Speaker 1: Welcome to game Plan, a show about our lives at work.
Speaker 1: I'm Rebecca Greenfield, a reporter for Bloomberg, where I cover
Speaker 1: workplace culture, and I'm Francesco Leady, editor of the game
Speaker 1: Plan section at Bloomberg dot com. Today we're talking career paths. Later,
Speaker 1: we'll talk to Mary Norris, also known as the Comma Queen.
Speaker 1: Mary's a copy editor at The New Yorker with a
Speaker 1: cult following. She'll tell us about her unlikely path to
Speaker 1: The New Yorker and the places her job has taken
Speaker 1: her since. But first, let's talk about the state of
Speaker 1: the career path today. So this idea of getting a
Speaker 1: job straight out of college and staying with the same
Speaker 1: company until you get a gold watch and cash and
Speaker 1: that pension. Nobody does that anymore, No, not real. So over,
Speaker 1: I don't know anybody doing that. I don't even know
Speaker 1: what a gold watch looks like. What's a watch? I
Speaker 1: just use my phone to tell the time. So, yeah, millennials,
Speaker 1: young people, they're not doing this at all. That's the
Speaker 1: received wisdom, that's what we read ad nauseam, is that
Speaker 1: millennials are not catching up to previous generations in terms
Speaker 1: of how fast they're getting their careers on track. But
Speaker 1: we're gonna kind of interrogate that a little bit, I think,
Speaker 1: because I feel like that's rooted in some misconceptions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's really easy to just think of the Lena
Speaker 1: Dunham character on Girls, who is entitled and does what
Speaker 1: they want and doesn't want to follow this notion of
Speaker 1: kind of getting on track. But I think in reality,
Speaker 1: for a lot of young people, it's not something that's
Speaker 1: as much in their control as we would like to think. Right,
Speaker 1: It's not necessarily a trait of millennials personalities that's making
Speaker 1: them make the choices that they make. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of external factors, like the difficulty in buying a
Speaker 1: home being settled with student debt. Yes, student debt is
Speaker 1: I think one of the biggest issues young people face
Speaker 1: just unprecedented, did not exist before, and I think that
Speaker 1: changes the way you think about your career. It's definitely
Speaker 1: only a reason people live at home. I've interviewed people
Speaker 1: just out of school who have decent jobs and are
Speaker 1: just saving the rent money because that rent money can
Speaker 1: go straight back to their student debt payment. And the
Speaker 1: idea that millennials have no company loyalty and don't sort
Speaker 1: of lock themselves into a career early and then work
Speaker 1: their way up in a company. Is a little more
Speaker 1: complicated than it seems at first to write like this
Speaker 1: isn't strictly a millennial thing. No, young people hop around.
Speaker 1: They've always hopped around. I found a pretty interesting number
Speaker 1: from a Times article about ten years ago that said
Speaker 1: boomers had ten and a half jobs between baby boomers
Speaker 1: between the ages eighteen and forty. Young people are just
Speaker 1: figuring out what they want to do, right, So we're
Speaker 1: also jumping around from a job is the best way
Speaker 1: to make more money. Annual raises especially now just don't
Speaker 1: cut it. You have to get a promotion or move up, right,
Speaker 1: So like finding a new job is the best way
Speaker 1: to cement salary increases, and so it's actually can be
Speaker 1: a smart career choice. And what you're saying is that
Speaker 1: people have always operated this way when they're young. They've
Speaker 1: moved from job to job. It's not some sudden shift
Speaker 1: in the way young people think about the value of work.
Speaker 1: The other thing that has changed is the sort of
Speaker 1: implied social contract between businesses and their employees. So there
Speaker 1: was a really interesting story on NPRS marketplace about the
Speaker 1: rise of the idea of shareholder value and the economist
Speaker 1: Milton Friedman's ideas that companies should think more about profits
Speaker 1: than either doing good in the world or doing right
Speaker 1: by the people that work for them, And what it
Speaker 1: led to was a huge soaring stock market in the
Speaker 1: eighties in the seventies and eighties, as companies trim their
Speaker 1: expenses and restructured and became a little bit more ruthless
Speaker 1: about providing value sharehold there's and meeting analysts estimates every quarter.
Speaker 1: But it also led to things like the demise of
Speaker 1: pension plans and the sort of withering away of employee benefits,
Speaker 1: and the kind of general sense that that you had
Speaker 1: job security if you went to a company and did
Speaker 1: a good job and worked your way up through the ranks.
Speaker 1: So it's almost like companies started this, like they were
Speaker 1: the ones that changed the deal. And it feels a
Speaker 1: little unfair to blame millennials or young people for not
Speaker 1: keeping up their end of the bargain by being loyal
Speaker 1: to companies. Yeah, I mean, I really think that I
Speaker 1: don't get the idea of being loyal to your company
Speaker 1: at all. I think that people should work hard, and
Speaker 1: should do the jobs that they're hired for, and should
Speaker 1: try not to screw people over. But we're almost brainwashed
Speaker 1: into this idea that you're doing something wrong if you
Speaker 1: act in your own interests by taking another job that
Speaker 1: pays better and gives you better opportunities. Whereas, like who said,
Speaker 1: your company can't fire you any time they want from
Speaker 1: most anything. Yeah, companies have shifted to this buzzy word
Speaker 1: of the culture, so like you have these relationships with
Speaker 1: your coworkers and you feel a sense of belonging, like
Speaker 1: that's a reason to stick around, which is a pretty
Speaker 1: lousy replacement for financial security when you're old, right, And coincidentally,
Speaker 1: it's a lot cheaper for companies to instill a sense
Speaker 1: of corporate culture than it is to invest in your
Speaker 1: retirement income. Right. And we've seen the rise of empty
Speaker 1: ish perks as a way to keep and attract employees,
Speaker 1: which I guess they work in a sense, but obviously
Speaker 1: not that well because people are jumping around. We've been
Speaker 1: talking about sort of the difference between finding a career
Speaker 1: path and settling into it early and then just kind
Speaker 1: of doggedly working your way up the ladder. And sort
Speaker 1: of floating around aimlessly like a typical millennial, and just
Speaker 1: making decisions based on your whims or what what sparks
Speaker 1: your soul. And it might be a good time to
Speaker 1: talk about our guests career path. So our guest has
Speaker 1: had the following jobs. She was a key girl at
Speaker 1: a public pool. She was a cashier at a costume shop.
Speaker 1: She drove a milk chuck for a dairy farm. She
Speaker 1: was a cheese factory worker, dishwasher, and worked the register
Speaker 1: to a department store. So she had a lot of
Speaker 1: jobs before now being a copy editor. What a classic
Speaker 1: aimless millennial. Actually. Mary Norris has been with The New
Speaker 1: Yorker since. She's not only a copy editor, but she's
Speaker 1: something of a grammar celebrity. She wrote a best seller
Speaker 1: Between You and Me, Confessions of a Comic Queen, and
Speaker 1: hosts the popular web series also called Commic Queen, where
Speaker 1: each week she dives into our favorite grammar questions. We're
Speaker 1: going to start out by addressing the all important question
Speaker 1: of the serial comma. The serial comma, also known as
Speaker 1: the Oxford comma, is the common before and in a
Speaker 1: series of three or more, there's a famous one. We
Speaker 1: invited the stripper jf K and Stalin. If it were
Speaker 1: we invited the strippers Comma, JFK, Comma and Stalin, then
Speaker 1: you wouldn't mistake JFK and Stalin for strippers. So if
Speaker 1: you don't want to use the serial Comma, save it
Speaker 1: for some time when it really means something, when it
Speaker 1: really makes a difference. Okay, Mary, thanks so much for
Speaker 1: coming on our show today. Pleasure to be here. So,
Speaker 1: before you got to the New Yorker, where you've been
Speaker 1: for some time, we talked about some of your early jobs.
Speaker 1: Why don't you tell us about some of those in
Speaker 1: your experience before settling in Well, my very first job
Speaker 1: ever was checking feet. Had a public pool in Cleveland.
Speaker 1: We've had this tradition in Cleveland. I think a lot
Speaker 1: of great lake cities did have it where you had
Speaker 1: to use this bench and um put one foot at
Speaker 1: a time upon this foot shaped platform and use your
Speaker 1: fingers to spread out your toes and what you were doing.
Speaker 1: What I was doing was making sure no one got
Speaker 1: into the pool who had athletes foot. We were trying
Speaker 1: to stem the spread of athletes foot in the city
Speaker 1: of Cleveland. This doesn't sound like a job that you
Speaker 1: were led to by your passion for stemming athletes foot
Speaker 1: your passion feet. I did not have a foot fetish,
Speaker 1: and it was not what you'd call a career move right.
Speaker 1: I was fifteen and a half and I just wanted
Speaker 1: some spending money, you know, a teenager wants that. So
Speaker 1: that was my very first job. And I always wanted
Speaker 1: to have a little financial independence, and so I took
Speaker 1: what jobs I could get as a teenager. I worked
Speaker 1: in a discount store in Cleveland, marking clothing. My first
Speaker 1: job when I got out of college was in a
Speaker 1: costume company in Cleveland. Then I got a job driving
Speaker 1: a milk truck and that was the best job I've
Speaker 1: ever had. What was so great about it? Well, I
Speaker 1: liked cows and any job that had to do with
Speaker 1: cows even remotely. But I did believe in in milk
Speaker 1: and cut What did you like about cows, Um, They're
Speaker 1: so placid and contented and productive. You know, they gave milk.
Speaker 1: You have written about all of these different jobs that
Speaker 1: you've taken that seem largely unconnected, but it sort of
Speaker 1: seems like you've made a lot of decisions that were
Speaker 1: driven by um wanting financial independence or just needing a
Speaker 1: job and then been able to kind of find the
Speaker 1: meaning in the job once you got there. Was that?
Speaker 1: Is that accurate? Well, I knew that I was looking
Speaker 1: for experience too. Yes, I wanted to be a writer
Speaker 1: from the very beginning. Um after those couple of jobs
Speaker 1: in Cleveland, I went back to graduate school at the
Speaker 1: University of Vermont. There again I was following the cows,
Speaker 1: and I got an m a. In English literature there
Speaker 1: English and American literature, and I learned to milk University cows.
Speaker 1: And my first job after that was in a mazzarella plant,
Speaker 1: she's fa actory where we packaged mozzarella. And I remember
Speaker 1: I had wanted to write fiction as a graduate student.
Speaker 1: I thought I could do a master's thesis that was
Speaker 1: a collection of stories. But they wouldn't let me do that,
Speaker 1: and they even said I didn't have enough experience to
Speaker 1: be writing fiction. And then the funny thing was that
Speaker 1: one of the professors I had had after I got
Speaker 1: the job and the cheese factory, said well, now you'll
Speaker 1: have some experience. So the themes so far running through
Speaker 1: your career cows, dairy and writing. Yes, yes, that's about right.
Speaker 1: But then you moved to New York, a place that
Speaker 1: has a notable lack of cows. Why don't you tell
Speaker 1: us about that decision and where that took your career.
Speaker 1: At the time, I had a sibling living in New
Speaker 1: York who had become friends with a woman who was
Speaker 1: in his um portraiture class, and it turned out that
Speaker 1: she her name was Jeanne flush Shman. It turned out
Speaker 1: she was married to Peter Fleishman, who was the chairman
Speaker 1: of the board of the New Yorker, who was the
Speaker 1: son of Raoul Fleishman, one of the original founders. And
Speaker 1: I got to know them, and I started to think, well,
Speaker 1: maybe I could live in New York. Indeed, my sibling
Speaker 1: did suggest she was going to Paris. She had a
Speaker 1: wonderful career herself as a musician or big job was
Speaker 1: that she played the harp and a bear costume. I
Speaker 1: guess costumes were a family thing, and mammals costume of mammals.
Speaker 1: She had this nice gig playing the harp in a
Speaker 1: bare suit outside of one of the gates of Central Park,
Speaker 1: and she she told me, well, you could probably get
Speaker 1: some kind of job in publishing. So I came to
Speaker 1: New York Peter Fleshman was a wonderful friend to me.
Speaker 1: He was on the business side, of course, and in
Speaker 1: those days, business and editorial did not mix. So he
Speaker 1: actually could not get me a job at The New Yorker.
Speaker 1: But he could call the executive editor and say I
Speaker 1: was going to call and would like to talk to him.
Speaker 1: So Peter arranged that. Yeah, that seems like a pretty
Speaker 1: big thing, a connection. People talk about that now, how
Speaker 1: important that is to getting jobs. So I guess things
Speaker 1: haven't changed that much. But so then you eventually do
Speaker 1: get a job at the New Yorker. Obviously, Yes, there
Speaker 1: was no opening that first time I talked to this editor,
Speaker 1: but I called back. I'd been washing dishes in Patterson,
Speaker 1: I'd done statistical typing as a temp, and I'd been
Speaker 1: a temporary cashier at a discount store e J Corvettes.
Speaker 1: You probably don't remember. That was a long time ago,
Speaker 1: and I was going to try to get a hack
Speaker 1: license and drive a cab. I still add my chauffeur's
Speaker 1: license from having driven the milk truck, so I thought
Speaker 1: that would be a natural But in fact I did
Speaker 1: not know my way around in New York, and it
Speaker 1: would have been a total disaster if I had tried
Speaker 1: to drive a cab. So Peter said, why don't you
Speaker 1: call them back and see if there are any openings.
Speaker 1: And there were. There was an opening in the typing
Speaker 1: pool and one and what it's called the editor I
Speaker 1: live Prairie. I failed the test for the typing pool.
Speaker 1: There was an electric typewriter, and you know, I'd only
Speaker 1: had a manual up to that point, and that was
Speaker 1: my excuse anyway, that the typewriter just kind of took
Speaker 1: off without me. But in the editorial library was a
Speaker 1: little more primitive that manual typewriters, and we typed summaries
Speaker 1: of stories, even poems and nonfiction pieces. Type this summaries
Speaker 1: on index cards and indexed every piece, you know, by author,
Speaker 1: by subject. Every person who was mentioned in the piece
Speaker 1: would go into the file because those people might want
Speaker 1: to know where what piece they were in someday and
Speaker 1: they'd call up and ask. The cartoons were all indexed.
Speaker 1: You know, cartoon about a bird. Somebody might remember that
Speaker 1: they had seen a cartoon about a bird that laid
Speaker 1: a square egg, and they wanted a copy of that
Speaker 1: issue so they could call. And we had the an
Speaker 1: index where we could find that under birds. So you
Speaker 1: eventually ended up you finished the training. Yes, um, I
Speaker 1: did that for a little while, and then I learned
Speaker 1: another job called collating. And we had this proof reader,
Speaker 1: a grammarian who was legendary named Eleanor Gould, and she
Speaker 1: read everything in Galley, not the fiction, but everything else.
Speaker 1: You had to move her changes on to a clean proof,
Speaker 1: and there were loads of them, and I came to understand,
Speaker 1: or at least I came to study what she would do.
Speaker 1: And I began to internalize all that stuff, and I
Speaker 1: learned in biasmosis. So when there was an opening that
Speaker 1: on the copy desk, that's when I finally got to
Speaker 1: work on copy myself. When manuscripts would come through and
Speaker 1: you know, and get to reach on Updyke and John
Speaker 1: McPhee and Pauline Kale and wonderful stuff Harold Brodkey, I remember,
Speaker 1: and I would get to see what the editors did.
Speaker 1: And after many many years of that, I moved on
Speaker 1: to become query proof reader myself, the sort of thing
Speaker 1: that Eleanor Gould did. And did you have a moment
Speaker 1: where you knew you'd found your thing, where you were
Speaker 1: in your element and you sort of expected you'd stay
Speaker 1: there for a long time, or did you never really
Speaker 1: think that way about your career? Well, as soon as
Speaker 1: I got any job, as soon as I got the
Speaker 1: foot in the door at the New Yorker, I felt
Speaker 1: like this, well, this is probably it. I'm certainly not
Speaker 1: going to find a magazine that's better than this to
Speaker 1: work at. And I wanted to be a writer. But
Speaker 1: ever since I was a kid, I've known you know,
Speaker 1: I came from a working class family, and I knew
Speaker 1: that that I needed to paycheck and I had no
Speaker 1: rich father to ask for money except once in a while.
Speaker 1: And you are a writer. You've written a book confession. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: and that's this is wonderful bit, you know, even once
Speaker 1: you had a book, even once you've had a book
Speaker 1: on the best seller list, and Between You and Me
Speaker 1: was the best seller list for five weeks, not that
Speaker 1: I was counting. You still need a day job. It
Speaker 1: surprised me, But in a way you fulfill that prophecy
Speaker 1: of your teacher, where you all of your experience led
Speaker 1: to the material for you to write the book which
Speaker 1: is called Between You and Me Confessions of a Commic Queen. Right,
Speaker 1: I should say the whole title. I did not expect
Speaker 1: to get a book out of my day job, and
Speaker 1: you have a lot to say about commas. Surprisingly I do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was kind of surprised myself. So in addition to
Speaker 1: having published a book, now you also have this web series,
Speaker 1: comic Queen, which has a cult following, including fans like
Speaker 1: me and Fancesca. Was that unexpected? And how do you
Speaker 1: feel about your new role. Well, that's something that I
Speaker 1: agreed to do in order to help publicize the book.
Speaker 1: I was not really eager to make videos. It was
Speaker 1: not my idea, but the New Yorker and content asked
Speaker 1: in general, wanted to have more of an online presence.
Speaker 1: Doing videos was the hip thing to do, and I
Speaker 1: agreed to do it. And that again surprised me that
Speaker 1: people were really interested in that stuff. You know, we
Speaker 1: think copy editors very quiet, retiring lives. You know, to
Speaker 1: be a celebrity copy editors to be an oxymoron if
Speaker 1: there ever was one. So that has changed things around
Speaker 1: the office a bit. Some of the writers have gotten
Speaker 1: a little wary of me because they're afraid I'm going
Speaker 1: to use one of their sentences is well, well, thank
Speaker 1: you so much. For coming and talking to us today.
Speaker 1: Was really great having you. It was fun talking Thank
Speaker 1: you for having me. So what do we learn about
Speaker 1: career paths from talking to Mary, who was successful but
Speaker 1: in a way that she never imagined. Well, first of all,
Speaker 1: I learned that Mary is a delight. Oh yeah, she's
Speaker 1: so so great. I loved her. So here's somebody with
Speaker 1: this really specific career path like nobody else. She didn't
Speaker 1: follow in anyone's footsteps. No one else has that exactly
Speaker 1: the same sequence. It's like, I really want to be
Speaker 1: a dairy farmer or maybe a copy editor and and
Speaker 1: and a scholar of James Thurber in between. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think there are kind of two lessons from that. One
Speaker 1: is to understand that everything you're doing could give you
Speaker 1: some sort of skill for something later that you don't
Speaker 1: know you'll even need it for. Like I mean, her
Speaker 1: big example was saying that she had a lot to
Speaker 1: say about Commas, like decades worth of stuff to say
Speaker 1: about Commas, that so many people cared about that now
Speaker 1: she is a Commas celebrity, right, And she's a published writer,
Speaker 1: which ironically in a way, is the thing she always
Speaker 1: wanted to be. Like she was trying to get published
Speaker 1: and trying to find the subject matter that was that
Speaker 1: was perfect for her all throughout her career, and in
Speaker 1: the end it ended up being her day job. So
Speaker 1: the day job wasn't this irrelevant side act in her life.
Speaker 1: It was the thing that got her to her final goal. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I do wonder if at the time, at times she
Speaker 1: was more frustrated than she is now. It's easy to
Speaker 1: look back and say, like, oh, all the all those
Speaker 1: copy editing times paid off. But it's nice to be
Speaker 1: able to see that perspective from somebody and to know that,
Speaker 1: like your own frustrations with not achieving the things you're
Speaker 1: trying to achieve in the moment might look very different
Speaker 1: when you're looking back on it all. And I mean,
Speaker 1: I've certainly I had a total change in careers. I
Speaker 1: became a journalist only after spending about five or six
Speaker 1: years after college pursuing being a researcher, and that feels
Speaker 1: like a very different career path, and going to journalism
Speaker 1: school and then starting as a journalist felt a lot
Speaker 1: like starting over and kind of resetting. And it certainly
Speaker 1: was that from a salary perspective, and it was that
Speaker 1: from the perspective of being like a few years older
Speaker 1: than everybody that I worked with. But I realized now
Speaker 1: how much about kind of studying anthropology and being a
Speaker 1: researcher is completely relevant to journalism and thinking about research
Speaker 1: and how to interpret it, knowing how to interview people
Speaker 1: and basically write about what they say, which is what
Speaker 1: both researchers and journalists do. You know, I wasn't ever
Speaker 1: acquiring those skills and the interests of becoming a journalist,
Speaker 1: but I certainly use skills. I even use skills that
Speaker 1: I used what I was an acting student. Yeah, you do,
Speaker 1: I act really interested in some conversations. And on that note,
Speaker 1: let's take it to half baked takes, halfy fake takes,
Speaker 1: halfy takes, half big takes is where we have opinions
Speaker 1: about things that important. Opinions aren't quite fully formed enough
Speaker 1: for anything besides us talking about it right here, right now.
Speaker 1: So Francesca, tell me your half big take. Okay, this
Speaker 1: week's half big take is about one of the most
Speaker 1: insidious and misused phrases in the English language, possibly, and
Speaker 1: that's no worries. You're using no worries wrong, probably, or
Speaker 1: you know someone who has Yeah, I think it's not
Speaker 1: only an annoying phrase, but ever since you pointed this
Speaker 1: out to me, people are also using it around. It's
Speaker 1: both it's annoying even when you use it right. So
Speaker 1: no worries is like I think it's like an Australian
Speaker 1: originated uh idiom that's just like whenever, don't worry about it,
Speaker 1: no problem, no big thing, and it's it seems really
Speaker 1: useful in conversation. But one of the most passive aggressive
Speaker 1: things that people can do is use it. Basically, you're
Speaker 1: like forgiving somebody when you say no worries. So there's
Speaker 1: a lot of ways you can use it. That turned
Speaker 1: out to be really kind of uncool and rude. So
Speaker 1: I sat across from somebody at a desk who had
Speaker 1: restless leg syndrome, and I assume, I don't know if
Speaker 1: he was officially diagnosed, but that's I'm going to go
Speaker 1: ahead and diagnose it with that. He was very fidgety
Speaker 1: and he would just thrash his legs around under the
Speaker 1: desk and they would kick mine and I was bruised
Speaker 1: in the shins by the end of the day. And
Speaker 1: so after putting up with it silently or kind of
Speaker 1: grumpily by sighing loudly for a month or two. I
Speaker 1: finally went up to him and I was like, I
Speaker 1: don't know if you know this, but you're kicking me
Speaker 1: under the desk when you move your feet around, and
Speaker 1: it's it's just if you could just watch it. And
Speaker 1: he goes, oh, no worries, and I was like, yeah, what, No,
Speaker 1: I'm not worried. You should be worried, Like you can't worried.
Speaker 1: The correct thing to say is I'm so sorry I
Speaker 1: didn't realize I'll stop doing wow. Yeah, And and people
Speaker 1: use it like that's really a lot. They really, they
Speaker 1: really do. It's become a tick. So if you ever
Speaker 1: want to be really passive aggressive and somebody tries to
Speaker 1: call you out for something that you don't think you
Speaker 1: should be called out for, just respond to them with
Speaker 1: no worries and it will enrage them to the point
Speaker 1: of having to say something about it on a podcast.
Speaker 1: What's your half? By take? My half big take is
Speaker 1: that I love my sad dusk salad. I think there's
Speaker 1: this whole movement against the sad dusk salad. I think
Speaker 1: there are some books written about sad dusk sealing. There
Speaker 1: was a tumbler or a blog. I think tumbler A
Speaker 1: book deal happened. So a sad dust salad is what
Speaker 1: it sounds like. It's it's the epitome of cubical life.
Speaker 1: It's just staring glumly at your screen while you shove
Speaker 1: a healthy, green, gross meal into your mouth while you
Speaker 1: pretend to do work or scroll through the internet. I
Speaker 1: understand the symbolism and why it seems horrible. But I
Speaker 1: make a really good salad at home. It's really easy
Speaker 1: to do. You just buy like two or three kind
Speaker 1: of fun ingredients like am okay beats or hearts of palm.
Speaker 1: It's so easy. I buy tofu. Do you make it
Speaker 1: in the morning. I make it in the morning, put
Speaker 1: it in a tupperware and it's delightful and lovely and healthy.
Speaker 1: And you know what, I really like it, and stop
Speaker 1: shaming me. So you look forward to the moment in
Speaker 1: your day where you get your sad disk salad. But
Speaker 1: this is my question. The salad sounds great, thank you,
Speaker 1: but wouldn't it be better if it were not in
Speaker 1: a temper were but on a nice ceramic plate, and
Speaker 1: not at your desk, but at a picnic table. Or
Speaker 1: an outdoor fresco dining environment. Exactly, everyone's eating that. Somebody
Speaker 1: leaves and sits somewhere nice and eats. So but we
Speaker 1: don't call it sad dusk burrito because like we're it's
Speaker 1: like brito for the salad. Yeah, it's a happy desk salad.
Speaker 1: So I think that that. So the implication of the
Speaker 1: of the sad desk salad is that you're not only
Speaker 1: a workaholic who can't leave their desk and who has
Speaker 1: no more joy in their life, but you've also eliminated
Speaker 1: the the fun, calorie filled foods that you might be
Speaker 1: eating from that time. So basically you're miserable and you
Speaker 1: resent that and frankly think it's slightly sexist. It's true.
Speaker 1: It's are always criticized for being salad eaters, like it's
Speaker 1: the one time I know I'm going to eat greens today,
Speaker 1: and as a woman, I can say I hate salad.
Speaker 1: So just sucking at stereotype right there. So let me
Speaker 1: eat my salad and stop saying no worries unless you're
Speaker 1: actually apologizing for something. And this has been half big takes,
Speaker 1: half baked takes. Thanks for listening to game Plan for
Speaker 1: more You can find me on Twitter at rs Greenfield.
Speaker 1: Our guest Mary Norris is at Mary Norris t n Y.
Speaker 1: And I'm at Francesco today. See you next week. I
Speaker 1: want to do it. I have a half big take
Speaker 1: about bananas. Bananas are so genetically engineered. Why do we
Speaker 1: still have to deal with this garbage booger thing that
Speaker 1: you can't get rid of, and it never it always
Speaker 1: ends up like somewhere on your desk. It's really gross.