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He Smashed Into It — Then Waited 9 Hours To Tell Me To My Face · You're Not Too Much

• 0:02
  Kyle goes over and looks and he's like, "Oh, no, he definitely hit your
• 0:04
  car." And there were some gigantic, like, scratches all over the bumper.
• 0:08
  The bumper was misplaced.
• 0:09
  Taillight was cracked.
• 0:10
  It was, like, a whole thing.
• 0:12
  So he goes over and knocks on the window, and there's no response from this
• 0:15
  person sitting in the front of the car.
• 0:16
  None.
• 0:17
  And he knocks again.
• 0:19
  Nothing.
• 0:19
  And he's like, "The guy stirred a little, but there was no response." And
• 0:22
  we're like, "Oh, shit." This grown-ass man sat on my porch and cried for 30
• 0:29
  straight minutes. Welcome to You're Not Too Much from the Different, Not Broken
• 0:34
  Network, a podcast about how you're not too much, they're not enough,
• 0:39
  space expands, so let's fill it.
• 0:43
  There's one rule of semicolons, and that is don't use fucking semicolons.
• 0:47
  That's really the only, like, hard punctuation rule I have
• 0:51
  is don't use semicolons.
• 0:55
  They're awful.
• 0:56
  It's unnecessary punctuation.
• 0:58
  There's nothing that a semicolon does that you can't do with a period and
• 1:02
  starting a new sentence, or in some cases, a comma, or in rare cases, a colon.
• 1:08
  There's nothing that a semicolon does that cannot be done by
• 1:12
  much simpler punctuation.
• 1:14
  It is grandiosity in punctuation form.
• 1:18
  It is infuriating.
• 1:19
  Every time I see somebody write a sentence with a semicolon, I'm like, "Why do
• 1:23
  you need to show people that you're so impressed with yourself?" There's a word
• 1:27
  that I can't think of, proving how not impressed with myself I am right now.
• 1:30
  It is snootiness in… No, there's a better word for it, and my words are
• 1:35
  not working right now, but I hate them.
• 1:38
  I hate them.
• 1:39
  I literally was a journalism major in college, and I focused, or I,
• 1:42
  or my specialty track was editing, and I was like my professor,
• 1:47
  who I'm still very close with, I was like his superstar student.
• 1:50
  He once pulled me out of a test because I d- not only got something right,
• 1:54
  but I found the correct answer for it, which I didn't have to do, but I'm a
• 1:57
  nerd, and so I did, and he pulled me out of the test to be like, "Nobody's
• 2:01
  ever done that. I'm so impressed with you." And to this day, he's the reason,
• 2:05
  or he's one of the reasons, one of two reasons why my ego is so unreasonable.
• 2:09
  But even during that class, which was, like, the first editing class…
• 2:14
  Pretentious is the word that I couldn't fucking come up with before.
• 2:18
  But even during that class, he was, like, teaching the situations where in
• 2:22
  AP style a semicolon is appropriate, and I raised my hand, and I was like,
• 2:26
  "I'm sorry, the only rule of semicolons is don't use fucking semicolons."
• 2:31
  And he was like, "I need to know more about this." And so to this day, he will
• 2:36
  ask me about my opinions on semicolons because I get so angry about them.
• 2:40
  They are useless punctuation.
• 2:43
  They do not need to exist.
• 2:45
  They are only there to make already self-obsessed people feel more
• 2:49
  impressed with themselves over the quality of their writing, and you
• 2:53
  can make simpler sentences that are easier for people to read.
• 2:56
  If it's, like, poetry or something, do whatever you want.
• 2:58
  There's no rules in poetry.
• 3:00
  Whatever, I'm not gonna tell you what to do in poetry.
• 3:02
  But if you're trying to build stuff that's consumable for other people, get
• 3:05
  out of here with your fucking semicolons.
• 3:07
  And this is also bringing me back to one of the most embarrassing moments
• 3:14
  that I ever had in college, because it was not related to semicolons.
• 3:19
  Do you ever just know something and not realize it's weird?
• 3:21
  Or like just assume that everybody else knows that too, and then you
• 3:24
  find out that it's just you, or like it's not common knowledge?
• 3:28
  So I was in that class, and again, Rick Brunson, who was the teacher of that
• 3:33
  class, I am still very close with him.
• 3:35
  We talk all the time.
• 3:36
  He is one of my favorite people in the world, and I call him my life coach
• 3:40
  because every time I'm having a meltdown about something, I call him and he
• 3:43
  listens to me and doesn't call me crazy, or only calls me a little bit crazy.
• 3:47
  And also, his wife is a goddess among men.
• 3:50
  We were very early in the editing class, and he was going through what
• 3:55
  prepositions were, and he said, "Can anybody tell me what a preposition is?"
• 4:03
  And me, being me, and remembering second grade, said, "It's anything a squirrel
• 4:09
  can do to a log." Which I thought was how everybody learned what a preposition is.
• 4:15
  It turns out, it is not.
• 4:17
  It turns out that might have just been me.
• 4:20
  Because in the middle of class he burst out laughing and
• 4:24
  was like, "It's a what now?"
• 4:26
  And I was like, "It can be above the log, beside the log, inside the log,
• 4:31
  next to." He was like, "No, I mean, that, that tracks, but is that really, that's
• 4:37
  how you know…" I was like, "Am I not?
• 4:40
  I don't know what to do with this." And so he, he is the kindest man in the world,
• 4:45
  and I said something shocking enough to make him laugh at me in front of a
• 4:48
  whole class of people, which tells you how strongly we feel about prepositions.
• 4:52
  But also is one of like a handful of… I only have a handful
• 4:56
  of embarrassing moments from college, but that's one of them.
• 4:58
  Because in front of an entire class, I said, "It's what a squirrel
• 5:01
  can do to a log," and nobody knew what I was talking about.
• 5:04
  So anyway, semicolons are stupid.
• 5:07
  Don't use semicolons.
• 5:09
  And amnesty for squirrels and logs.
• 5:15
  Have you ever had a day that just, like, you could not have
• 5:18
  predicted how it's gonna turn out?
• 5:21
  And then you get to the end of it and you're like, "What just happened?"
• 5:24
  And not even really in a bad way.
• 5:26
  Maybe like just like a wild and ridiculous way, but just kinda
• 5:30
  look around and go like, "What?
• 5:32
  Where, what did I just exist through?
• 5:34
  This is… I could not have predicted this." It reminds me, this is
• 5:38
  unrelated, but whatever, side quest.
• 5:40
  It reminds me that Anchorman is one of my favorite movies ever, and I can
• 5:45
  literally quote it from beginning to end.
• 5:48
  Maybe not literally, but almost literally quote it from beginning to end.
• 5:51
  I know it that well.
• 5:52
  I don't even have to watch it on screen anymore 'cause I can watch it in my
• 5:55
  head, because I've seen it that many times. But the reason that Anchorman is
• 6:02
  one of the best movies ever made is not just because it's so funny and stupid
• 6:08
  that you just laugh the whole time, but it's because you could not have
• 6:14
  predicted in a million years that movie was gonna end in a Kodiak bear pit.
• 6:19
  You- there was no way you were, there was no way you could predict that.
• 6:22
  It… That was completely a surprise.
• 6:25
  These are the philosophical conversations I used to have with
• 6:27
  my friends when I was too young to be having these conversations.
• 6:30
  Not too young, but just like, I don't know why I was thinking about
• 6:32
  this stuff when I was 18 years old.
• 6:34
  But Talladega Nights was the follow-up basically to Anchorman, and you knew
• 6:40
  exactly how Talladega Nights was gonna end, and it did end exactly that way.
• 6:44
  So it was a funny movie.
• 6:45
  It's still a funny movie, but it wasn't a sensation because it was exactly
• 6:49
  the formulaic movie you thought it was gonna be, except for Sacha Baron
• 6:53
  Cohen having horses that are also gay.
• 6:56
  But you could not say that about Anchorman.
• 6:58
  There's nobody who was like, "This is definitely gonna end up
• 7:01
  in a bear pit." Nobody knew that.
• 7:03
  Anyway, that's how this day felt to me, because it was just
• 7:07
  like a super normal Sunday.
• 7:09
  We had kind of a chill weekend.
• 7:10
  Kids were hungry.
• 7:12
  I had looked at my husband earlier that morning and said, "Why have you not
• 7:15
  taken me to Chili's for french fries?"
• 7:17
  And he said, "Is that a thing you want to do?" And I said, "I, I wouldn't
• 7:23
  ask you that if I didn't wanna do it."
• 7:26
  And he was like, "How was I supposed to know that?" And I
• 7:28
  just kinda like gave him a look.
• 7:30
  What do you mean, how are you supposed to know that?
• 7:31
  He's like, "You've literally never asked for this before, ever."
• 7:35
  And I was like, "That seems like your problem. Like, why am I not at Chili's
• 7:39
  having french fries right now?" So anyway, he started to get ready to go to Chili's.
• 7:44
  I've literally never asked to be taken to Chili's, ever.
• 7:47
  I just woke up that morning and I was like, "Man, Chili's
• 7:49
  french fries sound really good."
• 7:50
  Nothing sounds good at Chili's, but all right.
• 7:53
  That day it was Chili's.
• 7:55
  It takes us a long time to get out of the house, not for any other reason
• 7:59
  than none of us wanna leave the house.
• 8:02
  And so we finally got ready and walk out the front door.
• 8:05
  Kids are still, like, shuffling to get their shoes on and stuff, and look,
• 8:10
  and there's a car like two houses down that very clearly has the front wheel
• 8:17
  on the right side, like, turned under.
• 8:20
  And it was that moment of, like, hmm, that's not supposed to be like that.
• 8:24
  And it was also, like, three feet off the curb, and it was, like, just far
• 8:28
  enough off the curb that you were like, "Hmm, that's weird. I don't know how
• 8:33
  that guy got there. Okay." And I just assumed that it was, like, abandoned,
• 8:37
  like maybe somebody got into a car accident and they hadn't towed it yet or
• 8:41
  whatever, and that it was just abandoned.
• 8:43
  There wasn't anybody in there.
• 8:44
  So then we, like, look at the pavement, the asphalt, and see that
• 8:50
  there's, like, a skid mark, like a long mark on the concrete that
• 8:53
  looks like that it led to that car.
• 8:57
  The problem was it seemed to be coming from my car that was parked out front.
• 9:01
  Now, my car is gigantic.
• 9:04
  It's a 6,000-pound SUV.
• 9:06
  It's huge, and I got it because it's huge.
• 9:09
  Because aside from the fact that we have many people who we travel with on the
• 9:13
  regs, we have house horses, and they have to be put in a vehicle occasionally,
• 9:17
  and that requires quite a large vehicle.
• 9:20
  But also, once you start driving in a vehicle that is almost your
• 9:25
  height off the ground, one, it's not good for your Napoleon complex.
• 9:29
  Two, you don't like driving in the vehicles that are on the ground.
• 9:33
  It just doesn't feel as good.
• 9:35
  I like being all the way up there.
• 9:36
  Anyway, so I love my car, and my car's only, like, six months old,
• 9:40
  maybe a little more than that.
• 9:41
  I was like, "Did he, did he hit my car?
• 9:43
  He wouldn't hit my car, right?
• 9:44
  It was just parked there.
• 9:45
  He's down there.
• 9:47
  I don't know how that would happen." Kyle goes over and looks, and he's
• 9:49
  like, "Oh, no, he definitely hit your car." And there were some gigantic,
• 9:53
  like, scratches all over the bumper.
• 9:54
  The bumper was misplaced.
• 9:56
  Taillight was cracked.
• 9:57
  It was, like, a whole thing.
• 9:58
  So we're looking at it and we're like, "Somebody hit my car."
• 10:01
  I, I didn't put the pieces together yet.
• 10:03
  There were two very clear pieces of what happened literally sitting
• 10:07
  on the street in front of me, but I did not put them together yet.
• 10:09
  And I was like, "Dude, somebody hit my car when it was parked here? Like,
• 10:11
  when did this even happen?" So he goes over to the windshield, which
• 10:15
  I would not have seen this before getting in my car because it was on
• 10:19
  the windshield, and I can't see on the windshield from standing next to the car.
• 10:23
  It's that high off the ground, and I am a very small person.
• 10:26
  He reaches in.
• 10:27
  There's a note there that says, "Please call so and so.
• 10:31
  I hit your car.
• 10:32
  Here's my phone number.
• 10:33
  I'm an Uber driver," and it happened at 4:30 this morning or 4:50 this
• 10:38
  morning or something like that.
• 10:40
  And I was like, well, okay.
• 10:40
  I was annoyed, but I was like, at least they left a note, whatever.
• 10:43
  And I'm like, do I call this person first?
• 10:46
  We need to get a police report.
• 10:47
  We need to call the insurance.
• 10:48
  He's an Uber driver.
• 10:49
  How do we get to the insurance for Uber?
• 10:50
  I'm not sure how to do any of this.
• 10:52
  And my husband being the better procedural one of the two of us walks
• 10:57
  up to the car that's in front and sees that there's a person inside.
• 11:04
  So I'm still processing the fact… It's like 2:00 in the afternoon
• 11:09
  when this happens, and this thing happened at 5:00 that morning.
• 11:13
  I mean, that's the time that he put on the note that he left.
• 11:16
  So he goes over and knocks on the window, and there's no response from this
• 11:19
  person sitting in the front of the car.
• 11:21
  None.
• 11:22
  And he knocks again.
• 11:23
  Nothing.
• 11:23
  And he was like, "The guy stirred a little, but there was no response."
• 11:26
  And we're like, "Oh, shit." So I, of course, pull out my phone.
• 11:31
  I don't think the car was on.
• 11:32
  I'm not sure.
• 11:33
  But not only is he sitting in his car non-responsive, but he's in Florida,
• 11:36
  and it was like 100 degrees that day.
• 11:38
  Any number of things could have happened aside from the fact that he had clearly
• 11:42
  gotten into an accident with our car.
• 11:44
  So we called 911 and said, "There's a non-responsive person in this car.
• 11:47
  Can you please send the police for the police report for the accident and then
• 11:50
  an ambulance?" The police got there first. And in the meantime, he had woken
• 11:57
  up, and he genuinely was just asleep.
• 11:59
  And when you consider the fact that he had been there since 4:00
• 12:02
  something that morning, 4:45 that morning, yeah, that makes sense.
• 12:06
  That makes sense.
• 12:07
  And so he got out and he was super apologetic, and so, so kind, and so
• 12:12
  upset about everything that had just happened, and was completely upfront
• 12:16
  about what happened, and that it was completely his fault and totally an
• 12:20
  accident, and he had somebody, he had a fare in the car, and his first concern
• 12:24
  was making sure that they were okay and then getting them into another car.
• 12:27
  And then he was told by Uber not to walk up to any of the houses, and they were
• 12:31
  gonna send a tow truck, and it was 10 hours later and they still hadn't sent
• 12:35
  the tow truck, but he was fine with that 'cause he was waiting for somebody
• 12:38
  to come out of their house and go to the car so that he could talk to them.
• 12:41
  And I was like, "You waited for 10 hours?
• 12:43
  Really?
• 12:44
  Okay." Totally floored by the fact that he stuck around for the tow truck, but
• 12:49
  also, he also was like, "I was hoping not to leave before I got to talk to whoever
• 12:54
  this happened to, but I wasn't allowed to go up to any of the houses." And I
• 12:57
  was like, "First off, that makes sense.
• 12:58
  That is good advice from Uber." Regardless what you think of them, it is good advice
• 13:04
  to tell your people, "Do not walk up to strange houses in the middle of the night.
• 13:09
  We will handle that part of it." And they did. So the police came first. When they
• 13:14
  came, we were like, "Okay, he seems fine.
• 13:16
  Go check him out and make sure that he doesn't need medical
• 13:19
  assistance, but we've talked to him.
• 13:20
  He's up and walking around.
• 13:22
  We don't want you to think that we called for medical assistance and we didn't
• 13:25
  actually need it." And they were like, "No problem." So they went over to him,
• 13:29
  and it was, like, the first time that I've been immediately in this situation.
• 13:33
  But they went over to him.
• 13:34
  He told them the whole story, same story he told us.
• 13:36
  He was completely upfront about everything.
• 13:39
  He just looked exhausted, which obviously he's been in his car for 10 hours,
• 13:43
  so he's gonna be exhausted, but this was, like, existential exhaustion.
• 13:46
  This was not I've been sleeping in my car exhaustion.
• 13:50
  And so the police came over to me and they were like, "Okay, he gave
• 13:55
  us all the information that we need.
• 13:56
  The only thing I don't understand…" The woman police officer said this to me.
• 14:00
  She's like, "The only thing I don't understand is why he didn't just call
• 14:02
  the police in the middle of the night." This was a, a gentleman with brown skin
• 14:07
  who very clearly had a thick accent.
• 14:10
  And I don't know where he was from, or I didn't know where he was from at the time.
• 14:12
  He later told me.
• 14:13
  But I was like, "I wonder, can you think of any reason why, in the current
• 14:18
  state of the US, he would not have called the police?" And she kinda
• 14:21
  looked at me and I was like… And she goes, "No, I don't think it's that."
• 14:25
  And I was like, "Are you serious?
• 14:26
  Is that…" So I literally in front of her looked at my husband and
• 14:30
  went, "Go stand with him, please."
• 14:32
  And she goes, she goes, "We're leaving." And I was like, "That's
• 14:37
  fine, but we're gonna stay with him."
• 14:40
  She literally looks at me and goes, "You're gonna, you're gonna stay
• 14:42
  with the guy who hit your car?" And I was like, "It's a car, it's fine.
• 14:45
  Nobody got hurt." And so she goes, "All right, I'll give you the
• 14:48
  report." And she was very nice.
• 14:49
  She was polite, she wasn't confrontational about it, but
• 14:51
  she truly did not understand.
• 14:52
  Kyle was sent to just go stand with him, just in… Like, who knows, but just in
• 14:57
  case, especially because we had called and, like, we thought we were calling for
• 15:00
  an ambulance, and then he turned out to be okay and we didn't need the ambulance.
• 15:02
  Then we walked over, and the police were still writing the report,
• 15:05
  and I was like, "Why don't you come sit on the porch with us?
• 15:07
  You can sit on the inside, we'll sit on the outside, just in the
• 15:09
  event that anything gets weird." He was like, "Thank you so much.
• 15:13
  This means so much." And we were like, "We'll just be here, just in case."
• 15:16
  I wasn't gonna leave him out there by himself.
• 15:18
  So it turns out he's from Puerto Rico anyway.
• 15:20
  He was fine, but also, that doesn't super matter in this current setup.
• 15:26
  So we did that, but that really wasn't the, the biggest part of it.
• 15:30
  I was shocked that they were shocked.
• 15:33
  Do we really live in just, like, two different planes of reality,
• 15:35
  where this would not oc- Like, how does this not occur to you?
• 15:39
  But whatever.
• 15:40
  So we did what we did.
• 15:41
  We didn't need them anymore.
• 15:43
  They had done their part.
• 15:44
  They could leave now.
• 15:46
  We didn't need them to do anything else, was really the
• 15:48
  vibe we were trying to give.
• 15:50
  So they had called a tow truck for him.
• 15:52
  They had called the city tow truck for him, because the tow truck he
• 15:54
  was waiting for that Uber covers was taking forever, and it…
• 15:57
  he showed me.
• 15:58
  It had, it was basically saying, like, another 15 minutes every 15 minutes,
• 16:02
  and had been doing that since 6:00 that morning or 5:00 that morning or something.
• 16:07
  So he was, like, totally stuck, because he didn't wanna leave his car abandoned
• 16:10
  and then the tow truck driver not take it, but he also, like, couldn't reliably
• 16:15
  say when they were gonna get there.
• 16:16
  And the city was like, "No, you gotta move the car. You have to… If our tow
• 16:20
  truck gets here first, you have to use it, because you can't leave a disabled
• 16:23
  car." It was, like, barely a foot further off the curb than it should be.
• 16:28
  It's not like it was in the middle of the road.
• 16:30
  It was a little bit too far off the curb.
• 16:32
  My husband looked at them and was like, "What if I just move it?" He's
• 16:34
  like, "What if I just push it over to where it needs to be?" And they're
• 16:38
  like, "Well, you really can't leave a disabled car." And he was like, "What's
• 16:40
  the difference between a disabled car and an abled car if it's on the curb?"
• 16:44
  And they were like, "If you can figure it out, we're not gonna say anything."
• 16:47
  But it was just a whole bunch of stupid stuff, but they kept saying to him,
• 16:51
  like, "You have to get the tow truck. The tow truck has to come and move this
• 16:54
  car unless the other tow truck comes first." And so I looked at him and I
• 16:58
  said, "Is that okay? Can you use their tow truck?" And he kind of doesn't answer.
• 17:04
  And finally they walked away, and it was just him, my husband, and
• 17:08
  I, and it kinda started to rain.
• 17:10
  And he was like, "I just need to wait for Uber's tow truck." And I was like,
• 17:14
  "Is that because of employment or…" And he goes, and he literally bursts into
• 17:19
  tears and says, "I can't afford the other tow truck." And I was like, "Oh, okay.
• 17:27
  How much does the tow truck cost?" And actually both my husband and I said it
• 17:31
  at the same time, if you wanna know. We disagree on everything except these
• 17:34
  exact situations when we are, like, fully in lockstep. I was like, "Cool.
• 17:38
  How much does the tow truck cost?" He's like, "I don't know." One of the
• 17:40
  cops was leaving, and I was like, "Do you know what the tow truck costs?"
• 17:42
  And she's like, "I'm not really sure.
• 17:44
  They'll tell you when they get here and when they test the distance."
• 17:47
  And so I looked at him, I was like, "Don't worry about it.
• 17:49
  We can figure out the tow truck.
• 17:50
  Don't worry about it." And he's, like, sobbing.
• 17:52
  Big guy, absolutely sobbing.
• 17:56
  And I was like, "Don't worry about it." And he's like, "But I hit your car."
• 17:59
  And I was like, "It's just a car.
• 18:01
  You didn't hit, you didn't hit my kids, you didn't hit my family.
• 18:04
  It was a car.
• 18:05
  It's a car.
• 18:05
  It's a car that's gonna get fixed.
• 18:06
  It's a car that your insurance is gonna pay to fix.
• 18:10
  We're fine.
• 18:10
  It's still drivable.
• 18:11
  We're fine." And he was so upset about it, which I understand.
• 18:15
  I would be the same if I was him.
• 18:16
  Just having made that kind of mistake, I would be the same
• 18:19
  level of upset that he was.
• 18:21
  He's sitting there, and we were just talking, and you get a sense that there's,
• 18:26
  like, something else going on there.
• 18:28
  We had him come up and sit on the porch and wait, because it was a f- fricking
• 18:32
  100 degrees out, and we were waiting for them to give us paperwork and whatever.
• 18:36
  And so he came and sat up with us while he was waiting for the paperwork
• 18:39
  and to get the citation and whatever.
• 18:41
  And I said to him, I was like, "What did you do before you drove Uber?" And he
• 18:46
  goes, "Oh, I was a civil engineer." And I was like, "What?" And he goes, "Yeah,
• 18:51
  I was a civil engineer for 30 years.
• 18:53
  I worked between two companies for 30 years, and then I got laid
• 18:56
  off last October, and I haven't been able to find another job.
• 18:58
  The end of last year, my, my doctor told me that I needed to go start driving
• 19:02
  Uber so I could get some income because we were through all of our savings,
• 19:07
  and for the first time, I had high blood pressure and high cholesterol,
• 19:10
  and that's never happened before, and he said it's all related to stress."
• 19:13
  He's like, "And we ran through our savings, and so now I drive Uber,
• 19:16
  but I only do it early in the morning because there's too much traffic later
• 19:19
  in the day, and that makes me anxious."
• 19:21
  And I was like, "God damn." And I was like, "So tell me more about what
• 19:25
  you've done." He's done procurement for, like, multinational companies.
• 19:32
  He's got a degree.
• 19:34
  He's got a background in more things than I can count.
• 19:38
  I said, "Do you have a resume?" He sent me a super professional resume that he's been
• 19:42
  sending out to anybody who will listen.
• 19:46
  And so, at this point, like, the car, I don't even… The
• 19:48
  car is, like, a year ago.
• 19:49
  I don't care about it.
• 19:50
  I was like, "Whatever." My husband's like, "Did you get
• 19:52
  that?" I was like, "I don't care.
• 19:53
  Don't, don't ask me about cars.
• 19:54
  I don't care about cars anymore." But we just talked for a long time.
• 19:57
  When I say to you this grown-ass man, big guy, probably closer to
• 20:03
  retirement than not, sat on my porch and cried for 30 straight minutes,
• 20:09
  and any time he would stop talking, he would just burst into tears again.
• 20:13
  Because the last year has been absolute shit, and he did nothing to deserve it.
• 20:20
  That's not to say that anybody ever does anything to deserve it, but
• 20:24
  bro was just trying to do his best.
• 20:26
  He was just doing the job he's always done, and then not only does he get
• 20:31
  into this accident, which he obviously felt horrible about, but he loses his
• 20:38
  only mode of transportation and his only source of income at the same time.
• 20:45
  So thankfully, the Uber tow truck did come.
• 20:47
  He didn't have to pay for the other one.
• 20:50
  We would have paid for it anyway because it wasn't even much money,
• 20:53
  and we weren't gonna let him absorb that stress on top of everything else.
• 20:57
  Uber had already given me all of the information about the repair for the car.
• 21:00
  They had already reached out to us.
• 21:02
  He did everything right.
• 21:03
  He did everything that you're supposed to do, and then he sat there and waited
• 21:06
  for us for over nine hours to come out and say, "I did that to your car." On
• 21:14
  top of the fact that this man has so much stress on his plate and in his
• 21:17
  life right now, that I probably wouldn't have run, but I probably would've run.
• 21:22
  No, I wouldn't have.
• 21:23
  But I would've thought about it because it's just, like, the last thing.
• 21:28
  Who needs this on top of everything else?
• 21:31
  It was one of those moments where it was just like, we could have chosen
• 21:34
  to be mad because he damaged our car.
• 21:37
  We would've been right for being mad.
• 21:39
  Nobody would've faulted us for being upset that he hit our car.
• 21:43
  But when you take a step back and you look at the things that are
• 21:46
  happening in front of you, like, this poor guy is the byproduct of a
• 21:53
  shitty economy made shittier for no reason, getting screwed by all of the
• 22:00
  things that are happening around us.
• 22:03
  He doesn't need me to get mad at him.
• 22:05
  He's got that on lock.
• 22:06
  He's got that part handled.
• 22:08
  And even the cops were kinda like, "You don't need us to do anything?" We're like,
• 22:12
  "No, we just needed the police report so we can file it with the insurance.
• 22:16
  We don't need… What do you think we're gonna do?
• 22:18
  He's here.
• 22:19
  He's been here the whole time.
• 22:20
  Not only did he leave a note, but he waited for us to come out of the house."
• 22:24
  Those people don't exist.
• 22:27
  People like that don't exist, especially after everything he's been through.
• 22:31
  He should've lost every shred of humanity that he had left, and he didn't.
• 22:36
  He's supremely human still.
• 22:39
  Anyway, so they got his car taken care of.
• 22:42
  We've been texting with him since.
• 22:44
  He sent me his resume.
• 22:45
  I posted it all over the internet.
• 22:47
  My understanding is that he's gotten a couple of interviews
• 22:49
  out of it, which is amazing.
• 22:51
  But if anybody in the Orlando area, or really anywhere, pick a place, I'll
• 22:56
  send it to you, is looking to hire a super experienced civil engineer who
• 23:00
  has gotten the shit end of the stick that he did not deserve at all, reach
• 23:06
  out to me by one of the various and sundry ways that you can find us on our
• 23:09
  website, and I will send you his resume.
• 23:12
  He is a sweet man with the integrity for days, and we need
• 23:16
  more Carloses on this planet.
• 23:18
  We need more people who are willing to wait nine hours to tell somebody they
• 23:22
  made a mistake, despite the fact that the universe has given them 1,000 reasons
• 23:26
  not to have that level of integrity.
• 23:28
  So if anybody's got a job for Carlos, hit me up.
• 23:32
  You can also find me on LinkedIn.
• 23:34
  Obviously, most people know I'm on LinkedIn, but if you don't, you can find
• 23:37
  me on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/elletwo.
• 23:43
  And there's a link in the episode description, 'cause we do that, too.
• 23:53
  Ask L2.
• 23:54
  Ask L2 from Ray.
• 23:54
  He asks, "Everyone tells me the money's in the room, but the room is
• 23:56
  200 people, a buffet, and compulsory eye contact. Is there a version of
• 24:02
  networking that doesn't involve the room?"
• 24:04
  I mean, yeah, I've done it for the last five years, and it's been
• 24:07
  wildly successful, so I'm gonna go with yes, that does exist.
• 24:10
  Now, I will say this is in direct violation of my brand and all of the, the shit
• 24:16
  that I've spewed for the last several years, but I will say that I went to
• 24:20
  an event a couple of weeks ago that was a very targeted group of people.
• 24:25
  I got invited.
• 24:26
  I didn't know anybody.
• 24:28
  Actually, when I got there, I realized I knew a lot of people there, but that's
• 24:30
  'cause the field that I'm in is, like, accidentally very incestuous, and we've
• 24:33
  all worked together in other places.
• 24:36
  So I did know some of them in advance, but a lot of them I didn't, and I got
• 24:41
  more business from that experience, and that's not why I was there.
• 24:47
  I was just there to be basically, like, part of this panel of
• 24:50
  people they put together.
• 24:51
  I was not there to… I guess in theory I was there to network, but really I wasn't.
• 24:55
  And just by, like, chiming in when people were talking about the things
• 25:00
  that they ran into and people would ask questions, "What do you do?" And
• 25:03
  it just happens to be that I'm kind of in this career transition where I
• 25:07
  used to run my own startup, and now I sold my startup, and so I'm now
• 25:11
  consulting with people who run startups.
• 25:13
  All of these people run startups.
• 25:15
  I got more very concrete business from, and, like, things that have
• 25:21
  converted in the weeks since, from that experience than I have in
• 25:26
  that amount of time any other way.
• 25:28
  Now, I've had the same level of success and gotten contracts of the same
• 25:36
  merit without ever putting shoes on.
• 25:39
  I don't think you have to do that.
• 25:41
  I got an opportunity to do that, and it was a really cool opportunity, and also
• 25:46
  it opened me up to the idea that maybe I should do that more, but every week?
• 25:51
  No.
• 25:51
  Every month?
• 25:52
  Probably not.
• 25:53
  If I get an opportunity to go to another conference that has the same
• 25:57
  kind of concentration of people…
• 25:59
  And again, to your point about eye contact, which I fully get,
• 26:03
  this was very curated. Everybody was going to the same events.
• 26:08
  They created opportunities to have to talk to people.
• 26:12
  Everybody ate together.
• 26:14
  Like, literally for three days, I didn't have to think about food.
• 26:17
  I didn't have to think about drinks.
• 26:18
  I didn't have to order anything for delivery.
• 26:20
  I didn't have to cook myself any- literally everything was scheduled for me.
• 26:23
  It was my freaking dream.
• 26:25
  Everything was scheduled for me.
• 26:26
  There was a calendar that told me everywhere I had to go.
• 26:30
  They decided where I needed to be every minute, and then for the couple
• 26:33
  of minutes that I needed to not be those places, I just was like, "Guys,
• 26:36
  I gotta dip out 'cause I have a couple of things I gotta get done for work."
• 26:39
  And they were like, "Cool. See you in a little bit." But that was the perfect
• 26:44
  experience for me, because there was a place I needed to be at a time all of
• 26:49
  the other people were going to be there.
• 26:51
  I got to see the same people multiple times.
• 26:53
  That was the perfect networking experience for me if I had to be in person.
• 26:58
  If I was going to a conference where setting my own schedule or deciding
• 27:03
  what things I was gonna go to each day, and there are thousands of people
• 27:08
  there, and whether I was gonna end up meeting the five who needed my services
• 27:13
  or not was pretty up in the air, that's a different beast, and that would not
• 27:18
  have met my brain where my brain is, which is, I had to do zero logistics,
• 27:22
  so I was able to do the people-ing well.
• 27:26
  That being said, go find online communities for the field that you're in.
• 27:31
  Go find groups that you can join.
• 27:33
  There are Slack communities, there are Facebook communities, there are all
• 27:37
  sorts of different… People have social media-like communities that are private.
• 27:41
  I own a couple of them myself.
• 27:43
  There are places that you can go or take part in that have people who are either
• 27:49
  looking for what you do or also do what you do, and you would be surprised how
• 27:55
  much business you can get from people who do exactly what you do, even though
• 27:59
  you're technically their competition.
• 28:01
  That's just not the way that people act in the real world.
• 28:04
  You get referrals from people who are, quote-unquote, "your competition" all
• 28:06
  the time for any number of reasons.
• 28:08
  So go find the online version of that gigantic room.
• 28:14
  Will I say that you don't ever need to be in the room?
• 28:17
  No.
• 28:18
  If there's a way that you can stomach it or find rooms that are appropriate for
• 28:21
  you, I really have come around to the idea that maybe that's not a bad idea,
• 28:27
  but it doesn't have to be the only thing you do and it's not the only place that
• 28:30
  you're gonna grow a business at all.
• 28:31
  There's plenty of other places.
• 28:33
  Thanks for being here, guys.
• 28:34
  Have a good day.
• 28:34
  Love you, mean it.
• 28:40
  I forget that there's an episode description.
• 28:42
  I don't ever look
• 28:42
  at