193: Bonds Built in the Foxholes
In this episode, the hosts delve into the idea of whether bonds formed in moments of workplace trauma and high-stress situations are uniquely irreplaceable. The discussion also touches on how team-building activities can simulate the bonds formed under duress, the cultural differences in work stress, and challenges faced in the workplace.
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With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.
Transcript
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[00:00:00] Highlight
[00:00:00] Ben: is there a story that we're not telling where it's, you can build all those same beautiful bonds?
[00:00:05] Ben: But you don't actually have to be running around. Like everything's on fire
[00:00:09] Adam: It's a, it's a really good point. I really like that. You're bringing this up. I honestly, I think the answer is kind of, no, I don't like, I, I,
[00:00:18] Ben: after show after show.
[00:00:21] Adam: No, but like, and I mean that kind of in, in a, in a weirdly positive way. Like
[00:00:45] Intro
[00:00:45] Adam: here we go. It is show number 193, and on today's show, we are going to talk about foxholes and work trauma. But first, as usual, we'll start with our triumphs and fails. I've got Ben Nadel and Tim Cunningham here with me today. Carol is probably still working, MIA, totally unresponsive, which usually means stuff is going on at work.
[00:01:06] Adam: so, no Carol tonight. but that, that means I'm coming to you first, Tim. What do you got going on?
[00:01:10] Tim's Fail
[00:01:10] Tim: Well, I'm going to go with a failure in the fact that I can't think of a triumph or a failure.
[00:01:15] Adam: The total cop out
[00:01:17] Tim: Yeah, I got, I got nothing. Yeah, not a whole lot going on. You know, Ben was asking me about my, my garden. My garden's doing, doing okay. Got the, got people here, you know, replacing the liner in the pool, so.
[00:01:29] Tim: That's a big failure cause that's extremely expensive, proposition to put new vinyl on your pool.
[00:01:34] Adam: Yeah.
[00:01:34] Tim: But, yeah, other than that works, like works plodding along, projects are going. So yeah,
[00:01:40] Adam: You know, I think we've, we've mentioned similar moments in the past and we just say that it's a triumph, that it's, the status is quo, you know,
[00:01:47] Tim: status
[00:01:47] Ben: septic tank is all status quo. Everything's good there.
[00:01:50] Tim: Yeah. Yeah. So they need to check on that. It's been a couple of years.
[00:01:56] Adam: Yo, you? Well, I don't know. Whatever. I don't know. I've never had a Suffolk tank, but I, so I don't know, but I assume that they last a lot more than a few years
[00:02:04] Ben: Well, you have to empty them.
[00:02:05] Tim: I get, I get, I get them pumped.
[00:02:07] Ben: I've never had to empty
[00:02:08] Tim: every three years
[00:02:09] Ben: Apparently you do.
[00:02:11] Tim: they get full and it's not good when it gets full. Everything backs up in the house.
[00:02:15] Ben: Nobody wants that.
[00:02:16] Tim: Nobody wants that. So I, I just feel, you know, feel for the guys who do that for a job, man. Jumping in a septic tank and
[00:02:24] Ben: like a, like a Mike Rowe episode. What was it? Dirty
[00:02:28] Adam: Dirty jobs.
[00:02:29] Tim: yeah,
[00:02:30] Ben: I'm pretty, there must've been a septic tank episode.
[00:02:33] Adam: Oh, I'm sure.
[00:02:34] Tim: yeah. So, so I don't really have anything, so sorry, you know, no triumphs, no fails, but the status is quo.
[00:02:40] Ben: We're just happy to have you, sir.
[00:02:41] Tim: thank you. How about you, Adam?
[00:02:43] Adam's Failiumph
[00:02:43] Adam: I'm gonna go with a fum. So I've, I know I've mentioned on the PA in the past, on the show, maybe. Even somewhat recently, I feel like, that I was locked out of my personal AWS account. Like I had an account and I used it for years and then
[00:02:58] Ben: You mentioned you were still getting billed for it, like a couple of cents, like nine cents a month or something.
[00:03:03] Adam: seven cents a month. Yeah. And like, I, and it's weird, like, I, it's always felt wrong, right? Like it, it just feels like, well, if you're going to lock me out of my account and not let me in, you, it shouldn't be fair that you're charging me seven cents a month. Right. And so, yeah. This weekend I found myself with some time and maybe I will, since I have a work AWS account, I will.
[00:03:26] Adam: Go and, like put in a support ticket through work and say like, I'd like to get back into my account, you know, I'll, I'll pay whatever I owe that I missed or whatever. You know, just, you know, let me back in. Cause I, so
[00:03:36] Tim: So then they lock your work account. Mm
[00:03:40] Adam: of the reason for the part of the motivation for that was like, I've been kind of working on a side project and I was considering hosting it on AWS stuff.
[00:03:47] Adam: And I was like, I really don't want to have to like go create a whole separate AWS or Amazon account for all that. Like, let me see if I can fix this. And so, here's what I did. I went to the login, because I was thinking, okay, before I put in my support ticket, I need to, like, remind myself exactly what error am I getting, what have I tried, this and that, right, so, go to, to go through the problems again, to, refresh my memory so I can put in this ticket.
[00:04:12] Adam: And wouldn't you know it, I get in. So I, I, I know, I, I, I, I, I, I'm pretty sure what was happening before was it, I don't know if you guys have ever used AWS and signed into the console. They have two different login screens,
[00:04:25] Tim: They do.
[00:04:26] Adam: right? So there's the quote unquote root user access screen and then like a IAM user login.
[00:04:33] Adam: And they're very different, like they look very, very similar, except like one has an extra field on it. And I, I somehow, I think, I think I signed up for my personal AWS account before I got good at console, like the AWS console stuff through work. Right. I was basically familiar through work, but I was just kind of figuring it out, making it work, personal stuff.
[00:04:56] Adam: And then I didn't touch it for years. And then when I came back, I just like, you know, stuff was, was funky in my brain and it wasn't working out. And I felt locked out and I'm pretty sure what was happening was I was just using the wrong login screen. And it was, you know, I, I'm counting that part as a failure for Amazon.
[00:05:13] Adam: Like there should have been some sort of affordance there for them to like push me into the pit of success. Right? Like I'm just using the wrong login form. How hard could it be to be like, you know, that's not the right password. Have you tried logging in over here?
[00:05:26] Ben: totally.
[00:05:27] Adam: so, I mean, it feels, I feel so bad. So like a moron, because it took me all this time of like, just trying to Thinking that I was locked out.
[00:05:36] Adam: I was probably more than a year, probably like three years that I thought I was locked out of my account.
[00:05:40] Ben: probably spent in excess of 94 cents that you didn't have to spend.
[00:05:47] Adam: Uh,
[00:05:48] Adam: but I'm back in, and, and so that's, that's good, I guess. Yeah, so I, like, like I said, you know, it's a failure, I'm afraid, like, it's a triumph because I'm in, but it's a failure because I never should have been locked out.
[00:06:01] Ben: For whatever reason that made me think of, I just recently saw some comics one post on Facebook. It's like two panels or three panels and one panel is like.it's an interview and the guy's like, what do you do if you see a really bad user interface? And the guy says, I'd make it worse. And the third panelist, you're hired and it's the Amazon hiring process.
[00:06:22] Tim: That's, that's so true.
[00:06:24] Adam: It hurts because it's true. Yeah.
[00:06:27] Tim: it's some, it must be an Amazon thing. Cause like. I have an Audible account. I had an Audible account. And some reason the Audible account and the Amazon account was on the same user, same username, which was my email. But when I did that, the, I kind of got the wires crossed on it. So it's like I changed the password in the Amazon one and all of a sudden my Audible stopped working. And yeah, it just, they, they, I don't know, they do weird, weird things with it would tell me. Oh, that's the other word. This is an Amazon thing, but don't you hate it when you go, you forget your password, so you go, change your password and you put in what you thought was your old password, and it's like, sorry, you can't reuse passwords.
[00:07:11] Tim: I'm like, wait a minute. Hmm. Wow.
[00:07:18] Adam: That's all I got. Ben, why don't you bring it home? What do you got going on?
[00:07:21] Ben's Triumph
[00:07:21] Ben: going to go with a triumph. I have on previous episodes talked about the fact that I'm building a bulk export process for customer documents as we ride our horses into the sunset here. And I'm pretty excited. I've sort of quietly made that generally available to our user base. Which like double secret triumph, I didn't actually ask permission to do this at all.
[00:07:47] Adam: This whole time I just assumed that that was like something that you were supposed to be doing.
[00:07:50] Ben: Well, it's okay. Although like my, my primary triumph here is that I'm, I'm, I'm like several dozen documents away from passing the 15, 000 exports mark. Which, you know, in the grand scheme of things is a drop in the bucket for 13 years of data. It represents, I think, a non trivial number of users who feel like this could add value and that have gone and provisioned an S3 bucket and wired it up and hit the Export button.
[00:08:22] Ben: And I've now exported close to 15, 000 prototypes. So that's, I'm feeling pretty jazzed about that.but I'll say like the double secret triumph here is that, I, when I started this process, I was told that we did not want to burden our support team. So I should not launch this and, and without, you know, written authorization and, and running it by people.
[00:08:47] Ben: And like, I just get cocky. And, you know, like I'll,
[00:08:51] Adam: What are they going to do, fire you?
[00:08:52] Ben: I'll, I'll, I'll turn it on for, basically I, I, I launched it, but it was disabled and there was a message that said, Hey, if you're interested in trying this, reach out to me directly. And I have my, my email address, my work email address, and I will include you in the private beta.
[00:09:09] Ben: So I had, I don't know, maybe like 10 people reach out to me to say, Hey, we're, we're actually very interested in this. Can we try the beta? So I added them to the feature flag and. They kind of helped hammer out some like, Oh, this UI could be a little bit more clear on how I'm supposed to provide information.
[00:09:24] Ben: So I was tweaking and probably in that private beta, I mean, maybe something like close to 1500 or 2000 prototypes were exported just cause some of these people had like a thousand prototypes. And it was like pretty exciting to see that actually work.but no one from the support team was ever like.
[00:09:40] Ben: Hey, we're getting some support tickets about this not working. So I was like, Hmm, can I just like quietly enable this for everybody then and see what happens? And I did that a couple of weeks ago and no one has said anything to me yet. So, you know, I feel like I'm going out, as cocky as I arrived and I'm feeling pretty good about that.
[00:10:03] Adam: Do you have the ability to, like, peek into the support database and see, like, are they getting any tickets without hav without having to ask anybody?
[00:10:10] Ben: I'm. I'm assuming that 100 percent somebody would reach out to me and say like, what the heck is going on? But I am very clear. I think if you, when you go to the export page, it's, it says like, this is a developer led initiative. If you have any questions or feedback, please contact me directly at my email.
[00:10:30] Ben: So I'm really trying my best to say, this is not a quote unquote, official project, don't bother the support people. And so far, I think it's working.
[00:10:40] Adam: Oh, good, man. 15,
[00:10:42] Ben: I feel good. I feel good about it.
[00:10:43] Adam: 000 exports. So that's, that's 15, 000 like prototype pages or whatever.
[00:10:50] Ben: It's, it's like an individual document. So an document might have a bunch of screens in it.
[00:10:54] Adam: Okay.
[00:10:54] Ben: it'd be interesting to see how many gigabytes of information this has been. I have the, so when you export. Basically, so this is all running in MySQL and it's essentially hijacking these two tables as a makeshift queue.
[00:11:10] Ben: So there's a queue table and then a results table and. I'm sure we've all done kind of similar things. We just say like, select top 100 from Q and then process it and then move those records, you know, insert them into results and delete them from Q kind of a thing. I'm, I'm oversimplifying, but not that much. Part of what I record in the results table is the number of screens that were in each prototype, and the size of the actual zip file that gets generated, just because I'm curious to understand more about the transfer, like how fast these transfers are actually happening. so I can look up, I can certainly look up to see just the total gigabytes size.
[00:11:51] Ben: and I, and I think I mentioned this on a previous show, but the largest prototype zip file that I've seen so far is about 1. 2 gigs. But most of them, I mean, that person had literally thousands of screens, like over 3000 screens, but when I look at, cause I do a bunch of validation just to make sure that all of the things are doing what they're supposed to.
[00:12:10] Ben: And like the vast majority of people have like six screens and a prototype, three screens and a prototype. I think there are a lot of landing page variations, you know, like marketing pages. Here's three variations on this one page kind of a thing. Most people have small stuff. Anyway, I'm excited. I feel like, I'm always trying to find the silver lining in the cloud that is the end of this career.
[00:12:36] Adam: At least it's not your career ending. It's just
[00:12:38] Ben: No, no, no. Yeah, yeah. That's just this job, but it's just been a, it's been a hot minute.
[00:12:42] Adam: Would you say that you have some traumas from this experience
[00:12:45] Ben: think I had
[00:12:46] Adam: company shutting
[00:12:47] Ben: I think some traumas. I've, I've, I've survived some things, been through some incidents, got some pages, not that many pages in my, in the grand scheme of things. I'm actually pretty happy about that.
[00:12:56] Adam: Now, is this all as a result of the, the sunsetting of the product? Or are you talking more just like general throughout
[00:13:03] Ben: speaking, I mean, actually very little has gone wrong in the sunsetting of the product.
[00:13:09] Adam: So they just totally like Elon Musk's your company.
[00:13:12] Ben: percent. We got Elon Musk so hard
[00:13:16] Adam: Somebody bought it and they're like, just unplug everything until, until something starts
[00:13:20] Ben: until it hurts.
[00:13:21] Adam: yeah,
[00:13:23] Ben: But, but, so I guess we're pivoting here into our, into our topic of,
[00:13:27] Adam: I was trying to do it a little more subtly,
[00:13:29] Ben: know I could, I didn't know how to, I didn't know how to bring it around. I didn't know if it would be too confusing. Like, are we still in triumphs and fails? I didn't want to confuse people.
[00:13:35] Adam: no, officially we are not in triumphs and fails anymore, but
[00:13:39] Let's Talk About Work Trauma
[00:13:39] Adam: let's talk about work trauma.
[00:13:41] Ben: Well, so this is why I've been thinking about this lately, because. Oftentimes, when I hear people reflecting on their careers, and where they've worked, and their experiences, they will oftentimes, glamorize is not the right word, but look back with affection to the times when everything was on fire, and the team was dug in, and we were all on the Zoom call, and we worked for, you know, 43 hours straight, And we got it done and, and you build this camaraderie and it, it, it, it feels like, you know, it often gets equated to being in the foxhole in a wartime metaphor.
[00:14:21] Ben: and then even if you think about things like the Marines, you know, they go through this super, super intense training program and from everything that I have heard, you know, once a Marine, always a Marine, like that builds a bond that is not easily broken. And I can relate to that. We've had a lot of incidents at work over the years, and there is something about being on that Zoom call, and everything feels like it's on fire, and you're trying to be there for your, your fellow compatriots, and you're calming each other down, and you're dividing up tasks, and you're Communicating well, and you're trying to get things done.
[00:14:59] Ben: You're talking about the logs and you're cooperating. I don't know, there's something very beautiful about it. The thing I think that often gets left out in the conversation is, do we build that same kind of bond in the good times? You know, is there a counterfactual, that's not really the right word in this context, but is there a story that we're not telling where it's, you can build all those same beautiful bonds?
[00:15:27] Ben: But you don't actually have to be running around. Like everything's on fire
[00:15:31] Adam: It's a, it's a really good point. I really like that. You're bringing this up. I honestly, I think the answer is kind of, no, I don't like, I, I,
[00:15:41] Ben: after show after show.
[00:15:44] Adam: No, but like, and I mean that kind of in, in a, in a weirdly positive way. Like I agree that. I'm kind of reading between the lines of what you said here, but I think what I was hearing is that like, you know, in general, that whole like incident response, gutting it out through 48 hours of, of, you know, consecutive, you know, no sleep or anything.
[00:16:06] Adam: And just until it's fixed, most of us have been through that once or twice or God, please not more than that. But, is, it's exhausting and, and. You do form a different kind of bond with the people that you're going through that with. And I think it's primarily you're learning that you can rely on each other, right?
[00:16:26] Adam: And you're, it's a, it's a unity of purpose, right? So when, when times are good, people have opinions and people have their priorities and those things can often conflict and compete. But when you, when, you know, when you have an existential crisis for your company, And then there literally is only one top priority and it's to save the company, then,
[00:16:50] Ben: suddenly all pointed in the same direction.
[00:16:52] Adam: exactly.
[00:16:53] Adam: And like, it's hard, probably not impossible, but I would say darn near impossible to do that in the good times, right? Like you can, you can bond with people, you can have, you can create strong bonds over positive experiences, but I don't think that it's the same kind of bond as, as dealing with adversity together.
[00:17:13] Tim: And I think it's a different part of your brain is activated, right? That makes it more memorable. So, right. You're, you're in fight or flight mode. Right. And so your brain is going to. You know, hold onto that lesson because there's some lesson usually learned there and be able to identify the people that were around you at that time that helped you, you know, beat that beast, but, but I would say, I think it can somewhat simulate this.
[00:17:39] Tim: So, you know, with companies that do like team building kind of things, usually there's some, some amount of competition or where you're thrown into a situation that you're completely unprepared for with your coworkers. Right. So. Like one of the first team building things we did when we got bought by Constellation back in 2013 was we had to, they basically gave us a, a bunch of like odd tools and things.
[00:18:08] Tim: And then we had to build a,
[00:18:09] Ben: tools,
[00:18:09] Tim: yeah, physical tools. They gave us supplies like, like bags and some pool noodles and duct tape and things like that. And we had to build, we had to do like a canoe race against the other teams to see who could design the best canoe. Right. And I still remember that today. Like, so it wasn't really like trauma, but it's like the situation where, you know, none of us were engineers and they, you didn't really have all the tools you needed to do something super successful, but you know, I remember every person on that team and that was like.
[00:18:37] Tim: 2013. So I think that they do, you do that to kind of simulate that, that bonding experience that you also go through when you're facing some sort of like, you know, workplace emergency trauma.
[00:18:51] Ben: Well, it even feels a little bit reminiscent of going back to school. Like not returning to school, but. Remembering back to school. Most of school went pretty smoothly for me. You know, I was pretty dedicated to stuff and I did things on time, but there were a couple of projects where I had to pull all nighters and I remember those, like I remember those in a, in a visceral way in the way that I don't remember the things that were standard homework operating procedure.
[00:19:18] Ben: And I think it's that same kind of the trauma gets imprinted in a, I came out triumphant, you know, I finished the things, I took the test, I handed in the homework, but it sticks with you in a
[00:19:29] Adam: Well, this also reminds me of a section of the Phoenix Project, which we read on as part of our book club here on podcast. And if you guys remember, like, at one point toward the end of the book or, or toward, I guess, just after the turning point, when things start to get better, the, the CEO guy like brings in his top brass and, and they just all kind of go around the table and they share their like life story and they talk about what makes them who they are and, and
[00:19:56] Ben: Right,
[00:19:56] Adam: was a big, you know, it's like they talked about their traumas, and that kind of helped them understand each other better, which I think is kind of going back to what Tim was saying.
[00:20:06] Adam: It's like you can't put somebody through the trauma, but you can help each other. Understand who you are and how you think.
[00:20:14] Glamorizing the Hard Path
[00:20:14] Ben: So the flip side to my thought here on all of this stuff is that when people talk about these traumatic scenarios in which they built this strong team bond, I sometimes am afraid that there is a little bit of an othering, meaning that The kind of most successful companies are the ones where all these people had to suffer together to make the company successful. And it sometimes feels like, Oh, if my company is just running smoothly and things aren't on fire, like we're sort of almost not professional in the way that these people have, have walked through fire to make their products successful. And I, I, every time we have these.like survivorship bias conversations.
[00:20:58] Ben: There's always the, what about the people who didn't have to go through with this kind of stuff? They can still be successful. And do we forget the fact that maybe you can be successful without actually having to walk through the fire? And, and I'm always a little bit afraid about that kind of glamorization of the, the hard path.
[00:21:16] Tim: And, and then there's some sort of management styles that. I think there's certain people that are addicted to that kind of adrenaline rush. Right. Yeah. I think there's some, and there's certain management styles that, that they needlessly set up, you know, scenarios where it feels like, you know, it's the end of the world where you, they'll pit, people against each other and, and create these drama situations where, you know, it's super dramatic.
[00:21:42] Tim: And I think there's just a certain personality that that's drawn to that, or they might be addicted to it. but certainly not, Something I would ever want to encourage.
[00:21:52] Ben: Well, I do wonder a little bit, if I can reflect on my own Experience at work. And one of the things that Adam was underscoring is that when there's an emergency, everybody is suddenly on the same page. This is the one highest priority item and we're all cooperating. When things aren't on fire, I'm, my experience has much more been the solo developer.
[00:22:14] Ben: I'm sort of off in my corner, doing my own thing. Even when I was on a team that had people, we were all sort of doing our own thing, but in the same universe. And so we were a team, but we weren't necessarily doing teamwork, if that, if that makes sense.
[00:22:31] Adam: You're just all hanging out in the same room, but all working on your own projects.
[00:22:34] Ben: And so I think maybe it's that, it's the force, it's the forcing function that is the incident that creates the teamwork.
[00:22:42] Ben: And maybe it's really the teamwork that is the bonding. And this goes back to what Tim was saying about the team building exercise. It's the, it's the teamwork. And maybe, and I'm just thinking here in real time, what's so important about the foxhole mentality is the teamwork and less the suffering. The suffering is incidental.
[00:23:01] Ben: That was the thing that forced the teamwork. But if we can find ways to. Make teamwork more of a regularly scheduled program, then perhaps we can build this type of bond without having to feel like, the, the, everything is fine, dog,
[00:23:20] Adam: He's got to have a name, right?
[00:23:24] Ben: hadn't seen, not have his own animated show yet.
[00:23:26] Team Building Exercises
[00:23:26] Ben: We did an escape room of, we did a virtual escape room about, four weeks ago at work three or four weeks ago. And it's. Essentially, so if you've heard of an escape room, I've never actually done one in real life, but the idea is it's kind of a real world puzzle room where you're in a room and there's all kinds of artifacts and you have to do puzzles like understand how to move levers and undo locks and this lock provides you with a key and you have to figure out where that key goes.
[00:23:54] Ben: We did a virtual one over Zoom where they literally have a guy In a escape room and he has a camera mounted on his helmet. And so you see his hands and you, he has a headset and you're telling him what to do. And he's going, he's knocking on doors and he's. Pulling levers and hitting buttons and whatnot.
[00:24:14] Ben: And, I, I mean, honestly, I hate that kind of stuff because I feel so much pressure. I'm not a fast thinker. I'm definitely a slow, like, you tell me a thing. I'll go sit, think about it for 45 minutes and then come back to you with an idea. But there, even that was, was, I felt bonded to the other people that were on my Zoom call.
[00:24:31] Ben: It was like four or five other people. Because everyone's coming with ideas about how to do it. And we're all puppeteering this guy around the escape room. I don't know where I'm going with that thought. Other than to say it was a team building exercise. And at first I hated the idea and I didn't really want to do it.
[00:24:47] Ben: But by the time I was done, I, I did feel more connected to people. And part of me wishes we did that stuff more often. Like the, the emotional knee jerk side of me, it's like, Oh, I got stuff to do. I definitely don't want to do that stuff more often, but the, Academic side of me is like, yeah, it'd probably be actually really good for team morale and interpersonal relationships if we did that kind of stuff more often.
[00:25:11] Adam: So I was kind of saving this for the after show, but we can kind of get into it a little bit. Maybe I'll save some details for the
[00:25:16] Ben: Do it live.
[00:25:17] Abundance and Scarcity
[00:25:17] Adam: so I have a friend, so you were talking about how, like it feels almost impossible to, or you feel like othered if your company is not going through those same challenges, right?
[00:25:30] Adam: You feel less professional or something, right? And that made me think about like, you know, a lot, I feel like a lot of the constraints that put us in these situations are from being in, for lack of a better word, I'll just say like low margin businesses, right? Like we're, we, we are not charging enough to pay five people's salary from one customer and getting 10, 000 customers, right?
[00:25:53] Adam: We are, you know, I would say that. Tim's company is probably a little better off than yours and mine, but, uh, but, you know, we, we, we, we work hard for a living and sometimes it just feels like we're barely keeping up with. The needs of the customers and the products. Anyway, and it made me wonder, like, are there tech companies, like, or programming jobs where you do have that, like, abundance of riches or what's the, the, the thing, an embarrassment of riches, right?
[00:26:27] Adam: Like, more, so much money and time that you're just like, yeah, this is, you know, super laid back, but still also somehow like a rewarding job. I don't know about that. But it kind of made me think about, I have a, I have a friend who's a pilot, and she's 21, she learned to fly when she was 16, which I think is the minimum, and she just got hired this week, actually today, she's moving down to Delaware, because she got hired for this job.
[00:26:54] Adam: and she is going to be a private pilot for a construction company. Basically, it sounds like the construction company has a ton of money to the point where they just, it is a construction company and they have. Multiple nice planes. Like, take your family on vacation plane. Like, we're not talking a little Cessna 182.
[00:27:13] Adam: We're talking about like, they have a Gulfstream jet. They have a PB, PBM, something like that. And a Pilatus PC 12, which are, you know, these are large, aircraft. They hold, you know, maybe 13, 15, 20 people comfortably. and
[00:27:30] Ben: Am I in the wrong business?
[00:27:32] Adam: yeah, exactly. And she's one of their private pilots. She's going to be working like three or four days a week with a couple of, you know, expected like, you know, maybe 10 or 12 overnights, you know, not, you know, not sleeping at home sort of situation, right?
[00:27:45] Adam: They're going to fly somewhere and she's going to be there with them for a day or two and then come home. Poor you, you have to go to the Bahamas for two days, right? Like, and like, I just, this is the first generation of the company, right? It's a family owned company, it's two brothers or whatever. And they, like, how, how do they have that much money, right?
[00:28:03] Adam: This is not like generational wealth. This is a company they built for themselves. They have enough money to like, Just own a bunch of planes, which let me tell you, are not inexpensive. And, and pay private pilots to just fly them around to take their family on
[00:28:16] Tim: Think what you're missing when you say construction in the Northeast, you actually mean the, the mob.
[00:28:23] Adam: Maybe. It does sound an awful lot like that.
[00:28:26] Ben: Yeah,
[00:28:26] Adam: a front for something.
[00:28:28] Tim: Yeah. It's a front for the mob.
[00:28:30] Adam: Oh, man.
[00:28:31] Ben: It's funny. I, so when you talk about a company where things are kind of going okay, going smoothly, not, not mediocre. Okay. I, I think we even denigrate the categorization. We'll call those lifestyle businesses. Like, oh, you're not even working hard. That's a
[00:28:47] Adam: Yeah, yeah, yeah,
[00:28:48] Ben: making enough to live a good life.
[00:28:50] Ben: Like, as if that was a bad thing and that the real successful company is like, you have to grind and you have to suffer and you have to, you know, be in these foxholes with,
[00:29:00] Tim: that's very much an American thing. I think they're not that way. They're not that way in Europe.
[00:29:05] Ben: Yeah, for sure.
[00:29:07] Tim: It just surprised me in Europe. It's like, like when we were in Ireland, shops would just, you know, close and be like, I was like, yeah, this is where America rest, like a restaurant or whatever, they're like, oh yeah, we're closed Monday and Tuesday.
[00:29:22] Tim: I'm like, what? And then their hours are from like 11 a. m. till. Like, you know, 7 p. m. It's weird hours. I, there's this fish and chips place. I could never figure out when it was open. Cause I, I'd walk past it and they like, it's a Wednesday afternoon. It's closed. There's no sign saying why it's closed or anything.
[00:29:41] Tim: And then, then Friday it was open, but it closed at like 6 p. m. Like, what are you guys
[00:29:46] Ben: one wants 6pm. That's crazy.
[00:29:50] Tim: but I mean, I think, you know. American culture. We kind of glamorized the hustle culture and, you know, you know, making everything super productive and, you know, getting, you know, the most money bang for our buck. Yeah. Different culture, different things.
[00:30:07] Vegetables
[00:30:07] Ben: I'm gonna take a wild right hand turn here for a second and just say that it almost reminds me a little bit about eating vegetables.
[00:30:14] Adam: Okay.
[00:30:15] Ben: and that a lot of
[00:30:16] Adam: We've been talking about this totally on
[00:30:18] Ben: least to me, are just awful. They just taste terrible. I can't stand the taste of spinach. For example, it tastes like
[00:30:25] Adam: texture for me. Yeah.
[00:30:27] Ben: And, like a lot of things just taste really bitter and gross. And I always feel like, you know, the, world, like the billions of years that people have evolved from microorganisms. Like. My body has evolved to say that if something tastes gross, it's probably bad for me. But I think we, we glorize, glorize, is that a word?
[00:30:49] Tim: No.
[00:30:49] Ben: Glorify. Thank you. We glorify the suffering as a, almost a virtuous purification process. That, that if the vegetables are terrible, that they're probably good for you. And I can't tell you how many years. I believed if something tastes disgusting, then it's probably good for me. And that was not based on anything except vegetables.
[00:31:14] Ben: Like, Oh, that just must be how life works. And, I guess just to tie that back to foxholes, you know, it's this, it's this idea that if it's terrible, that there is a virtue to it and, and like that, that can't be right all the time, at least,
[00:31:30] Adam: Yeah, I'm sure it's not uniquely American, but it's definitely in the soul of the American, like, culture,
[00:31:36] Ben: yeah.
[00:31:36] Adam: for sure. Like, suffer there's, like, there's something suffering is worth doing, like, always.
[00:31:42] Tim: Yeah.
[00:31:43] Adam: so I actually, I want to take it back to vegetables since we're talking about trauma. and, so I have vegetable trauma as well, Ben.
[00:31:51] Adam: when, when I was growing up, I, I just, you know, like you, it's like, it's, it's yucky. I don't want to eat that, and that's why I would not eat. Much in the way of vegetables. Like, if it wasn't a potato, I wasn't gonna eat a vegetable. And so, at some point, my dad decided that, we were starting a new rule.
[00:32:07] Adam: And that there was, I had a list, of the vegetables that I would eat and it started with nothing on it. And then every year on my birthday, I had to add something to the list. And then if my mom made that vegetable to go with our dinner, then I had to have a serving of it. Right. And so like first year carrots goes on the list.
[00:32:22] Adam: Second year peas goes on the list. Whatever, right? Something like that. And so anytime that my mom made carrots or peas, I had to eat them. And man, let me tell you, like it wasn't even that long, maybe four or five years into this. I was like breaking down into tears on my birthday because I knew I had to pick a new vegetable to add to the list.
[00:32:40] Adam: And it was, oh my god, it was the worst. And I feel like
[00:32:45] Tim: Is chocolate a vegetable?
[00:32:48] Adam: it comes from a plant.it, so, I carried that trauma with me for years and years and years and I was a terrible eater until I was like 30, 35. And then finally I was like, this is ridiculous. I have to, I have to get over this trauma. I have to start eating healthier.
[00:33:04] Adam: And so I have added a lot of things to my, my repertoire of like things that I'm willing and in some cases even happy to eat. But still there's like a, I just have this like visceral, uncontrollable, almost like a phobia response to some vegetables. Like I, I, you, I, Tim, do you remember we went to, it might've been the very first time that I went to Max with you guys.
[00:33:27] Adam: we went to, we were in LA. We went to some super fancy restaurant. And we had like the chef's tasting menu, which is like, they bring you like nine or whatever different dishes and you don't control what you don't order your food. You say, bring me whatever the chef is proud of tonight. Right. and there was like two of those dishes.
[00:33:43] Adam: And now keep in mind, I personally spent like 250 on this meal. This is like a, you know, you, you, when you do this, this is not like a, a 12 snack pack. You're, you're laying out some cash for this. So I was like, I'm going to eat whatever they put in front of me because I know that it's going to be well prepared and they're proud of it and that sort of thing.
[00:34:01] Adam: So there were like two dishes that were like, it just came out and it was a plate of like mushrooms with some oils on them or something. I'm like, yeah, yeah,
[00:34:08] Ben: me feel queasy.
[00:34:09] Adam: yeah. I, I, I still to this day do not eat mushrooms, but I ate those and they were delicious.
[00:34:15] Ben: How dare you, sir? I, I will not, I will not be on a call with someone who says positive things about mushrooms.
[00:34:22] Tim: are awesome.
[00:34:23] Adam: Oh,
[00:34:24] Tim: Have you eaten mushrooms since, or is that the only time?
[00:34:28] Adam: I imagine I have had some, but never willingly and never, like, happily.
[00:34:32] Tim: Gotcha.
[00:34:33] Ben: It's like, my wife will sometimes get a quote unquote hamburger. That's actually just a, well, like a shiitake mushroom or something. And I'm like, it's literally the worst part of the burger. Like, you're literally, like, you're making all the bad parts of burger.
[00:34:47] Adam: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:34:48] Ben: man. I, this, a total tangent here, but it made me, the small plates made me think of the, one of the scariest things for me when going out to eat with other people is when someone drops the bomb. Why don't we just get a bunch of small plates for the table? And I'm like, whoa, I will order what I want.
[00:35:06] Ben: And if you touch it, I will cut your hand off. Like, let's, let's, let's use that strategy.
[00:35:12] Adam: And we're gonna get separate checks.
[00:35:14] Ben: Like nobody is touching my General Tso's chicken.
[00:35:17] Tim: funny. Oh
[00:35:19] Ben: Speaking of which General
[00:35:20] Adam: wings with no sauce.
[00:35:22] Ben: my General Tso's chicken was my gateway drug. I could not stand broccoli until it
[00:35:29] Adam: I still don't like broccoli.
[00:35:31] Ben: the chicken and broccoli in the General Tso's.
[00:35:33] Tim: You guys are such children. Give me
[00:35:38] Adam: I mean, we, you eat so many vegetables, Tim, that you've had to, like, find other things to torture yourself with and now you're eating weird animal testicles.
[00:35:45] Tim: There you go. Yeah. Crazy.
[00:35:49] Adam: All right. Well then, I guess we'll wrap it there.
[00:35:50] Patreon
[00:35:50] Adam: This episode of Working Code is brought to you by Mushroom Burgers. And other, things that should not be between buns.
[00:35:58] Tim: Hey, we, you broke Ben. It's been a while.
[00:36:08] Adam: I wish you guys could see how red he's turning.
[00:36:11] Ben: so out of left field. I loved it.
[00:36:15] Adam: And listeners like you, if you want to keep it, I got to get through this. If you're enjoying the show and you want to make sure that we can keep putting more of whatever this is out into the universe, then you should consider supporting us on Patreon. Our patrons cover our recording, editing, and transcription costs. And we couldn't do this every week without them. Are you though?
[00:36:48] Ben: I'm good. I'm good. I'm ready. I'm here.
[00:36:50] Adam: Special thanks to our top patrons, Monte and Giancarlo.
[00:36:53] Thanks For Listening!
[00:36:53] Adam: I love that you laughing is what makes me laugh. Oh God, that's going to do it for us this week. We'll catch you next week. And until then,
[00:37:00] Tim: Remember, there's nothing traumatic about it. Your heart matters.
[00:37:03] Adam: aw, aren't you a sweetie?
[00:37:05] Tim: Yeah. You okay Ben?
[00:37:07] Ben: Yeah, I'm good.
[00:37:10] Tim: He's crying guys. He's actually crying.
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