Speaker 1: Over fifty women have come out with stories of alleged
Speaker 1: sexual assault and harassment by Harvey Weinstein. But sexual harassment
Speaker 1: in the workplace isn't a problem unique to Hollywood. It's everywhere.
Speaker 1: This is game plan. Hi. I'm Rebecca Greenfield and I'm
Speaker 1: francesco Leavy, and this week we are talking about sexual
Speaker 1: harassment in the workplace yet again, because it's not going away.
Speaker 1: The Harvey Weinstein scandal has started a huge conversation about
Speaker 1: harassment pretty much everywhere. Yeah. I think some of the
Speaker 1: early reactions were to say, look at Hollywood, this is
Speaker 1: an industry that's just set up for powerful men to
Speaker 1: abuse women. And actually it's it's not just Hollywood, And
Speaker 1: I think that it's a mistake to look at one
Speaker 1: industry and try to point fingers, because very quickly lots
Speaker 1: of other revelations about women in all kinds of workplaces
Speaker 1: started coming out, And following the first wave of allegations
Speaker 1: against Weinstein, there was the social media campaign hashtag me
Speaker 1: Too that I don't know about you, but I saw
Speaker 1: everywhere on my Facebook and Twitter, and it asked women
Speaker 1: either specifically or generally to post on their social media
Speaker 1: if they've been assaulted or sexually harassed in the workplace,
Speaker 1: and basically pretty much everyone has. My first thought was
Speaker 1: this applies to literally a hundred percent of the women
Speaker 1: I know, like so that if anybody isn't posting this hashtag,
Speaker 1: it's because they decided that they weren't going to, you know,
Speaker 1: make a personal social media post, not because you know,
Speaker 1: they can't find an example of something like this happening
Speaker 1: to them. And it really has, as you say, it's everywhere,
Speaker 1: and it has I think been somewhat successful in raising
Speaker 1: the level of conversation here to just show the ubiquity
Speaker 1: of what goes on. And you know, lots of women
Speaker 1: have examples of little small things or much bigger and
Speaker 1: more traumatic things that have happened to them. But part
Speaker 1: of the goal seems to be to just raise awareness,
Speaker 1: and I think it's really done that. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: something that does feel different than before, maybe I'm being optimistic,
Speaker 1: is that it's not even just more conversation, but more
Speaker 1: things seem to be happening because of this. It seems
Speaker 1: like people are calling out for identifying the Harvey Weinstein
Speaker 1: in your industry, because there definitely is one. We saw
Speaker 1: this in our own industry. There was something called the
Speaker 1: Shitty Media Men List that quickly surfaced shortly after the
Speaker 1: Weinstein allegations. It was a Google doc that had anonymous
Speaker 1: allegations against men and media. It was very controversial and
Speaker 1: quickly got taken down. But I think the point of
Speaker 1: it was to show like, this is happening in our
Speaker 1: industry and people want to do something about it, and
Speaker 1: just to drive home how not specific to one industry.
Speaker 1: This is we quickly compiled. It didn't take us very long,
Speaker 1: a not at all exhaustive list of industries that have
Speaker 1: had harassment scandals in just the last year so, just
Speaker 1: following the Weinstein allegations. Employees have complained about an abuse
Speaker 1: of workplace and sexual harassment at Fidelity, where at least
Speaker 1: one person was forced to resign because of his behavior.
Speaker 1: There was a big scandal that emerged out of the
Speaker 1: National Park Service last year that revealed this huge issue
Speaker 1: with assault and harassment against female park rangers. In the
Speaker 1: linguistics world, there was a big scandal a major professor
Speaker 1: at the University of Rochester has been accused of harassment
Speaker 1: by his grad students. If you thought industries that market
Speaker 1: to women might be safe from these kinds of scandals.
Speaker 1: You were wrong. The company that owns K Jewelers had
Speaker 1: its own scandal where widespread allegations of sexual harassment and
Speaker 1: gender discrimination caused the retailer to have a huge board
Speaker 1: change and stock plunge. And of course, there was the
Speaker 1: Fox News scandal involving Roger Ales and Bill O'Reilly. There
Speaker 1: was the scandal at uber, which has forced the company
Speaker 1: to completely rethink its entire strategy and leadership. In the
Speaker 1: fintech world so far has been dealing with its own
Speaker 1: harassment allegations. I think we should just start naming industries
Speaker 1: because we're gonna run out of time here. We have
Speaker 1: Antarctic geologists, um, the California State legislature, the military. Oh,
Speaker 1: and let's not forget the President of the United States
Speaker 1: of America. So it's wide spread everywhere. This is not
Speaker 1: just Hollywood, This is not just media. This is probably
Speaker 1: happening in your industry too. What's interesting is a lot
Speaker 1: of these stories have things in common. It's usually powerful
Speaker 1: men against people in positions with lass power. Obviously that's
Speaker 1: what happened in the Weinstein allegations. Are a lot of
Speaker 1: these high profile actors at big media companies. There's often
Speaker 1: an underlying element of every buddy kind of new or
Speaker 1: kind of suspected. Either certain bad actors had a bad
Speaker 1: reputation or there was a culture that everyone kind of
Speaker 1: accepted and nobody, no individual took a stand against. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we see that kind of thing play out with the
Speaker 1: shitty medium endless that we mentioned earlier. A lot of
Speaker 1: these things are open secrets, are are part of whisper campaigns,
Speaker 1: and it's just being codified on a document. People don't
Speaker 1: feel confident making allegations, maybe because they've only heard rumors
Speaker 1: or you know, they've been warned away from someone or
Speaker 1: something did happen to them, but it's so normalized in
Speaker 1: the company or industry culture that they rationalize it, or
Speaker 1: they wonder if it really is a big enough deal,
Speaker 1: or if they reported is going to cause more trouble
Speaker 1: than one little comment or a bunch of comments or
Speaker 1: a bunch of being interrupted in meetings or passed over
Speaker 1: for promotions. Yeah, and then you a list kind of
Speaker 1: has power because it shows you that maybe you aren't
Speaker 1: the only one that's happened to And other people are
Speaker 1: saying that it did make them feel like they were
Speaker 1: harassed and it can it can give your experience a
Speaker 1: lot more power. Yeah, it kind of explains why a
Speaker 1: lot of these allegations seemed to come out in these
Speaker 1: huge waves. It's not like all of these people just
Speaker 1: woke up, you know, and a couple of subsequent mornings
Speaker 1: and decided to accuse someone. It's it's that they gain
Speaker 1: strength from other people making reports that they themselves had
Speaker 1: either been discouraged from making, or had just made the
Speaker 1: decision not to make for their own careers, or another
Speaker 1: thing we see in common as people do make the
Speaker 1: reports and they're not taken seriously, either by their own companies,
Speaker 1: or they're either paid off to keep quiet, or they
Speaker 1: just leave the company. That happens a lot or the industry.
Speaker 1: I think that's one of the sadder things that I've
Speaker 1: noticed as a theme in scandals across all these different industries,
Speaker 1: is people saying, I just you know, my only option
Speaker 1: was to was to walk away from this field. You
Speaker 1: saw that in many of the reports from people who
Speaker 1: made allegations against Harvey Weinstein, and we've seen it in
Speaker 1: other industries to people saying this. And the sad thing is,
Speaker 1: as we're realizing there's no industry that's safe from this.
Speaker 1: So you might just get fed up with the culture
Speaker 1: in your own industry and decide I'm going to step
Speaker 1: out of this, But you'll be pretty hard pressed to
Speaker 1: find another industry that doesn't have its own, similar but
Speaker 1: slightly different set of problems. When you put it that way,
Speaker 1: the problem sounds really insurmountable. But even though all these
Speaker 1: cases have a lot of things in common, each industry
Speaker 1: and company needs to deal with it in their very
Speaker 1: own specific ways. Our guest today is a great example
Speaker 1: of someone who saw need in her own industry and
Speaker 1: took some small steps that are adding up to hopefully
Speaker 1: some bigger changes. Beth Alpert Nicai is an archaeologist and
Speaker 1: an associate professor at the University of Arizona that saw
Speaker 1: a problem with gender based harassment in her field, But
Speaker 1: when she wants to find research on it, she is
Speaker 1: that there were more papers on the significance of pigs
Speaker 1: than on women. She's not researching the problem herself. So
Speaker 1: when did you realize that sexual harassment and gender based
Speaker 1: discrimination was a problem in your field? I would say
Speaker 1: that it's always clear that it's a problem in the field. Um,
Speaker 1: when I began going to professional meetings of the Annual
Speaker 1: Conference of American Schools of Oriental Research, which is the
Speaker 1: professional organization for mostly North Americans but some others who
Speaker 1: do archaeological field work in the Middle East, North Africa,
Speaker 1: but around the Mediterranean basin. It was clear that almost
Speaker 1: everybody there with a man. And it's always been clear
Speaker 1: that pretty much everyone who runs an excavation project in
Speaker 1: the field is a man. So the information it has
Speaker 1: always been there, but I didn't really articular the problem
Speaker 1: of dangers in the field per se until two thousand
Speaker 1: and fourteen when I read an article that for Biological
Speaker 1: Anthropologists published I'm the results of a survey they did
Speaker 1: on harassment and assault in anthropological field sites, field projects
Speaker 1: um in remote locations. That I realized that this is
Speaker 1: something that made it can be dealt with in my
Speaker 1: own field as well. And what is it about a dig?
Speaker 1: And maybe for those of us who aren't familiar, you
Speaker 1: can give us some sense of what a dig is like.
Speaker 1: What is it about a dig that opens it up
Speaker 1: to more opportunities for just sort of discrimination and harassment.
Speaker 1: So for people who are working on excavations abroad, and
Speaker 1: I'm only going to speak about the area I'm familiar with.
Speaker 1: Of course, we're all people who have traveled. Most of
Speaker 1: us have traveled from some place else. We're living in.
Speaker 1: Often we're moat field locations in UM countries where we
Speaker 1: may we're unlikely to know the legal system, we may
Speaker 1: not know the language, we may not be familiar with
Speaker 1: the country in general, know how to move ourselves around,
Speaker 1: how to access help people talk about that and not
Speaker 1: just for archaeologists, as a state of exception, which both
Speaker 1: makes people vulnerable too things happening in this kind of
Speaker 1: isolated setting, but also makes some people feel like whatever
Speaker 1: they do they're there, they can do the laws at
Speaker 1: home where the social morays that they have at home
Speaker 1: no longer applied to them, So it um. I mean,
Speaker 1: excavations can be and often are really great places to
Speaker 1: work and exciting and positive. But they also have the
Speaker 1: potential setting a lot of people together um who are
Speaker 1: on most of them on summer vacation from their normal
Speaker 1: law of doing something very physical, very intense and in
Speaker 1: a fine space and living together five or six days,
Speaker 1: and we also has the potential to to allow for
Speaker 1: problems to take place. Can you give us some idea
Speaker 1: of some specific examples of what discrimination and harassment might
Speaker 1: look like in this really specific field. A lot of
Speaker 1: what I heard about. I launched a survey in two
Speaker 1: thousand and fourteen, and I relaunched it in two thousand
Speaker 1: and fifteen and called its survey on Field Safety Middle East,
Speaker 1: North Africa and the Mediterranean Basin. I ended up with
Speaker 1: over three hundred responses. And the kinds of violations that
Speaker 1: people talk to me about often were things relating to
Speaker 1: abuse of power, where people, particularly women, felt that their
Speaker 1: contributions were value, that they lost control of their own
Speaker 1: work on a site, so um they weren't able to
Speaker 1: continue working on material they were working on on the
Speaker 1: site once they left that excavation project, and that hadn't
Speaker 1: been what was anticipated. So there were problems. Some problems
Speaker 1: related to like an abusive authority that resulted in hampering
Speaker 1: people's professional progress, whether they Most commonly that was for
Speaker 1: people who are doctoral students, but also there were stories
Speaker 1: of physical assaults or demigrations. Instances many were people were
Speaker 1: made to feel unsafe physically or where they were unsafe
Speaker 1: physically and they had no recourse to help. Excavations might
Speaker 1: not have often don't have a set up, at least
Speaker 1: at that time. It's getting better now, but have a
Speaker 1: setup where if something happens in the in the States,
Speaker 1: you might think, oh, well, I can call the police,
Speaker 1: I can report it to the human resources department in
Speaker 1: my UM university campus. But out there it's hard to
Speaker 1: know who to report it to. If the excavation directors
Speaker 1: are not supportive, then people are pretty much out of luck.
Speaker 1: And so those were the kinds of, say, two different
Speaker 1: kinds of problems that people that people UM kind of
Speaker 1: quester them, that people were particularly concerned about. One of
Speaker 1: the things that you also found in your research was
Speaker 1: an ambivalence about reporting. And we see that in a
Speaker 1: lot of industries. So I'm wondering, why is that something
Speaker 1: that you're seeing specifically in archaeology. In the field, people
Speaker 1: are in such isolated places. And I do think that sometimes,
Speaker 1: and this may be true for undergraduate to comm as
Speaker 1: part of it an academic program and work on and
Speaker 1: excavations UM, the freedom of being abroad and and and
Speaker 1: and not having the normal constraints of life might make
Speaker 1: things seem interesting that back home wouldn't have seemed acceptable
Speaker 1: at all. UM. They might also not have the confidence
Speaker 1: to something happens that they feel was wrong, they were
Speaker 1: in some way abused by a supervisor, they may not
Speaker 1: have the confidence to go and report it there. So
Speaker 1: there's that level of you know, it's a foreign country,
Speaker 1: I don't know quite what to do, I don't know
Speaker 1: quite who to report it to. UM. I think that's
Speaker 1: part of the problem, and I'm not singling out university undergraduates.
Speaker 1: Are a lot of people who end up feeling oppressed
Speaker 1: by it in some way or intimidated by a superior
Speaker 1: and don't have the courage to report it. Book For
Speaker 1: these people, there's no going home. You can't be any
Speaker 1: place else. So every day for the rest of the
Speaker 1: excubation season, you're facing the exact same people and living
Speaker 1: in that exact same situation that you know you can't
Speaker 1: just like hop on a bus and get back home
Speaker 1: again for the weekend and not and not return. It
Speaker 1: makes it complicated. The other part of reporting is when
Speaker 1: the people who are abusive our supervisors as and your
Speaker 1: say a graduate student, your researcher, and your access to
Speaker 1: the materials you're working on depend on maintaining a positive
Speaker 1: relationship with your superiors on the excavation side. Then you lose,
Speaker 1: you riff, the loss of the materials you might be
Speaker 1: using for your doctoral dissertation. If that happens, do you
Speaker 1: have to drop out of school? People do? I mean,
Speaker 1: I've heard stories about people who said, this happened and
Speaker 1: I left the shield. This happened to me too many times.
Speaker 1: I couldn't take it anymore, and I left the field altogether.
Speaker 1: I'm no longer involved in archaeology. I just saw your
Speaker 1: survey and filled it out. So you know, those are
Speaker 1: professional calls that people make. But when people are graduate students,
Speaker 1: doctoral candidates, say vulnerable to the whims of their dissertation
Speaker 1: supervisors or their excavation directors, they don't have control over
Speaker 1: um their own lives from that from a professional perspective. So,
Speaker 1: since you've done this research, now you're working on making
Speaker 1: digs safer, can you talk about some of the changes
Speaker 1: that you've pushed. The first part of what I did
Speaker 1: was of course, collecting data and find out what it
Speaker 1: is that's what it is that's wrong, and begin to
Speaker 1: think about what might remediate that, what might fix the
Speaker 1: problems that people were are experiencing. When I started working
Speaker 1: on this, I was a member of the board at
Speaker 1: American Schools of Oriental Research. I had been working in
Speaker 1: general on women's issues, and I heard the Oranization's Initiative
Speaker 1: on the Status of Women, which was newly created. I
Speaker 1: was or remained the first chair for it, and so
Speaker 1: I had a platform to begin talking to the board
Speaker 1: of trustees about gender safety and gender equity issues, and
Speaker 1: they were at first startled, but then I think UM
Speaker 1: safety wasn't something that had figured on the agenda previously
Speaker 1: at board meetings, but supportive, and so I began working
Speaker 1: within the organization UM within a sort of meeting with
Speaker 1: big excavation directors, meeting with UM participants on excavations and
Speaker 1: talking about the need to have clear codes of conduct,
Speaker 1: clear reporting mechanisms, someone who is an umbud person who
Speaker 1: was well trained to help people handle problems, access to
Speaker 1: good medical care, which excavations surprisingly often don't have. And
Speaker 1: I say surprisingly because physically can be physically dangerous work,
Speaker 1: never mind sexual as sol and we're rock and following
Speaker 1: you or something. So it's good medical care seems important.
Speaker 1: And I think that in general excavation directors who were
Speaker 1: really interested in how they could improve the safety of
Speaker 1: their digs. I never experienced pushback from them UM and
Speaker 1: so my original goal was to simply post up on
Speaker 1: the a soor website and disseminated to all the excavation
Speaker 1: directors and and people working on digs information about protocols,
Speaker 1: what how to prevent problems, what to do if there
Speaker 1: are problems, um, and so forth. But I I didn't
Speaker 1: have the language for it. These things are always legal,
Speaker 1: and I need a good language. So I began working
Speaker 1: on my own campus, University of Arizona, meeting with people
Speaker 1: who for ample run UM Study Abroad program for students
Speaker 1: undergraduate or graduates to study and do research and foreign countries,
Speaker 1: or faculty members who do research in foreign countries or
Speaker 1: teaching foreign countries, everybody who leaves the United States and
Speaker 1: the protection of Title nine and the been Clary Act.
Speaker 1: And discovered that there were not a lot of good solutions.
Speaker 1: There wasn't language developed. There weren't UM protocols I could post,
Speaker 1: because every country that people go to has its own
Speaker 1: laws and its own more rays and customs and so forth,
Speaker 1: so it wasn't possible for anyone to have and across
Speaker 1: the board, if you're in trouble, here's the number to call.
Speaker 1: Here's what you tell the police, here's how you deal
Speaker 1: with the situation, here's how you find your local consulate,
Speaker 1: and here's how they fly you back home if that's
Speaker 1: what you want to do, because in some places it's not.
Speaker 1: I have to report about sexualists, so you may end
Speaker 1: up being victimized. So it sounds like you're at the
Speaker 1: beginning of the process. People are just thinking about the
Speaker 1: protocols that they have to have. But I'm wondering if
Speaker 1: you have heard anybody say that they do feel safer
Speaker 1: as a result of some of these changes. I have
Speaker 1: heard lots of I mean lots of people have, and
Speaker 1: this comes both from big directors and participants on excavations,
Speaker 1: whether they're graduate students or their faculty who work on
Speaker 1: another person's excavation, say that having this discussion and having
Speaker 1: it publicly is helpful and that bringing all of this
Speaker 1: out to the public is something that feels positive to them.
Speaker 1: That they feel that they're gaining, you know, the freedom
Speaker 1: to say what they need to say, as well from
Speaker 1: the fact that this is now an open topic. There
Speaker 1: is nobody in American schools of Oriental research or me
Speaker 1: at the level of excavation staff excavation directors, UM, senior
Speaker 1: participants who are unaware of what these problems are. And
Speaker 1: everybody has access to the statistics, basic statistics, what percent
Speaker 1: of X, Y and Z happens, who it happens to.
Speaker 1: I haven't published the where it happens. What's a safer
Speaker 1: country or a less saxe country or the same with
Speaker 1: excavations that keep all that information is confidential. And you
Speaker 1: know that's the only reason people talk to me is
Speaker 1: that I don't tell stories publicly. But UM, I think that,
Speaker 1: I mean, I do have a sense that this has
Speaker 1: created a positive atmosphere. I'm working on other aspects of
Speaker 1: creating a positive work atmosphere for women in archaeology UM
Speaker 1: as well. And and so there's a whole conversation taking
Speaker 1: place that UM people are I don't crede it only
Speaker 1: myself with that you know, I launched it. Let's say,
Speaker 1: a lot of conversations taking place that wouldn't have been
Speaker 1: taking place some years ago. UM. And I think that
Speaker 1: that that people are glad to see that happening. Certainly
Speaker 1: women and especially younger women who you know, still have
Speaker 1: a lot of work to do before they are old
Speaker 1: timeure tackles to somewhere. Um, you know, there is there there.
Speaker 1: I feel like this is an endeavor that that has
Speaker 1: a value and can have a long term value. But
Speaker 1: you're right, it's a I'm beginning. I I still have
Speaker 1: to get better information out to excavator is about how
Speaker 1: to prevent and what are good protocols and so forth.
Speaker 1: I'm just a bit stimming, and I keep up in
Speaker 1: that University of Arizona comes up with a great solution
Speaker 1: packet and then they just email it to me and
Speaker 1: it'll be good to go. But I fear that's not
Speaker 1: unlikely to happen because it's just so hard to do. Well.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for taking the time and talking
Speaker 1: to us, and we really appreciate hearing from you. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Even in best story, you hear some of the themes
Speaker 1: that we talked about earlier. She mentioned that there are
Speaker 1: women who have left archaeology rather than stay and continue
Speaker 1: to experience, you know, harassment or discrimination. And yet, even
Speaker 1: though some of this feels so universal across different industries,
Speaker 1: her experience also makes it clear that there's a lot
Speaker 1: of specifics. There's things about archaeology that make it so
Speaker 1: that it has its own particular pitfalls UM that can
Speaker 1: lead to discrimination and harassment. And that's that's true for
Speaker 1: every single industry. Yeah, and even within archaeology. She was
Speaker 1: talking about how each dig needs its own policies and
Speaker 1: procedures and that you just couldn't have a blanket statement
Speaker 1: that applied to every single site. But I think it's often,
Speaker 1: as we've seen with all these allegations, that's on women
Speaker 1: and victims to speak out and speak out until people
Speaker 1: take them seriously, and then it's usually women who are
Speaker 1: trying to fix this this them. But I don't think
Speaker 1: that that's fair at all to put all of this
Speaker 1: on women. The journalist Helen Rasner wrote this Twitter thread
Speaker 1: that went viral and later became a Medium post that
Speaker 1: was a list of twenty things and I'm sure there's
Speaker 1: many many more that men can do UM in order
Speaker 1: to help women and support women, besides just not being harassers,
Speaker 1: which I think most men would consider themselves to not
Speaker 1: be UM. And what struck me about her list, and
Speaker 1: you can find it on Medium, is that it's it's
Speaker 1: stuff that goes way way way broader than just you know,
Speaker 1: piping up about issues in your own workplace. For men,
Speaker 1: it's about actually incorporating more views of women and supporting
Speaker 1: women in much more general ways in their lives. And
Speaker 1: I think her point was when you do that, you
Speaker 1: bring in perspectives that are different from your own, and
Speaker 1: they help you see things and empathize with people who
Speaker 1: might be experiencing something you've never experienced. Let's be clear,
Speaker 1: none of these illusions are saying that men should avoid women,
Speaker 1: because that's definitely not the way to fix things. There
Speaker 1: have been some people who say they're now afraid to
Speaker 1: take meetings with women because they might be accused of harassment, which,
Speaker 1: first of all, many of the allegations of harassment that
Speaker 1: are coming out are not misunderstandings or miscommunications. It's, you know,
Speaker 1: someone showing up in a bathroom of naked and asking
Speaker 1: you to give them a massage. That's not really a miscommunication.
Speaker 1: But there are also ways to be professional with women
Speaker 1: that won't be misconstrued as harassment, and people do it
Speaker 1: all the time. Right the when something rises to the
Speaker 1: level of the Harvey Boyingstein scandal, it's because there's dozens
Speaker 1: of totally unambiguous examples of bad conduct. So we're not
Speaker 1: talking here about misunderstandings as you said, there were some
Speaker 1: men who piped up and said, well, if all of
Speaker 1: these other little things are also a problem, how can
Speaker 1: I ever know what to do and how to behave
Speaker 1: around women so that I don't end up getting accused
Speaker 1: of harassment. And the answer is, listen to women, read
Speaker 1: these accounts, um try to understand how maybe some things
Speaker 1: that you may have said in the past, while they
Speaker 1: don't make you a monster, may have not been appropriate,
Speaker 1: or you know, may have put people in a position
Speaker 1: where they felt like their job depended on acting in
Speaker 1: a certain way, or they weren't being given the same
Speaker 1: opportunities as men, or any of these other subtle things.
Speaker 1: So it's just it's a chance to reflect. It's not
Speaker 1: an opportunity to bury your head in the sand and
Speaker 1: say you don't understand why all of these things are
Speaker 1: coming up now. And speaking of reflection, let's take it
Speaker 1: to half big takes, Happy fake takes. If you have
Speaker 1: your own half pig take, you can call into our hotline.
Speaker 1: The number is two and two six one seven zero
Speaker 1: one six six Francesca, what's your half big take? My
Speaker 1: half big take is basically just an observation about something
Speaker 1: odd I've noticed happening recently, people have been stepping on
Speaker 1: my feet a lot in a subway. This is just
Speaker 1: this feels recent, So I don't know what's going on.
Speaker 1: You and I are both subway commuters, um and so
Speaker 1: you know, it gets crowded in there. But I feel
Speaker 1: like foot stepping is something people generally avoid, and in fact,
Speaker 1: I have a memory of like, years and years and
Speaker 1: years ago, I had a foot injury and I didn't
Speaker 1: want to take the subway because I was worried my
Speaker 1: foot was going to get stepped on. And my boyfriend
Speaker 1: at the time was like, come on, when's the last
Speaker 1: time somebody ever stepped on your foot in the subway?
Speaker 1: And it made me think about it, and I realized, wow,
Speaker 1: like human beings generally do a good job of avoiding
Speaker 1: this thing. You would think everyone did. And then I
Speaker 1: have had this idea in my head for years that
Speaker 1: you just don't get your foot stepped on in the subway.
Speaker 1: But then in the past couple of weeks, every day,
Speaker 1: multiple times a day, people have been stepping on my feet.
Speaker 1: So what I want to know is am I doing
Speaker 1: something different? Or my shoes different or my feet different?
Speaker 1: Is my positioning different? Is it a full moon. Has
Speaker 1: everybody lost their ability to estimate the space? Certain like,
Speaker 1: what's going on? Has this happened to you? First of all,
Speaker 1: don't think your feet have changed? Just guessing. Um, I
Speaker 1: have to say that. I think it's probably an overcrowding issue.
Speaker 1: But also, just this morning, I stepped on a foot
Speaker 1: and then and I said sorry a thousand times. Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm getting a lot of stories. So this isn't like
Speaker 1: a gripe about human behavior because people usually notice that
Speaker 1: they've done it and then immediately apologize. But it just
Speaker 1: seemed like this thing we had down as a society,
Speaker 1: not stepping on each other's foot, and then something shifted.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's yeah, the train was crowded, I was trying
Speaker 1: to move into make room, stepped on a foot. There
Speaker 1: you go. I don't know. I still think it's something
Speaker 1: in the air. Halloween's coming up, Mercury, Yeah, there you go. Okay,
Speaker 1: so it's a combination of all those things. Clearly, Becca,
Speaker 1: what's your half big take? My half big take is
Speaker 1: that when traveling for work, I don't need your quirky,
Speaker 1: charm filled hotel. Okay, I don't need it. I just
Speaker 1: want a giant bed with starchy white sheets and a
Speaker 1: million pillows that's way too big for me, and a
Speaker 1: really fluffy robe, and like a nice cleaner than my
Speaker 1: bathroom bathroom. You want a totally generic hotel with all
Speaker 1: of the quintessential hotel e things, right, I mean it
Speaker 1: should be nice, like not dingy. Yeah, but I don't
Speaker 1: need you're like boutique hotel. It's kind of small rooms.
Speaker 1: Not talking about a specific hotel. There's a few chains
Speaker 1: that this could apply to, so I think you have
Speaker 1: to worry. But I mean that's maybe nice. You know,
Speaker 1: they usually boast trendy products like hair products and stuff.
Speaker 1: It's not I don't care. I'm probably bringing my own stuff.
Speaker 1: Like is that are those three ounces of like really
Speaker 1: fancy shampo? You're paying extra for that room? Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I think maybe this goes with it where it's like
Speaker 1: I think airbnb can be a nice option for work
Speaker 1: if you can stay in a neighborhood, that might be
Speaker 1: better for your work thing. But again, like i'd either
Speaker 1: just being a hotel rather be an hotel. Just want
Speaker 1: my generic I feel the same way. And for me,
Speaker 1: I think that it comes from this, like I'm still
Speaker 1: occasionally able to tap into that childhood glee about like
Speaker 1: when you get to stay in a hotel. You know,
Speaker 1: do you remember that when you were a kid and
Speaker 1: I was like, oh my god, we're gonna stay at
Speaker 1: a hotel I want? And and that is all the
Speaker 1: things that you described, like the signifiers of that, the
Speaker 1: big bed, the soft pillows, the fluffy bathroom. It's not like,
Speaker 1: you know, cool boutique body wash and like cool light
Speaker 1: fixtures whatever. And this has been half big takes, half
Speaker 1: baked takes. Thanks for listening to another episode of Game Plan.
Speaker 1: You can find me on Twitter at Arsley Greenfield and
Speaker 1: I'm at Francesca today. You can call us and leave
Speaker 1: a message about anything you like, including your own half
Speaker 1: bag take at two and two six seven zero one six.
Speaker 1: If you like this show, head on over to Apple
Speaker 1: podcast or wherever you listen and rate, interview and subscribe.
Speaker 1: I just really like hearing from you. You know. I
Speaker 1: took some time recently to review a couple of podcasts
Speaker 1: that I like because we ask you to do it
Speaker 1: every week, and I'm gonna tell you it made me
Speaker 1: feel good. Good Podcast Karma. Also, if you want to
Speaker 1: hear more from us throughout the week, You can subscribe
Speaker 1: to our newsletter by going to bloomberg dot com Slash
Speaker 1: Newsletters and checking the game plan box. The show was
Speaker 1: produced by Liz Smith and Magnus hen Rexon, and the
Speaker 1: hat of podcast is Francesca Levy And we'll see you
Speaker 1: next week. Bye. Also say harrassment and not harsassment. I'm
Speaker 1: definitely gonna sayrsassment.