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Simplify My Soda: A Crispy Coke RTO Love Story · You're Not Too Much

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The push to return to office is deeply ableist. If you treat
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people like humans, they will want to quit less.
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Is it possible that everything feels exhausting? Because everything is exhausting.
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All right, here we go. I'm gonna pretend I'm pushing record. Cause that feels right.
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Okay, I'm pressing record. Boop. Hi,
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everybody. I'm Lauren Howard. Welcome to Different
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Not Broken, which is our podcast on exactly that.
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That there are a lot of people in this world walking around feeling broken. And
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the real you're just different. And that's fine.
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So this came up at a conference I was at a few weeks ago.
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I was doing a fireside with this amazing facilitator, and she
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said, how is it that you say these things that get people
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thinking so often? And I think she meant
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these, like, very, very simple things that I. Well,
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I think are simple, but these things that, like a paycheck is not a permission
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slip for abuse, that I say all the time, that are. Seem to turn the
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lights on for people who don't understand why they're stuck or what,
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situate, you know, why they can't get out of the situation they're in or why
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things are happening the way they're happening. The reality is she kind
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of caught me off guard, which is pretty hard to do, especially when I'm,
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like, doing a fireside because, like, I'm up for anything. I'm, I
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think, on my feet really well, and I didn't exactly have an
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answer for it. I think she wanted me to say that I have this
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curated list of responses that I give
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in very specific situations, and that they're well crafted and
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that we've spent many years putting together this information,
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and we kind of have in that I have
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been running my mouth on the Internet for a long time, and
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we have an arsenal of things that I have run my mouth to say,
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but none of them are planned. It's not like I'm out here like
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I'm gonna deliver this message. It's just like, I heard this thing
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that I think is stupid, and I wanna push back on it. And I don't
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think that people should be responsible for the things that they're told or the things
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that they hear about themselves or the ways that they've been thought or taught
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to think about themselves or whatever. But the reason it caught me off guard
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was she asked me how I say these
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things that basically that people need to hear. I think
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I know I do that, but I didn't. It's not
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intentional. The point being, I'm not saying anything. That to me feels
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revolutionary. I'm saying the very obvious things that
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are sitting in front of me, like, your job shouldn't be allowed to abuse you.
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Workplace abuse is the same thing as getting abused at home. You should
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not accept abuse just because they're paying you to exist in their
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environment. None of those things are revolutionary.
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And people respond to them as if I've blown their
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minds when I am literally asking for the bare
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minimum. The bare minimum. You should be
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psychologically safe in your workplace. That's not
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a shocking request. That is something that people should
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have at the bare minimum. Psychological safety is not a fringe benefit. It
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is not a thing that you get just for being an executive
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who sets policy for the company. You should be psychologically
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safe in your environment. You should get paid the
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same. Regardless whether you
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participate in the workplace politics or not, you do get paid
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the same. Meaning, screw the stuff that you don't get paid for.
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You don't have to participate in things that make you
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uncomfortable. None of that is revolutionary.
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And so she caught me off guard, asking, like, how did we come up
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with these things? And I'm like, how did nobody else.
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I can't be the first person saying some of these things. I know I'm not.
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I might be the first person you've heard it from, but I'm not the first
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person saying these things. And if I am, that's terrifying
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because this shit is like baseline humanity.
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Like, this is the bare minimum of how you should treat other
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humans. There's this whole push, and really we're at the last
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legs of it now for all of the jobs that went fully remote during the
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pandemic to get pushed back to the office. And
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you hear a lot about how RTO is so important for team building
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and how people do better in an office and teams
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work better in an office. Nobody's talking about the fact that return
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to office is deeply ableist. It completely
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changes the playing field for likely neurodivergent individuals who
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work better in their own environment, who work better in a controlled environment,
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in an environment that they set up. And not even just neurodivergent individuals
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work from home made it possible for people with lots of different disabilities
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to succeed at work because they were able to do it from their own environment.
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It created environments for people with all types of
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different disabilities to succeed. So the push to return to office is
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deeply ableist. But also this bullshit that they throw at us
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about team building, about how you can run a better team if you're all in
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the same place all the time. And if meetings are more productive, if first
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off, I am substantially less productive in an office, and I say
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that as the person who literally runs the show. I lose hours,
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hours of work in an office. There's prep
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time for getting ready. There's travel, there's
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schmoozing and palling around with the people that you work with.
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There's meetings that run over. There's all sorts of
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distractions, there's long breaks for lunch. I probably get
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three to four hours less work done in this
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supposedly more productive office than I do from my home,
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where I still interact with all my coworkers, where I still spend lots of time
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with people, where I have everything that I need within my
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grasp, where I can be
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shoeless and in soft pants, therefore comfortable, therefore working
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harder, I work drastically better in my
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own environment. Does that mean you should never be in person with
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your team? No, but there are ways to facilitate that. And there
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are ways to facilitate really good remote meetings where you get the same kind of
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collaboration. What nobody's talking about return to office
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is that a lot of these companies invested in very
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expensive buildings, very expensive buildings that
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are the primary holding that that company
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has. When nobody's working in an office,
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property values go in the toilet. Local
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governments don't do well when property values are in the toilet.
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They are incentivized to get people back to the office.
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Businesses suffer when their primary investment,
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I. E. A large skyscraper,
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has no value because everybody was working from
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home. So now, instead of
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selling the damn building that they don't need, they're dragging
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everybody back into the office because they care more about property values than they do
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about people. That's what it is. That's what's driving the return to office
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movement. It has nothing to do with camaraderie and better teams. There
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are plenty of really good tools to manage remote teams. And if you can't
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figure it out, it's because you're a bad manager. Not because there aren't good ways
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to manage remote teams. You need a different manager. There are
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so many good tools to manage remote teams. And then there's also the whole thing
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that, like, if you treat people like adults and pay them fairly for their work,
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they'll do their job and you won't have to worry that much about actively managing
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them day to day. There's that every time I have someone
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tell me that they can't get their employees to work, the first question I ask
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them is, what are you paying them? And it's always Met with silence,
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always. Well, we can't afford to. Well then
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you can't afford to run your business. If you can't afford to pay people,
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people fairly, you can't afford to run your business. You
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don't have people who are not performing because they're
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bad people. You have people who are not performing because you're paying them shit and
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expecting them to work at a job that where they should be
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making double, if not more. Every single time I have some
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dude tell me that a remote team would never work for his team because
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if they're not actively monitored, they don't work. My first question is, what
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are you paying them? And it is literally always met with some kind of objection
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about how that's not relevant. If it wasn't relevant, you would
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tell me, you would tell me how much. You would say we pay them so
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well and we give them full benefits and they get good vacation and they still
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are bad at their jobs. That doesn't happen. I was just kind of
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floored by this question that I got because like all of that is common sense.
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It's literally supply and demand. That's what that balancing
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scale is. That's common sense. It's well
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documented. There's plenty of arsenals of documentation
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on how well paid employees do better work, how happy
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employees stay longer, how they don't need as much management,
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how you can run an effective team if you're not being a cheap asshole.
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None of that is revolutionary. So the thing to gawk at is
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not that I say anything that is
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revolutionary or different or anything beyond
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literally the baseline of how we should treat humans.
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The shocking thing is that it's of any interest at all
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because other people aren't saying it, or not even that other people aren't
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saying it, that it's not the common knowledge. I'm saying, like this is baseline
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stuff. If you treat people like humans, they will want to quit
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less, they will feel ownership in the company,
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they will want to perform, they will want to stay in your company.
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Shocking. That's common sense. I'm
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so tired of being treated like I'm doing or saying anything that is
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revolutionary when the reality is the problem is that everybody else
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is running really bad operations that treat people like shit. And I
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don't say everybody else. There are good companies out there that are doing things. But
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the point being there is nothing earth shattering about anything that comes out of
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my mouth. The terrifying thing is that it's not widely
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accepted as how we should treat humans. That's the terrifying thing
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is Parroting the things that to me seem so fricking
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obvious, and the fact that it shocks anybody
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as innovative leadership should be more
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terrifying than it is. Just treat people like humans and
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you'd be surprised how human they act.
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And now we're going to hear from some of our listeners with their weekly brags.
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This is Candace M. On January 4th. Before my
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official first day back at work for the new year, I have already
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signed my son up for summer summer camp in August and
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for slow pitch this spring. Really feeling like I have my poop
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in a group. So 2026. Let's go.
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I hate the idea of love languages. I hate them. Like, please do some
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research into the background behind what
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love languages are, because it was a book written by a pastor to
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convince all women that all men have
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touch as their primary love language. Which means that you should give your husband sex
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whenever he wants and you should feel bad if you deny him sex. And that
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all women are just, you know, complicated
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creatures who. Who need things other than touch and have a different love
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language. But if you want to make your man happy, just give him sex all
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the time. That's what the love languages is about, really. It's all
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very coercive to get women to give their husband unmitigated amounts of sex.
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So, anyway, I don't use the term love language, but if there was something that
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wasn't creepy, that was like a love language,
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I would have one. And it is not
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expensive jewelry. It's not big
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gifts. It's not
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sweeping gestures. It's not
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anything that requires a ton of planning.
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Show up to my door with a fountain Coke
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from a place that, you know, I like the fountain Coke.
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I will be forever in your debt. I will love you so
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much. That is the greatest sign of love and affection to me is somebody who
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knows she likes fountain Coke from Chili. So I'm gonna stop and
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get her a fountain Coke from Chili's. And you could give it to me in
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an unmarked cup and I would be able to tell you what restaurant
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it was from, because that's the way my
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brain works. But there is a certain. I don't even
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know how to describe it. In some
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soda that comes out of a fountain where the carbonation is
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so fresh and, like, recently
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replaced, there's so much CO2 pumped into
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this thing. It, like, tickles your lips. Then it burns your lips a little bit
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and it tastes so fresh. Usually, I have found
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I've actually been told this by people who worked in restaurants and
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maintained soda fountains that it Means the fountain is very
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clean. If they clean the soda machine a lot
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and replace the CO2 correctly, you
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get what is affectionately known as a very crispy
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Coke. And that means the
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carbonation is sharp, it's big bubbles. If you take too big
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a sip, it usually makes you burp almost immediately because you are literally
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inhaling CO2. You're like. And it's not
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attractive. It's the right syrup to bubbles
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ratio. Again, I can
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tell you where a Coke is from by taste.
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And a fountain Coke from specific places versus a 20 ounce
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coke versus a 2 liter bottle versus a can of Coke. Not the same. Those
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are totally different drinks. I will tell you which one I'm in the mood for.
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If it's all you have, I will take it. I'll be happy. But
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it is not unlike me to send my husband on a
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run to get me a 20 ounce coke. And if he comes back with
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anything other than a 20 ounce bottle of Coke, I will
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take it and I will side eye him because this is not
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correct and he knows it. I am not particular about that many
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things. Things, really I'm not. I am deeply
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flexible on most things. But if I tell you I want
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a Coke from McDonald's and you bring me
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a Coke from literally anywhere else that is not on
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my list of like one or two places that I prefer the Coke from,
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I'm gonna be visibly disappointed. And if you're my husband
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and this sounds awful, but just know he has a very good life and I
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make sure of it. If you're my husband and you show up to this house
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with something other than exactly what I asked for, when the ask
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is for Coke fountain Coke, I should
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say no other kind of Coke. Nothing
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illicit. Literally brown stuff in a bottle that might also be
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eroding my insides. But it's too late. The damage
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has already been done. We are not undoing it. I was born
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in the 80s. Our parents all but put it in our bottles.
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We are damaged. There's nothing that we can do to undo it. It is the
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one thing that gives me joy on a daily basis. I have tried many
15:15
times to stop consuming it. You are taking the limited
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light that I have out of my day. Also, if
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you dare darken my doorway with
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a drink from a Coke freestyle machine, you
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do not know me. We are not friends. Our
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relationship cannot continue. There is no
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greater disappointment to me than walking into an establishment thinking that
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I'm about to get a crispy Coke and find out that it is a Coke
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freestyle machine. I will get Coke from a bottle.
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If that's the case, if I can, or I will. This shows you
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how disappointed I am. This shows you how much you have failed me. I
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will drink water. I will drink water. I
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also say this as a person who, like, acts like I don't like water, actually,
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really like water. Every time I drink water, I act like I have
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discovered a new drink, especially water with ice in it. I
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act like I've discovered this new drink that I didn't know I love. It literally
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happens, like, twice a day. I'm like, oh, this is so refreshing. Why don't I
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drink this more? Because it doesn't have empty calories in it. That's why.
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Duh. It's not loaded with sugar. Ice water is
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delicious. And I don't know why. I have it completely.
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I have my brain completely convinced that I don't like it, which is not true.
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I do quite like it. I also really like a seltzer, which my kids call
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spicy water. Not hard seltzer, just regular seltzer. No flavor.
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You people who put flavor in your seltzers, it's not even flavor.
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It's like a fart of some idea of a flavor. Like, you
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get the, like, people who drink La Croix. It's like a
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whisper of watermelon and metal, and they're like, would you
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like a watermelon lacri? No, I don't want that. That's gross.
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That's gross. You're taking something that was perfectly fine on its own and giving
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it the suggestion of a flavor. No, I very
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happily will drink. Actually. Aldi has really, really good
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canned seltzer. And it is very crispy when you first
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open it. And it has big bubbles. Not small bubbles, big bubbles. And it's
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very inexpensive. And it's, like, the only thing I shop at Aldi for. I get
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an Aldi delivery every couple of weeks of, like, six cases of seltzer so
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that I drink something other than the crispy Cokes that I send my
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husband on a retrieval for all the time. Because in my brain, if I
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don't buy them and keep them in the house, then I will drink them less.
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And instead, I just send my husband to retrieve them. And he
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does it because he doesn't like the consequences of not.
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Because if I'm asking for one, shit's happening.
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It means I need emotional stability that I can only get
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from a Grisby Coke.
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And now we'll go to Allison, who has this week's
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small talk. I've only recently started thinking I Might
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be neurodivergent. And I feel weirdly late to the party.
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Part of me feels relieved and part of me feels angry that nobody
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noticed sooner. Is it normal to grieve a version of yourself you never
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got to be? Okay, so first I want to say normal is
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bullshit. We don't strive to be normal. It doesn't exist.
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But everything that you are describing is
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a completely reasonable part of this process. You're going to grieve the
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person you didn't get to be. You're going to grieve the little kid that you
18:32
were who didn't get the support that they needed. You're going to grieve the version
18:36
of yourself you could have been younger. All of that is
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something people grieve over. And I encourage you
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to grieve over it. Not that I want you to be sad and feel
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sad and whatever, but because
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the mechanism of grief is really important to learning things about
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yourself and to figuring out how to
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move to this next stage of your life. And so yes, it
19:03
is absolutely using the word I hate normal to feel
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that way in this situation. It is. We
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see a lot of people who voluntarily come in for a diagnosis,
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get the diagnosis and then really struggle with the diagnosis,
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even though they pretty much knew beforehand, even though they might have self diagnosed.
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But there is something totally different about having a clinician agree
19:26
with you, even if you were certain before. It's just
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different. And so there is no range of emotions that
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is incorrect in this situation by any means.
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And honestly, like that's the truth in a lot of
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situations, like we act like there's some sort of
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pre described set of responses that you're supposed to have
19:49
in major life changes or difficult
19:53
situations. And that's not the truth. It's not the truth at all.
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I'm the type of person who gets into a
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really tough situation and laughs until I can't stop laughing.
20:05
Like laughs until I cry. Like literally I will have tears streaming down my face
20:09
because my reaction is to laugh and not cry. And I could be in the
20:12
worst situation in the world. I cannot tell you
20:16
how much we laughed the day after my dad died. And there was some
20:20
heavy grieving going on and it was brand new and we were processing. But like
20:24
it also, there was some of it was just really
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funny in my very twisted and adult brain. So outside
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of even this particular situation,
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you're entitled to whatever reaction your body and your brain have,
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but also that feeling of just
20:45
uncertainty, not knowing whether
20:49
you're responding correctly, not knowing what the next thing to do
20:52
is that's the way it's supposed to be. Regardless whether you knew it before
20:56
or not, this is all new to you. This is a new path. There's no
21:00
roadmap for this. There's something else I wanted to address
21:03
that you said. There's this idea of late, and it's called
21:07
late diagnosed. If you're diagnosed older than, I think, 13 or
21:11
something. So late is kind of the correct clinical term.
21:15
Maybe. But there is no finish
21:19
line. There is no medal
21:22
waiting for you when you have this great personal epiphany. There
21:26
is. Like, in light, life does not put up a checkered
21:30
flag and a ribbon to run through
21:34
when you achieve something or when you get to a point in your life.
21:38
And so just kind of keep that in mind. It's like
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you're late to this information. And. Yeah. Did that
21:46
probably make your heart, your life harder in some ways?
21:50
In some ways, maybe it did. But are you. Are you
21:53
running late for life? Are you. Are you coming to the
21:57
information later than you should have? I don't know that there's no
22:01
finish line. You came there, you got there. When you got there, you might not
22:04
have, you know, you did the best with the resources that you have. You might
22:07
not have had the knowledge. You might not have known about the conditions. You might
22:10
not have been surrounded by the right people. Like, life brought you there when
22:14
it brought you there. And there is. It didn't bring you there because you finally
22:17
got to the finish line. There's no finish line. You get there, and then you're
22:20
presented with 700 new hurdles that you're gonna have to jump over. That's the
22:24
way it works. So you're not late. You're exactly where you're supposed to be,
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even if where you're supposed to be is gonna require some
22:31
untangling and redoing. Thanks for being here, guys.
22:35
Have a good day. Love you mean it.
22:44
Did Apple podcast just wake up? Like, what the happened yesterday
22:48
was 49.