Speaker 1: After every US presidential election, there are those people who
Speaker 1: threatened to pick up and move out of the country.
Speaker 1: That was definitely true, But what does it really mean
Speaker 1: to relocate your whole life and what would it take
Speaker 1: to start fresh? This is game plan. Hi, I'm Francesco
Speaker 1: Leavie and I'm right back to Greenfield and today we
Speaker 1: are talking all about working abroad. Yeah, people threaten to
Speaker 1: leave if so and so I was elected president, and
Speaker 1: I don't know if people actually do it like that,
Speaker 1: many people follow through on it, right, So, right after
Speaker 1: the most recent presidential election, there was this all this
Speaker 1: buzz about how much people wanted to leave the country.
Speaker 1: On the night of the election, I think the Canadian
Speaker 1: immigration website crashed from all this traffic it was getting.
Speaker 1: I think there was also this huge uptick in traffic
Speaker 1: to the New Zealand immigration website. So the narrative is
Speaker 1: always all these Americans are talking about moving abroad, but
Speaker 1: it sort of remains to be seen whether that actually
Speaker 1: translates to this massive out migration of people. Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: seen some people on Twitter actually do it, really, meaning,
Speaker 1: I've seen some strangers that I follow on Twitter actually
Speaker 1: move their families so they say so, they say, would
Speaker 1: you ever work abroad? Yeah, I mean so. I I
Speaker 1: haven't ever made this threat, but I I kind of
Speaker 1: understand the appeal. I have definitely fantasized about working in
Speaker 1: various different countries, and my fantasies usually get really specific.
Speaker 1: Like I went through a phase where I was totally
Speaker 1: obsessed with moving to Santiago, Chile, and then at one
Speaker 1: point I thought I would go work at like an
Speaker 1: English language newspaper in pantom Pen And by by the way,
Speaker 1: these are places I've never been. And I have kind
Speaker 1: of learned about myself that when I find myself getting
Speaker 1: really deep and like going really far down the rabbit
Speaker 1: hole of googling other countries, it's usually a sign that
Speaker 1: there's like something that that great wing out of my
Speaker 1: life that I need to running away from your problems.
Speaker 1: It's an escapist fantasy, though, what about you, Like, have
Speaker 1: you ever worked abroad or studied abroad? When I studied
Speaker 1: abroad in college, I didn't. That's great. I'm jealous of
Speaker 1: people who did. Yeah, and Argentina and yeah, it was great.
Speaker 1: I loved it. I think after that a lot of
Speaker 1: people are like, I need to live abroad and work abroad,
Speaker 1: and I had that itch, you know, twenty year old
Speaker 1: me had that itch. But now I just I like
Speaker 1: it in America. I like it like I want to
Speaker 1: fight the good fight and make it work here. And
Speaker 1: I did go to Mexico City recently and I was like,
Speaker 1: I can definitely live here. It's that difference between fantasy
Speaker 1: and reality. Whenever I go somewhere, I have tried to
Speaker 1: picture myself living there and like, what would I do?
Speaker 1: What would my days be like? But I've really barely
Speaker 1: lived outside of New York. I feel like, at least
Speaker 1: you're honest about liking the sort of stability and the
Speaker 1: network that you have here and not needing that much
Speaker 1: of a change. For me, it's like, do you really
Speaker 1: want to work abroad or are you just looking for
Speaker 1: something to think about that isn't recidily life when you
Speaker 1: go on vacation, of course you want to live in
Speaker 1: the places your vacation, right, and you don't think about
Speaker 1: the work life there. I do remember that from living
Speaker 1: in Argentina, like the people who lived and work there,
Speaker 1: it's hard. It's like a hard place to live and work.
Speaker 1: Everything is easier for tourists, but for people who are
Speaker 1: serious about it. It does seem like right now there
Speaker 1: are unique opportunities for highly skilled professionals to go work abroad.
Speaker 1: For example, just recently, after President Trump hold America out
Speaker 1: of the Paris Climate Accords, French President Macron made this
Speaker 1: big statement about how US climate scientists who are frustrated
Speaker 1: by the environment here should or would be welcome in France.
Speaker 1: There was a similar plea Canada made a few months
Speaker 1: ago about trying to lure tech professionals to to Canada.
Speaker 1: So there's there are other allied US countries who are
Speaker 1: trying to take advantage of what they would perceive as
Speaker 1: people being frustrated with living in the US and get
Speaker 1: some of that talent over to their country. Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: seen articles about people from abroad applications being down at
Speaker 1: universities here, and that usually like leads to people staying
Speaker 1: here and wanting to work here. But I think because
Speaker 1: of immigration worries and visa worries, it's a lot less
Speaker 1: likely that they can come work here. So other countries
Speaker 1: are a kind of saying, oh, look look at us,
Speaker 1: Look at our great universities. Are are a great companies, right,
Speaker 1: They're also trying to lure legal immigrants in the US
Speaker 1: who may not want to stay here because of the
Speaker 1: politics of the US. So those are like the headlines
Speaker 1: that suggest, you know, something might be changing, But of
Speaker 1: course everybody has their own practical reality, and when you
Speaker 1: actually think about what it would take to move somewhere
Speaker 1: else and establish a new life there, it's really daunting.
Speaker 1: Like for starters, you have to find work that you
Speaker 1: could do, then you have to get the legal permission
Speaker 1: to work there. You need a good deal of money
Speaker 1: in most cases to to move. And then after all
Speaker 1: that there's re established sing yourself somewhere else in all
Speaker 1: of the kind of culture shock that wouldn'to. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: definitely a culture shock to working in a country that's
Speaker 1: not your own. And here at Bloomberg, we have a
Speaker 1: lot of colleagues from other countries working in our New
Speaker 1: York offices, so we asked some of them what it's
Speaker 1: like to work in a foreign country. I grew up
Speaker 1: in Pakistan and the most surprising thing about the work
Speaker 1: culture in the US is how much time we spent
Speaker 1: working over here. So I'm from Brazil and one of
Speaker 1: the most shocking things for a Brazilian working in the
Speaker 1: United States is the fact that people eat at their desks,
Speaker 1: if they eat it at all. I'm from England and
Speaker 1: to me, the most surprising thing about working in the
Speaker 1: US is how willing people are to work on their weekends.
Speaker 1: Um from Australia and the biggest thing I think I
Speaker 1: know with working culture in the US is that working
Speaker 1: outs are a lot longer here. I'm from Denmark and
Speaker 1: the most surprising thing about working in the US to
Speaker 1: me is the lack of consecutive weeks of vacation. Another
Speaker 1: very interesting thing is just like the concept of personal
Speaker 1: space in the United States, especially in the office, where
Speaker 1: it's it's very different in a place like in Brazil
Speaker 1: where sometimes instead of like you messaging someone, which would
Speaker 1: be seen almost as impolite, especially if you're sitting nearby
Speaker 1: that person. I mean, people would go out there and
Speaker 1: just lightly touch that person on the shoulder and say, Hi,
Speaker 1: here's the facts that it's supposed to deliver to you,
Speaker 1: and then here. I remember that. Right when I moved.
Speaker 1: You know, there was an editor who worked with me
Speaker 1: very closely, so I would do that right and any
Speaker 1: one day he said, in the United States, you should
Speaker 1: stop touching people and I said, okay, I'll never touch
Speaker 1: any There was a theme to a lot of the
Speaker 1: things that our colleagues that which is that Americans have
Speaker 1: terrible work life balance and we don't appreciate vacation for
Speaker 1: lunch bakes. Yeah they they phrased it in very nice ways,
Speaker 1: but it does sound from a foreign perspective that working
Speaker 1: and living in America is kind of miserable. And and
Speaker 1: my question was always like, wait, but so why are
Speaker 1: you here? And it was kind of for the same reason,
Speaker 1: like the things that are drawing our colleagues from foreign
Speaker 1: countries are the same things that are kind of hard
Speaker 1: to adjust to, which is just that people are very
Speaker 1: into work here. I mean, some of the reasons for
Speaker 1: that maybe a little unhealthy, but it also is kind
Speaker 1: of nice to be around a bunch of ambitious people
Speaker 1: who are all working on the same project and you know,
Speaker 1: all feel really strongly about getting it done right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So they're willing to sacrifice some of the things the
Speaker 1: comforts of being in their own country to do something
Speaker 1: that they want to do, which is what you would
Speaker 1: have to do if you want to move to Canada
Speaker 1: because of the president. Okay, so say you want to
Speaker 1: work abroad, and you're ready for all the challenges, including
Speaker 1: the culture shock, but you don't really know where to start.
Speaker 1: Our guest today wrote an op ed for The New
Speaker 1: York Times urging more Americans to work abroad. So Katu
Speaker 1: Meta is the author of Maximum City, Bombay, Lost and
Speaker 1: Found Any Teachers Journalism at New York University. He grew
Speaker 1: up in India, moved to the US in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: and has lived in cities all over the world. So Kati,
Speaker 1: thanks for joining us, Thank you, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1: In a recent article you wrote for The New York Times,
Speaker 1: you encourage more Americans to work overseas. Why is that, Well,
Speaker 1: because of the world bigger than just America, and often
Speaker 1: people like my students who have spent all the lives
Speaker 1: in the United States don't quite realize that. Um until
Speaker 1: recently eight Americans didn't even have a puff bote until
Speaker 1: it became obligatory to to having to go to Canada Mexico.
Speaker 1: And the percentage of Americans that have a puffpote is
Speaker 1: still quite low compared to Canadians or Brits or Australians.
Speaker 1: For what I've trying to say in my article if
Speaker 1: that for younger Americans, particularly in these days where you know,
Speaker 1: the last election was all about jobs, that you shouldn't
Speaker 1: just look for jobs in the United States, and just
Speaker 1: if my family had to leave rural India in the
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties and then, you know, look for jobs all
Speaker 1: over the world. It's now something that more and more
Speaker 1: Americans are realizing. And there's actually nine million non military
Speaker 1: Americans living abroad, up from four million in So say
Speaker 1: Americans take your advice and they start looking for jobs
Speaker 1: and work abroad, what do you think some of the
Speaker 1: biggest obstacles that they might face are, Well, I think
Speaker 1: a lot of it is just this idea of leaving home.
Speaker 1: So if you're grown up in France or Germany or Australia,
Speaker 1: you kind of used to the idea of leaving home
Speaker 1: all the time. That if it's not that you love
Speaker 1: your homeless but because of the geography of these countries,
Speaker 1: you grow up traveling abroad much more so when Americans
Speaker 1: go abroad for the first time, and certainly when they
Speaker 1: go looking for jobs. The first thing he realized that
Speaker 1: I've written about this in my book Maximum City. When
Speaker 1: I moved back to Bombay, after twenty one years to
Speaker 1: write a book. I was incredibly frustrated that everything, like,
Speaker 1: you know, the way that the government works or doesn't work,
Speaker 1: the corruption in everyday life, the filth in the streets,
Speaker 1: and sometimes just the attitude of people. So I called
Speaker 1: it country of the No, referring to India, and it
Speaker 1: took me some time to get used to living again
Speaker 1: in the country where I was born. So when Americans
Speaker 1: go abroad, don't expect the rest of the world to
Speaker 1: be America. Enjoy the parts of it that are not,
Speaker 1: and realized that America now is a much more portable notion.
Speaker 1: That is, when Americans travel, America comes with them in
Speaker 1: their fast food and their culture here in the clothes.
Speaker 1: In some sense, much of the planet now looks like America.
Speaker 1: You mentioned in your article that working abroad isn't something
Speaker 1: we only have to associate with a certain elite. But
Speaker 1: how can ordinary people get the things that they would
Speaker 1: need to work abroad. Well, it's funny if if here,
Speaker 1: if you are from the elite, if you've been well educated, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, if your parents have taken you for spring
Speaker 1: break to other countries. You grew up with a great
Speaker 1: offensive confidence intervald But what I've submitted in my article
Speaker 1: if um, if you go looking for a job in
Speaker 1: a car factory in Mexico, I mean the car jobs
Speaker 1: are moving abroad to Mexico. You're not going to live
Speaker 1: as well as a unionized auto worker in Michigan, but
Speaker 1: you might live much better than if you had an
Speaker 1: eight dollar and our job flipping burgers in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: For the idea is that even though the absolute felleries
Speaker 1: might be lower in these countries, you actually have a
Speaker 1: shot at leading a middle class life in a country
Speaker 1: like Mexico or Canada or any of these other factories
Speaker 1: which if they opened up their labor market to Americans,
Speaker 1: you know, you can have a car and apartment. You
Speaker 1: can basically live a middle class life even if you
Speaker 1: aren't highly skilled. And I see lots of for example,
Speaker 1: American security personnel and firefighters in the countries that I
Speaker 1: go to around the world, So it's it still is
Speaker 1: mostly for the elite, but there's more and more of
Speaker 1: the non elite jobs that are opening up for Americans,
Speaker 1: and Americans are going abroad to take them because they're
Speaker 1: drying up in America itself. You talked about how there
Speaker 1: might be some downsides to living abroad, like a lower salary.
Speaker 1: Is there any upside to going to a country where
Speaker 1: you make class money, Well, I mean it helps to
Speaker 1: realize that, you know, you can actually be happy in
Speaker 1: a country which doesn't have the same level of like reconsumption.
Speaker 1: What most Americans are really shocked by when they go
Speaker 1: abroad if that they can get thick and not go bankrupt.
Speaker 1: This is something that came up over and over again
Speaker 1: in the Instagram response to my op ed. All these
Speaker 1: young Americans who go to Europe or Australia, and you know,
Speaker 1: there are all these stories about getting thick, going to
Speaker 1: the emergency room, getting surgery and coming out and realizing
Speaker 1: there's no detectible, there's no copay, the government does what
Speaker 1: it should and health care is treated as a human right.
Speaker 1: And then many of these same stories, you know, talk
Speaker 1: about their horror at the idea of returning to a
Speaker 1: country where, even if you are insured, when you get thick,
Speaker 1: you know, your greatest wory going into the operating room
Speaker 1: is how am I going to pay for this? There
Speaker 1: are some people talking about leaving the country for political reasons.
Speaker 1: This happens almost every election. Are they wrong about how
Speaker 1: easy it might be to re establish their career or
Speaker 1: their lives somewhere else. For people who want to leave
Speaker 1: the country because they don't like the political situation, you know,
Speaker 1: they could be accused of devotion. Why don't you stay
Speaker 1: here and fight the good fight if you really are
Speaker 1: so concerned. But then you know, there are people who
Speaker 1: are genuinely disgusted with what's happened with American politics, and
Speaker 1: they see the entire democratic and indeed constitutional structure of
Speaker 1: the country have rigged. She Ha's another big shock that
Speaker 1: people find out when they go abroad. And even if
Speaker 1: all the money that you earn if in the foreign
Speaker 1: country in foreign currency, you will still get taxed on
Speaker 1: it by the United States government. America is one of
Speaker 1: the few countries that taxes its citizens even when they
Speaker 1: go abroad and aren't actually, you know, enjoying anything other
Speaker 1: than the consular protections of the United States. Um. There
Speaker 1: is an exclusion which i've I believe a little over
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand dollars the first hundred tho dollars of
Speaker 1: your income. Everything after that is texted federal rates, and
Speaker 1: the the U. S. Treasury is also very particular about
Speaker 1: bank accounts that you open oversees. It requires documentation and recording,
Speaker 1: so you know, you might leave America, but America won't
Speaker 1: leave you. And citizens of other countries like the EO
Speaker 1: countries find it much easier to live and work abroad.
Speaker 1: Just in terms of the logistics of it. You mentioned
Speaker 1: that it is easier for younger people to reinstate themselves abroad.
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask if you had any advice for
Speaker 1: people who are older or have more established careers or
Speaker 1: families and who want to do this. Well. There are
Speaker 1: all kinds of websites and services that recruit Americans because
Speaker 1: you know, in spite of all the problems with the country,
Speaker 1: in almost every country that I've traveled to, and I've
Speaker 1: traveld to quite a few, Americans are universally respected for
Speaker 1: their world ethic, their efficiency, and their own ft and
Speaker 1: it's almost unparalleled. So people who go abroad, for example,
Speaker 1: executives who posted abroad by multinationals tend to do quite well.
Speaker 1: And if you're going abroad on an expact package, you
Speaker 1: will live like a king. So there's also this reverse shock,
Speaker 1: and Americans short on expact packages come back and they
Speaker 1: don't have all the perks that go with the expat life.
Speaker 1: But for people who are just you know, picking up
Speaker 1: and going for the first time, it's going to be difficult. Cutily,
Speaker 1: if you have a family, housing isn't cheap in much
Speaker 1: of the rest of the world, and getting into a
Speaker 1: foreign culture, of course, depending on the culture, can be
Speaker 1: quite difficult. But in most of these countries, you know,
Speaker 1: there's an American focal that will welcome you in. Even
Speaker 1: when I took my family back to India, would regularly
Speaker 1: go for things like Fourth of July parties at the
Speaker 1: American Consulate in Bombay. You did an Instagram call out
Speaker 1: with your article for stories from expats. What were some
Speaker 1: of the responses? Like, Yeah, so the Instagram responses generally
Speaker 1: by people in the twenties or thirties who had moved
Speaker 1: all over the world A lot in Europe, a lot
Speaker 1: in South and Central America, and lots of really gorgeous
Speaker 1: pictures of these Americans frolicking and water faults and as
Speaker 1: your oceans and hanging out with a cute, cuddly animals,
Speaker 1: sipping cappuccino in Parisian sidewalks and so forth. So they
Speaker 1: I was impressed by how good they looked, the people
Speaker 1: as well as the surroundings they were in. And as
Speaker 1: I mentioned, health care is something that was constant in
Speaker 1: these responses, the fact that there's a just dramatically better
Speaker 1: quality of health care, and also the work life balance
Speaker 1: that was very important. In most of the rest of
Speaker 1: the world except maybe Japan, people don't work as hard
Speaker 1: as Americans and there is this big focus on eating. So,
Speaker 1: for example, if you go to Spain, even if you
Speaker 1: work for a corporation, you'll have a tour lunch break,
Speaker 1: the same thing in Italy. In many countries ne world,
Speaker 1: you'll have a siesta, and in the evenings you'll go
Speaker 1: out with people that you work with and you know,
Speaker 1: drink with them until it's dinner timement, sometimes beyond. So
Speaker 1: there seemed to be this idea that the people who
Speaker 1: left did earn as much, didn't accumulate as much as
Speaker 1: they might have if that stayed home, although that wasn't
Speaker 1: truin every case, but most of them lived much better
Speaker 1: while they were working. Were there any challenges that people
Speaker 1: told you about. There wasn't much mention of the challenges
Speaker 1: in the Instagram responses. You know, a couple of posts
Speaker 1: which talked about being lonely, missing family, you know, missing people,
Speaker 1: None of them as far as I could see, you know,
Speaker 1: of all the few hundreds that I saw, and the
Speaker 1: Facebook responses talked about missing things like nature or you know,
Speaker 1: New York. The vitality of it because for the people
Speaker 1: who went abroad, obviously it was a felt selected group,
Speaker 1: the people who felt that they could leave all this
Speaker 1: and then go. And I think that's because which the
Speaker 1: air fares being what they are, you can come to
Speaker 1: America come back to it all the time. I mean,
Speaker 1: what is exile when around trip home is five hundred bucks.
Speaker 1: So this wasn't possible with earlier waves of migrations for
Speaker 1: people who left their countries like mine. You know, when
Speaker 1: we came in the nineteen seventies, we might go back
Speaker 1: to India once for every two or three years because
Speaker 1: air fare then we're much more expensive than they are now.
Speaker 1: It was a much bigger production, you know. Now I
Speaker 1: traveled back and forth between India and the US sometimes
Speaker 1: four or five times a year. So it's easier for
Speaker 1: Americans who who go abroad to to keep their links
Speaker 1: for the home country. Well, do you have me completely
Speaker 1: sold on working abroad. So like an Instagram post, I've
Speaker 1: just to figure out how to talk my family into it.
Speaker 1: And so thank you so much for coming in and
Speaker 1: talking to us, Thank you for having it. Seems to
Speaker 1: me that maybe the mistake a lot of people make
Speaker 1: when they think about having a career in a different
Speaker 1: country is expecting to basically completely transfer their existing life
Speaker 1: from here to there, so working a similar kind of environment,
Speaker 1: have a similar kind of job, and maybe even speak
Speaker 1: your native language. That's why Americans were looking to emigrate
Speaker 1: to New Zealand and Canada and not Brazil. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: that's hard to adapt to different culture, different language. I
Speaker 1: found this article in the New York Times with this
Speaker 1: reporter who moved her entire family to Japan for her job,
Speaker 1: and they were working very hard to integrate into a
Speaker 1: culture that's notoriously difficult to integrate into it. Her husband
Speaker 1: quit his job to move with her. She has kids. Um,
Speaker 1: they're both learning language which is very different than English. Um.
Speaker 1: She talks about all these different work customs which are interesting,
Speaker 1: like having to remember to bow right when you get
Speaker 1: in and you have to ask for a business card
Speaker 1: right away when meeting someone, or else that's rude. She
Speaker 1: talked about like having to fax interview requests, just all
Speaker 1: those little things, and um, it sounds like she mostly
Speaker 1: likes it. But she talked about how her daughter hurt
Speaker 1: herself and they couldn't find hospital that spoke English and
Speaker 1: they were using their like bilingual dictionary and reading about it.
Speaker 1: It's just a paragraph in the story, but I mean,
Speaker 1: can you imagine how insane that was in the moment? Yeah? No,
Speaker 1: And it just goes to show how much more complicated
Speaker 1: it gets when you're trying to do this with a family,
Speaker 1: when everyone involved has stakes in other things, when your
Speaker 1: your spouse has a career that they have to figure
Speaker 1: out what they're going to do about, and when you
Speaker 1: have a kid that you're trying to raise and take
Speaker 1: care of and protect and expecting that you won't face
Speaker 1: those challenges, and even expecting that you won't have to
Speaker 1: integrate into a new culture. I think is white remains
Speaker 1: a fantasy for most people who think about it, like
Speaker 1: if they just don't end up doing anything about it,
Speaker 1: because that fantasy of working abroad it doesn't really exist.
Speaker 1: I think you should do it if you value the
Speaker 1: experience of being kind of out of your comfort zone
Speaker 1: and thrown into a new environment, and you should expect
Speaker 1: to face all these difficulties. Yeah, and that's what made
Speaker 1: all the difficulties of moving to Japan worth a firm.
Speaker 1: A Toko Rich that New York Times reporter and the
Speaker 1: piece she talks about how her daughter came home from
Speaker 1: school one day and told her that she thought it
Speaker 1: would be cool to move around a lot. That's when
Speaker 1: Rich said she knew that she made the right decision
Speaker 1: to move her family to Tokyo because she wants her
Speaker 1: kids to value being outside their comfort zones. And now
Speaker 1: it's time for half baked takes. Half bake takes. You
Speaker 1: can call us and leave a voicemail with your half
Speaker 1: baked take at two and two six one seven zero
Speaker 1: one six six. And if you tried to call us
Speaker 1: in the last couple of weeks and got redirected to
Speaker 1: the Bloomberg switchboard, we're very sorry. It was a technical
Speaker 1: error which is fixed now. So please is don't let
Speaker 1: those halfig takes go to waste call back and leave
Speaker 1: them on our voicemail. Becca, what do you feel super
Speaker 1: strongly about? That doesn't really matter. I was inspired by
Speaker 1: our coworkers who were talking all about how Americans suck
Speaker 1: at vacation, and I think that the worst day is
Speaker 1: to take off are days that nobody's gonna be working anyway.
Speaker 1: So somebody mentioned this year, July four is on a Tuesday,
Speaker 1: and how you might take off the Monday before, and
Speaker 1: I say, that's dumb. Don't do that because nobody's gonna
Speaker 1: be working anyway, and everyone's gonna leave early anyway. So
Speaker 1: why ways the whole vacation day on that unless you're
Speaker 1: trying to plan like a whole trip and you want
Speaker 1: to just if you're doing like a Tuesday to Tuesday
Speaker 1: and you want, you know, you need to take the
Speaker 1: Monday to take it off, but just the one day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: A hundred percent on board this. You should be on
Speaker 1: the days when the office is slow. You should definitely
Speaker 1: be in the office because it's like a mini vacation,
Speaker 1: Like all you have to do is get your physical
Speaker 1: body into the office. Um, but then you're kind of
Speaker 1: free to do whatever you want. It's it's when the
Speaker 1: office really needs you that you should go on. Sounds
Speaker 1: like a very American half big take where I'm like,
Speaker 1: you know, gaming the system to like eke out the
Speaker 1: vacation days where Europeans would just be like we got
Speaker 1: off all summer anyway or whatever. Yeah, I know, we're
Speaker 1: so obsessed with taking as little time as possible that
Speaker 1: we put way too much thought into exactly what days
Speaker 1: of the week are right to take. You know, It's
Speaker 1: it's very stressful anyway, Francesca, what is your half pick take?
Speaker 1: I have found the absolute worst autocorrect failure. It's not
Speaker 1: even an autocorrect failure. It's just a really common text
Speaker 1: or messaging error, which is and I don't know why
Speaker 1: everyone seems to do this, and I certainly do it,
Speaker 1: replacing the exclamation point with a question mark or vice versa.
Speaker 1: Have you ever done this? I'm sure it's like a
Speaker 1: tick that you don't like that people do. No, it's
Speaker 1: I mean, it's well, it's an ax it in. But
Speaker 1: then when you do it, it completely changes the meaning
Speaker 1: of whatever you're writing. Disastrous. So once I basically sent
Speaker 1: somebody work to do on a weekend, and I was like,
Speaker 1: it was like a group of people. I was like
Speaker 1: asking the news editors to do something and said happy
Speaker 1: long weekend news editors, but instead I put a question
Speaker 1: mark by mistakes. So it was like, happy long weekend
Speaker 1: news editors, and then actually it makes it even Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like, here's a crappy thing I'm gonna do and
Speaker 1: make you work on your long weekend. Um, but I've
Speaker 1: seen other people do this, and then you have to
Speaker 1: go back and correct, like you have to add a
Speaker 1: little asterisk. Can say I meanted an exclamation point, But
Speaker 1: it's the damage is done. You've already you've added a
Speaker 1: tone to your I don't know why do we do
Speaker 1: this is it's psychological. It's not at the slip of
Speaker 1: the finger that half baked dick is copy udit it
Speaker 1: your text messages, No, I refuse. Texts are the only
Speaker 1: place where I can be lucy lucy with language. Then
Speaker 1: you're gonna pay the talk today to be editing my
Speaker 1: got a casual writing the casualties. All right, this has
Speaker 1: been half bag takes, half baked takes. Thank you for
Speaker 1: listening to game Plan. You can find me on Twitter
Speaker 1: at francesco today and I'm at RZ Greenfield. You can
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Speaker 1: produced by Liz Smith and Magnus Hendrickson. Head of podcast
Speaker 1: is Alec McCabe. We'll see you next week at Bye
Speaker 1: m H. Every day I say something else that no
Speaker 1: one understands here. I told someone I didn't want to
Speaker 1: throw a spanner in the works, which means I don't
Speaker 1: want to stuff up the process. I'd often get asked
Speaker 1: if I had a ball breaking yarn by my editor.
Speaker 1: That means do you have a scoop