think
Speaker 1: has a ton of caffina like six pm, and I
Speaker 1: like could barely keep my eyes open at eleven pm.
Speaker 1: So so we should all be drinking coffee at six pm.
Speaker 1: And there you mentioned this to me too. Decalf is
Speaker 1: kind of bs right, oh complexe. So I was a
Speaker 1: waitress in my pre journalism days for many years and
Speaker 1: we just totally had no regard for people's caffeine requests
Speaker 1: and they never knew the difference, sleeping like babies with
Speaker 1: their fake decalf. You cannot see my face, but I
Speaker 1: am freaking out. That's crazy. We didn't know the difference.
Speaker 1: The two coffee pots were the same. It wasn't totally
Speaker 1: our fault. And we asked our general manager for like
Speaker 1: a new one, and they were like, it's all the
Speaker 1: same thing. It could have been making only decalf all
Speaker 1: day and nobody would live your life. Drink what you
Speaker 1: want to drink, enjoy that coffee, do what you've got
Speaker 1: to do to get through the day, love it. Thank
Speaker 1: you all right, Dina, what is your happic take? So
Speaker 1: it's really more of a question than to take, um,
Speaker 1: where is the appropriate place to change your shoes? Because like,
Speaker 1: if I'm going in for an interview, I'll change my
Speaker 1: shoes like in the subway station. But if I'm just
Speaker 1: coming to work, I change my shoes like at my desk.
Speaker 1: But that means that I have in this office a
Speaker 1: lot of room to run into my bosses while I'm
Speaker 1: wearing like my rainbow flip flop. Okay, so you you're
Speaker 1: one of these people that commutes to work wearing comfortable
Speaker 1: shoes and then you put on your work appropriate shoes
Speaker 1: at some point before you start your day. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: to be clear, I mean these are my work appropriate shoes.
Speaker 1: They're just not comfortable enough. We're looking at some elegant
Speaker 1: slides flat like flat shoes, but they're just not comfortable
Speaker 1: enough for a twenty minute walk to the subway. Yes,
Speaker 1: summer in the city, changer is a half bake take already. Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm not a shoe changer. And then yeah, where do
Speaker 1: you change your shoes? Is another layer to this. Happened
Speaker 1: that I never even considered, and this causes a lot
Speaker 1: of angst. I used to be a shoe changer. I
Speaker 1: think I just converted to heels that are comfortable enough
Speaker 1: that I can wear them on the subway. But I
Speaker 1: would do it like halfway up the block from work,
Speaker 1: because I felt like the subway was too weird, Like
Speaker 1: if I did it in the subway car, people would
Speaker 1: be looking at me. But the office exactly the same
Speaker 1: thing you would walk through. You didn't want to walk
Speaker 1: through the office and your flip flops. So I would
Speaker 1: like pause in some some loading dock halfway down the
Speaker 1: block up and be the weirdo that's standing there taking
Speaker 1: my shoes off. It's it's it's hard. I'm sorry, guys.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna say it does kind of gross me
Speaker 1: out to think of you guys changing your shoes in
Speaker 1: the subway station. It's grossed down there. I guess the
Speaker 1: street is not. But you don't have to put your
Speaker 1: feet down on the ground. The floor is lava. I mean,
Speaker 1: one shoe at a time. If you have a seat,
Speaker 1: even better. I have noticed you change your shoes at
Speaker 1: the dusk and I'm like, oh, Diana's a shoe changer. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: the walk between like entering the building and getting to
Speaker 1: my desk, I'm like, very much on the lookout for
Speaker 1: all of my superiors. I do do they notice our
Speaker 1: shoes the second shoe take. Yeah, shoes are a big deal.
Speaker 1: And the other problem with the subway changeup, which is
Speaker 1: why I think I changed my ways, is that you
Speaker 1: don't get to wear your nice, pretty shoes on the subway.
Speaker 1: And that's honestly, like, that's when you want to look
Speaker 1: good is in front of a bunch of interesting strangers,
Speaker 1: not running your colleagues you see every day you don't
Speaker 1: even care about. I love that you think that's always
Speaker 1: full of interesting strangers potentially interesting anyway, thanks for your
Speaker 1: great take my pleasure, So, Jenny, but is your halpic tic? Okay?
Speaker 1: So I have two intern themed half bake takes, although
Speaker 1: they applied everyone. Number one is I recently did a
Speaker 1: presentation for some interns and a lot of them sent
Speaker 1: me thank you notes. But one of them actually wrote
Speaker 1: me a handwritten thank you note and put it on
Speaker 1: my desk, which she also had to find in our system.
Speaker 1: And I think that handwritten notes are a little bit creepy.
Speaker 1: It's a little like stockery that she she also found
Speaker 1: out other information about me that I didn't talk about.
Speaker 1: I think that's it's like the intern over kill. My
Speaker 1: second related intern thing that actually was part of this
Speaker 1: thank you note is she referred to me as ms
Speaker 1: Kaplan And while I appreciate the MSS rather than miss Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's like feminist, three years younger than me. Call me
Speaker 1: by my name. Yeah, it's in office as we call
Speaker 1: each other by our first names. Yeah, it's okay, we're
Speaker 1: not in or Draper Price. Yeah it's also right, yeah
Speaker 1: Mr Draper and never even not about that. Also, she's
Speaker 1: a young woman in an office place, like she should.
Speaker 1: She's already gonna they're going to be assumptions working against her,
Speaker 1: so she should not make herself seem even younger. Don't
Speaker 1: infantilize yourself further, maybe there are some workplaces that still
Speaker 1: do them, Mr Draper ms Olsen, and maybe like you
Speaker 1: heard that, then you would pair it. That's the only
Speaker 1: way I can see this thing. That's conservative workplace. So
Speaker 1: it's a hard balance to strike. So in terms we
Speaker 1: respect your struggle, Yes, that's true, because I also would
Speaker 1: have found it weird. I she was like, Sup, Jay Dog,
Speaker 1: thanks for the presentation. I think that big Ti hears
Speaker 1: that end are being ridiculously unfairly judged. That's part of
Speaker 1: the process we all did. You gotta pay your dues,
Speaker 1: just get judged for everything to do and say sorry
Speaker 1: in turns. Happy summer, enjoy the free snacks, Kim. What's
Speaker 1: your half big take? My half bag take is that
Speaker 1: offices that put printers right next to people are just cruel.
Speaker 1: And every office does this. Every office does this, and
Speaker 1: it's if you if you sit next to a printer,
Speaker 1: you deal with that all day. It becomes background noise
Speaker 1: to your life. You're sitting there for ten hours a
Speaker 1: day and people are just printing crap right next to you,
Speaker 1: and what you what you gonna do? But you can't
Speaker 1: blame the people they have to print their stuff out.
Speaker 1: I blame the printer being there in the first place.
Speaker 1: Do you sit near a printer now? Is that where
Speaker 1: this inkster is coming from. I do not sit near
Speaker 1: a printer now, but I used to, and I demanded
Speaker 1: a desk change because one of our colleagues happens to
Speaker 1: print a lot and again not her fault, but still terrible.
Speaker 1: I also have sat near printers and you didn't. There's
Speaker 1: something you didn't even bring up, which is like forced
Speaker 1: to be the printer guru. You have to answer printer questions.
Speaker 1: You have to tell people whether or not there's paper
Speaker 1: in the printer, or why there isn't the paper in
Speaker 1: the printer, or where they can find paper to put
Speaker 1: in the printer, and people will need help fixing the printer,
Speaker 1: and they assume that you are the one who can
Speaker 1: do that. It also reminds me of when I sat
Speaker 1: on the end of the row in the aisle and
Speaker 1: that's where everyone walks by, and there's everyone just wants
Speaker 1: a small talk you all the time, and you're just like,
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to do my job. Yeah, and they
Speaker 1: think you haven't heard the sentiment about the printer or
Speaker 1: the thing at the end of the row. A hundred times. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a reason, like the separate copy printer room exists.
Speaker 1: And if you if you have both the separate copy
Speaker 1: room and printers on like every row, it just it
Speaker 1: doesn't make any sense. Just let let the people walk
Speaker 1: all the way to the copy room for the different
Speaker 1: times where they actually have to print something out. I
Speaker 1: do have one alternate suggestion for how to handle this problem.
Speaker 1: If the design gods have deemed it impossible not to
Speaker 1: put printers near people, that those desks be assigned to
Speaker 1: people who are like on some kind of office probation,
Speaker 1: or who are in trouble. You get, you know, but
Speaker 1: you are experiencing that misfortune for a reason. It's like
Speaker 1: the punishment seat. Yeah, it's like shape up your work product.
Speaker 1: Every six months you can graduate out of the printer's
Speaker 1: seat to a nice becaushy window seat that's messed up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, it's pretty evil. I'm kind of glad I
Speaker 1: thought of it, all right. Thank you, Kim pat tell
Speaker 1: us you are a half big take office curtains. Everybody
Speaker 1: hates the open office. You got somebody eating over here,
Speaker 1: sneezing over there, talking on the phone, laughing behind you,
Speaker 1: which is the worst of all those. Laughter, it's we
Speaker 1: should discuss that. I think it might be the worst
Speaker 1: when people are having boisterous, happy conversations behind you and
Speaker 1: you're trying to be some serious kind of business. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I think you should have office curtains um either
Speaker 1: dropping down from the ceiling, or if you have high
Speaker 1: ceilings like we do in our newsroom, then maybe they
Speaker 1: could kind of slide on a rack. So when you
Speaker 1: need to have a little bit of like hospital curtains,
Speaker 1: that's exactly how I was thinking about on a track. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like nobody likes to be in the hospital sharing
Speaker 1: a room with someone else, but it makes it that
Speaker 1: much better if you have curtains separating. So I did
Speaker 1: a happy take once about how I wish we could
Speaker 1: have cubicles because that's better than an open office. But how, how,
Speaker 1: how how would office curtains be better than a cubicle
Speaker 1: because we've already had cubicles and cubicles are terrible. Also,
Speaker 1: Pat is knowing Pat that is a real estate reporter,
Speaker 1: knows that we could never go back to cubicals because
Speaker 1: it's too expensive. But curtains cheap and easy solution. It
Speaker 1: could be a d I y solution. You could be
Speaker 1: the one office curtain reporter in Bloomberg. No, I think
Speaker 1: this is a startup. Yeah, curtain you. I'm trying to
Speaker 1: think of a downside to the office curtain, and I can't.
Speaker 1: I've thought of many. But when I was like, well,
Speaker 1: what if someone wants to talk to you? Like the
Speaker 1: whole point of the open office is like knock on
Speaker 1: the curtain. There would also be a lot of people
Speaker 1: calling your name from the other side of the curtain,
Speaker 1: not knowing whether you were at your desk or not.
Speaker 1: They make Pat you in there, Pat, you need heavy
Speaker 1: curtains so you can't hear that. Yeah, this is a
Speaker 1: such a great half It's so creative. I really just
Speaker 1: love points for creativity. Yeah, well done, Pat. Those were
Speaker 1: some seriously excellent half Bay takes. Yeah, thank you so
Speaker 1: much to our colleagues for bringing there really not fully
Speaker 1: formed ideas. Yeah, to us, it was just enlightening. There
Speaker 1: was not a single take two baked. No, they were
Speaker 1: all perfectly under done. Yeah, with the cooking time on
Speaker 1: those takes, And normally we would end the show with
Speaker 1: our half bag takes, hence the second that inspired this all.
Speaker 1: But I feel like we've been out done. There's no
Speaker 1: need for us to do that now. But next week
Speaker 1: we'll resume our regulatively scheduled programming and you can call
Speaker 1: in as usual with your own half Bake Takes at
Speaker 1: two and two six one seven zero one six six,
Speaker 1: and we'll have some really great half bag takes just
Speaker 1: for you. And this has been all half they take
Speaker 1: it on half Baked Takes. Thank you for listening to
Speaker 1: game Plan. You can find me on Twitter at Francesca
Speaker 1: Today and I'm at RZ Greenfield. That's where you can
Speaker 1: tweet us your half bake takes or anything else that
Speaker 1: you want to let us know. You can also hear
Speaker 1: from us at our newsletter that we sent out every week.
Speaker 1: You can find it at bloomberg dot com slash Newsletters.
Speaker 1: If you like our show, please go to Apple Podcasts
Speaker 1: or We're ever you listen, rate, review, and subscribe. It
Speaker 1: helps put our show in front of more people's eyeballs. Um,
Speaker 1: so if you like it, that's a great way to
Speaker 1: help out. The show was produced by Liz Smith and
Speaker 1: Magnus Henrickson. The Head of Podcasts is Alec McCabe and
Speaker 1: we'll see you next week. Bye. You guys are here
Speaker 1: all day. No sad here all day. You can our
Speaker 1: hotline Dina if you have more, We'll be here all day.
Speaker 1: I thought it were gonna get five boysails from Dona