Speaker 1: Flex and Frooms, Flex and Frooms. This is the Flex
Speaker 1: and Frooms catch up podcast. Happy Monday, guys. Today we
Speaker 1: chatted about why flights always get canceled. Thank you to
Speaker 1: Monik Ryan from cou Jong and the Prestige Trap. Let's go.
Speaker 1: This is Flex and froomes on CADA. Do you ever
Speaker 1: wonder why so many flights in Australia are late? Tell
Speaker 1: me why one in three flights are delayed on three?
Speaker 1: This is an endemic of the highest order. We clearly
Speaker 1: have not recovered post COVID, but we persevere. We have
Speaker 1: a TikTok from Monique Ryan. She is the She's a
Speaker 1: teal member somewhere in Victoria.
Speaker 2: Coo youong?
Speaker 1: Perhaps she usp Josh Rounberg. Anyway, guys, obviously I what
Speaker 1: is it?
Speaker 2: God?
Speaker 1: Is it up?
Speaker 2: Dog?
Speaker 1: Let's make the TikTok. She's got an explanation.
Speaker 3: Do you want to know the real reason why flights
Speaker 3: in Australia always get canceled? It's because the Australian government
Speaker 3: pretty much allows Quantas and other airlines to.
Speaker 1: Get away with them.
Speaker 3: In other countries, there's laws which force airlines to pay
Speaker 3: customers if their flights are delayed or canceled not Australia.
Speaker 3: It means they're ripping off customers and they're recording huge
Speaker 3: profits from it. As a result, one in three flights
Speaker 3: are delayed and one in twenty five are canceled.
Speaker 1: I need no babes. How else am I supposed to
Speaker 1: get from Melbourne to Sydney? Do I need to take
Speaker 1: a boat? At this stage, I really don't get it.
Speaker 1: I would really like there to be a fast train.
Speaker 1: Clear that's not going to happen.
Speaker 2: But then what is the alternative?
Speaker 4: Because the system in America or the United States of
Speaker 4: America and Canada is pretty flawed as well. I'm not
Speaker 4: sure if you've experienced this idea of standby. So when
Speaker 4: you buy a ticket for a flight in the United
Speaker 4: States of America, you it grants you access, but you're
Speaker 4: not guaranteed a seat, And so after you buy your ticket,
Speaker 4: you need to select your seat to confirm that you
Speaker 4: have a spot on the plane. Now, they openly oversell
Speaker 4: these seats because they know that there's a lot of
Speaker 4: money to lose if you fly a plane or you
Speaker 4: leave and all the seats aren't full. So what happens
Speaker 4: is if you get put on standby It means that
Speaker 4: you have to wait to see if everybody else is
Speaker 4: boarded the plane, and if you don't have a seat there,
Speaker 4: they'll I think this is Delta and it was a
Speaker 4: couple of years ago.
Speaker 2: They'll offer you eight hundred dollars. Oh really.
Speaker 4: Now there's a bit of a conspiracy or a theory
Speaker 4: or a scam where people purposely book themselves on really
Speaker 4: full flights, really popular flights that they don't have to catch,
Speaker 4: knowing that they're going to be given this eight hundred.
Speaker 2: Dollars incredible, So it's like a two way scam.
Speaker 1: The Kansas is each other out. Listen. When I flew
Speaker 1: with a redacted airline in America, I thought it was
Speaker 1: like the real Boogie one, but it was actually the
Speaker 1: lowest tier situation. I'm not I won't tell you on
Speaker 1: air it was. Now the guys, I will not share.
Speaker 1: You never know where the dollars are going to come in, guys. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Mickey knows it too. Tell me why they put me
Speaker 1: a flight from Sydney to San Francisco and then San
Speaker 1: Francisu to New York and there's a half hour layover
Speaker 1: when I'm coming internationally. Thing, Oh, this is brilliant. I
Speaker 1: paid extra for this, like very.
Speaker 2: Specific, it was a fast track moment.
Speaker 1: And tell me why I then had to go to
Speaker 1: Ohio of all places. I did meet some ministering people
Speaker 1: on the plane, and by interesting I meant by the
Speaker 1: end of the trip, I wish I wasn't seeing next
Speaker 1: to them. But you live in your learn.
Speaker 4: Do you agree with the sentiment that if it didn't suck,
Speaker 4: if it wasn't the worst in the world, it wouldn't
Speaker 4: have to be marketed as prestigious.
Speaker 2: You might think of being a.
Speaker 4: Politician, you know, like it feels like a prestigious job
Speaker 4: to do, but realistically when you're there, it might just suck.
Speaker 4: You might say dating rich, you know, like pursuing someone
Speaker 4: who has more money.
Speaker 2: Than you might seem like a really cool thing.
Speaker 4: We've heard a lot of horror stories about people feeling
Speaker 4: as though they can't escape those dynamics because they don't
Speaker 4: have anything to their name and they can't go anywhere.
Speaker 4: I was scrolling through TikTok as I do and came
Speaker 4: across this video from Go Beyond Ambition that's talking a
Speaker 4: lot about how we might need to be a bit
Speaker 4: more discerning about things that are presented or marketed to
Speaker 4: us as being prestigious, because again, if it really was
Speaker 4: all that would it needle this extra pay off.
Speaker 1: If it didn't suck, they wouldn't have had to make
Speaker 1: it prestigious.
Speaker 5: Here's another bombshell that blew my mind. If you have
Speaker 5: two options, one being more prestigious but not as enjoyable,
Speaker 5: versus one that's like something that you're more into but
Speaker 5: less prestigious, do the less prestigious and speaking from experience,
Speaker 5: do the.
Speaker 1: Less prestigious one.
Speaker 5: Yeah, this essay completely blew my mind. It's like kind
Speaker 5: of ironic though, because the writer of it, Paul Graham,
Speaker 5: he's literally the founder of y Combinator, another company. He
Speaker 5: went to Harvard, so I would say he's pretty qualified
Speaker 5: to talk about prestige. He gets on to basically say
Speaker 5: that prestige is the opinion of the world, and it's
Speaker 5: how the world gets people to do.
Speaker 1: Things that kind of suck.
Speaker 4: Honestly, I think about a few of my friends who
Speaker 4: currently lawyers, and they are some of the most depressed morally.
Speaker 1: Areft.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like this.
Speaker 4: You know, a lot of us deal with like this
Speaker 4: moral contradiction of like not really feeling as though that
Speaker 4: we are acting in a way that truly aligns with us.
Speaker 4: But you know the lengths that they've expressed having to
Speaker 4: go against their morals and to uphold a system that
Speaker 4: is truly built for one person in mind. I was
Speaker 4: talking to a friend of mine who dropped out of
Speaker 4: law school. It was just part of the curriculum, and
Speaker 4: they were talking about whatever, and they were talking about
Speaker 4: common phrases and so innocent until proven guilty, Like the
Speaker 4: origins of that are as sinister as you'd imagine it
Speaker 4: to be. Because the people who would need that, the
Speaker 4: people who wouldn't have to benefit from that kind of rule,
Speaker 4: are people doing objectively bad things, and what more lea
Speaker 4: way for that? And she was like, wait, so I'm
Speaker 4: gonna have to use this as permission to let someone
Speaker 4: who's doing a terrible thing get more leeway so they
Speaker 4: can muster up the money and muster up the support
Speaker 4: and muster up the connections to fight against this thing
Speaker 4: that they are probably guilty of and do it again
Speaker 4: and again and again.
Speaker 1: And this reminds me of like every person who did
Speaker 1: like a double degree, like King, you did that thinking
Speaker 1: of you, it's your parents or like friends who've gone
Speaker 1: to do like uni degrees when they really wanted to
Speaker 1: do like a trade. They thought they had to do
Speaker 1: the you need to go and then they've gone back
Speaker 1: to do mature age trade. That's got to hit differently.
Speaker 2: Well, you got it, some derogatory mature age trade. But
Speaker 2: I see you, I hear you.
Speaker 1: You don't ever saying yeah like the people who've been
Speaker 1: doing it since I fifteen.
Speaker 4: But I would say it's one of those things where
Speaker 4: I am a personally likes to make my own mistakes.
Speaker 4: I really hate hearing from other people what I should
Speaker 4: and should not do, So I can understand that like
Speaker 4: this might come across as like do the thing that
Speaker 4: you really want to do for fear that it might
Speaker 4: be bad. But it is interesting to see that when
Speaker 4: we look at people in positions of prestige, very few
Speaker 4: of them have glowing things to say, Hello, lovely.
Speaker 1: We had a listener message us. They are under duress,
Speaker 1: which is something that we have all experienced, but this
Speaker 1: one is particularly bad. She wants to tell us about
Speaker 1: a time her ex boyfriend has tried to force her
Speaker 1: to pay back all the money that he spent on
Speaker 1: her in their relationship, which is now defunct. The relationship
Speaker 1: has been canceled, the investment discontinued. Here is her story.
Speaker 1: My boyfriend and I got together when I was a teenager.
Speaker 1: He was a few years above me. We would sneak
Speaker 1: around and have a little fun, and our relationship was
Speaker 1: pretty much toxic. Okay, I'd have to beg for a
Speaker 1: little time for him to spend with me or to
Speaker 1: talk to me. He was just always quote unquote busy,
Speaker 1: and he wrote down every single thing he paid for
Speaker 1: me or bought me as a gift. I'll do that
Speaker 1: in my head, but he took it one further. This
Speaker 1: is me listening to speaking, not the room speaking, not
Speaker 1: the guy. When we broke up, he started demanding money
Speaker 1: back and it's just so stupid. And he keeps threatening
Speaker 1: me to sue me because he has proof that he
Speaker 1: lent me money. But he just wrote down everything he
Speaker 1: paid for in brackets, trips, movies, festivals, gas, restaurants, clothes.
Speaker 1: Mind you that I paid as well, but I never
Speaker 1: asked for money back. The money I actually did ask
Speaker 1: him I already returned. Is his stupid behavior or am
Speaker 1: I tripping? Who's in fault here? Can he sue me
Speaker 1: for this. Oh my words, you were saying earlier, Flexi,
Speaker 1: that we spoken about a similar thing on the show.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, we told a story of a BBC article
Speaker 4: I was reading about this trend or this social movement
Speaker 4: that was happening in China and Singapore where where women
Speaker 4: who felt as though they lost their best years to
Speaker 4: a partner who broke up with them were entitled to
Speaker 4: some kind of payment after the dissolution of that relationship,
Speaker 4: and for the most part they were getting money.
Speaker 1: Yeah. My personal opinion on such an experience is that
Speaker 1: he played the game and he.
Speaker 2: Lost one hundred like I believe.
Speaker 1: Oh my word, where does one even begin.
Speaker 2: This is ridiculous, it's one hundred percent.
Speaker 1: I'm sick of it, appalled. I think you should block him.
Speaker 2: Just know he can't sue you.
Speaker 4: I mean, if there was a verbal contract that he
Speaker 4: was giving you these things with the intention to keep
Speaker 4: the relationship strong, maybe he could sue you. That's a
Speaker 4: verbal contract in Australian law. But for the most part,
Speaker 4: you can't give someone something freely and then claim after
Speaker 4: the fact that it was transactional and therefore you can
Speaker 4: sue them.
Speaker 2: Like he's not going to sue you.
Speaker 1: And also, respectfully, what did you give him that you
Speaker 1: cannot put a monetary priceless price?
Speaker 2: The love of a partner is priceless.
Speaker 1: Honestly, many people would pay.
Speaker 4: Maybe one could argue he was overcompensating with the finances
Speaker 4: because he knew that he was cashing in a check
Speaker 4: that he could not pay, that he could not shop
Speaker 4: for you as a true partner, So he had to
Speaker 4: give you all that he could, which was money. Now
Speaker 4: there is no relationship. He's lost out of that money.
Speaker 4: He feels entitled to it. Get it from someone else.
Speaker 1: Think about the memories, King Price. You know what, maybe
Speaker 1: if there was like a way for a napp to
Speaker 1: wipe all the memories, then it would be a fair trade. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like wipe all the memories from his brain.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know that he wouldn't know that he was
Speaker 2: owed money, so it.
Speaker 1: Would be amazing with all parties here. Have you ever
Speaker 1: considered being a digital nomad?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Oh, have you ever done it? No? Of course not.
Speaker 2: Listen.
Speaker 1: I found this story by a woman called Francesca Specter.
Speaker 1: She's a writer somewhat of our similar vocation. FLEXI did
Speaker 1: just launch a newsletter? When do we find it? No?
Speaker 2: Deep dives please at substack.
Speaker 1: Correct. So Francesca has written in The Guardian about the
Speaker 1: realities of being a digital nomad. Here's what she said.
Speaker 1: I would be sitting outside a hostel in Florence, doing
Speaker 1: a nine to five riding shift for a Nottingham based
Speaker 1: health and beauty retailer, cooling my overheating laptop in the shade,
Speaker 1: while looking enviously at holidaymakers relaxing by the pool. Tell
Speaker 1: me why all the times I've decided to bring my
Speaker 1: laptop out into the wild, say at a beachside cafe
Speaker 1: in my Chrosen suburb, I have to go home because
Speaker 1: the flies are swatting around me. Is because having showered today,
Speaker 1: Potentially then I go down to the beach. Why don't
Speaker 1: I want to go sit the laptop at icebergs? I can't.
Speaker 1: I'm in the full pelt of the sun.
Speaker 2: Got it.
Speaker 1: These are the realities nobody talks about when it comes
Speaker 1: to being a digital nomad, working for yourself, working from home.
Speaker 1: I'm under duress, the hidden truths, the hidden truths. I
Speaker 1: want to know if it was actually I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess people do go to balley and do it illegally.
Speaker 1: I thought you, I thought it was legal. I thought
Speaker 1: it was.
Speaker 2: Leathal mean m no comment, no comment.
Speaker 4: I'm not saying everybody is doing it, but people definitely
Speaker 4: go on visas that don't allow you to work and
Speaker 4: then work online and get taxed in their home country.
Speaker 4: Don't give me ideas not stimulating the Balinese economy, economy,
Speaker 4: but you know, it is what it is.
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