Speaker 1: Half a century ago, if you had a job, it
Speaker 1: was expected that you were loyal to your company, and
Speaker 1: your company was loyal back to you. There were things
Speaker 1: called pensions for example. Now can we even call what
Speaker 1: we have to our employer a relationship? This is game plan. Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm d back to Greenfield and I'm Francesco Leavy. And
Speaker 1: this week we're talking about the relationship between workers and
Speaker 1: their employers and how that has become a lot more
Speaker 1: tenuous over time. This was brought to our attention because
Speaker 1: of this really interesting Wall Street Journal article that came
Speaker 1: out this week by Lauren Weber. It was called the
Speaker 1: Second Class Office Workers, and she dives into this world
Speaker 1: of contract workers. She says, there are millions of them,
Speaker 1: and there are people who work at companies next to
Speaker 1: full time employees, often doing the same work, but they're
Speaker 1: not full time employees, so they don't get the benefits
Speaker 1: associated it with that. Yeah, and especially I think when
Speaker 1: you sign on for years and years as one of
Speaker 1: these contract workers, you can really suffer from not getting
Speaker 1: some of those benefits. Um. There was another article a
Speaker 1: couple of months ago in The Guardian that featured a
Speaker 1: family husband and wife who both work for Facebook in
Speaker 1: the cafeteria. So their contract workers are not technically employed
Speaker 1: by Facebook, but and they're actually paid pretty well hourly.
Speaker 1: But that puts them in sort of a weird in
Speaker 1: between space where they're not full time employees, so they
Speaker 1: don't qualify for the company health insurance, but they make
Speaker 1: a little bit too much money to qualify for any
Speaker 1: state or federal medical benefits. So I think that contract
Speaker 1: workers can get sucked into this sort of middle space
Speaker 1: for years and years because a lot of companies have
Speaker 1: have used this contractor scheme as a way to basically
Speaker 1: get the equivalent of a full time worker without the benefits. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Wall Street Journal article goes into a lot of
Speaker 1: the darker sides of having that weird relationship. So of
Speaker 1: course you don't get held insurance benefits, but you also
Speaker 1: can be fired at pretty much any time. And also
Speaker 1: you culturally have a weird relationship to your employers. So
Speaker 1: she talks about how people have different badges, for example,
Speaker 1: and that is something that themes really innocuous, but it
Speaker 1: does make people feel like they're second class citizens, are
Speaker 1: lesser than I think those little slits can add up,
Speaker 1: you know. It's like, especially if your co workers are
Speaker 1: kind of always reminded that you're not one of them,
Speaker 1: Like if you're all doing the same work, like you said,
Speaker 1: but they all got any email that you didn't because
Speaker 1: you're not on some official list, and so you don't
Speaker 1: get to go to some big company wide meeting. It's
Speaker 1: like those things don't really matter. But they constantly remind
Speaker 1: you that the company isn't investing in you the same
Speaker 1: way it's investing in its other employees. And she points
Speaker 1: out to relationships that these people have with their managers
Speaker 1: are often weaker because, like you said, it's it's just
Speaker 1: not the same investment. I'm really glad that the Journal
Speaker 1: dug into this issue of contract workers because it really
Speaker 1: is fascinating, and I think it's kind of not talked
Speaker 1: about enough. But we can back up and look at
Speaker 1: this from an even broader angle, and I think there's
Speaker 1: a bunch of different ways that the traditional relationship between
Speaker 1: the employer and the employee is breaking down. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: first think of the gig economy, which is this promise
Speaker 1: from tech companies that we can be free from the
Speaker 1: shackles of traditional employment and have flexible schedules and the
Speaker 1: work we want if we work at lift or uber
Speaker 1: or companies like fivere or task rabbit, you already have
Speaker 1: a car and an apartment, so why not let it
Speaker 1: work for you exactly. And I remember when these first
Speaker 1: came out, people were buying into that. And this coworker
Speaker 1: of mine when I used to work at fast Company,
Speaker 1: wrote this article where she tried to live off of
Speaker 1: the gig economy and basically learned that she was making
Speaker 1: less than minimum wage and didn't have any marketable skills. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she was like, yeah, I'm not a handyman. People. We're
Speaker 1: paying me like five dollars an hour to bag jewelry
Speaker 1: and I couldn't get enough gigs to make enough money.
Speaker 1: And I think that is a reality of love of
Speaker 1: a lot of people who are doing this. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you're doing any kind of freelance work at all, you
Speaker 1: you have to do a lot of hustling that's unpaid
Speaker 1: around any job you get. So when you shrink that
Speaker 1: down to like little tiny micro modules of work, you're
Speaker 1: still doing all of that. Like you're going from job
Speaker 1: to job. If you're a task rabbit, you're not getting
Speaker 1: paid for that, and so it just becomes I think
Speaker 1: it could easily eat up your life. Yeah, and then,
Speaker 1: just like the contract workers, you don't get benefits, you
Speaker 1: don't really have an employer. There's no stability, you don't
Speaker 1: get any of those comforts that used to come with
Speaker 1: a traditional salary job. You don't get job security, you
Speaker 1: don't get sort of time to figure out your next
Speaker 1: step and do your own thing without having to worry
Speaker 1: about constantly making money. And generally the contract between employers
Speaker 1: and employees has just changed. I feel like this sense
Speaker 1: that accompany owes you something and you owe them something
Speaker 1: is disappearing. What you're talking about is company loyalty, and
Speaker 1: that's not something that even full time employees have any
Speaker 1: expectation of having with their employers. But how do we
Speaker 1: get to this point? Our guest today is Rick Wartzman.
Speaker 1: He's the author of the End of Loyalty, The Rise
Speaker 1: and Fall of Good Jobs in America. Right now, in
Speaker 1: many different ways, the contracts between the worker and the
Speaker 1: employer is weaker than ever. We want to know how
Speaker 1: did we get to this point? Well, it's a it's
Speaker 1: a long story, and there are many forces that have,
Speaker 1: you know, really put pressure on workers. We know about
Speaker 1: globalization and the rise of competition from low age countries.
Speaker 1: Automation and technology, certainly over decades has has had an
Speaker 1: effect on certain industries and in particular UH and put
Speaker 1: downward wage pressure and eroded job security for many workers.
Speaker 1: You've had the decline of unions, which has been a
Speaker 1: really important factor as well. Mainly from my reading of history.
Speaker 1: Employers really set out to just crush organized labor and
Speaker 1: they've they've done quite a good job of that. We've
Speaker 1: gone from you know, twenty five up to thirty five
Speaker 1: per cent or so of the private sector workforce being
Speaker 1: unionized to just about six percent today. UM, so that's
Speaker 1: had a huge effect. And then the last element, which
Speaker 1: I think has just amplified all of these things is
Speaker 1: UH this shift in corporate culture and I talk a
Speaker 1: lot about this in my book, the shift from a
Speaker 1: real stakeholder mindset, where in this post war period, from
Speaker 1: say the late nineteen forties to the early seventies, companies
Speaker 1: explicitly talked about how they were trying to balance the
Speaker 1: interests of all their constituencies, so the communities they operated in, customers,
Speaker 1: their shareholders to be sure, but also their workers. And
Speaker 1: that has given way to a predominant culture of trying
Speaker 1: to maximize shareholder value. And when you put investors above
Speaker 1: all those other stakeholders, including workers, the pie gets carved
Speaker 1: up differently, and sure enough, investors have gotten a bigger
Speaker 1: slice and workers have gotten a lesser slice. Your buck.
Speaker 1: Looks at the corporate histories of for American corporate giants
Speaker 1: gm GE, Coca Cola, and Kodak. What would you say
Speaker 1: it was like to work at companies like that during
Speaker 1: what you see as sort of the Golden age for workers? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the first thing I should say is this golden
Speaker 1: age came with a big asterisk. So this post war
Speaker 1: period again, you know, from mid to late forties up
Speaker 1: to the early nineties seventies was golden mainly for white men.
Speaker 1: People of color and women were really blatantly discriminated again
Speaker 1: in the workplace and hadn't entered the workforce in uh
Speaker 1: the numbers that they certainly began to in the sixties
Speaker 1: and seventies and has accelerated through today. And of course
Speaker 1: many still faced tremendous blatant discrimination in lots of ways.
Speaker 1: But this again, this was really a golden age for
Speaker 1: white men. Um that said, there was a huge swath
Speaker 1: of of the workforce that was lifted up and saw
Speaker 1: steadily rising pay and benefits, and good job security and
Speaker 1: good benefits, I should say on both kind of the
Speaker 1: healthcare front, where company provided health coverage just got steadily
Speaker 1: stronger in terms of what it would cover and who
Speaker 1: it would cover, in terms of bringing in your family
Speaker 1: members if you're an employee, uh, and very solid retirement security.
Speaker 1: I mean there were full pensions back in those days,
Speaker 1: not not just four O one K type plans um
Speaker 1: and that was true across these four companies. And then
Speaker 1: over the last forty years the story has really been
Speaker 1: the same. You've seen a rooting job security. You've seen
Speaker 1: an erosion in benefits. You have seen pay that has
Speaker 1: been stagnant for many workers. Even companies like ge Um
Speaker 1: have gone, you know, at least we're going for a
Speaker 1: while to a two tier wage system and their factories
Speaker 1: so that they could pay new workers less. And so
Speaker 1: you've seen the decline in the corporate social contract. And
Speaker 1: of course you have four very different companies too, in
Speaker 1: General Electric and Coca Cola that over this entire seventy
Speaker 1: five year arc have done quite well. And then you've
Speaker 1: had to that of course, have really struggled. Right. You
Speaker 1: had General Motors that went into bankruptcy and it's you know,
Speaker 1: a shadow of what it was at its height. And
Speaker 1: Kodak that also went bankrupt and is you know, a
Speaker 1: much much tinier, very different company than it was and
Speaker 1: it's hey day. But it doesn't matter if you worked
Speaker 1: for one of the successful ones in Coca Cola and
Speaker 1: GE or one of the real laggards in GM or Coda.
Speaker 1: As a worker, the story was pretty much the same. Um.
Speaker 1: The social contract rose and then it unraveled. You mentioned
Speaker 1: organized labor. Was that the only motivation for companies to
Speaker 1: treat employees this way? No, not at all, um. So
Speaker 1: coming out of World War Two, I think there were
Speaker 1: uh several forces at work, um that set off this
Speaker 1: golden age. So one was these big US companies at
Speaker 1: that time they could just frankly afford to be extremely generous.
Speaker 1: We had as a nation bombed our global competition to
Speaker 1: its knees, and many look at it, and I think
Speaker 1: there's a lot of truth to this. This was an
Speaker 1: extraordinary time and exceptional time. Because these were exceptional circumstances,
Speaker 1: These big US companies produced an inordinate amount of the
Speaker 1: world's goods um again there was very little competition, So
Speaker 1: that was one thing. And then on the home front,
Speaker 1: by the way, you also had all these returning UH
Speaker 1: servicemen and coming back from the war and set off
Speaker 1: the baby boom and the emergence of really the great
Speaker 1: American middle class, this giant rise of the middle class.
Speaker 1: Another was there was some fear at this time. There
Speaker 1: was concern about all these returning service men and some
Speaker 1: some service women, but mostly men coming home, tens of
Speaker 1: millions of them who had who had been off to
Speaker 1: war now they were coming back. And a lot of
Speaker 1: corporate leaders expressed the concern that unless we provide good jobs,
Speaker 1: with good benefits and good security, we may end up
Speaker 1: with another great depression on our hands, perhaps one that
Speaker 1: would be even worse than what unfolded in the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 1: And in turn, the fear was that if that happened,
Speaker 1: there might be long breadlines again, and capitalism might actually
Speaker 1: give way to socialism or you know, God forbid communism
Speaker 1: on American soil. And so there was some feeling that
Speaker 1: we've got to provide and provide well for people, or
Speaker 1: the capitalist system itself might be at risk. So fear
Speaker 1: was an impulse. There was also an impulse of just
Speaker 1: keeping the economy humming. There was a common kind of
Speaker 1: almost Kinzian notion back then that you've got to put
Speaker 1: enough pay in people's pockets so that they can keep
Speaker 1: this great consumer economy going. UM. There's a great quote
Speaker 1: early in my book from Charlie Wilson, the president of
Speaker 1: General Electric, who said something like, how are they going
Speaker 1: to buy my refrigerators if we don't give them enough
Speaker 1: wages to do it with? And this is a very
Speaker 1: common kind of thinking that that you know, prevailed in
Speaker 1: in corporate culture then. UM, and some interestingly today have
Speaker 1: raised this concern. Right. Larry Summers, the former Treasury secretary,
Speaker 1: has sort of raised the question have wages stagnated for
Speaker 1: so long to the point that it may be cutting
Speaker 1: into consumer spending and the overall growth of the economy.
Speaker 1: And he's talked about this secular stagnation UM from essentially
Speaker 1: just not paying people enough not compensating them moment And
Speaker 1: then finally I'd say that the other again big factor
Speaker 1: is there was just a different mindset I think coming
Speaker 1: out of the depression and World War two, UM, corporate
Speaker 1: leaders really thought in we terms you know, we're kind
Speaker 1: of all in this together. That was the kind of
Speaker 1: national culture, and I think it was reflected and reinforced
Speaker 1: by corporate culture. And I think as America shifted more
Speaker 1: to an eye from a wee kind of ethic. UM
Speaker 1: that's also been reflected in UH in corporate culture. And
Speaker 1: again we've gone from the stakeholder mindset to a maximize
Speaker 1: shareholder value mindset. And when did that corporate mindset start
Speaker 1: to change and why so? It it really started? I mean,
Speaker 1: some people trace it to UH an article that Milton Friedman,
Speaker 1: the University of Chicago economists wrote famous piece in the
Speaker 1: New York Times Sunday magazine in nineteen seventy believe it
Speaker 1: was the Fall of nineteen seventy, and in it he
Speaker 1: said that business really has one social responsibility and that
Speaker 1: was that was the words he used, and he said
Speaker 1: that this social responsibility was for manager is to act
Speaker 1: as the agents of the shareholders. Um, that was their
Speaker 1: only job. And shareholders wanted one thing. They wanted profits
Speaker 1: to go up and in turn stock price to go up.
Speaker 1: And that was pretty much what executives and managers were
Speaker 1: there to do. And for them to do anything else,
Speaker 1: including trying to foster employment was in Freedman's words, I
Speaker 1: believe I have this correct. He said that was just
Speaker 1: practicing pure and unadulterated socialism. And so this this idea
Speaker 1: um called agency theory um, which maybe began with Freedmen,
Speaker 1: but there were certainly other thinkers. I mean, this was
Speaker 1: a period when people began to hold up the market
Speaker 1: place as something sack or sank and if we just
Speaker 1: let the market do its job, it would take care
Speaker 1: of a lot of our our problems. Um. There was
Speaker 1: a whole school of thought that rose up around this
Speaker 1: in business schools and law schools, among economists, and and
Speaker 1: before long this sort of went from the ivory tower
Speaker 1: and began to permeate the realm of practice. And then
Speaker 1: the last piece was EO pay began to be explicitly
Speaker 1: linked to UM how stock price did so. CEOs are
Speaker 1: always compensated uh with stock and stock options. Even if
Speaker 1: you go back to the nineties, fifties or sixties, you
Speaker 1: see that as part of their compensation packages. But it
Speaker 1: was a pretty tiny part, you know, small fraction. Now
Speaker 1: depending on how you measure it, it's somewhere between fifty
Speaker 1: and eighty percent. For a typical big company CEO his
Speaker 1: and it's mostly his uh, you know, or her pay
Speaker 1: is now tied to stock. And so when you do that,
Speaker 1: it becomes in their interests, you know, it's their own
Speaker 1: personal interests to try and drive up share price in
Speaker 1: the short term. And uh, when you do that, you
Speaker 1: know what's what's the quickest way to do that? Well,
Speaker 1: you you cut costs, and suddenly employees look like costs,
Speaker 1: an avoidable expense, not really like something you want to
Speaker 1: invest much. I'm wondering if it was really better for
Speaker 1: a lot of workers back then. And I know you
Speaker 1: mentioned some of the things like how maybe people like
Speaker 1: me and Francesca wouldn't be included in this idyllic version
Speaker 1: of the workplace, But was it. Are we looking at
Speaker 1: those with rose colored glasses a little to some degree? Yeah,
Speaker 1: we we definitely are. And I think this is particularly
Speaker 1: true as President Trump has romanticized a lot of these
Speaker 1: old manufacturing jobs and cold jobs and so on. First
Speaker 1: of all, they were they were brutal, I mean they
Speaker 1: were they were often you know, just backbreaking and dangerous. Uh.
Speaker 1: And um, you know, there's a lot of recorded evidence
Speaker 1: in oral histories. You know that I've I've read and
Speaker 1: a lot references in my book worker voices that talked
Speaker 1: about how tough these jobs were. But again, they put
Speaker 1: you at least on on a solid economic footing. You
Speaker 1: had good pay, you had good medical benefits, you had
Speaker 1: good retirement security. Um, your your kids could do well.
Speaker 1: They could you know, you could afford to send your
Speaker 1: kids to college. They were often the first generation that went,
Speaker 1: so there, you know, there were some real advantages that way.
Speaker 1: They were probably not as good jobs in some other ways.
Speaker 1: Even if you had more of a technical job, say
Speaker 1: at a general electric in the old days, it was
Speaker 1: much more of a kind of i think paternalistic, bureaucratic,
Speaker 1: top down kind of system, it probably wouldn't have been
Speaker 1: as enjoyable, you know, again depending on I'm sure it
Speaker 1: varry's department to department and manager to manager. But right
Speaker 1: we've we've moved to a corporate culture on the high
Speaker 1: end where there's a lot more collaboration, where there's a
Speaker 1: lot more team orientation, you know, where there is some flexibility,
Speaker 1: where where good companies like ge try and coax ideas
Speaker 1: from the bottom up. Um and and it's a bit
Speaker 1: more of a meritocracy than it probably was in the
Speaker 1: in that so called golden age. So some things are
Speaker 1: better about it now, I think, by and large across
Speaker 1: the board. Um, But again I think those things are
Speaker 1: largely reserved for people who have the skills and knowledge
Speaker 1: to take advance image of that part of the employment system.
Speaker 1: It's clear we're never going back to this golden age
Speaker 1: that you described, Like even high skilled workers who have
Speaker 1: the best benefits right now don't have pensions, for example.
Speaker 1: But are there things being done to make things better? Uh?
Speaker 1: You know, look, the things that I think may make
Speaker 1: things better, particularly on the knowledge worker end, younger millennial
Speaker 1: employees and all the evidence shows want to work for
Speaker 1: companies and are putting pressure on their employer to have
Speaker 1: the right values and to work at a place that
Speaker 1: is trying to make the world better. And even though again,
Speaker 1: if you if you're coming out of college and you're
Speaker 1: you know, you land one of these knowledge jobs talent,
Speaker 1: and you're you're being recruited, you know, you're probably gonna
Speaker 1: do okay yourself. But I think there's also increasing demand
Speaker 1: to say, we want to work at a company that
Speaker 1: treats all of our workers, down to those on the
Speaker 1: front lines are colleagues on the front lines that may
Speaker 1: not be may be in more of a low skilled
Speaker 1: kind of job. We want them treated right too. Um.
Speaker 1: And so I think there's pressure coming from you know,
Speaker 1: the employee side. I think there are pressures coming from
Speaker 1: the consumer side. Um where uh, you know, there's more
Speaker 1: and more access to information, a lot of it digitally
Speaker 1: now where you can you can go on glass Door,
Speaker 1: pay Scale or um. This online bank Aspiration has this
Speaker 1: app that you can use where you can look at
Speaker 1: the places you're shopping. You know, they know through your
Speaker 1: debit card purchases and online bill paying where you shop,
Speaker 1: and they'll rate the merchants where you're going. They'll give
Speaker 1: them a People's score and a Planet score. Right. How
Speaker 1: how where I'm shopping do they are they in line
Speaker 1: with my values? And you know they sort of benchmarket
Speaker 1: against other merchants that sell the same stuff. Maybe maybe
Speaker 1: they'll be. I think there's pressure that is coming from
Speaker 1: consumers and more pressure that way. Um. You know, we've
Speaker 1: seen what happens that you know and an uber for example, right,
Speaker 1: they didn't add a tipping option I thing for their
Speaker 1: drivers out of you know, because out of the goodness
Speaker 1: of their hearts. You know, they did so because there
Speaker 1: was pressure from right from workers wanting there from sorry,
Speaker 1: from consumers wanting their workers treated better. So, UM, I
Speaker 1: think that's another avenue where where maybe we're gonna start
Speaker 1: to see some some pressure and things moving in the
Speaker 1: other direction. And then, of course, investors, a lot of
Speaker 1: the kind of socially responsible impact investing has been more
Speaker 1: on the environmental side of things. UM, but I think
Speaker 1: that there is a movement to to try and look
Speaker 1: at e s g. Environmental social and governance metrics that
Speaker 1: also cover the people's side, and that um, social people
Speaker 1: are interested in impact investing and socially responsible investing. UM.
Speaker 1: You know, that's a real place the capital markets can
Speaker 1: can leverage pressure against companies to do the right thing
Speaker 1: and treat their people right in terms of compensation, in
Speaker 1: terms of investing in their training, making sure that they're
Speaker 1: following labor standards and and so on. So I think
Speaker 1: those are all pressure points that I think companies are
Speaker 1: beginning to feel how quickly and how forcefully they can
Speaker 1: add up and overcome this maximize shareholder value mindset. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't know if it will be strong enough to
Speaker 1: roll things you know back or how far. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: sounds like the only way companies do anything is if
Speaker 1: they feel like they have to thank you so much
Speaker 1: for taking the time and coming to talk to us.
Speaker 1: Oh it's a pleasure, Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1: So there's a perfect example of the shareholder value principle
Speaker 1: that Rick was talking about that I read about. A
Speaker 1: couple of months ago. American Airlines announced that I was
Speaker 1: giving pay raises to its pilots and its flight attendants,
Speaker 1: and basically Wall Street freaked out and the stock went down. Wow.
Speaker 1: So the specific thing that Wall Street was upset about
Speaker 1: was that basically American was giving like a little leg
Speaker 1: up to its workers. And it's funny because Rick was
Speaker 1: saying that, you know, maybe one hope we have for
Speaker 1: things turning around is consumers putting pressure on companies. And
Speaker 1: I guess in this case, like for consumers, you want
Speaker 1: happy flight attendants and pilots, and everybody's always complaining about
Speaker 1: how terrible the flying experiences. So maybe what it would
Speaker 1: take to convince American Airlines shareholders that it's good to
Speaker 1: give pay raises is if consumers hated the experience so
Speaker 1: much that they demanded it and then that sent the
Speaker 1: company's stock price down. But it seems very round about.
Speaker 1: It's honestly hard to think about how we could get
Speaker 1: back to anything that Rick is talking about for lots
Speaker 1: of reasons, like I even think that he said that
Speaker 1: these pressures we see from consumers are small. But I
Speaker 1: also think, you know, he was talking about how there
Speaker 1: are a lot of people that were left out of
Speaker 1: this economy and left out of this great world. And
Speaker 1: you know, he described it as an effect, but I
Speaker 1: wonder if that is almost why it was that way,
Speaker 1: when you're leaving out a lot of people of the
Speaker 1: company Titian, it creates a scenario where more where yeah,
Speaker 1: where all the white men can be the ones who succeed. Well,
Speaker 1: he did say that there has been some pushback in
Speaker 1: academia and people, you know, and and how economists think
Speaker 1: about this to the theory that you know, shareholder value
Speaker 1: above all is most important. So maybe over time the
Speaker 1: zeitgeist changes to where we can actually convince investors that
Speaker 1: companies make more money by treating their employees better. But
Speaker 1: it does seem like the only way things really changes
Speaker 1: if it's in the economic interests of corporations. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: see that a lot in my reporting. All of the
Speaker 1: benefits trends are a companies that are having trouble hiring.
Speaker 1: So you want to hire the best people, you have
Speaker 1: to treat them well. I think that the hard thing is,
Speaker 1: and he mentioned this a little bit, is just that
Speaker 1: there are fewer people that fit into that bucket. So
Speaker 1: people are trying to think of ways where more people
Speaker 1: can be included. Maybe we'll get there one day and
Speaker 1: out of time for half takes half fake takes, you
Speaker 1: can call into our hotline and leave us your own
Speaker 1: half bake take at two and two six one seven
Speaker 1: zero one six six Francesca, what's your half bag take?
Speaker 1: It's about work karaoke. Favorite topic on this occurring theme
Speaker 1: on Game Plan. Uh, it should be against the rules
Speaker 1: in some kind of corporate manual or just you know,
Speaker 1: you should get reprimanded by your manager if you go
Speaker 1: to any kind of karaoke. But let's keep it work related.
Speaker 1: If you go to work karaoke and don't sing, you
Speaker 1: should just be required to do it. Of course, you're
Speaker 1: going to look down. That's the point. You can't go
Speaker 1: and watch everyone else. You don't get the privilege of
Speaker 1: watching everyone else make a fool themselves. The contract you
Speaker 1: make is that we're all gonna look equally dumb. It
Speaker 1: doesn't worrk as a bonding if not everyone does it.
Speaker 1: I'm actually gonna go one step further because i feel
Speaker 1: strongly that private room carry okay, is kind of a joke. No,
Speaker 1: it's fine. I know everybody loves it because you get
Speaker 1: to order your dumplings fears, and you know what happens.
Speaker 1: Everybody gets too comfortable because there's not enough humiliation and
Speaker 1: there's not enough vulnerability, and everybody sends it, ends up
Speaker 1: singing along to every song and everyone's just shouting over
Speaker 1: each other by the end. If there is some public humiliation,
Speaker 1: like a bar full of drunken people that you don't
Speaker 1: know and you have to get up in front of
Speaker 1: them and sing, it just raises the stakes a little
Speaker 1: and it makes your performance really special. Also, I really
Speaker 1: like watching people sing who can't sing. I just think
Speaker 1: everyone to know that you're an above average singer and
Speaker 1: that's why you don't mind the humiliation. But very machiavellion. Okay,
Speaker 1: thank you for saying that I don't enjoy watching people
Speaker 1: be humiliated. I actually find that when people can't sing
Speaker 1: and they know that they can't sing. It's one of
Speaker 1: the sweetest things in the world to watch them sing.
Speaker 1: Like I love why people sing Happy Birthday because it's
Speaker 1: like they're not singing a Happy Birthday to show off
Speaker 1: how good they are singing. They're they're doing it to
Speaker 1: like celebrate. But then you hear everyone sing off pitch,
Speaker 1: and I actually think it's really sweet and cute. I
Speaker 1: don't like it when people think they can sing but
Speaker 1: can't say this is like a lot take. This is
Speaker 1: like coming together. Is more of like a thesis take
Speaker 1: if I had to write yeah, if I had to
Speaker 1: write like my thesis for half Big Take school, I'd
Speaker 1: be singing yeah. Anyway, I have a lot of thoughts
Speaker 1: about karaoke. Um tweet at me for more Becca, what's
Speaker 1: your half big take? So you know how you have
Speaker 1: to leave your seat sometimes depends are kind of worker
Speaker 1: you are, but yes, okay, So I often have to
Speaker 1: leave my seat, leave my computer screen and go to
Speaker 1: meetings or do various things, go to the bathroom, and
Speaker 1: some people might put their computer to sleep, but I'm
Speaker 1: not going to do that because that's way too much work.
Speaker 1: But I do select the perfect tab to leave open
Speaker 1: that everyone can see. Yeah, and it's actually quite stressful.
Speaker 1: I could see like our clicking through tabs and you're
Speaker 1: like that one's not good, that one's not good, that
Speaker 1: one's not good, Like, oh, yeah, that's study I was
Speaker 1: reading about, like worker rights. Yeah, yeah, leave that up.
Speaker 1: I'm right there with you. I do exactly the same thing.
Speaker 1: I totally curate my screen when I walk away from it.
Speaker 1: And it is a lot of pressure because you need
Speaker 1: to convey that you were doing work. But like I
Speaker 1: don't know, you also need to find something that isn't
Speaker 1: gonna like you don't want to leave your email open.
Speaker 1: I don't know, it can't be something. Yeah, it has
Speaker 1: to be something work related. I usually tab through for
Speaker 1: like a very uh innocent but work related chat. Like
Speaker 1: I'm not going to leave open up chat with you.
Speaker 1: I'll leave over to chat if it's like a chat
Speaker 1: that is that everyone has access to. That's just about
Speaker 1: like interesting what's going on the home? I don't always
Speaker 1: be like an article or a journal interesting strategy. What
Speaker 1: does your tabs say about you? Let us know? And
Speaker 1: this has been half Big Takes Ethic Takes. Thank you
Speaker 1: for listening to another episode of game Plan. You can
Speaker 1: find me on Twitter, I'm at our Z Greenfield and
Speaker 1: I'm at Francesca today. Tweet at us or call us
Speaker 1: and leave a voicemail at two one to six seven
Speaker 1: zero one six. If you like the show, head on
Speaker 1: over to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen and rate
Speaker 1: and review and subscribe. We love hearing from you. You
Speaker 1: can also subscribe to our newsletter if you want to
Speaker 1: hear from us more throughout the week, and you can
Speaker 1: do that just by going to Bloomberg dot com slash
Speaker 1: newsletters and checking game Plan. This show was produced by
Speaker 1: Liz Smith and Magnus Henrickson and the head of podcast
Speaker 1: As franchise to leave. We'll see you next week. Bye.
Speaker 1: I couldn't help but wonder it's my relationship with you
Speaker 1: know what