Speaker 1: Welcome to game Plan, a show about our lives at work.
Speaker 1: I'm Francesco Leavy, editor of the game Plan section at
Speaker 1: Bloomberg dot com, and I'm Rebecca Greenfield, a reporter at Bloomberg,
Speaker 1: where I cover workplace culture. This week, we're talking about
Speaker 1: bridge burning. Everybody has the fantasy of quitting their job
Speaker 1: and leaving in a blaze of glory, telling their boss
Speaker 1: exactly what they always thought of them, I don't know,
Speaker 1: tearing up somebody else's cubicle, doing something really memorable that
Speaker 1: will make the company rue the day that they treated
Speaker 1: you badly. But usually we have the good sense not
Speaker 1: to do stuff like this because we've been always taught
Speaker 1: that you don't burn bridges. Right, Yeah, you never want
Speaker 1: to piss someone off that maybe you'll need them for
Speaker 1: something later, right, And you never know who that person
Speaker 1: is going to be, so your workplace nemesis. Now, who's
Speaker 1: some other officer and that you hate could be the
Speaker 1: very person that is responsible for deciding whether you get fired,
Speaker 1: hired or fired at a future job. And yet we
Speaker 1: still hear about these examples of people doing exactly that,
Speaker 1: just doing stuff that is so deliciously awful. But it
Speaker 1: is a really bad career move, and we love reading
Speaker 1: about it. Like, not too long ago, there was a
Speaker 1: customer service employee a yelped named Talia Jane who wrote
Speaker 1: a lengthy essay on Medium about how terrible her job
Speaker 1: was and how poor her pay was, and it generated
Speaker 1: a long back and forth on the Internet about whether
Speaker 1: she was an entitled millennial or whether she was completely
Speaker 1: right to stand up to the man. But the whole
Speaker 1: point is we all got the joy of watching somebody
Speaker 1: live out our work revenge fantasies without any of the repercussions.
Speaker 1: Yet so fun to read these things because it scratches
Speaker 1: that itch that we have to do these things, but
Speaker 1: then we don't actually have to do it, right, But
Speaker 1: what happens when you burn a bridge and you don't
Speaker 1: even really know you're doing it as you're doing it.
Speaker 1: This week's show is going to be in a little
Speaker 1: bit of a different format. We're going to dedicate the
Speaker 1: whole time to exploring an incident that could have burned
Speaker 1: some major bridges and that is a very personal story
Speaker 1: that comes from within our very own podcast team. Isn't
Speaker 1: that right, Becca? Yes, I'm I may have burned a
Speaker 1: bridge without quite knowing that I was doing it. To
Speaker 1: understand the tale of Becca's Big, bad bridge burning. You
Speaker 1: need a little bit of background, so we're just gonna
Speaker 1: launch you right into it. Sit back and enjoy back.
Speaker 1: I was a blogger at The Atlantic Wire, and I
Speaker 1: wrote a post called Who's crazier bloggers are Writers? There
Speaker 1: have been an article in The New York Times about
Speaker 1: Joe Wisenthal, a blogger at the time at the website
Speaker 1: Business Insider. The story was about how much he worked.
Speaker 1: He woke up at four a m. He was always
Speaker 1: on Twitter, so much so that his wife had to
Speaker 1: tweet at him to get his attention. Even his bosses
Speaker 1: described as schedule as insane. My job at the time
Speaker 1: was to respond to the news of the day, so
Speaker 1: I wrote a post about Joe, which was mostly about
Speaker 1: the way we talked about workaholic bloggers versus other types
Speaker 1: of people who are dedicated to their jobs with the
Speaker 1: same intensity. I used Robert Carroll, one of the most
Speaker 1: famous and celebrated biographers, as an example. The story was
Speaker 1: also a criticism of Joe, though it had some harsh lines.
Speaker 1: You said that it sounded like quote his life sucks
Speaker 1: and that he was quote feeding his own ego and
Speaker 1: the page view beast that is Business Insider. It was
Speaker 1: a controversy when I went up Business Insider, people including Joe,
Speaker 1: tweeted mean things at me, but it wasn't that out
Speaker 1: of the ordinary for a day in the life of
Speaker 1: blogger me at the time. And after a day of
Speaker 1: Twitter squabbling, I moved on with my life and I
Speaker 1: have to say I didn't really think about the article again.
Speaker 1: So three years later, you get a job at Bloomberg
Speaker 1: and Joe wasn'tal now works here. Now you work with
Speaker 1: this person that you had burned. I knew he worked
Speaker 1: at Bloomberg. There was a lot of press about it,
Speaker 1: but honestly, hadn't remembered that story. I didn't even think
Speaker 1: about it when I was interviewing for the job that
Speaker 1: it somehow might affect my chances of getting the job.
Speaker 1: But it turns out that Joe remembered it. I think
Speaker 1: he was he heard your name in a conversation about
Speaker 1: the interview process or that you had just been hired
Speaker 1: or something like that, and he was like, that's the
Speaker 1: woman who like tore me to shreds on the internet.
Speaker 1: That was Aaron rot copp An editor at Bloomberg who
Speaker 1: was very involved in hiring me. Not only did Joe remember,
Speaker 1: but everyone at Bloomberg had been talking about it before
Speaker 1: I started. We definitely all had like a real big laugh.
Speaker 1: I think there was like, uh, some reading out loud
Speaker 1: from your post about Joe wise atal um, not in
Speaker 1: like a sarcastic way, but like where we would read
Speaker 1: lines and then all laugh and Joe would laugh too.
Speaker 1: I might have remained blissfully ignorant until on my second
Speaker 1: day of work and editor here brought it up to me.
Speaker 1: He said, didn't you write a takedown of Joe Wisenthal
Speaker 1: and now you're sitting right next to him. At that moment,
Speaker 1: I was mortified. I was brand new at this job
Speaker 1: and had already jeopardized my relationships. Did my bosses and
Speaker 1: colleagues think I was this terrible person? Even worse, I
Speaker 1: had made a tactical error and offended someone I was
Speaker 1: going to work with. Basically the first time that he
Speaker 1: heard your name come up as like she's coming to
Speaker 1: work here, he was like, I have to ask her
Speaker 1: about that, or I don't remember. I don't remember how
Speaker 1: it came up. I just said yeah, as soon as
Speaker 1: he found out you were working here, that that conversation
Speaker 1: started again. That was Dashelle Bennett, a reporter at Bloomberg
Speaker 1: who works with Joe and who I had also worked
Speaker 1: with at The Atlantic Wire. If Joe remembered this story
Speaker 1: three years later, I must have really hurt him, kind
Speaker 1: of painted him as a crazy person a little bit
Speaker 1: that like, and that was but that in that craziness
Speaker 1: his appeal. It made a big deal about how little
Speaker 1: Sleepy got and how he like had carved out this
Speaker 1: niche as this guy who just gets up super early
Speaker 1: in the morning. It beats everybody and everything just because
Speaker 1: he's never sleeping, and you know, and there was a
Speaker 1: big picture and the big name picture was like a
Speaker 1: stage photo of him and his wife in bed and
Speaker 1: she's asleep and he's awake on his laptop. And that
Speaker 1: was kind of a big deal. So it wasn't you know,
Speaker 1: it was totally fair based on what the story was about.
Speaker 1: And and I also think that, like everyone knows that,
Speaker 1: you know, when you get featured in the New York
Speaker 1: Times about anything, you know, it becomes really hard to
Speaker 1: control what the response or the message of that story
Speaker 1: is going to be. So Becca had potentially burned a
Speaker 1: bridge and didn't even realize it. Joe could have blocked
Speaker 1: her hiring at worst, or at the very least, he
Speaker 1: could have ruined her reputation at work before she even
Speaker 1: started the job. In the end, I think everything turned
Speaker 1: out okay, or did it so? Our guest today is
Speaker 1: one of our colleagues at Bloomberg, Joe Wisenthal arkets editor
Speaker 1: and co host of the Odd Lots podcast, and for
Speaker 1: a while, the center of some of Rebecca's most tense moments.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me. I'm first of all, I'm really
Speaker 1: excited to be on the other side. You know, normally
Speaker 1: I'm interviewing when we do the podcast, so it's always
Speaker 1: fun to be a guest. So thanks for having me,
Speaker 1: Thanks for talking to us, thanks for coming on. Well,
Speaker 1: I want to know about how you felt when you
Speaker 1: read the article that Rebecca wrote. So I was, first
Speaker 1: of all, I was. I was mostly amused and flattered.
Speaker 1: I was not like upset or like hurt or anything
Speaker 1: like that. I was so when that New York Times
Speaker 1: article about myself came out, you know, obviously, like any
Speaker 1: sort of narcissist, I was saying what people said about
Speaker 1: it and or various people who said nice things, and
Speaker 1: some people were making fun of me because the article
Speaker 1: made me sound kind of crazy, but that one, Rebecca's,
Speaker 1: was like the only one that like really like went
Speaker 1: after me. And the reason why I wasn't upset or
Speaker 1: like that I wasn't like heard right, it didn't like
Speaker 1: staying particularly is because the premise of the article was
Speaker 1: that I wasn't as talented as like the most talented
Speaker 1: biographer of all time, which I thought I just seemed
Speaker 1: like so I was like really like amused by like
Speaker 1: the premise. That's like, here's this person who is widely
Speaker 1: regarded to be like the lb j's biographer, Robert Carroll,
Speaker 1: right like that was how the article was set up.
Speaker 1: And it's like, yeah, guilty, I'm not well. I have
Speaker 1: gone back and read the article and it kind of
Speaker 1: has two points to it, which kind of shows it
Speaker 1: was kind of a bad, bad piece, but it was
Speaker 1: good in some ways. But the one piece was kind
Speaker 1: of saying that the media treats bloggers unfairly by saying
Speaker 1: that like portraying you is like a workaholic, and but
Speaker 1: like it's in a bad way. But when Robert Carroll's
Speaker 1: a workaholic. It's a good thing, and so I kind
Speaker 1: of tried to make that point. But then I was like,
Speaker 1: but but why do we think Joe's brand of borkaholicism
Speaker 1: is bad? It's because what he's doing is dumb. Basically, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I guess that's right. Like, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: been a long time since I've read it. So there
Speaker 1: was one thought, which is that the premise of the
Speaker 1: piece was such like felt like it was set up
Speaker 1: in a way that like, of course I couldn't win,
Speaker 1: so I wasn't too bothered. But then and this is
Speaker 1: gonna sound really sanctimonious and obnoxious and everything like that.
Speaker 1: But then my other thought, and again it is gonna.
Speaker 1: I kind of felt sorry for you that you wrote that,
Speaker 1: because my thought was, like I don't know, like who
Speaker 1: edited is or like thought it was a good idea proposed,
Speaker 1: and I guess I just felt like this struck me
Speaker 1: as something clearly regrettable to write. And and that's fine,
Speaker 1: like I've wrote, I've written so many things in my
Speaker 1: life when I was younger that are worse or regrettable,
Speaker 1: like everyone does it. But you always sort of hope
Speaker 1: like that, you know, sometimes someone catches them and say like,
Speaker 1: this isn't really very like good piece or like a
Speaker 1: good idea, And sometimes editors do that and sometimes they don't.
Speaker 1: And I've been on both sides because I've written some
Speaker 1: things or like oh I wish someone had said don't
Speaker 1: write this. Did you feel bad because you felt like, oh,
Speaker 1: this inexperienced writer is going to get some backlash now,
Speaker 1: or just because you thought, oh, this person wrote a
Speaker 1: thing that isn't very good or I or you know,
Speaker 1: it wasn't it. It was more so we know what
Speaker 1: it was. More. I didn't think there was gonna be
Speaker 1: any back particular backlash, and there wasn't. I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't know. Maybe some there was people not backlash, but
Speaker 1: your business inside our buddies tweah, well that's because you know,
Speaker 1: it's a team sport. So but I you know, I
Speaker 1: didn't know. I didn't think it was gonna be any backlash. Actually,
Speaker 1: my thought more specifically was it's um kind of unfortunate
Speaker 1: that people and I didn't know anything about you, and
Speaker 1: I didn't know like where you were your career, but
Speaker 1: I figured you're sort of early in your career, which
Speaker 1: I was. Yeah, I was I'm pretty sure maybe, And
Speaker 1: so my thought was I just sort of thought it
Speaker 1: was a little unfortunate early in their career, who like,
Speaker 1: you know, in this business like makes sense, like yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah I was writing stuff, not like so I,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I was writing things takes before the word
Speaker 1: take was even the word before people didn't talk about
Speaker 1: yeah it was not. Yeah, but I was doing this
Speaker 1: just constantly all day, turning things out, and I was
Speaker 1: just really unhappy in my job and definitely like projecting
Speaker 1: a little bit through this where I was. There's so
Speaker 1: there are a couple pretty mean lines in here that
Speaker 1: I regret more than anything else. So one of them
Speaker 1: is talking about how the Times article portrayed you as
Speaker 1: not working a normal schedule at all, and I said, still,
Speaker 1: we feel bad for Wise and it sounds like his
Speaker 1: life sucks. Yeah, I guess that's kind of mean. And honestly,
Speaker 1: it was because I didn't have a life that was
Speaker 1: that different. You know. I wasn't waking up at like
Speaker 1: four am, and I wasn't on Twitter constantly because I
Speaker 1: didn't want to be. But I felt like I was
Speaker 1: going in that direction and I didn't. I thought I
Speaker 1: thought my life kind of sucked, and but like it
Speaker 1: seems like you were you were the only successful story.
Speaker 1: You know. It's funny, you know, in retrospect now I
Speaker 1: guessider myself an old man and I have kids, or
Speaker 1: I have one kid, I don't have kids, But not
Speaker 1: like I think back and I was like, did that
Speaker 1: kind of suck? Maybe it did? Like maybe you were right.
Speaker 1: Maybe you were like at the time, I mean saying, oh,
Speaker 1: it sounds like his life sucks is a little mean.
Speaker 1: But now that I have some perspective on life and
Speaker 1: slightly more semblance of a work life balance, maybe that
Speaker 1: was Maybe that was actually one of the better lines.
Speaker 1: Maybe that actually maybe that one will stay the test
Speaker 1: of time. Yeah, well, I think I saw you as
Speaker 1: kind of the success story of what I was doing. Physically,
Speaker 1: Joe was doing what you were doing, but so weren't.
Speaker 1: In other words, if this is success, then what is
Speaker 1: even the point? In other words, like if the in
Speaker 1: other words, if the person who's really like thriving in
Speaker 1: this environment has to wake up at four in the
Speaker 1: morning and is online all the time and it doesn't
Speaker 1: have a life and the article, I mean, I thought
Speaker 1: their aspects of it done fair. But there were details
Speaker 1: in the article that made my life seem worse than
Speaker 1: it was, like I said, like the New York Times. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it said that there was like there were boxes
Speaker 1: that were unopened, which portrayed me as completely not in
Speaker 1: the which is just not. Maybe there was like one
Speaker 1: box that in the corner of there were details that
Speaker 1: I thought played up the degree to which I didn't
Speaker 1: have a life more than perhaps it was a little
Speaker 1: bit fair. But no, I mean I think, actually you're
Speaker 1: the way you say that makes sense that if that success,
Speaker 1: then what is even the point, like why go down
Speaker 1: that path? Was that the harshest line. There's one other
Speaker 1: one line that I regret more than it sounds like
Speaker 1: his life sex, which is the close to the kicker.
Speaker 1: So I'm talking about how Robert Caro has a noble
Speaker 1: cause and that's why we like it. But your cause,
Speaker 1: I say, uh, why is enthals cause is beating his
Speaker 1: own ego and the page view beast that is a
Speaker 1: business insider. So when I going back to as you say,
Speaker 1: I think, actually the premise of your peace, as you
Speaker 1: stayed before that, why does the media treat someone like
Speaker 1: Robert Caro differently than someone who's blogging or why is
Speaker 1: workaholism seemed really noble in Kara's case, that's actually interesting.
Speaker 1: But I remember that because that sounds that like was
Speaker 1: from your just sort of like yeah, um, yeah, you
Speaker 1: know again. I wasn't like offended. I wasn't like this
Speaker 1: is right me, and I was more like, well, this
Speaker 1: is just sort of pointless. But you must have felt,
Speaker 1: I mean, like, how how often did you come in
Speaker 1: for criticism like that? Well, or do you well? Especially
Speaker 1: when I was at Business Insider, we got the criticism
Speaker 1: that like, we're nothing but hungry for page views all
Speaker 1: the time, which is fair and unfair, so fair in
Speaker 1: the fact that we were We were a startup, and
Speaker 1: startups never have a lot of money and they have
Speaker 1: very little margin for erin. One of the ways that
Speaker 1: you get more money is growing traffic, which a allows
Speaker 1: you to sell more ads and be growing traffic theoretically
Speaker 1: allows you to raise more money. So you know, in retrospect,
Speaker 1: I think while we got a lot of criticism for it,
Speaker 1: the fact that we were really good at growing traffic
Speaker 1: and obsessed with it is one reason why we survived.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, well, so to mind you, I was
Speaker 1: also very much in that world, constantly looking at chart
Speaker 1: beat analytics to see my on traffic and under a
Speaker 1: ton of pressure. So again, it was the part that
Speaker 1: I was upset about, and I bet that I'm not alone,
Speaker 1: and because I think that this criticism has been leveled
Speaker 1: at all everyone still to this day of digital media startups.
Speaker 1: Is that I was really proud of what we were
Speaker 1: accomplishing traffic aside. I was proud of the audience we're reaching.
Speaker 1: I was proud of like when I knew, like more
Speaker 1: and more people in finance and tech, we're reading it,
Speaker 1: people who were high up and sophisticated, we're reaching out
Speaker 1: and they liked it. Yeah. So okay, so you say
Speaker 1: that you weren't that stung by it, but so, to
Speaker 1: be honest with you, I completely forgot about it when
Speaker 1: I found out what I was working here. I definitely
Speaker 1: knew you worked here. I knew you were, but I
Speaker 1: just didn't think, Oh, I wrote this mean thing about
Speaker 1: this person, like one they might prevent me from getting
Speaker 1: this job, which should have been a concern, but too
Speaker 1: that I have to work with this person who I offended,
Speaker 1: But you remembered it. Yeah, Well, it was one of
Speaker 1: these things I remember the name, so Rebecca Greenfield, and
Speaker 1: but I did not like immediately click why I remember
Speaker 1: the name? So wait, So let's so we've skipped ahead
Speaker 1: in time, and now you have discovered that Becca has
Speaker 1: been hired or is about to be hired. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: about to be three years later. So this was Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's probably about three years later. It was. It was
Speaker 1: December April, okay, so it was early on. I had
Speaker 1: only been at Bloomberg for a few months and it
Speaker 1: was this big effort and still ongoing. But at the
Speaker 1: time there was a lot more hiring on the digital side,
Speaker 1: and someone I forget who it was, but one of
Speaker 1: my colleagues, like I were hiring Rebecca Greenfield, and the
Speaker 1: name definitely like jumped out. I was like, that name
Speaker 1: is really familiar. And then suddenly the light bulb went off.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, I know where I know that
Speaker 1: name from. She wrote a really mean thing about me
Speaker 1: one time, so then you probably googled there. And then
Speaker 1: I googled, I said, googled like Rebecca Greenfield. Wire wasn't
Speaker 1: along it came up. But you know, as soon as
Speaker 1: I I you know, I could probably search our IB
Speaker 1: records and find like I was probably like very amusing,
Speaker 1: like I love this should make for an amusing awkward
Speaker 1: What was the first thing that you did remember or
Speaker 1: the first person you oh, I don't know. Well, I
Speaker 1: was Dash, who was here earlier on the show, right,
Speaker 1: he was already working here and I had worked with him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you had worked with him, so I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is he was probably who I talked about it
Speaker 1: at first two and then I pointed it out to
Speaker 1: a few people, but it was never in like a
Speaker 1: malicious way or like, oh, we can't hire anything like that.
Speaker 1: I was like, Oh, this is gonna be pretty funny.
Speaker 1: And you weren't embarrassed. You weren't like concerned about other
Speaker 1: people reading the article. No, no, not at all. You're
Speaker 1: happy to have everybody laugh about it. Yeah. I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is funny. So yeah, Dash told me you couldn't
Speaker 1: stop talking about it. And how I found out was
Speaker 1: just so far removed from you and the people I
Speaker 1: was directly working with. I was under the impression that
Speaker 1: everybody knew about it, and I think that's true, probably
Speaker 1: because I was I really did get a kick out
Speaker 1: of it. But so one thing we Fantasca and I
Speaker 1: have been talking about was that if you had found
Speaker 1: out before I had been hired, would you have used
Speaker 1: it against me? There's no chance I would have. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's just lucky, right, someone else might have, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So then so then I am freaking out it's working
Speaker 1: like I am just this is my second or third
Speaker 1: day in the office. I am just like everyone's impression
Speaker 1: of me is this article. And I didn't know. I
Speaker 1: feel kind of bad because I didn't mean to, Like,
Speaker 1: I didn't you know now that like her, you from
Speaker 1: your perspective. I went around and told everyone about this
Speaker 1: article just because I was so amused. And I can
Speaker 1: sure I didn't put myself at your shoes. That would
Speaker 1: make a pretty awkward like. I can say that that
Speaker 1: was not the prevailing like everybody. That wasn't the thing
Speaker 1: everybody was running around talking about. I think there was
Speaker 1: like an undercurrent of people knowing about it, but that
Speaker 1: there was some distance between it getting around that you
Speaker 1: had been hired and that this article had been written
Speaker 1: and you actually starting, So it didn't feel like the
Speaker 1: most current about you. I'd also heard a lot of
Speaker 1: good things about you. Yeah, so so, but I consulted
Speaker 1: some people and decided that the best thing to do
Speaker 1: was just immediately address it and just just confront you
Speaker 1: in person. I thought that that was would maybe like
Speaker 1: put you a little bit off guard. So I think
Speaker 1: I came up to you and hid behind a lot
Speaker 1: of cliches and was like, we need to address the
Speaker 1: elephant in the room and bury the hatchet. And I think, really,
Speaker 1: what do you remember about it, Joe? I remember, like
Speaker 1: Rebecca obviously uncomfortable or embarrassed, so um, but I did.
Speaker 1: Actually I thought that was I can remember thinking that
Speaker 1: that was well handled. Cool. So so where we kind
Speaker 1: of wanted to talk about burning bridges, and we all
Speaker 1: do things in our careers that can eventually come back
Speaker 1: to us. But the scenario worked out for me. It's
Speaker 1: just inevitable that we'll all burn bridges at some point. Basically, well,
Speaker 1: there's an argument that it it put your name in
Speaker 1: Joe head. Maybe that even helped you a little. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that was the right the point of my
Speaker 1: job at that time. It was, and you know, I
Speaker 1: was I've written things, you know, I wrote a lot
Speaker 1: about economics and stuff like that for a long time,
Speaker 1: and I like a taxed economists who are a hundred
Speaker 1: times smarter than I was and insinuated they were stupid,
Speaker 1: you know, when I was like just beginning because I
Speaker 1: thought that to what you had to do to make
Speaker 1: an aim for yourself and things that seemed self evident
Speaker 1: to me, Why isn't it self evident to this Nobel
Speaker 1: prize winn or whatever? And of course I was obviously
Speaker 1: wrong like times, but I think it's good. I think
Speaker 1: it's good to make mistakes, and it's good to have
Speaker 1: really bad ones that hopefully don't destroy your career, but
Speaker 1: that help you slow down and help you. It's like,
Speaker 1: you know, that was really stupid, and like get chased
Speaker 1: into bit and have your ego um kept in check
Speaker 1: a little bit like from time to time, and it's
Speaker 1: probably a good thing to have happened. That's probably a
Speaker 1: good place to to Finnish up. Do either of you
Speaker 1: feel like there's anything left unsaid? Do you need to
Speaker 1: hug it out? N it out? Thanks so much for
Speaker 1: both of you, Thank you very much for having me out.
Speaker 1: And now it's time to bring you one of my
Speaker 1: favorite segments, if not my favorite segment ever. Half Big Takes,
Speaker 1: Half Fake Takes, Half Big Takes is where we present
Speaker 1: opinions that demand a platform, but are not thoughtful or
Speaker 1: well researched enough to justify a news story. What is
Speaker 1: your take this week? Half take? Okay, this is one
Speaker 1: that I've floated by a few people, and I'm beginning
Speaker 1: to understand it's very controversial. This is a behavior that
Speaker 1: I that I do, and if I if I had
Speaker 1: to give it a headline, it would be really like,
Speaker 1: revolving doors are the worst. But let me back up
Speaker 1: a little. I have a fear of revolving doors. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't call it a phobia because I can go through them,
Speaker 1: so it's not like a paralyzing fear going to get stuck.
Speaker 1: The experience, it feels most akin to a medieval torture
Speaker 1: device like the iron maiden, which is where you step
Speaker 1: inside this thing and it just closes in on you
Speaker 1: and then you're basically in like a standing coffin and
Speaker 1: spikes sort of moving on you closer and closer. Like
Speaker 1: I feel like there's so much potential to get wedged
Speaker 1: into a revolving door, and the reason is because everybody's
Speaker 1: moving at their own preferred speed. In the little you know,
Speaker 1: the little pie slices of the revolving door, right, So
Speaker 1: I do my best to avoid revolving doors if I can,
Speaker 1: but in many buildings like ours, the alternative is a
Speaker 1: very heavy that on purpose. Yeah, they want you to
Speaker 1: use revolving door because they think that it's Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: I would like to probably take environment you're a monster.
Speaker 1: I'd like to see the real science on that, because
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that they're that great for them. But
Speaker 1: you'll find you some fully baked takes on that. So,
Speaker 1: people in my mind are being very rude when they
Speaker 1: go through the revolving door at full force and keep
Speaker 1: pushing the bar that moves the door ahead long after
Speaker 1: they have made the door move enough that they can
Speaker 1: get into the building. So if I'm behind somebody like
Speaker 1: that and i can feel them moving too fast, and
Speaker 1: I know that I'm going to be in a situation
Speaker 1: where I will be scared that I will get tripped
Speaker 1: by the door or stuck in the door, I will
Speaker 1: place my hands on the bar behind them and pull.
Speaker 1: That is so mean. It's not mean. I they're being mean.
Speaker 1: I'm protecting myself. Has anybody ever reacted well, I can
Speaker 1: only see the back of their head. I mean, because
Speaker 1: you're scared of getting stuck. Imagine what you're doing to them.
Speaker 1: All I'm doing is slowing them down and giving them
Speaker 1: ample time to exit the revolving door. But you're you're
Speaker 1: helping them. I'm helping there are no danger the safety
Speaker 1: of me and the people around me. Wow, that I
Speaker 1: don't even know if that's a half take or just
Speaker 1: a behavior. I mean, it's basically like it's basically the
Speaker 1: most passive aggressive thing. It's aggressive. I mean it's it's
Speaker 1: it's sort of passive aggressive because people don't really know
Speaker 1: what's happening when it's happening to them. Probably like no
Speaker 1: one's ever done it to me, so I don't know
Speaker 1: exactly what it feels like to do it to you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you see me going the revolving door and you're
Speaker 1: you get right behind me. If you get a chance,
Speaker 1: do it, and then I'll tell you if it's really jarring.
Speaker 1: But I think it's for the greater good and I
Speaker 1: would hope that people would be trained out of their
Speaker 1: aggressive revolving door behavior by it. But also, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's really not helping anybody, and I should probably stop.
Speaker 1: What's your half big take? So mineus also workplace transportation related.
Speaker 1: If I had to give it a headline, I would say,
Speaker 1: chivalry is dead in the elevator, and I'm into it.
Speaker 1: It should be chevalry needs to die in the elevator.
Speaker 1: So we work in a building with a lot of people, um,
Speaker 1: a lot of men of the male persuasion, and often
Speaker 1: you've get in a packed elevator and these men will
Speaker 1: stand when you are getting off the elevator, stand at
Speaker 1: the elevator doors and like hold it open for you.
Speaker 1: I hate this and there's so much congestion that happens
Speaker 1: because of it. It's not like they're actually even physically
Speaker 1: holding a door like a sensor makes the door stay
Speaker 1: open or closed. Well, it's not even about holding the door, right,
Speaker 1: it's about like they will stop and allow a woman
Speaker 1: to get on or off first, which creates an incredible
Speaker 1: amount of congestion, especially if the woman's in the back
Speaker 1: of the elevator. Exactly, I'm not I'm not sure where
Speaker 1: this practice came from. I'm also weirded out by the
Speaker 1: idea of chivalry from my coworkers. Well, and I mean
Speaker 1: it's it's a generalization and an assumption, but I'm fairly
Speaker 1: sure that there are plenty of other areas of these
Speaker 1: people's lives where they're not going this far out of
Speaker 1: their way to be chivalrous, and so it seems like
Speaker 1: kind of a performance. Oh my god, you're so right,
Speaker 1: like they're getting The next thing they're doing after getting
Speaker 1: off the elevator is getting onto the subway, and you
Speaker 1: know that they're not standing around an I've been holding
Speaker 1: out their jacket to cover puddles for women in the subway.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's no it's a no holds barred, every
Speaker 1: man for themselves situations in the subway. So it seems
Speaker 1: like you're doing this thing in the elevator to show
Speaker 1: your politeness or whatever, but really it's just like it
Speaker 1: makes getting off the elevator. And then as the woman,
Speaker 1: it's really awkward because everyone's standing to the side and
Speaker 1: you're rude about it. I've audibly said you can go
Speaker 1: like I just I just have no patience. So what
Speaker 1: now we sound like we're being ungrateful for people. So
Speaker 1: I'm you know, somebody male or female wants to hold
Speaker 1: a door open for me, that is a nice thing
Speaker 1: to do. That does is actually kind of it saves
Speaker 1: me whatever some effort. It's not disruptive to the people
Speaker 1: around me. It's there's the elevator. Schevelry just makes there's
Speaker 1: a dope. There's no place for it in the workplace.
Speaker 1: Traffic flow over gender, base politeness. That's right, and this
Speaker 1: has been half baked takes, half faked takes. Thank you
Speaker 1: everybody for listening. For more from us, I am on
Speaker 1: Twitter as at Francesca today. Our guest today Joe Wisenthal
Speaker 1: is at the Stalwart, and I'm at Rs Greenfield. See
Speaker 1: you next week. My job at the time was to
Speaker 1: respond to the news of the day, the news of
Speaker 1: I Know, I Know I I also noted my emphasis.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh,