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The Many Jobs Of Mike Rembis (Part 2) | The Christian Reeve Podcast #371 · The Christian Reeve Podcast

• 0:45
  Hello and welcome to another episode of the Christian Reef
• 0:48
  Podcast. Today's guest is a returning
• 0:50
  guest. This is Part 2 for now of the
• 0:55
  many jobs of Mike Rembis, who is a writer, Blogger, quasi actor,
• 0:59
  director, producer, all the way from Florida.
• 1:02
  Welcome back. Thank you very much.
• 1:04
  Obviously it's been, it's been a long time since we last spoke.
• 1:09
  20 minutes. Oh yeah, 20 minutes.
• 1:11
  Yeah, yeah. As you can tell, I've recorded
• 1:15
  this in two settings because I did contemplate the idea of
• 1:18
  maybe uploading A3 four hour show, but I just think it'd be
• 1:21
  better to split it up. That makes no sense.
• 1:24
  People won't sit through Titanic.
• 1:26
  They're not going to sit through 4 hours of you not in one shot
• 1:30
  not. In.
• 1:31
  One not in one shot is what I'm saying.
• 1:34
  Well, you can get Titanic. Breaks.
• 1:36
  I mean, I don't disagree, but. No, no, no.
• 1:38
  I mean, I mean what? Do you mean the actual Titanic?
• 1:42
  You have to have to take, you have to take breaks is what I'm
• 1:45
  saying. There's this guy.
• 1:46
  I think I've mentioned this on the show before.
• 1:48
  The is like the world's I might actually I might have actually
• 1:52
  mentioned it the last show, I don't know, but the world's
• 1:55
  biggest fan of Titanic and he has like over 2000 video
• 2:01
  cassettes of Titanic on VHS. No, you didn't tell me that.
• 2:06
  You must have told somebody else.
• 2:07
  That might be someone else. Yeah.
• 2:09
  It still blows me away. And it gets really weird because
• 2:12
  he's got. Why would you have that many of
• 2:14
  them? I don't know, it gets weird man.
• 2:16
  He's got like a doll that he carries around, like a life-size
• 2:19
  doll with Jack's face on it. And he's, he also hates Rose,
• 2:23
  which is quite funny because obviously it's like she let him
• 2:26
  die. So he's like, we don't talk
• 2:28
  about her. And if you go on his, his Amazon
• 2:33
  wishlist, he's just got like VHS of Titanic and then like Mac and
• 2:37
  cheese. And then that's it.
• 2:39
  That's just so you can buy him that if you want.
• 2:42
  But yeah, everyone's got their thing.
• 2:44
  That's his thing, apparently. So there you go.
• 2:48
  Weird. OK.
• 2:51
  For a for a OK film and I'm going to get a load of heat for
• 2:55
  that, but I don't care because it's I'm.
• 2:58
  I'm with you there. It's an OK film.
• 3:00
  It's OK, I mean. This I saw in the theatre.
• 3:03
  People make out like that's the greatest movie ever made and I'm
• 3:06
  like. I.
• 3:07
  Decent. Super fans on it, yeah.
• 3:10
  Well look, decent ish storyline, but ultimately do you know what
• 3:13
  I find funniest about that film is that it managed to make the
• 3:17
  Titanic sinking the subplot. It did.
• 3:21
  That's the song. It did.
• 3:22
  You're right. It's about the fucking Titanic
• 3:25
  sinking. The love thing.
• 3:27
  The love little storyline they made-up was it didn't happen and
• 3:31
  was just kind of stupid in retrospect as well.
• 3:34
  Like this woman all the way. She's recounting how she had a
• 3:40
  little fling of this guy. 80 years ago. 80 years ago, 6080
• 3:46
  years ago. And like she remembers that love
• 3:49
  and she wants to go to him when she dies.
• 3:50
  And I'm like, OK, that's romantic but also a bit mental.
• 3:54
  And who remembers A fling they had when they're in their 20s,
• 3:57
  when they're in that their 80s, you know?
• 4:00
  I would say more than you think, Yeah.
• 4:05
  I I think some people's love runs deep, man.
• 4:12
  They they think, yeah. OK.
• 4:14
  There's a difference between love versus someone that you had
• 4:19
  like a A1 night Flynn with. It could still be love.
• 4:25
  No, it can't. I can't.
• 4:29
  Wrong. OK, don't believe it.
• 4:33
  I well, it's not those people that say that.
• 4:35
  Do you love at first sight? Do you believe in that?
• 4:37
  Yes, absolutely. Have you experienced?
• 4:40
  This I think so. When you saw your wife.
• 4:45
  Ah, maybe. I don't know.
• 4:49
  I don't know if I can. See this?
• 4:50
  You got to say yes. No, she's not going to watch it.
• 4:53
  She won't watch it. Listen.
• 4:56
  She's not a fan. Of you.
• 4:58
  Oh, so, so it's a successful marriage and standard marriage.
• 5:04
  That's right, we hate. Each other.
• 5:05
  No, I was kidding. No, we we don't.
• 5:07
  We don't. But of course not.
• 5:08
  Of course not. No, I, I I do think that there
• 5:12
  is such a thing. Does exist and was.
• 5:15
  Happy marriage. I've I've, I've had it on and
• 5:21
  off, you know, OK, years ago and.
• 5:25
  But I mean, a lot of people say it's just infatuation, you know?
• 5:29
  Yeah. And sometimes, you know, you
• 5:33
  hang out with somebody for one day and never see him again, but
• 5:38
  never forget him and that love stays.
• 5:42
  That's that's all there is to it.
• 5:44
  There's there's no other way to explain it other than it is
• 5:49
  love. It's a lot at first sight and
• 5:52
  and and it's pure and you'll never see that person again.
• 5:56
  But it it, it and that's what makes it perfect is that you
• 6:06
  can't change anything. You can't build upon it.
• 6:10
  You you can only say what if. And it's, it's beautiful to
• 6:17
  think what if, but you don't know where they are or they
• 6:23
  don't know who where you are. It's, it's over.
• 6:27
  It was a quick fling and that's that, you know, But it's a
• 6:33
  beautiful, but it's a beautiful thing.
• 6:36
  I don't know that's love necessarily.
• 6:38
  Like it. I mean, it is I.
• 6:42
  Don't know. I don't know about both sides of
• 6:44
  it, but. For you, it was the love of your
• 6:48
  life. For her, it was Tuesday.
• 6:54
  So rude to her, my God. No, I just, I learned that one
• 7:01
  from like when people meet celebrities and like they're
• 7:03
  like, oh, it's the greatest day of my life.
• 7:05
  And they're like, oh, this is just another day in my office
• 7:07
  for me. Like, you know, brutal.
• 7:11
  But let's get back to the many jobs of Mike Rembus.
• 7:15
  So we kind of discovered last time that obviously you worked
• 7:20
  pretty quite a few roles as a salesman, you're quite
• 7:24
  comfortable in that kind of sales role.
• 7:26
  But I found this interesting, you worked as a salesman for a
• 7:29
  security company. How does someone approach
• 7:32
  selling security to companies? That that was a short lived, but
• 7:39
  what that was, was you know, how security guards are standing at
• 7:46
  the gates of places. Doing nothing.
• 7:49
  What you did was you'd go to these, most of the time you're
• 7:54
  going to a place that already has security guards and undercut
• 7:58
  their business. That was the whole business
• 8:00
  model. It was to say, yeah, we'll we'll
• 8:04
  charge you. We'll pay your guards the same
• 8:07
  amount, but we'll charge you less to handle the paperwork
• 8:13
  that goes along with it. So, so all they're doing is
• 8:16
  changing uniforms and it's like, well, that kind of sucks for the
• 8:22
  person who you undercut. And it's it's really lousy for
• 8:28
  that reason. And it keeps the wages down for
• 8:34
  all of the security guards. Did you guys, did you ever get
• 8:37
  any like push back from that like?
• 8:40
  No, I was only there for such a short period of time.
• 8:43
  I I mean was it month, two months at the most And they
• 8:47
  didn't, I didn't really make any new sales or anything like that.
• 8:53
  I think I pushed 2 contracts around and I never found any new
• 8:59
  business, which was the goal of it.
• 9:01
  And when I told the guy, I don't think this is for me, I'm going
• 9:08
  to I'm going to give it two more weeks, he said Nah, let's just
• 9:11
  do it right now. You're, you're out, OK?
• 9:14
  I'm not 2 week notice was not necessary with this guy.
• 9:19
  So just dumped me right away and it was that.
• 9:22
  Last time you we spoke about an auto salesman job that you had
• 9:28
  in Salt Lake City. Was that for Jerry Simon?
• 9:31
  Was that different company? Same Same.
• 9:33
  Company I had I had two auto sales jobs in Salt Lake and
• 9:38
  before that I worked at Dishman Suzuki in Spokane where I
• 9:42
  learned to sell cars. So the Jerry signer one, I I
• 9:44
  want to bring this up because on your website you state that you
• 9:48
  attempt to sell overpriced cars in an oppressive sellers
• 9:53
  environment. It was, it was OK.
• 9:57
  So just just for clarification, the, OR a little background, I
• 10:01
  guess I learned to sell cars at distance, Suzuki and Spokane
• 10:05
  from a guy named Dewey Hebbler, who I love.
• 10:08
  I mean, I mean, I adore the man. He's a great memory in my in
• 10:14
  everything. He taught me how to sell, not
• 10:17
  just cars, how to be a good person, a fair guy, a fun
• 10:22
  person, you know, not work too hard, not kill yourself trying
• 10:27
  to make a sale, you know, and not to beg people to buy.
• 10:31
  Yeah, it was his thing. And we sold mostly used cars,
• 10:34
  but we sold new Suzuki sidekicks and stuff like that.
• 10:38
  And I sold at my I only worked for him for a few months, but
• 10:45
  like 6 months. But my very last month I sold a
• 10:49
  car a day. I sold 30 cars to my last month
• 10:53
  with him. And I was like, Oh my God, I
• 10:56
  can't believe we're moving to Salt Lake City.
• 10:57
  But we had to. It was just that was the time
• 11:00
  was right. So I get to Salt Lake and I, I
• 11:05
  said, oh, I can sell cars. I know I could do that.
• 11:07
  I'm going to Jerry signer. He's the biggest dealership in
• 11:10
  the in the area. It wasn't the biggest, I don't
• 11:13
  know, but he's, he's had all the TV commercials and everything.
• 11:16
  So I go over there and their deal was every, they had way
• 11:24
  more sales people than you ever needed in your life.
• 11:27
  The the dealership doors open to 8:00 or 9:00.
• 11:34
  So I figured I'd get there at 8:00 or 9:00.
• 11:38
  Well, first before that ever happened, I had to take it like
• 11:42
  a three day class, which was paid.
• 11:44
  There was some some minimum wage or something that these hourly
• 11:49
  wage. So I had 24 hours of sales
• 11:52
  class, Jerry Signer style classroom, learn everything
• 11:57
  about them for three days along with twenty other people and
• 12:01
  then come in Monday morning and be there, be there early.
• 12:06
  They said, OK, so I'm like how early?
• 12:11
  Well, we open at 8:00 or 9, whatever it was, you need to be
• 12:15
  there earlier than that. But nobody's real clear about
• 12:19
  that. So I show up, I don't know it
• 12:22
  maybe even on time, maybe 10 minutes early, and I find out
• 12:27
  that I am like 15th in line in the UPS line.
• 12:33
  That's what it's called the UPS line.
• 12:35
  You're up next, you're up next. So the first salesperson of the
• 12:40
  day who shows up puts the name at the top of the board.
• 12:45
  And then #2 #3 #4 #5 right. So these people, I find out are
• 12:51
  getting up at 6:00 AM and showing up at 6:30 in the
• 12:57
  morning waiting for the place to open.
• 13:02
  I was like, that's ridiculous. So and then then they wanted to
• 13:07
  work till 6/7, 8:00 at night. It'll close.
• 13:11
  So I mean, I the first two or three days, I don't know how
• 13:15
  long I worked there. I think it was just a few days.
• 13:20
  I don't think I ever sold. I, I didn't, I know I didn't
• 13:22
  sell anything, but I, I don't even think I took anybody on a
• 13:26
  test drive because I was so far down the list.
• 13:29
  I was like, this is stupid. I just, you got way too many
• 13:33
  sales people. And I mean, they had like 30
• 13:35
  sales people. And it's like, so we're all
• 13:37
  going to sit here and wait for people to walk in the door and
• 13:42
  take our turns, and you're telling us that we got to be
• 13:44
  here at 7 AM, 6:00 AM to do it? See.
• 13:48
  It's ridiculous. That's stupid unless you're
• 13:54
  because everyone's getting a flat fee plus their Commission,
• 13:57
  right, all right, and thinking that.
• 13:59
  So it's pointless I think. It might have been straight
• 14:02
  Commission, actually. Right.
• 14:03
  I think that's that's the key. Then you're making sure that if
• 14:07
  you're really busy, you've got more than enough sales people.
• 14:10
  But then obviously if you're quiet, you don't have to pay any
• 14:13
  of those people that didn't make any sales, which is bullshit.
• 14:17
  Like that's just that's that's kind of like what I was talking
• 14:21
  about last time with the whole overbooking staff.
• 14:27
  Because you don't care, because you're like, well, we're giving
• 14:29
  you an opportunity power. And it's like, yeah, but I mean,
• 14:33
  let's be real, a car dealership, they don't tend to be like
• 14:37
  massive buildings. Do you know what I mean?
• 14:39
  You might have like a big lot, but it's a small building.
• 14:42
  And. I'm not being funny as well, but
• 14:44
  if you're coming into a car dealership that must be pretty
• 14:48
  overwhelming if there's like 15 fucking sales people or more
• 14:52
  like. Always, always.
• 14:55
  I mean, as a customer, I've been a customer many, many times, you
• 14:58
  know, at dealerships with my wife and I went on a test drive
• 15:01
  a few weeks ago. She's been thinking about a car.
• 15:05
  We're not going to do it. But I mean, they are so
• 15:08
  aggressive and they're like, oh, are you working with anybody
• 15:10
  else here already? And I said, yeah, we were.
• 15:12
  But I, I don't think he works here anymore.
• 15:14
  Turns out he did. Now, that guy's got a split
• 15:16
  Commission because, you know, this one's working with us now.
• 15:21
  And it's like, OK, I'm not going to buy a car from either of you.
• 15:23
  So let's. So don't even worry about that,
• 15:26
  you know? But it's like even, even like
• 15:29
  the, the, The thing is that I, I came from a marketing
• 15:31
  background. That was that was what I
• 15:33
  studied, right? And I no offence, but I never
• 15:36
  really got on very well with salespeople because I was taught
• 15:40
  about how it works. And to be fair, every sales
• 15:43
  environment's a bit different. But the one sort of unifying,
• 15:49
  let's say quality is your taught kind of how to communicate how
• 15:53
  to sales is a language and of itself, right.
• 15:57
  And like, for instance, there's the rule of three people that
• 16:01
  for those who don't know, it's interesting if you, if you have
• 16:04
  that in the States. But the idea is, let's say I'm
• 16:07
  in a, a mall or a shopping centre in the UK and I come up
• 16:13
  to you and I'm like, oh, have you thought about changing your
• 16:15
  energy provider? I could offer you a better deal.
• 16:18
  And then and then they say no. So you're like, that's your
• 16:21
  first number one. Number two, Are you sure?
• 16:24
  Because I know I can save you at least 50%.
• 16:28
  And they go no again. So that's 2 and 3rd and final,
• 16:33
  you're like, you just go all out.
• 16:35
  Number three, you're like, I can guarantee you a saving.
• 16:39
  And then they say no for the third time and then you just
• 16:41
  walk away, which I found just bizarre.
• 16:44
  I've experienced that myself, but I get I get the psychology a
• 16:48
  bit now. It's irritating because I think
• 16:52
  I shouldn't have to say no more than more than I think twice.
• 16:57
  Is more than once. Once should be enough.
• 17:01
  I I look at tonality because sometimes the first no, you
• 17:06
  know, maybe they could be, maybe they could have their arm
• 17:09
  twisted, you know, Are you sure I don't have to do that little
• 17:12
  chat about it Maybe. But if it's like a hard like no,
• 17:16
  it's like, don't, you know, don't, don't have a argument.
• 17:19
  Don't push someone. You know, don't.
• 17:21
  And the the more aggressive salespeople out there will just
• 17:26
  push, push, push, push, bully, intimidate, overwhelm.
• 17:31
  Like I was reviewing an old Dragon's Den episode.
• 17:36
  For those who don't know, that's like the English equivalent of
• 17:39
  Shark Tank. And this, this guy.
• 17:42
  Yeah, it's really, really good. I recommend it.
• 17:44
  There's this guy that came on who was the sales arm of this
• 17:51
  double act essentially, And they were selling like some water
• 17:55
  dispensing products and you know, on paper it looks.
• 17:58
  Dispensing glass. Well, there's basically in the
• 18:04
  UK, probably the same as the States, no, like a unit.
• 18:08
  So basically the idea was most places will have like some sort
• 18:12
  of agreement with the water company or provider where I
• 18:16
  don't let's say you've got water coolers, you have a guy that
• 18:20
  comes in once a week. They.
• 18:22
  Water Boy. Yeah, they take out the the old
• 18:25
  ones, they put in the new ones, right, Sure.
• 18:29
  And that's a pretty foolproof situation.
• 18:31
  Now what this company was essentially saying is, Hey, we
• 18:34
  can offer you a solution where you don't have to have any of
• 18:38
  any of that infrastructure and the water will be produced from
• 18:43
  from air from water vapour. And it's good quality.
• 18:46
  And that in of itself is great. But they were talking about
• 18:50
  basically going door to door with their sales and essentially
• 18:53
  like re educating the public. And one of the guys on the on
• 18:56
  the panel, this guy Duncan Ballantine, was like, English
• 18:59
  people aren't going to do or British people aren't going to
• 19:01
  do that. Like you're not going to re
• 19:03
  educate them. They'll just go for whatever's
• 19:06
  there or whatever's easiest, you know, like unless the thing
• 19:10
  you're offering truly is better and it takes off.
• 19:15
  But like it's, it was convoluted.
• 19:19
  It was, it just wasn't working. But then as they're going
• 19:22
  through this pitch and you know, it's intimidating me being in
• 19:24
  front of investors, I get it. But this guy was like the the
• 19:29
  sales guy was like really aggressive.
• 19:31
  He was like, you know, this is going to be like the dust vac or
• 19:34
  some products to come under the name.
• 19:37
  But he'd sold that basically in the past.
• 19:39
  And he was an aggressive door to door salesman who'd been, yeah,
• 19:44
  he's very full of himself, had a bit of an ego and it was just
• 19:47
  embarrassing to watch. They were all like, I got one
• 19:50
  point. He was like, oh, they asked,
• 19:52
  they asked them about their investment in the company, like
• 19:55
  how much they have invested. And he was like, oh, I think it
• 19:58
  was like something like, oh, 10,000 in cash and 90% or 100%
• 20:04
  in effort. And he sort of giggled and they
• 20:06
  all just looked at him like, right.
• 20:09
  And one of the women on on the panel, this woman, Deborah
• 20:12
  Meadham, was like, no, I see what you do.
• 20:15
  You're too aggressive with your with your pitch.
• 20:20
  And I know that you're the sort of person that will go into a
• 20:22
  place into someone's home and just bully them until they go
• 20:26
  for the product. You just, you just shower them
• 20:28
  with facts. Keep talking at them.
• 20:29
  Until yeah, I've known salesman like that and and I think it's
• 20:33
  all because they were taught properly how to have a
• 20:37
  conversation with somebody like. Yeah, I mean, that's the that's
• 20:42
  the thing, like anyone can be sold to like what the reason I
• 20:47
  brought my background is I know what's going on, right?
• 20:50
  I can see what's going on. And if the guy's not aggressive,
• 20:54
  I don't mind leaning into it and be like, all right, you're
• 20:57
  trying to sell to me. OK, I'll listen.
• 20:59
  Go on, try me. Like, let's, let's have that
• 21:02
  conversation and if it's a good salesperson, I see keep saying
• 21:07
  mad salesperson, they'll realise quickly and they'll know like
• 21:12
  not to try certain things, but they'll be like, OK, and they'll
• 21:15
  just get to the point and you're like, OK, And then and then
• 21:18
  afterwards you're probably glad you had the conversation.
• 21:22
  But I mean, you, you're spot on with that.
• 21:25
  It's it's who teaches you how they teach you everything.
• 21:28
  Makes a difference. And every time I went to a sales
• 21:32
  organization with poor training, I did terrible.
• 21:37
  When I went to an organization with good training, I did great.
• 21:40
  And that's and that's just all there is to it.
• 21:43
  Avis, they taught us, they gave us, we had nice classes to learn
• 21:49
  how not to be pushy, how to be pushy and and do the job.
• 21:54
  Dewey Dishman, Suzuki taught me what people really want to talk
• 21:59
  about when they're buying a car and to just let them sell
• 22:04
  themselves. If you could tell they're not
• 22:06
  going to buy that car, don't even push that car, say, do you
• 22:09
  want to look at something else? And if they say no to say, OK,
• 22:12
  that's fine. You don't have to look at
• 22:14
  anything else. And all of a sudden you say,
• 22:16
  they say, wait a minute, what about that over there?
• 22:21
  And it's true. They do that.
• 22:22
  If you just back off completely on a car lot and say, yeah,
• 22:28
  today's not the day, Today's not the day.
• 22:30
  I I don't care. And it's like, it's like, oh,
• 22:34
  what about that one over there? Oh, you know, a lady was looking
• 22:37
  at that yesterday. I think I'm hoping she comes
• 22:39
  back today. Really.
• 22:40
  Let me see it. And that works, yeah.
• 22:44
  And that's. The thing, you know what's going
• 22:46
  on, but it's it's a bit of a, a fun jousting.
• 22:49
  It's like it is, I don't know, we'll be there tomorrow and it's
• 22:53
  like, all right, buddy, let's go check out the car, OK?
• 22:56
  Yeah, yeah. That's fun.
• 22:57
  That's that's not a great. I like that.
• 22:59
  That's not aggressive. Yeah.
• 23:01
  And, and because I had good teachers, I did good at Joe's
• 23:03
  jobs and then and then when I got to Yellow Pages, I also had
• 23:07
  good teachers there who taught me the pitch.
• 23:09
  But like I said, Chris Corsi taught me, you know, got me into
• 23:13
  the class that taught me how to act, and that made me even a
• 23:16
  better salesperson. What would you say of the sort
• 23:20
  of the key elements qualities that a good salesperson should
• 23:25
  have? They should have their pitch
• 23:27
  memorized for one thing. I mean, even if you're selling
• 23:30
  cars and every single car in a lot is used and different,
• 23:35
  there's there's key points that people want to hear.
• 23:39
  They want to know how old the tires are, how many miles are on
• 23:42
  the car, Does it smoke? Does it have a good gas mileage?
• 23:49
  What was the what was the previous owner like?
• 23:51
  And you should know that for every single vehicle.
• 23:55
  Nobody wants to hear. I don't know.
• 23:59
  I'm going to have to check. Geez, I got no idea.
• 24:04
  You know, even if you don't know, you got to make something
• 24:07
  up. You know the, oh, that car, that
• 24:11
  car was a workhorse for this one guy who drove 100,000 miles, or
• 24:18
  it was a little old lady, you know, whatever.
• 24:20
  I think in, in, in that kind of environment, it's risky not to
• 24:23
  know. I, I get what you're saying
• 24:24
  because I, I've been in situations like that where I
• 24:27
  just, I just kind of go like I'm going to go find out for you and
• 24:30
  then I go find out. But to be fair, car sales, I
• 24:33
  mean, it's, it's very fleeting. Like the person's not going to
• 24:37
  wait around, they're going to walk away, you know, it's just
• 24:40
  how it is. And you can't know everything.
• 24:43
  And you got to admit that too. You know, as as soon as they as
• 24:47
  soon as you know you're going to say something that is
• 24:56
  irredeemably wrong, you know, not a total outright lie, but
• 25:01
  you say I think it was. You got to stop and say I got to
• 25:07
  check. But here's what I think.
• 25:10
  So that way you can, you can offer an opinion and not come
• 25:17
  across as a liar and then say, but I'll check on that for you
• 25:23
  do. You think it's worth kind of
• 25:25
  selling them on other parts that you do know about and then?
• 25:28
  Oh yeah. Do you know what I mean like
• 25:30
  kind of trying to secure in the sale and then go right, I'm just
• 25:33
  going to go find out for that last thing for.
• 25:36
  You yeah, yeah, like like if a car just had a brake job or
• 25:39
  something. You know what?
• 25:40
  We, we just, this one just came out of the shop and I know we
• 25:44
  checked it all out and that and it just got new brakes.
• 25:47
  I know it's got 100,100 and 50,000 miles on it, but with new
• 25:52
  brakes, I mean, you're golden going down the road.
• 25:55
  I know everything else checks out, so you shouldn't have any
• 25:59
  problem with it. And Dewey wants to get it off
• 26:02
  the lot, so he's got it priced as low as we could possibly go.
• 26:07
  We can't take anything else off of this, so it is what it is.
• 26:12
  One thing I want to ask you about that we didn't cover last
• 26:16
  time. We kind of like touched on it a
• 26:17
  little bit, but I want to deep dive it a little bit like job
• 26:20
  interviews because it I can't believe I didn't think to ask
• 26:24
  you about that because it's a no brainer.
• 26:26
  You've had many jobs, so clearly you've had a lot of job
• 26:29
  interviews. I have.
• 26:31
  Right. Did you say you're an expert at
• 26:34
  this point? No, no, no, I wouldn't say I'm
• 26:37
  an expert on a job interview because they're they're always
• 26:41
  throwing curveballs and they ask and those curveballs are the
• 26:45
  questions that I feel are the most irrelevant.
• 26:52
  They're like that. Where do you see yourself in
• 26:54
  five years? You're retired.
• 26:56
  You. Know that's.
• 27:00
  Not here, that's for sure. Stop asking stupid questions,
• 27:04
  you know. What's the stupidest question
• 27:06
  you've been asked in a job interview?
• 27:08
  Some of the some of the stupidest.
• 27:11
  I don't. I'm not sure that there really
• 27:13
  are stupid questions. Of course there are.
• 27:16
  There's a there was a question I didn't appreciate when I was
• 27:19
  really young. One guy asked me what's your
• 27:24
  father do? Oh, OK.
• 27:27
  What has that got to do with anything?
• 27:30
  How old? How old were you?
• 27:32
  So I was. 1819 You know what's my dad do?
• 27:36
  That's not your business, man. How did you react in the moment
• 27:40
  when he went? Well, I told I told my dad
• 27:43
  doesn't have a job. Oh wow, I must have made it.
• 27:47
  I must. Have made it.
• 27:49
  Awkward in the interview, like oh.
• 27:51
  Yeah, I mean, I really do come from a poor family, My.
• 27:56
  Dad, nothing to be a shame. Job.
• 27:57
  Yeah. And so, I mean, if you're going
• 27:59
  to ask me, I'm going to tell you my dad didn't have a job.
• 28:02
  My mom at the at the time he was asking a question.
• 28:07
  But did you see the interviewer just kind of fold into
• 28:09
  themselves at that moment? Kinda, Yeah.
• 28:11
  Is this, this kid has no pedigree, you know?
• 28:16
  Oh. Oh, was it like they use that
• 28:18
  against you? I think so, yeah.
• 28:21
  That's, yeah. I didn't get that job.
• 28:24
  Yes, I did not got to say in situations like that, I always
• 28:28
  look at it like, you know what, it's for the best.
• 28:29
  It's you dodged a bullet kind of thing.
• 28:32
  You know, I always, I always think about it like that.
• 28:35
  I remember one job interview with the guy and I appreciated
• 28:38
  it. Right off the bat.
• 28:40
  He said he wasn't going to hire me.
• 28:42
  But here's why. It was a, it was a job
• 28:46
  interview. After I had sold Yellow Page
• 28:49
  advertising for many years, I wanted to try something
• 28:53
  different or maybe I moved back to the area.
• 28:56
  I'm not sure what the situation was exactly, but I needed a job
• 29:00
  and this was selling radio advertising.
• 29:05
  So I'm like Yellow Pages radio. It's advertising, it's
• 29:08
  advertising. I think I can sell that, you
• 29:11
  know, so I get the so you know, obviously I had the resume, I
• 29:15
  had the experience. I could walk in.
• 29:18
  I knew my door to door sales in Tampa Bay inside out.
• 29:22
  I could canvas an area. I could I, I knew a little bit
• 29:26
  about selling blocks of advertising because I'd studied
• 29:31
  it on. So I knew how to do TV or radio
• 29:38
  and because I knew other people in business and, and to talk to
• 29:42
  them about it. So I learned from them even
• 29:45
  though I hadn't done it. And so I had a conversation with
• 29:48
  the sales manager and he says to me, what do you read?
• 29:54
  And I said, I read, I try to read mostly classic literature,
• 30:01
  you know, because that's what I, that I want to, I want to learn
• 30:05
  how to write from the very best, most, the, the most time tested
• 30:15
  things out there or something. I said, I, I says so I go on.
• 30:20
  I recently read Jonathan Swift and I recently read Frankenstein
• 30:26
  by Mary Shelley. And I recently read, you know,
• 30:28
  some I'm calling off real classics and stuff like that.
• 30:32
  And the guy looked at me like I was crazy.
• 30:34
  And he goes, he goes, What periodicals do you read?
• 30:40
  And I said periodicals. National Geographic.
• 30:44
  No, no, I, I, I, he goes. And I said, I think I did say
• 30:51
  National Geographic because I had, I had a volunteer position
• 30:55
  on the radio at the time to read National Geographic on tape for
• 31:02
  the blind. So I did.
• 31:04
  I did. I did that for a couple years at
• 31:06
  WUSF. I don't even put it on my
• 31:08
  resume, you know? Yeah.
• 31:09
  I don't think I came across that.
• 31:11
  No, I didn't. No, I, it's just.
• 31:13
  Any particular reason why you didn't include it?
• 31:14
  Or just. Didn't think about it.
• 31:17
  You know, I don't even have copies of the recordings, so.
• 31:20
  What did you, what did you get out of that?
• 31:22
  Like was what was that it? Was fun.
• 31:24
  It was just nice. It's nice to be in a recording
• 31:26
  booth all alone. Just read the articles, learn so
• 31:30
  much. I read the whole magazines cover
• 31:34
  to cover for two years. And anyway, I might have said
• 31:40
  National Geographic when he put it that way.
• 31:43
  And he goes, no, I'm talking about do you read the Tampa Bay
• 31:46
  Times or do you read the Tampa Bay Business Journal?
• 31:50
  That was it. And I said no, never.
• 31:53
  And he goes, and he goes, Any reason why?
• 31:56
  And I I said just not. Have a life.
• 31:59
  Yeah. And he goes and he goes and he
• 32:02
  he says right there and then he goes, I can't hire you for this
• 32:05
  job. And.
• 32:08
  You got to. You got to be extra boring to
• 32:10
  work here. Well, he goes.
• 32:13
  That's where you're going to get all your leads.
• 32:15
  Oh, OK. Yeah, yeah.
• 32:17
  He goes, you got to, you got to have your finger on a pulse.
• 32:19
  He goes, I don't want somebody I know.
• 32:21
  You said you know how to canvas and all that.
• 32:24
  He goes. I don't need somebody walking
• 32:25
  door to door trying to find a needle in a haystack.
• 32:28
  I need somebody to go straight to the straight to the needle.
• 32:32
  OK, but let's, let's just query this for a second.
• 32:36
  So a lot of people that's dying in a job know nothing about that
• 32:40
  job. They've never worked in that job
• 32:42
  before. They have their experience.
• 32:46
  And he's literally just giving you a few examples of like,
• 32:48
  well, you'd have to read this. You'd have to read this.
• 32:51
  Like, why didn't he? I mean, obviously you don't know
• 32:53
  this, but like, it just seems bizarre to me that he wouldn't
• 32:56
  have looked more at your character and the type of person
• 32:58
  you are and go, OK, well, if you like, OK, if it were me, I'd be
• 33:03
  like, would you be willing to read these kind of things?
• 33:08
  Because this is where your leads are going to come from.
• 33:10
  Well, that's, that's that's where I went with it next.
• 33:14
  I was like, well, that's what you want me to do.
• 33:17
  That's what I'll do. I have no problem picking up a
• 33:19
  newspaper and reading it. I'm not crazy about newspapers.
• 33:22
  But you know, if you want me to go through the newspaper and
• 33:24
  read it and he goes, no, that's not it.
• 33:27
  He goes, you already have to have that discipline.
• 33:30
  He goes. And if you're not, if you're not
• 33:31
  that way you don't know what to look for.
• 33:33
  That's stupid. Like it's all about lining.
• 33:37
  You'd learn. I you'd think, but apparently
• 33:41
  not according to this guy. He just said no, you, you did.
• 33:46
  You just you have to have it in you to begin with.
• 33:49
  Just like I said before, it's it's like we want you to be
• 33:53
  experienced already. We don't want to have to train
• 33:57
  you and wait for you to catch up.
• 33:58
  That's just not realistic. I mean, yeah, you will find
• 34:00
  people out there that already know, but.
• 34:03
  But that's what. Happened, but then again also if
• 34:06
  if you're what what was the job for?
• 34:08
  Again, if you don't mind. Me.
• 34:09
  That was average selling advertising for the radio.
• 34:12
  OK, OK, so. Cox Radio.
• 34:15
  Yeah, I remember. But what kind of a person is
• 34:17
  looking for leads to sell advertising but doesn't have a
• 34:20
  job in that field? What do you you're looking for?
• 34:25
  Leads. Well, what?
• 34:27
  OK, because he's like, you need to be looking and reading these
• 34:31
  periodicals in order to, but you need to be disciplined in this
• 34:35
  area already. And it's like, OK, but unless
• 34:38
  you're already working somewhere or you're a business owner
• 34:43
  chasing this kind of thing, like actually selling your own
• 34:46
  advertising, in which case, why would you go for the job?
• 34:49
  How? How would you already have that
• 34:51
  experience and discipline? Well, you know, this is this is
• 34:55
  the odd thing is that I noticed at, at the Yellow Pages, I knew
• 35:00
  guys who really did that, who opened the Tampa Bay Business
• 35:04
  Journal every morning. And when I would go out knocking
• 35:07
  on doors, which is the way I like to do business face to face
• 35:11
  and work a grid and see who's at every single door.
• 35:18
  That's the way I did stuff. I knew other guys who would sit
• 35:22
  and look at a newspaper for 2-3 hours and make a couple of phone
• 35:27
  calls and they were also successful.
• 35:30
  But you know that it's a completely different discipline,
• 35:33
  like the guy said. Yeah.
• 35:35
  And I like, I, I feel like it's only 50% of the equation really
• 35:39
  because. It could be.
• 35:40
  You know, like what you're saying there.
• 35:41
  Face to face sales, even to this day has a lot of merit.
• 35:48
  Yeah. And I think it's because of the
• 35:49
  personable thing. Like you, you can have all the
• 35:51
  knowledge in the world, but if you have no charisma and no kind
• 35:55
  of sense of presence and stuff like that, then it's it's just
• 35:57
  for naughty. Like it's, you know what I mean?
• 36:00
  Yeah. So I, I don't know who he got to
• 36:03
  sell his advertising and I don't know who's listening to radio.
• 36:06
  I don't listen to radio. I don't listen to advertising on
• 36:11
  on TV. I'll I'll mute it.
• 36:13
  I'll fast. I'll watch, put a record, a
• 36:16
  show, even the news. I'll record the news and roll it
• 36:19
  back an hour and and Fast forward through all the
• 36:23
  commercials so I can avoid them. I guess back in the back in the
• 36:26
  day, I mean when, when was this? When would this have been?
• 36:29
  This would have been around 2008 so.
• 36:36
  Maybe you could still catch people with advertising.
• 36:38
  I think like people are more wise to things now and just it's
• 36:42
  just an annoying thing that people put up with or or ignore,
• 36:48
  I think. I think really these days,
• 36:51
  advertising is really only successful in one way.
• 36:54
  And and that's just kind of getting in front of people's
• 36:57
  eyes and ears and imprinting on them.
• 36:59
  But I don't think it's, I don't know really how realistic it is.
• 37:02
  Like you heard an advert and you're like, oh, I need to go
• 37:05
  out and buy a new. I don't know.
• 37:09
  Window. Yeah, window from this company,
• 37:12
  but if you lay it down the line like, OK, I'll give you, I'll
• 37:17
  give you an idea right of of of an example example.
• 37:20
  There's this company and they're all around the world and the
• 37:24
  advert goes like auto class repair auto class with place or
• 37:28
  something like that. And if I.
• 37:30
  Ever repair safely replace? Yeah, it's the.
• 37:33
  Same Jingle everywhere. Windows.
• 37:35
  Oh, really? Yeah, it's, it's kind of there's
• 37:38
  a YouTube video on on this and it's, it's brilliant.
• 37:40
  It's the same Jingle everywhere in the world.
• 37:43
  But anyway, if I ever have like smashed in windows, the first
• 37:47
  thing I'm going to think of is that company because of the GM,
• 37:51
  you know, So it might not work on me now, but like down the
• 37:53
  line it might. So I think like there, therein
• 37:56
  lies the success of advertising. If it's memorable, you know.
• 38:00
  Sure. Yeah, the branding is what it's
• 38:03
  all about. Yeah.
• 38:04
  I had AI had a Co worker at the Yellow Pages who had come from
• 38:10
  Coca-Cola and and he was in advertising at Coca-Cola and his
• 38:17
  whole thing it was it or Coca Cola's whole thing was branding
• 38:24
  100%. He he goes the the reason we put
• 38:32
  vending machines out is not to make money on the cans that go
• 38:36
  in a vending machine. Now the guy who owns the vending
• 38:39
  or the guy who the guy who runs the vending route doesn't own
• 38:43
  the vending machine. Coca-Cola owns the vending
• 38:46
  machine and they give him the vending machine to buy their
• 38:50
  Coca-Cola so he could, so he can mark it up and sell it for
• 38:54
  whatever he wants to his customers.
• 38:57
  We don't even care if he makes a nickel a can or a dollar a can.
• 39:02
  Doesn't matter to us. We will.
• 39:06
  If the machine breaks, we'll fix it.
• 39:09
  And we own the machine because our name's on it and we won't
• 39:16
  make money on anything that guy sells in that machine.
• 39:20
  The reason for the machine is that big giant Coca-Cola
• 39:24
  signature on it on three sides that you're going to see from
• 39:29
  every direction, whether you walk in the room or if you're
• 39:31
  walking down the street. That's advertising, and they
• 39:35
  said that's what we're paying for is a visible presence to
• 39:38
  remind you that here there's an icy cold Coca-Cola waiting for
• 39:43
  you right here. If you don't want it right now,
• 39:45
  you're going to want it later. I feel like that's a wasted
• 39:49
  opportunity from a leasing perspective.
• 39:53
  Why not? Why not lease the machines out
• 39:58
  to owners so they pay and you make money from that?
• 40:01
  Because the ad, you're right, the advertising is, I know
• 40:04
  Coca-Cola is famous for its, its budget and how crazy they'll
• 40:08
  just spend like crazy amounts on like billboards and all sorts.
• 40:13
  And I get it. It's it's what we're talking.
• 40:15
  About. I think it's going to do that.
• 40:17
  I think the whole idea is to support a small business owner
• 40:21
  to get that advertising out there and and not take advantage
• 40:24
  of the guy. You know, I mean, he's not going
• 40:26
  to make enough. Great, that's cool.
• 40:28
  He's not going to make enough money to afford to lease the
• 40:31
  machine, but if it depends on the.
• 40:32
  Machine depends how much you lease it for though, doesn't it?
• 40:35
  You know, I mean, think about how many of those machines must
• 40:38
  be around all around the world. Right.
• 40:41
  OK. So that guy they got to, they
• 40:44
  got to put that machine someplace where it's got 24/7
• 40:47
  electricity. So they're using somebody else's
• 40:50
  electricity for free because they've allowed a machine on
• 40:57
  their campus. Like where I worked for the
• 40:59
  state, we had, I would say 3 vending machines of our own,
• 41:06
  maybe 4 on our campus. And then the adjacent campus,
• 41:10
  which was USF, University of South Florida, they, they must
• 41:18
  have had another 10 vending machines when you walk past
• 41:21
  them. So I mean, think of that.
• 41:23
  That's all that advertising. None of the electricity paid for
• 41:29
  by Coca-Cola, the the vent, the guy who runs the vending machine
• 41:34
  is, is making money. And everybody who it's
• 41:39
  convenient for and the state and the, the state who is USF and
• 41:45
  state of Florida, they could care less about paying the
• 41:49
  electricity to have an icy cold Coke on hand.
• 41:53
  So it's like a win win for everybody.
• 41:58
  That's that, and Coca-Cola built the machine and gave it to him.
• 42:06
  Moving it forwards, but still sticking sort of in the sales
• 42:09
  realm. You had several roles as a
• 42:11
  telemarketer. I've done this actually one
• 42:13
  time, yeah. What did you learn from this?
• 42:16
  Anything memorable? Anything that stands out?
• 42:18
  Any crazy customers? Anything at all.
• 42:21
  No, I had AI had a lot of fun at a few of those places.
• 42:26
  You know, it was it was your basic smile and dial and and
• 42:31
  stop at 9:00 because, you know, we can't make phone calls after
• 42:35
  9:00 at night. But is that like a law?
• 42:39
  Or is that just look? Oh, then no, that's a law, Yeah.
• 42:42
  OK. Yeah, that was a law in Florida.
• 42:43
  Yeah. You can't be calling people at
• 42:45
  9:00 at night 9, O1. It's over.
• 42:49
  I'll sue you, you know, but we had we, we had somebody who had
• 42:59
  a, an answering machine that had a dirty message on it.
• 43:03
  So it got passed around. Everybody listen to it laugh our
• 43:06
  ass off. And it said, it said, you better
• 43:12
  leave a message because if I find out you didn't, I'll fuck
• 43:17
  your little legs off. I was like, wait, no, really.
• 43:24
  It said that. So the guy gets to me and I
• 43:26
  call, I listen to it. And I was like, and so, so
• 43:31
  everybody listens to it, you know, and this is a phone room
• 43:34
  of like 200 people. So I don't know, I think
• 43:39
  somebody called to complain to the boss that everybody was
• 43:43
  calling to listen to their message and jammed up their
• 43:45
  phone line. And it's like, well, it's kind
• 43:49
  of like your own fault there. But that was a weird one.
• 43:56
  Not too many bizarre, weird things.
• 44:03
  Great tales from the phone rooms out there that I have.
• 44:06
  Not really. Well, I think, I think it's all
• 44:09
  pretty. Typical.
• 44:10
  I think this next one might be interesting.
• 44:13
  So you worked at Miss Kitty's Adult Bookstore as a cashier?
• 44:17
  I. Did for a short period of time,
• 44:20
  we had live dancers in the yeah, in the, in the, you know, behind
• 44:28
  plexiglass. Guys could stand there and pass
• 44:32
  dollar bills through like a a bank slot.
• 44:37
  And then they. Strip, they strip and dance and
• 44:42
  they weren't private. I mean, you could see all the
• 44:44
  other guys, the other booths and stuff that's going to.
• 44:47
  Go see what I'm doing. It's.
• 44:49
  Kind of gross. I mean, I worked there for a a
• 44:51
  couple of weeks and I I quit because the boss was rude to me.
• 44:56
  The lady had two, she had two locations, one in Bozeman that I
• 45:01
  already knew existed because I'd seen it when we lived in Bozeman
• 45:06
  years before. You never went and saw it.
• 45:08
  And then Miss Kitties, it was right across the street from
• 45:11
  Dewey from Dewey's dealership. So it was real convenient to
• 45:15
  say, you know, to go across the street and be a cashier at Miss
• 45:19
  Kitties. So I so I did that and I'd like
• 45:25
  to hanging out there talking to the girls.
• 45:27
  They dance and, and, you know, wore skimpy stuff when they're
• 45:31
  walking around and, and then we take turns at the cash register
• 45:37
  and people bought weird dildos and shit and that magazines
• 45:46
  when, back when they, I don't know if they sell magazines
• 45:49
  anymore and they sold porno tapes and all that.
• 45:52
  So everything you could think of, you know, just just an adult
• 45:55
  store. So one day a guy comes in and he
• 46:05
  he asked, OK, and this is what don't judge a book by its cover.
• 46:10
  I think we talked about this. Don't judge a book by its cover.
• 46:12
  You don't know what's really going on in that person's life.
• 46:15
  Sky walks in and he looks 30 ish handsome fella, sharp dressed,
• 46:25
  you know, real executive type new like look like he knew what
• 46:32
  he's doing with his life kind of thing.
• 46:35
  And he goes, where's the butt plugs at?
• 46:42
  Well, they're they're right behind you, right there on the
• 46:45
  wall. I run it.
• 46:46
  He goes over there, he's looking.
• 46:48
  He grabs this one in this thing. This thing is like, I don't how
• 46:54
  big can I make that look? I don't know how to do things
• 46:56
  with the camera in front of me anyway, it was it was, it was,
• 47:02
  it was like a grapefruit, right? Thing is huge and I've never
• 47:08
  used one. I'm never going to Didn't know
• 47:11
  how they work, didn't care how they worked or why anybody
• 47:14
  wanted one. It's not my thing, not at all.
• 47:17
  So the guy guy brings it over and it's like 30 bucks and he
• 47:24
  goes, is this the biggest one you've got?
• 47:25
  Jesus Christ. And I said that's all of them.
• 47:30
  And I said I, I think it is. And he's like shaking his head
• 47:34
  and shit, all right, all right, I'll get it.
• 47:38
  Zones out 30 bucks. And he and I was like, you need
• 47:43
  a bag for that. No, no, I'm good.
• 47:46
  That's out the door, you know, You don't know who these people.
• 47:50
  Are a bad ass just. Gives Oh my gosh, he was he he
• 47:56
  was the boss man. So one day, one day I'm, I'm
• 48:02
  coming into work and I finally meet the boss who owns Miss
• 48:06
  Kitties. And I said, oh, hi, I'm Mike, I
• 48:13
  work here, you know, blah, blah, blah.
• 48:14
  And, and it's nice to meet you and all that.
• 48:18
  And she goes, are you doing something now?
• 48:20
  Something like that. I don't know.
• 48:22
  She just, she just was very, very rude to me.
• 48:28
  And and then she's like, I'm not here for chitchat and all that.
• 48:32
  And I was like, because she didn't hire me.
• 48:34
  She didn't hire me. One of the girls hired me and
• 48:38
  and that was like, she's just a bitch.
• 48:41
  So I just so I said, OK, you know what?
• 48:44
  I don't need this. And then one of the girls who
• 48:47
  did hire me, she's she's she said, Mike, wait, no, no, she's
• 48:51
  like that. I'm sorry.
• 48:52
  And I said, no, I'm not going to work for her.
• 48:54
  I was like, she doesn't appreciate me being nice and
• 48:56
  saying hello and it's nice to meet you.
• 48:59
  I don't want to work for somebody like that.
• 49:01
  And that was it. I don't.
• 49:03
  See you man. Oh thanks.
• 49:05
  Did you notice on my website that there's a lot of links in
• 49:14
  in the section you're talking about when you look at all the
• 49:16
  jobs, if you hover over some of the names, I don't.
• 49:20
  Some links are still good, some are bad.
• 49:22
  I got to go through it and fix them.
• 49:24
  But there was a link on there. Miss Kitties.
• 49:28
  If if you link to it, it'll go to the story of that Lady and
• 49:33
  her, her business there and how she got us.
• 49:41
  I forgot if it's how they went out, why they were going out of
• 49:44
  business or how they got into business.
• 49:46
  I forgot what the story is. But you can, you can.
• 49:50
  You can click on a lot of stuff in my resume and go somewhere
• 49:59
  else and learn some kind of history about it.
• 50:02
  It's definitely worth checking out the website.
• 50:04
  It's it. Is it?
• 50:06
  It was fun to put together. It took me years.
• 50:08
  I took a long time to put all this together.
• 50:11
  How many jobs do you think you've worked?
• 50:13
  Over 130 I know that the actual jobs are in the one O 5 range,
• 50:22
  not counting acting and acting jobs.
• 50:25
  I've had 30 plus so. I think acting counts, but I I
• 50:28
  know you mean like roles if you. Like roles, yeah, yeah, so
• 50:32
  actual jobs I'm in the I'm in the one O 5 range and I lose
• 50:36
  track when I start to count and but I do.
• 50:40
  But it is accurate. I don't, I, I didn't leave
• 50:43
  anything out other than that, you know, the volunteer position
• 50:48
  I mentioned. When you're, when you're putting
• 50:49
  a resume together now, like how do you approach it?
• 50:53
  Because one thing I kind of figured out is probably best not
• 50:57
  to go over five years of work history, because if it's long
• 51:00
  enough, it's like it's just not relevant anymore.
• 51:03
  They're saying, they're saying not to go over 10 years, but
• 51:07
  you're right. I think five years and I've had,
• 51:10
  I had one job in the last 10. No, I had two jobs in the last
• 51:13
  10 years. My recent job was just a
• 51:19
  stockroom seasonally at Bell's department store, you know,
• 51:23
  where we, we took stuff out of boxes and set them up with price
• 51:27
  tags and things for putting out on the shelves.
• 51:31
  That's it now as that's one day a week.
• 51:33
  So I mean, is it even a job that I can list?
• 51:35
  I don't know. It's on there.
• 51:37
  You know, I put it on the list. But realistically, if I'm going
• 51:43
  to say tell me about your work history, Mike, for the last five
• 51:46
  years, I'm going to give them the state.
• 51:48
  And I've got a job that doesn't really relate to a lot of the
• 51:55
  other things that are available for me to apply for.
• 51:58
  It has a tricky 1. I, I made like several CVS
• 52:02
  myself. I did like a customer service 1A
• 52:05
  marketing one, an acting one, and then a kind of like a
• 52:08
  general one that had everything. Yeah.
• 52:12
  And then I kind of reduced it down.
• 52:14
  I put the maximum on LinkedIn and I included the LinkedIn link
• 52:18
  on my CV as a kind of way of being like here's here's the
• 52:22
  full work history if you want everything.
• 52:28
  What are you up to? I don't, I don't know.
• 52:34
  I've not, I've lost count. I reckon it's 20 or 30.
• 52:38
  Maybe not as many as you, but yeah, a decent amount.
• 52:41
  Like enough where I forgot about some of them and I, when I went
• 52:45
  back through all of them, I was like, oh wow, I'd forgotten I
• 52:49
  even did that. But then, but then there's other
• 52:53
  things as well. Like for instance, when I did
• 52:56
  agency work, I must have worked like maybe like 40 venues
• 53:03
  different places, you know, then that I don't know if that really
• 53:06
  counts. It's in the work history, but
• 53:09
  it's just you lose track of places you've been.
• 53:12
  Sometimes I walk through the city I live in and I'm like, oh,
• 53:14
  I remember working like there at one point and there and there
• 53:18
  and there. And you know, they do these like
• 53:20
  football stadiums. It's mad.
• 53:24
  It's. I've just tried the job
• 53:30
  applications or resumes as the most recent stuff and went back
• 53:36
  the, you know, three jobs and they're not even related.
• 53:42
  So I think what I, what I wound up doing to fill 3 pages, which
• 53:49
  might have been overkill. And mind you, none of this is
• 53:52
  working to get me a job. Nobody's responding.
• 53:57
  I put, I put together a resume that has the state on it.
• 54:02
  It's got the Yellow Pages, my Film Festival that I created,
• 54:07
  and Elegant Weddings by Deborah, which all kind of focuses on me
• 54:16
  being somebody who can put things together and run them.
• 54:23
  So so, but even that the focus isn't perfect.
• 54:28
  And you know, you have to look at a job first, the job out
• 54:34
  there that you're going to apply for and then build a resume or
• 54:39
  application based on that. And I've got.
• 54:43
  I've just got way too much disconnect for anything to work.
• 54:48
  I just think it's not realistic to, to like they expect people
• 54:52
  to put together like carefully constructed CVS for every job
• 54:56
  and it's like, it's not realistic.
• 54:59
  I, I remember a, a careers person years ago when I was at
• 55:04
  uni saying like, you've got real, you've got two real
• 55:07
  options. You can carefully construct an
• 55:10
  application each and every time, and it'll take a very long time.
• 55:13
  That's what they want you to do. Yeah, but it's not realistic.
• 55:16
  I mean, if you've got listen, if you've got like time and money
• 55:20
  and you're looking for your dream job, yeah, absolutely.
• 55:23
  But if you like need a job like right now, then the the way I
• 55:27
  always do it is have a generic CV that's geared towards a
• 55:31
  specific type of job role and then mass send that out, mass
• 55:36
  apply until you hit something. Because another thing as well,
• 55:40
  and this might be, I think we'll probably be experiencing the
• 55:43
  same thing. You got to remember everything
• 55:46
  is AI screening now. So it's not human beings seeing
• 55:50
  your CV until the short listing stage really because it all.
• 55:56
  And that's really not fair, you know, I don't, I don't see how
• 56:01
  it is. So I had AI create a resume for
• 56:05
  me that. Which I want to play is probably
• 56:09
  the better way to go about it. As much as I hate to admit it,
• 56:11
  it's AI. Give AII try.
• 56:14
  I, I, I had it work with me to get everything onto one page and
• 56:22
  make it look like I have some kind of authority or strengths
• 56:28
  that make my strengths stand out.
• 56:32
  And it I created something that wasn't even a solid timeline.
• 56:41
  It, it categorized, I don't even know how to describe it.
• 56:46
  I could pull it up and look at it for a second.
• 56:51
  Let me let me just do that. Where am I at?
• 56:56
  It would take a slight detour while Mike checks out, yeah?
• 57:00
  My own resume, because I because I don't remember at all.
• 57:04
  Let's see, am I here? Do you, do you have things in
• 57:08
  your CV like, oh, like sometimes it will have like hobbies,
• 57:15
  interests, high school education or degree, whatever, any of that
• 57:20
  stuff. No, no, I don't have anything
• 57:22
  like that. The hobbies and interests, No.
• 57:25
  OK, here's the one that I I had AI help me build.
• 57:29
  I'm just going to read it. I'm not going to share a screen
• 57:32
  because I don't want to mess up stuff.
• 57:34
  Oh no, that's not it. It's all right.
• 57:37
  It's a podcast. It's for really, it's a podcast.
• 57:40
  It's for. Here's the one that I like that
• 57:42
  I've been running where it's where I've got my name, address
• 57:49
  and stuff. OK address, phone number, you
• 57:51
  know, contact info. Business administrator with
• 57:54
  substantial experience, leading professional teams, Creative
• 57:57
  writer providing developmental editing and long form fiction
• 58:00
  and screenplays. Then I've got business
• 58:02
  experience. Florida Fish and Wildlife,
• 58:05
  Government Operations consultant from 2016 to 2025.
• 58:09
  Event Manager Elegant Weddings by Deborah 20/12/2013 Executive
• 58:14
  Director Owner of the Clearwater Film Festival, 2009 to 2011.
• 58:18
  Senior Account Executive Media Consultant from 1999 to 2008.
• 58:24
  Owner and propriety of the Penn Stock Gallery from 1993 to the
• 58:28
  present. I currently run my online
• 58:31
  gallery on Etsy and then because I buy and sell art.
• 58:35
  And then there's the essayist in writing experience.
• 58:39
  I put essayist freelancer 2005 to the present with a link to
• 58:44
  oh, you're going to update that. That's beehive.
• 58:48
  And then there's a producer, writer, producer, director,
• 58:53
  screenwriter, actor best productions 2005 to the present.
• 58:57
  So I'm all about my film production writing credits and
• 59:00
  awards that I won for perfect pitch at the Cannes Film
• 59:04
  Festival and you'll pages sales executive executive of the year
• 59:09
  in 2003. But the other one that the AI
• 59:17
  created for me, OK, let me see. It's this one here.
• 59:20
  The AI says that my executive OK IT called me Operational
• 59:28
  strategy consultant, Business launch specialist, strategic OK
• 59:34
  Executive summary, Strategic operations consultant with a
• 59:38
  career long focus on launch stabilization and infrastructure
• 59:42
  design. Expert at navigating the phase
• 59:44
  one complexity of new ventures from founding International Film
• 59:48
  festivals and retail galleries to managing $8.7 million state
• 59:53
  agency budgets. Specialized in deployment based
• 59:57
  roles where rapid integration, vendor architecture and
• 1:00:00
  administrative stewardship are required to bring a project from
• 1:00:05
  concept to maturity. IT and then IT tells about
• 1:00:11
  several of those other things. It throws Avis and the US Postal
• 1:00:15
  Service together and relevant skills and certifications.
• 1:00:20
  Saying I can use infrastructure software, advanced proficiency
• 1:00:24
  in financial reconciliation, project management tools.
• 1:00:27
  I mean, talk about blowing it up.
• 1:00:33
  I just it's a lot of. Fiction.
• 1:00:35
  Yeah, it just sounds very convoluted and kind of, I mean,
• 1:00:41
  I'll say this, AI is great at bullshitting and just referring
• 1:00:45
  corporate. Exactly what it was good at.
• 1:00:47
  It's great. It told me, it said, now now
• 1:00:51
  here's where you go and you, you give them this resume and it's
• 1:00:55
  going to get through all of the AII.
• 1:00:58
  Mean blocks. This is why I say like it's,
• 1:01:00
  it's better to just mass apply and have a generic thing because
• 1:01:05
  as soon as you get through that, absolutely, like now you're
• 1:01:07
  talking to people and now you can rely on your charisma, your
• 1:01:11
  experience and, and proper conversation.
• 1:01:13
  And you know, that's how you're going to get the job.
• 1:01:16
  You know, like it's just the screening process.
• 1:01:19
  And you're right, I think it is unfair, but at the same time, I
• 1:01:23
  guess it's quicker than having people manually go through like
• 1:01:26
  hundreds, maybe even thousands of applications.
• 1:01:29
  That's just not the time, you know?
• 1:01:31
  Yeah, well, you know, the the state fired me back in March of
• 1:01:35
  2025 S the only job interview. No, I went on other job
• 1:01:42
  interviews with other state agencies.
• 1:01:44
  None of them hired me. And the only place that did hire
• 1:01:48
  me was Belle's, the department store for the temporary job
• 1:01:52
  through the holiday season. How many times have you been
• 1:01:57
  fired? Almost all of them a lot like I
• 1:02:06
  just I I really haven't, I really haven't counted.
• 1:02:09
  I I would. Why do you think you've been
• 1:02:13
  fired? I would.
• 1:02:14
  Put it at a 4060 ratio. You know, there's a lot of.
• 1:02:19
  What what would you say is the the recurring theme the the
• 1:02:22
  recurring firing message? Not that I'm not qualified to do
• 1:02:31
  what I'm doing. That's OK.
• 1:02:33
  Yeah, yeah. They finally figure out that I'm
• 1:02:36
  faking it till I'm making it. I'm not making it, you know,
• 1:02:38
  It's like you hired me, It's your fault.
• 1:02:42
  You. Know I mean do they provide on
• 1:02:46
  the job training? Depends on the job.
• 1:02:49
  I mean, most of most of my jobs were not very nothing that
• 1:02:58
  needed a lot of experience. You know, they, they fired me
• 1:03:03
  from being a grill cook at Perkins after a couple of days
• 1:03:08
  because I wasn't fast enough. Like, you know, how fast do you
• 1:03:13
  need me to be? You need a, you need a, you need
• 1:03:16
  a breakfast for a table of 10 out in 7 minutes.
• 1:03:19
  That's you're being unrealistic. In my opinion, it's a It's a
• 1:03:23
  tricky one that because on one hand I can be like, yeah, it's
• 1:03:26
  fast-paced, you just have to move at a certain pace.
• 1:03:29
  But at the same time, yeah, it's the classic argument of like, do
• 1:03:32
  you want it done quickly or do you want it done properly?
• 1:03:35
  Striked. Especially with food.
• 1:03:38
  So I mean, there's, there's always different things there's,
• 1:03:45
  you know, you don't get along with somebody like the boss, you
• 1:03:49
  know, you tell them, I've told people you don't know what
• 1:03:53
  you're doing. You're not good at your own
• 1:03:55
  business and you know. So that went down well.
• 1:03:59
  Well, I wasn't, I wasn't planning to stick around anyway.
• 1:04:02
  But you know, if you want to fire me, it's fine.
• 1:04:04
  I I pushed people to fire me so that I can get the unemployment
• 1:04:08
  because. Cheeky.
• 1:04:10
  Well, it's the only way. I mean, if you quit, you don't
• 1:04:12
  get unemployment. What's the worst firing you've
• 1:04:16
  ever experienced? I've got a thick skin.
• 1:04:20
  So I think, I think this the state this last one was the was
• 1:04:27
  probably the worst. I mean, I wasn't doing anything
• 1:04:31
  wrong and they just came up with tiny, tiny, insignificant
• 1:04:39
  mistakes where I missed a step in the process.
• 1:04:44
  And they said, well, you know, This is why we have backup
• 1:04:47
  people. I said, exactly, that's why you
• 1:04:48
  have backup people to check my work and fix those mistakes.
• 1:04:53
  Yeah, but you're making too many mistakes.
• 1:04:55
  I'm like, what? One every three months, You
• 1:04:58
  know, it was on state forms and things where they're all going
• 1:05:03
  to be checked. So I, I, I thought we were a
• 1:05:06
  team that we work together that when I create a, a purchase
• 1:05:11
  order, that the reason we have you looking at my purchase
• 1:05:16
  orders is to make sure that they're all correct.
• 1:05:18
  And if I have a mistake, you kick it back to me and say,
• 1:05:21
  Mike, fix this. And I do.
• 1:05:23
  And it's not a big deal, not to me, but I think they got some
• 1:05:31
  kind of push from upstate, you know, the capital to say, look,
• 1:05:39
  we need to clean out. Personnel we need, we need less
• 1:05:48
  personnel. Since I got rid of my boss just
• 1:05:51
  before that for no good reason, they got rid of another guy
• 1:05:54
  who'd been there for 38 years. Jeez, let him go and wouldn't
• 1:06:05
  tell us why. And I, and I think the, the main
• 1:06:10
  consensus was that they changed the computer system and he just,
• 1:06:16
  you know, didn't get along with it.
• 1:06:19
  It was, it was like, OK, you get, you teach an old dog new
• 1:06:22
  tricks. Sometimes the dog doesn't want
• 1:06:24
  to learn new tricks. And, you know, it's just like
• 1:06:27
  that. So the, the state had its own
• 1:06:33
  agenda that they're really pushing me at the end toward
• 1:06:39
  perfection is like, everything has to be perfect all the time.
• 1:06:43
  And I was and I was like, well, that's not realistic.
• 1:06:45
  Everything cannot be perfect all the time.
• 1:06:50
  And I said, and if you get rid of me, you're just going to end
• 1:06:53
  up doing the job or finding somebody else to find mistakes
• 1:06:58
  that are going to be made anyway and you're going to have the
• 1:07:00
  same problem all over again. So the there's nothing I can do
• 1:07:06
  about it. So I just roll with it and say,
• 1:07:10
  OK, well, that's life. I guess I'm not meant to be
• 1:07:13
  here. Because when they, when the
• 1:07:17
  manager or my boss's boss fired her, he brought me in and he, he
• 1:07:25
  was asking me to quit. And I said I'm not going to
• 1:07:27
  quit. I don't, I said, I'm not a
• 1:07:29
  quitter. If you have a problem with what
• 1:07:31
  I'm doing, you tell me what you want me to fix and let's fix it.
• 1:07:35
  And I was there for another nine months because I pushed it and I
• 1:07:40
  and I, I said, do you want me to take some training?
• 1:07:42
  And they gave me some kind of training, which is stuff I
• 1:07:44
  already knew. So I went through it again and I
• 1:07:48
  passed with flying colors. And I'm like, yeah, see, I can
• 1:07:50
  pass the training. But once I get into the real
• 1:07:53
  world and there's 750,000 7 digit codes to choose from and I
• 1:08:01
  choose the wrong 1 by 2 digits. Wow, sorry, glad you caught it.
• 1:08:09
  But is that a really a big enough deal to keep pushing on
• 1:08:14
  me and everybody else? They have in my opinion too many
• 1:08:18
  codes for what we were doing. We just, it was out of control,
• 1:08:25
  the codes and they had these from the start.
• 1:08:29
  But you know, it's a it's my opinion.
• 1:08:33
  You're a passenger train conductor and engineer at Utah.
• 1:08:39
  Yeah, that's, that's a little bit of a push, isn't it?
• 1:08:42
  Count was so much. I know it was so much fun.
• 1:08:45
  You know, it's, it's, it's, it's on a train track.
• 1:08:49
  Was it like kids or was it like. A yeah, yeah.
• 1:08:52
  It's the little kids, right? It goes.
• 1:08:53
  It goes 5 to 10 miles an hour. That's the most.
• 1:08:57
  Oh, it was it. The problem was the train kept
• 1:09:00
  breaking down. I mean, it was like, it was like
• 1:09:04
  I was, I was there on Saturday and Sundays and it was fun.
• 1:09:08
  And the train ride itself is 10 minutes.
• 1:09:10
  It goes to the whole zoo. So that was a lot of fun.
• 1:09:13
  And they gave me a script that the that said this and this and
• 1:09:19
  their script was boring. So I added to it.
• 1:09:21
  I made little jokes and nobody complained about that.
• 1:09:24
  Everything was fine. They were it was a good place to
• 1:09:27
  work. I got run of the zoo.
• 1:09:30
  I got to watch, I got to see everything.
• 1:09:34
  And the, the thing was, that was, that was the only problem
• 1:09:41
  with it was that some days I'd go in, it's like the train's
• 1:09:45
  broken or break in the middle of a shift.
• 1:09:47
  And we, and it would just, it was just an, it was like an old
• 1:09:53
  diesel car that, I mean, I could have been 100 years old for all
• 1:10:00
  I know. I mean, it was old and it was a
• 1:10:03
  real train, a little tiny train, but it was, and all you had to
• 1:10:08
  do, you know, and I, so I learned how to drive a train, a
• 1:10:12
  little tiny train. It wasn't exactly like a car.
• 1:10:15
  All I had to do was push the thing and it would steer itself
• 1:10:18
  because, you know, that's what trains do.
• 1:10:20
  They stay on the track. And so I had a, so I had a, the,
• 1:10:24
  the throttle and a brake and that's it.
• 1:10:27
  That it was very silly. It's like, and there's no way
• 1:10:29
  you can crash and, and people and people couldn't walk in
• 1:10:34
  front of the train because it was, it was set that way so that
• 1:10:38
  there were tunnels underneath or bridges going over.
• 1:10:41
  Nobody could ever walk in front of the train.
• 1:10:44
  No animals could walk in front of the train.
• 1:10:46
  And I had to stop and we would stop and look at the
• 1:10:51
  hippopotamus or the giraffe or something like that and let
• 1:10:56
  everybody take pictures and then keep going or just go real slow
• 1:11:00
  in it because they didn't want you to really stop.
• 1:11:04
  Like you could stop. There was like 2 places I could
• 1:11:07
  stop because it was downhill on the next thing, because it, it
• 1:11:12
  went like little bit uphill, little bit downhill.
• 1:11:16
  And it's like if you're going to stop, you can only stop it.
• 1:11:20
  Like these two spaces. I can't remember.
• 1:11:22
  Maybe it's a bear den or something.
• 1:11:24
  Because it if, if you come to a full stop, it's got to go again
• 1:11:30
  and then you're better to be stuck going downhill than you
• 1:11:33
  are trying to go uphill. So, so that was that.
• 1:11:36
  And I went to work one day and the train was broken and I was
• 1:11:41
  like, So what else you got for me to do Nothing.
• 1:11:46
  I mean, I was like, can you put me to work doing something else?
• 1:11:49
  I need a job. I do work here.
• 1:11:51
  I'm capable. I'll feed an animal.
• 1:11:54
  I'll clean up. I'll, I mean, I was at that, you
• 1:11:57
  know, I, I was young and spry and I was like, I'll mop the
• 1:12:01
  floors or, or sweep. I'll do anything.
• 1:12:04
  What do you want? I'll empty garbage.
• 1:12:06
  We don't have anything else for you.
• 1:12:08
  I said, come on, it's a big giant place.
• 1:12:10
  You got to have something. They had nothing for me and I
• 1:12:13
  was like, when is the train going to be fixed?
• 1:12:15
  They're like, oh, we're working on that.
• 1:12:18
  So when when the train wasn't fixed, you just weren't earning
• 1:12:22
  any money. No, I was out.
• 1:12:25
  I had to find another job. I said, well, call me if the
• 1:12:27
  train gets fixed. That was the final one.
• 1:12:30
  I was like, there was a couple times where I I went to work and
• 1:12:34
  the train wasn't working or like I said, I broke down in the
• 1:12:36
  middle of the shift and would. They pay you for the rest of the
• 1:12:39
  shift if it broke down. No, no, just hourly.
• 1:12:43
  What's what's hourly wage where you are?
• 1:12:45
  What's the lowest hourly wage anybody gets?
• 1:12:48
  It's 1271 right now, pounds, so it's probably like $15.00 an
• 1:12:54
  hour give or take. Yeah, ours in state of Florida
• 1:12:57
  it's it's like 850 I think is the lowest you can get 850 U.S.
• 1:13:03
  dollars. For an adult.
• 1:13:06
  Yeah, yeah. They don't have child's wages.
• 1:13:10
  I know that's $8. And there are places, there are
• 1:13:14
  places that pay that and nothing more.
• 1:13:16
  And the when I was doing my temp job here at Bells, I was only
• 1:13:20
  making $14.00 an hour. In the year of our Lord 2026
• 1:13:24
  there are places paying $8.50. Like that's nothing.
• 1:13:28
  That's like 6 lbs an hour. Five £6 an hour you got.
• 1:13:31
  I know they're keeping people in poverty level.
• 1:13:35
  And I mean I I. Remember when I went to the
• 1:13:38
  States many years ago, I had like a brutal awakening as far
• 1:13:42
  as like how things work. There's a couple of things.
• 1:13:45
  One, I didn't know about the tipping culture.
• 1:13:47
  And my friend kind of politely said like, listen, it's it's you
• 1:13:51
  have to tip here. And I'm like, well, I've grew up
• 1:13:54
  on it being about service. And they're like, yeah, but this
• 1:13:58
  is how much they earn. And I was like, like, it's like
• 1:14:02
  at the time, this was like 2014 was like $3.00 an hour.
• 1:14:05
  And I'm like, that's that's ludicrous.
• 1:14:08
  It is. And like all servers make it.
• 1:14:10
  I mean, you see that famous scene in Reservoir Dogs where
• 1:14:13
  he's on about like, you know, they're all berating that guy
• 1:14:15
  because he won't tip. And he's like, what?
• 1:14:17
  It should be about service. And it's like, yeah, they're
• 1:14:19
  earning nothing, bro. Like just fucking tip them,
• 1:14:22
  right. But like the the crazy thing for
• 1:14:25
  me is I remember talking to this woman who at the time, I think
• 1:14:30
  she was a college student and she was working at Starbucks and
• 1:14:32
  that the middle of bum fought nowhere on the way to Las Vegas.
• 1:14:36
  I think it was for some truck stop.
• 1:14:39
  And she was on a smoke break. I was just chatting to her and
• 1:14:42
  just kind of, yeah, just chatting to people chatting.
• 1:14:45
  And you can tell she's pretty fed up with the job.
• 1:14:49
  And she said that they, they offer like scholarships or some
• 1:14:54
  sort of thing where if you work at somewhere like Starbucks,
• 1:14:58
  they'll offer like some sort of money towards your education,
• 1:15:03
  something like that. They had like schemes and stuff.
• 1:15:05
  And I was like, all right. But she was like, you earn so
• 1:15:08
  little. So you pretty much rely
• 1:15:12
  completely on tips. That's how you make a living.
• 1:15:17
  I was just like, wow, like all it takes is a few bad days in a
• 1:15:22
  month for a few bad weeks where people just don't really feel
• 1:15:25
  like tipping you much. And now you can't pay your
• 1:15:27
  bills. Now you can't survive, you know?
• 1:15:29
  They are shamed into tipping here, there's no doubt about
• 1:15:32
  yeah, I mean, what's what's tipping like in the UKI mean?
• 1:15:37
  It's basically non existing at this point because a big thing
• 1:15:40
  that's changed is, I don't get me wrong, there is a tipping
• 1:15:43
  culture that still exists. But what I've noticed and like
• 1:15:46
  I've worked a lot in the service industry over say the last
• 1:15:50
  decade, right? And before that.
• 1:15:53
  And what I always noticed is that people above a certain age
• 1:15:59
  who have cash may tip, but that's significantly lessened.
• 1:16:07
  Most people don't carry cash anymore, so you know, and that
• 1:16:11
  was always the thing like, oh, if you give a fiver and the
• 1:16:14
  drink is like £3 then I'll just keep the change.
• 1:16:17
  Like that would be your, your tip, right?
• 1:16:20
  If you go to restaurants, people may tip a lot of the time
• 1:16:25
  because the food prices are so high.
• 1:16:28
  The restaurant will charge a service charge, right?
• 1:16:31
  Which depending on the place, like a lot of places you pay
• 1:16:37
  other places. It's like, well, was the service
• 1:16:39
  really that good? I would say on the whole, people
• 1:16:43
  aren't really tipping anymore. And I think a lot of that has to
• 1:16:46
  do with the fact that people don't carry cash.
• 1:16:48
  Everything is on card or phone. And in a way it's kind of
• 1:16:54
  eliminated some of the the conversation because it felt
• 1:16:58
  more natural when it was cash. You almost didn't even have to
• 1:17:02
  say it was just like, let's say your, your meal was, I don't
• 1:17:06
  know, 40 lbs and you have 50 and you just kind of look and go.
• 1:17:11
  I'll give them 45 and but now you know, they've got the, the
• 1:17:16
  amount on the card loaded and ready.
• 1:17:19
  And then there's the awkward conversation like some places
• 1:17:21
  will choose to ask you, would you like to tip?
• 1:17:24
  Others won't say anything. Others will hand you the card
• 1:17:28
  reader and you can tip yourself. But mostly what I see.
• 1:17:33
  I mean, I, I worked bars for, for years over over the last
• 1:17:38
  couple of years and I can tell you I I barely made anything
• 1:17:42
  into, but I could count my fingers how many times I was
• 1:17:45
  tipped. And but like, don't get me
• 1:17:48
  wrong, it's we get paid better than the states.
• 1:17:51
  It's minimum wage, but you could at least survive.
• 1:17:55
  But I'll tell you this, if it was like America, people
• 1:17:58
  wouldn't be able to survive at all with the Tiffin culture we
• 1:18:01
  have. The way they're doing it now and
• 1:18:05
  I right off the bat, I don't go to restaurants on a regular
• 1:18:10
  basis, We'll go. Comfortable anymore these days?
• 1:18:13
  Can you really? Oh.
• 1:18:14
  No, I just never liked it. I I'm a great cook.
• 1:18:17
  I am. I'm, I'm, I'm a gourmet chef, a
• 1:18:22
  guy at home. Yes I am.
• 1:18:26
  I went to cooking school when I was in high school.
• 1:18:28
  Oh wow. OK.
• 1:18:29
  Ours, ours, ours high school was a precursor to chef school.
• 1:18:34
  My cousin, who also went to the same high school I did, went on
• 1:18:40
  to become a chef. He's still a chef all these
• 1:18:42
  years later. You know, I come from my
• 1:18:48
  grandmother taught me how to cook and she was a teacher there
• 1:18:52
  at one time. She taught my pantry teacher how
• 1:18:56
  to how to bake and my pantry teacher taught me how to bake.
• 1:19:00
  So I in effect learned that from my grandmother's passed down
• 1:19:04
  and, and anyway, and so I so going to restaurants is like,
• 1:19:12
  you got to really impress me with not just your French fries,
• 1:19:15
  but everything else. And I personally don't like to
• 1:19:20
  tip. I don't, I, I, I just don't know
• 1:19:24
  why it's against my nature. When I went to China, my wife
• 1:19:28
  and I spent a month in China once, years ago, 20 years ago,
• 1:19:33
  more than that 20, almost 25 years ago.
• 1:19:35
  And we found out that it is non existent in that culture.
• 1:19:40
  And it is actually rude to tip somebody.
• 1:19:45
  Because what that tells the server, like if you leave a coin
• 1:19:49
  on the table after you've been after your meal, is that you're
• 1:19:55
  not working hard enough and you need to find a better job.
• 1:20:00
  That's that's the message it sends.
• 1:20:03
  So they said never tip ever, ever, ever in China.
• 1:20:07
  And that was great. I was like, why don't we do this
• 1:20:09
  everywhere? I think I heard in in China or
• 1:20:13
  Japan it's in similar vein that I thought it was an adverb all
• 1:20:17
  places that if you it's customary to not eat your entire
• 1:20:22
  meal because if you eat the whole meal then it's considered.
• 1:20:27
  Gluttony. No, it's like it's, it's as
• 1:20:30
  though you're saying this was not enough to satisfy me.
• 1:20:33
  And so there's that. It's like a bit of a panic where
• 1:20:35
  they're like, oh, like we need to, we need to do more.
• 1:20:38
  Whereas if you leave a little bit, it's like saying that was
• 1:20:41
  perfect. Which is interesting because I'm
• 1:20:45
  the guy that finishes his place. I'm like what?
• 1:20:49
  Well, I'm going to tell you something about the way they fed
• 1:20:51
  us in China because I was with a large group from Earthwatch.
• 1:20:55
  We went on Earthwatch expedition.
• 1:20:57
  That was a lot of fun. And what we what happened was,
• 1:21:01
  you know, there was 10 or 12 of us at the table at all times.
• 1:21:05
  So everything was always served in mass in late on lazy Susan's.
• 1:21:09
  And I think there was always food leftover because they it
• 1:21:13
  just kept coming. When we went to Xian where they
• 1:21:17
  terracotta army as we saw the warriors and all that, we went
• 1:21:21
  to this. This was like one of the best
• 1:21:23
  meals of my life. Well.
• 1:21:25
  We went into a place that only serve dumplings, and you know
• 1:21:30
  how the Chinese dumplings are. They come in the in the little
• 1:21:34
  basket and it's the steamed basket.
• 1:21:36
  And then you pop it open and say, oh, there's something
• 1:21:38
  different there. I'm shit you not, man.
• 1:21:42
  They kept the dumplings coming and never served the same
• 1:21:46
  dumpling twice. And there was like 100 different
• 1:21:50
  dumplings. And I was like, Oh my God, this
• 1:21:51
  one's, this one's sheep, this one's lamb, this one's pork,
• 1:21:55
  this one's chicken, this one's beef.
• 1:21:57
  This one's something I can't name.
• 1:22:00
  This is this is seafood. Where'd they get seafood?
• 1:22:03
  The middle is Xian. You know, I mean, they had it
• 1:22:07
  was incredible. And I'm certain there I couldn't
• 1:22:13
  eat anymore. I, I mean, they, they filled me
• 1:22:17
  up. So I definitely left stuff on
• 1:22:19
  the plate or, or so to speak, or at least in the in the tin
• 1:22:23
  because oh, oh, that was incredible.
• 1:22:27
  They had that was just nothing like it.
• 1:22:28
  I would if there was a moment, if you could relive a moment of
• 1:22:32
  your life, what would it be it? Would be that.
• 1:22:35
  Oh, I'm right there with you, buddy.
• 1:22:36
  Oh my God. Oh, good.
• 1:22:39
  When I think of like the best place I ever had Chinese, it was
• 1:22:42
  like this or you can eat buffet place that we would go sometimes
• 1:22:47
  when I was like a teenager or like early, no, maybe I was bit
• 1:22:52
  younger actually, like 910, something like that.
• 1:22:54
  And I just remember that nowhere has ever come close to how good
• 1:22:58
  that was. And I can't understand why.
• 1:23:00
  It's just that specific place was really good.
• 1:23:04
  And I'm like, oh, take me back please.
• 1:23:06
  There's there's nothing like Chinese food in China, I'll tell
• 1:23:08
  you that. Oh, apparently it's totally
• 1:23:10
  different. It's totally different
• 1:23:12
  apparently. Have you been to China?
• 1:23:13
  No, never. I'd love to.
• 1:23:15
  Worth the trip, Absolutely worth it.
• 1:23:18
  I'd love to go anywhere at this point, Yeah, you never know.
• 1:23:22
  You never know what can happen. When we one of our first nights
• 1:23:27
  that I think it was our first night in Beijing, we go to a
• 1:23:30
  restaurant and we asked for duck because we wanted that Peking
• 1:23:37
  duck. Oh man, I heard about it.
• 1:23:40
  We finally had Peking duck later, but what they brought us
• 1:23:43
  was not duck. It was very good though, and it
• 1:23:46
  was man fricosee to perfection and it was so delicious and we
• 1:23:53
  knew it wasn't duck. It was not poultry of any kind.
• 1:23:56
  So we finally asked the girl, what is this?
• 1:24:01
  And she flips over the menu where the English was, where we
• 1:24:05
  never knew it was, and it said dog.
• 1:24:09
  Oh no, I. Ate a dog, No way to find out.
• 1:24:15
  It was so delicious. Snoopy Lassie.
• 1:24:22
  I don't know. I don't know what it's name was.
• 1:24:27
  It was a good dog. You go to hell for that one.
• 1:24:34
  Come on. They're.
• 1:24:35
  Burning me up. Yeah, they also, they also had
• 1:24:40
  Cat on that. Menu.
• 1:24:42
  Oh God. Nice.
• 1:24:43
  Yeah, right next to it. I was like, Oh my God, what?
• 1:24:46
  Where, what? What are we in for for the next
• 1:24:49
  three weeks? You know, I was just, I felt
• 1:24:52
  really bad afterwards, but. Well, you should feel bad
• 1:24:55
  because I'm I'm going to make you feel worse now.
• 1:24:58
  It's a different culture though, you know?
• 1:25:00
  I mean, it's a different culture.
• 1:25:01
  At least I didn't have to tip, you know?
• 1:25:05
  I'm going to make you feel worse.
• 1:25:06
  The guilt continues. You got caught eating cheese in
• 1:25:09
  the Walk in Cooler at Hardee's. Tell me more about this point in
• 1:25:11
  your life and stealing cheese. I would have done it again.
• 1:25:14
  I was starving, man. I would Oh my God, I was so
• 1:25:18
  hungry. I was like the because I.
• 1:25:20
  Provide food then. Well, after your shift, in the
• 1:25:25
  middle of your shift, not before your shift.
• 1:25:27
  And I mean, you know, I was AI was a young 18 year old starving
• 1:25:32
  kid and I needed food. And I mean, I think everybody
• 1:25:39
  must go through it, but that that growth spurt that you're in
• 1:25:42
  when you're 17 to 19 and you can't stop eating, you just got
• 1:25:47
  to eat. You're starving to death.
• 1:25:49
  It was like that that day. And I was like, Oh my God, I'm
• 1:25:52
  around all this food and I I didn't have enough to eat.
• 1:25:56
  I need more food. And I was and I was like.
• 1:26:02
  Screw it. Yeah, screw it.
• 1:26:05
  This cheese here, I'm here. Who's going to miss a few slices
• 1:26:09
  of cheese? You know this so so I did it and
• 1:26:12
  and they got he didn't fire me, but he's like, we don't do that
• 1:26:16
  here. And I was like, OK, you know,
• 1:26:20
  don't do that stealing here. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:26:24
  This is this is in Florida, the Deep South.
• 1:26:26
  And that's what he sounded like. We don't.
• 1:26:29
  I'm not taking a piss. I, I do this, these sorts of
• 1:26:31
  accents, a lot of voice acting and I thought I'd love Deep
• 1:26:35
  South. I, I it's gorgeous.
• 1:26:38
  The southern accents are just. Beautiful.
• 1:26:39
  I oh, I I like all kinds of accents.
• 1:26:43
  Yeah. It's rich.
• 1:26:45
  Rich in accents in in states. Yeah.
• 1:26:49
  You repeat the man you worked for What?
• 1:26:52
  Pizza, Beer. So I've got here Candy, Bowman
• 1:26:55
  and family or Bachman. Yeah, yeah, Candy and.
• 1:26:59
  Seems like you're pretty pretty fond of that particular
• 1:27:01
  position. Totally talking about that.
• 1:27:03
  Oh, yeah, Yeah. It grew up there basically, you
• 1:27:05
  know, for a couple of years. This was in high school.
• 1:27:09
  Nice and to her, Joe's stepfather Cantrell owned it and
• 1:27:19
  we taught us how to make pizzas and we delivered the pizzas and
• 1:27:25
  played loud music and. Nice.
• 1:27:29
  Hung out and, and Candy was a beautiful girl and she, you
• 1:27:34
  know, she, she wasn't my girlfriend, but, you know, fun
• 1:27:37
  to look at. Wish you were.
• 1:27:40
  And she married my friend Tom. They had a kid and their kid
• 1:27:43
  looked exactly like candy. And so anyway, it's just I liked
• 1:27:51
  working at Pizza man. I learned how to make pizza
• 1:27:53
  dough. I can still make pizza.
• 1:27:54
  I can make a pizza right now if I wanted, you know, well, I need
• 1:27:58
  the cheese. I don't have any cheese on me.
• 1:28:00
  So anyway, yeah, Pizza man was fun And, and I worked at another
• 1:28:07
  pizza place I worked at later on because I already knew how to
• 1:28:10
  throw a pizza in the air was Ricordi's Italian restaurant.
• 1:28:14
  And that was. Serious though.
• 1:28:18
  You know what it was an Italian restaurant run by Filipinos.
• 1:28:22
  Oh, OK, yeah. But Oscar and crew.
• 1:28:26
  But now I got a few stories about these people.
• 1:28:29
  They were great. People love them.
• 1:28:31
  Oscar, Lily, Beth and Nestor. Oscar was a boss.
• 1:28:36
  He owned the place. Lily Beth was his niece.
• 1:28:39
  She was one of the waitresses. And she was a tough cookie.
• 1:28:44
  Let's put her that way. She didn't like me or anyone for
• 1:28:48
  that matter. I don't think Lily Beth had any
• 1:28:50
  friends. She was, she was a little bit
• 1:28:53
  older than me. She's a little bit older than
• 1:28:54
  me. She's like 25 or something.
• 1:28:56
  I was 18 and, and, and would you do something?
• 1:29:01
  Would you did something she didn't like?
• 1:29:04
  She would yell about it and they would have these arguments in in
• 1:29:11
  Filipino that I didn't know what they're saying, but I understood
• 1:29:16
  the context and I knew one day it was about being and I said,
• 1:29:21
  hey, I didn't do that or something like that.
• 1:29:26
  And Lily Beth was in shock that I could understand what she's
• 1:29:29
  talking about. I forgot what it was exactly.
• 1:29:32
  But there was a time we were robbed or no attempted to be
• 1:29:35
  robbed. A guy came at us when we were
• 1:29:40
  leaving the building at right at close 11:00 at night and pulled
• 1:29:48
  a gun and I guess he staked out the place.
• 1:29:50
  He staked out the place and he knew that Oscar left with the
• 1:29:56
  the bag of money and we and that was the way Oscar always left.
• 1:30:00
  We said we all walk out the door together at the same time and I
• 1:30:06
  would ride my bike home or hitch hike.
• 1:30:08
  Sometimes he would give me a ride.
• 1:30:10
  I was 5 miles up the road and they would they would drive
• 1:30:16
  home. Well anyway this guy pulls a gun
• 1:30:20
  and goes give me the bag. They were like lightning, Lily
• 1:30:25
  Beth and Oscar. It was like being in a movie.
• 1:30:30
  They were martial artists and I didn't know it.
• 1:30:33
  They took this guy down like that man and they disarmed him.
• 1:30:38
  And Lily Beth, like knelt on his head and kept him on the ground.
• 1:30:42
  And he, Oscar gives me the keys. He goes, Mike go call the
• 1:30:46
  police. And I open the door and I go
• 1:30:47
  call the police. And they came and got him.
• 1:30:50
  Jeez, it was. I mean, it was so fast.
• 1:30:53
  I didn't even know we were being robbed until he was on the
• 1:30:56
  ground. It was just, I'm talking 10
• 1:31:00
  seconds. They were bad ass.
• 1:31:02
  I was like, just give me the bag.
• 1:31:08
  Oh, no, you don't, bitch. Lily Beth put him down.
• 1:31:13
  I had way respect for Lily Beth at that point, man.
• 1:31:16
  I was like, she's bad, man. And I, and you know, I ever
• 1:31:20
  since then, I mean, every time I see some woman on TV kicking
• 1:31:25
  ass, that's who I think of. I'm like, you know, all the
• 1:31:28
  Daredevil, all the all the movies with the great heroines,
• 1:31:33
  you know, Wonder Woman and all that Lily Beth.
• 1:31:37
  It's just bad ass. You a dishwasher at a hotel
• 1:31:43
  restaurant? I've done this a few times.
• 1:31:45
  Any any thoughts? Anything that stands out by that
• 1:31:47
  role. I actually love washing dishes.
• 1:31:51
  I do. If you're at home.
• 1:31:54
  I just. I think there's a Zen to it to.
• 1:31:57
  It's different commercially though.
• 1:31:58
  Come on. No, no.
• 1:32:01
  It's just the thing about about having, having the mess over
• 1:32:06
  here and bringing it to order, That's the way I, that's the way
• 1:32:12
  I see it. And I find it relaxing and
• 1:32:17
  comfortable and tiring because you know, you're standing for
• 1:32:21
  the whole shift. But no, I've never minded
• 1:32:24
  dishwashing. I, I never thought of that.
• 1:32:27
  And I always thought that every dishwasher should be paid more.
• 1:32:31
  It's hard. Job.
• 1:32:35
  Yeah, I mean, you got to get cheese out of the tines of
• 1:32:38
  forks. I mean, you got to make sure
• 1:32:41
  that there's nothing that the only thing on that plate is
• 1:32:45
  cleanliness, you know, and and then you're talking about the
• 1:32:48
  big scrub, big pans that they cook in, they burn stuff.
• 1:32:53
  You got to scrub it out, you know, you got to know how to
• 1:32:55
  soak things, you know how to how to scrape things, to do the to
• 1:33:00
  make the work easier. You know there there's an art
• 1:33:06
  and science to it that people just don't talk about the the
• 1:33:12
  beauty of dishwashing. Really, they don't they don't
• 1:33:16
  appreciate it. It's.
• 1:33:18
  Now there's a sentence I never thought I'd hear in my life.
• 1:33:23
  It's just go out. I mean, really, I, you, you got
• 1:33:26
  to love what you do. And this is one way to love it,
• 1:33:31
  you know? And I, I find a very comforting
• 1:33:35
  feeling to know that I've brought order to this chaos that
• 1:33:40
  you've brought me, you know? You worked for Hamilton Meat Pie
• 1:33:45
  Company in a factory. Yes I did.
• 1:33:48
  Me and my buddy Wally from from my childhood, we both ended up
• 1:33:53
  working here at the same time. Destroy your soul as it does
• 1:33:57
  many people, no. No, no, that was an easy, easy
• 1:34:01
  job. Yeah, the I worked, we worked on
• 1:34:04
  the line where it was. It was a small line because it
• 1:34:08
  was a night shift. To how quickly is are things
• 1:34:12
  coming through on this line? Like how quickly?
• 1:34:15
  Oh, well, we didn't have to do anything fast.
• 1:34:22
  No, what happens is we made the pot of Stew or whatever you want
• 1:34:27
  to call it's the the filling. And then we put that into a a
• 1:34:36
  machine that would measure out how much goes into the meat pie
• 1:34:42
  filling that is on a on a thing. The the dough would get pressed
• 1:34:54
  and cut out, the filling would go in and the girls that and me
• 1:34:59
  would flop it over. Me and Wally were the only guys
• 1:35:01
  who worked there. And there was a couple older
• 1:35:04
  ladies and there was some girls from our neighborhood.
• 1:35:07
  And you know, it was, it was written in the neighborhood
• 1:35:09
  where I grew up. So you flip these things around,
• 1:35:14
  you press them down and they come out about that big, you
• 1:35:18
  know, so that you could hold it in your hand and eat it.
• 1:35:21
  A meat pie. And so then when she got those
• 1:35:25
  arraigned once, once you make as many fit on a big tray, you put
• 1:35:30
  the big trays inside the oven. It's a carousel oven.
• 1:35:34
  It's all timed. It's very easy.
• 1:35:37
  And when they're baked, when they're done, you take them out
• 1:35:40
  and then you put them on on another line where they cool and
• 1:35:44
  then they go into packaging. And it was all, it was all an
• 1:35:49
  easy process. And then me and Wally would
• 1:35:52
  clean up at the end of the night and scrub everything.
• 1:35:56
  And we had, we play our music real loud and sing and, and we
• 1:36:00
  had the, the, the, you know, the Super duper water hoses that
• 1:36:09
  high pressure hoses that scrub the shit out of everything.
• 1:36:12
  And we make that place spotless by 3:00 AM and then we walk home
• 1:36:17
  in the dark. Yeah, we don't live far.
• 1:36:21
  So that was, that was, that was a fun place to be for a while.
• 1:36:26
  I was, I only did that for three months, but it was, it was good.
• 1:36:31
  Given that you've worked around pizza, French fries, and meat
• 1:36:38
  pies, do you love or hate those three things?
• 1:36:42
  Oh, oh, there's no food I hate. No.
• 1:36:44
  I was going to say that I just wondered if you got maybe sick
• 1:36:47
  of it like too much. No, no, not at all.
• 1:36:49
  No, never did. No, the only food I know I
• 1:36:53
  dislike, I don't hate. Hate is too strong of an emotion
• 1:36:57
  for any food. Oh, I don't know, just like,
• 1:37:01
  fucking hate celery. Celery.
• 1:37:03
  I like celery Rhubarb. Yeah, I'm with you there.
• 1:37:07
  Rhubarb is just what? Weibub and kale, Beet kale, beet
• 1:37:13
  kale. 'S another one that no beets I
• 1:37:15
  like. I I'm Polish, I grew up with
• 1:37:18
  with I make what do you call borst regularly?
• 1:37:23
  Bullsh, You know, beet soup. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:37:26
  Ukrainian beet soup. Oh gosh, is.
• 1:37:28
  Good. But then there's other stuff in
• 1:37:30
  there that makes it kind of interesting.
• 1:37:32
  Well, there's. Beans.
• 1:37:33
  Yeah. Dill, dill, salt, pepper.
• 1:37:37
  Yeah, I discovered. When I lived in Europe, I
• 1:37:40
  discovered that dill is like a real game changer with certain.
• 1:37:44
  Oh, it is with a lot of stuff. Oh my God, I love dill.
• 1:37:48
  My wife hates it. She doesn't like dill.
• 1:37:51
  She doesn't like cilantro. I mean, it's I got to keep
• 1:37:54
  things plain for her, but man, Dill does so much stuff.
• 1:38:00
  Do you like salmon? Yeah, yeah, I love salmon.
• 1:38:03
  Smoked salmon. Oh yes please.
• 1:38:06
  Throw some dill on there, I'm telling you, Salmon, salmon a
• 1:38:11
  dill until you've had the big. Cream cheese as well.
• 1:38:16
  Yeah, that's what I mean. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:38:18
  You. Crackers.
• 1:38:19
  You, you, you just take your your smoked salmon and mix it up
• 1:38:29
  with some dill and a little little cream cheese.
• 1:38:31
  Yes, that's, that's a spread, man.
• 1:38:35
  That's a nice spread right there.
• 1:38:37
  Sorry, but we're going to get a bit disgusting now.
• 1:38:39
  You worked at Myers Pest Control, was an exterminator?
• 1:38:44
  It was rough. Just the people were good.
• 1:38:49
  The job was a good job. What did this?
• 1:38:53
  What did this smell like? Poison.
• 1:38:57
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. When you really some of these
• 1:39:00
  places you I'm guessing you're dealing like with cockroaches
• 1:39:03
  and stuff. Oh yeah, See, we had, we had,
• 1:39:05
  you had your regular customers who had a service.
• 1:39:08
  You come in and you spray for cockroaches or fleas and you put
• 1:39:13
  down Safferton or whatever other poison of the day it was.
• 1:39:18
  I remember, I don't know why I can always remember the name of
• 1:39:20
  Safferton, but that that was for fleas and we sprayed on carpets
• 1:39:25
  and there is no reason for pest control services at all.
• 1:39:31
  Not in my opinion. I mean all you have to do is
• 1:39:33
  keep things clean and you might get a cockroach once in a while.
• 1:39:37
  In Florida I had AI had a cockroach in the kitchen the
• 1:39:40
  other day. Where he came from I don't know,
• 1:39:42
  but he didn't last long against my giant spoon.
• 1:39:46
  Got him. I I think you you make a good
• 1:39:49
  point though is if if things are kept clean it's not going to
• 1:39:52
  attract rodents. Yeah, I had a customer.
• 1:39:56
  I had a customer who complained to me that we had, he kept
• 1:40:02
  getting cockroaches and my our service wasn't working.
• 1:40:06
  And I, I told him he had dishes everywhere on he left food out
• 1:40:12
  and it was a pigsty. And I said what?
• 1:40:15
  You need to clean this place in order for the cockroaches to go
• 1:40:19
  away. You can't leave food out for him
• 1:40:21
  to eat. So is this a restaurant, you
• 1:40:23
  say? No, this guy's house, it's a
• 1:40:27
  guy's apartment. And so of course, he calls the
• 1:40:30
  boss to complain to me. And the boss tells me you can't
• 1:40:33
  scold people, just service them. And I said, well, what you want
• 1:40:36
  me to say he just don't say anything.
• 1:40:39
  Just say, oh, yes, Sir. OK, sorry.
• 1:40:42
  OK, we'll do a better job next time.
• 1:40:45
  That was their answer. I was like, you don't want to
• 1:40:47
  really. So you don't really want to
• 1:40:51
  solve the problem, you just want the problem to continue so you
• 1:40:54
  can show up every month for $30.00 a month?
• 1:40:57
  Exactly. Waste of money you do 1 deep
• 1:40:59
  clean, you never have to spend that money again.
• 1:41:02
  OK, OK. You saw Breaking Bad.
• 1:41:05
  Yeah, Oh yeah, yeah, with the lab.
• 1:41:07
  Remember Loss? Vomino's pest.
• 1:41:15
  They took over. Yeah, Remember when they took
• 1:41:18
  over the houses and they they tented the houses and they were
• 1:41:21
  cooking? Yeah, I forgot about that.
• 1:41:23
  Yeah. OK.
• 1:41:24
  Vomitos pest. OK, Well, they really do that.
• 1:41:28
  You know, you might have seen a tented building once or once or
• 1:41:32
  twice. I don't know how common it is
• 1:41:34
  there, but it's very common over here.
• 1:41:35
  Once in a while a house gets filled up with termites, but
• 1:41:40
  mostly termites or cockroaches or whatever, A little bit of
• 1:41:45
  everything and the house is so infested you have to tent it and
• 1:41:51
  gas it. Well, I that is the hardest
• 1:41:56
  fucking job in the world. It's it's worse than it's almost
• 1:42:01
  worse than making Styrofoam, but at least you're on a crew with a
• 1:42:06
  bunch of people. You're not alone in this.
• 1:42:09
  OK, so. How long does it take?
• 1:42:12
  Roughly, depending on a house, you can tent a house in a day
• 1:42:17
  and take the tent down in a day and just let it sit.
• 1:42:21
  And I was I was not part of the setup process as part of the
• 1:42:26
  cleanup process, which is disgusting.
• 1:42:29
  Had to go in and vacuum up hundreds, thousands of dead bugs
• 1:42:36
  and I was just grossed out, man. I just wanted to vomit the whole
• 1:42:39
  time. I'm surprised I didn't, but it
• 1:42:42
  was like, Oh my God, I can't, I can't do this.
• 1:42:46
  No, I only dare to do that twice.
• 1:42:49
  So because those are like special orders or something.
• 1:42:53
  And the rest of the time I was the service man who went to
• 1:42:56
  people's houses and sprayed with the BNG gun and and stuff like
• 1:43:01
  that. And I have one old lady say
• 1:43:03
  spray that lizard. And I refused.
• 1:43:05
  I said he's not a pest. He eats the pests.
• 1:43:08
  We're actually killing his food source.
• 1:43:10
  And so I refused to do that. And she calls the boss.
• 1:43:13
  Everybody's going to call and complain every time.
• 1:43:15
  They say you should have killed the lizard buddy.
• 1:43:17
  He said just spray the lizard. It's just a fucking lizard.
• 1:43:20
  And I was. Like, oh God.
• 1:43:23
  People don't get it. Yeah, I know, I know.
• 1:43:25
  So anyway, I I finally quit that job when I decided I was going
• 1:43:29
  to leave Florida. That was my last job in Florida
• 1:43:32
  before I let I live in Florida again.
• 1:43:33
  But at that point, when I finally saved up the money I
• 1:43:37
  wanted to save, to move out West, to explore it myself and
• 1:43:42
  in the West and find a new life, that was my last job.
• 1:43:47
  And I quit and I moved away because it was kind of it was
• 1:43:51
  kind of a last straw kind of thing.
• 1:43:53
  At the time. It was like there was I, I
• 1:43:58
  couldn't find another job I wanted.
• 1:44:00
  I couldn't, I just felt it. I, I had reached the end of this
• 1:44:06
  chapter. So that's, that's what I did.
• 1:44:09
  I got out. Couple of more serious one here
• 1:44:13
  for you. So you were a salesman at the
• 1:44:16
  National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, where you
• 1:44:19
  saw. Was the sponsor?
• 1:44:21
  Yeah, they, they had a contractor, Gary.
• 1:44:27
  He, he was a fun guy to hang out with.
• 1:44:31
  He, he, he hired me to sell the advertising a little bit.
• 1:44:39
  And so I, I, I tried doing the advertising because they had to
• 1:44:44
  have like, I don't know, 45 vendors or something to fill
• 1:44:50
  the, the, IT was a coupon book, you know, with coupons.
• 1:44:53
  So we, so we sold the advertising over the phone.
• 1:44:57
  And I worked at, I was at his house making calls on his home
• 1:45:00
  phone say, hey, I got one. I got one.
• 1:45:03
  And then he would take it from there and hand the phone,
• 1:45:05
  literally hand it right to him and, and, and say, Hey, this
• 1:45:10
  guy's interest. I said, OK, so let me let you
• 1:45:12
  talk to my boss. So he'd sell the advertising.
• 1:45:14
  All right, hey, I'll come over and I'll get the check from you.
• 1:45:17
  And Gary would do that. OK, So like a month later, after
• 1:45:22
  he's got all these things set up, he goes, he prints the books
• 1:45:26
  and now we got to go sell the books that the advertising's in
• 1:45:30
  to raise money for missing exploited children and that.
• 1:45:34
  And that was it. And it was really, it was a
• 1:45:37
  legit part of the charity. We met the people from the
• 1:45:42
  organization at some point who I forgot why, but I guess they
• 1:45:48
  delivered the books because we they, they were printed through
• 1:45:50
  them. And so I would go and knock it
• 1:45:55
  on doors of businesses and say you want to buy a coupon book.
• 1:45:57
  You're not going anywhere. You stand in front of a store in
• 1:46:01
  a parking lot. You want to buy a coupon book
• 1:46:02
  for missing and exploited children.
• 1:46:04
  Sure, you know, and, and people were like, yeah, I'll support
• 1:46:08
  that. It's 3 bucks. 3 bucks.
• 1:46:10
  Yeah, I'll support you for 3 bucks.
• 1:46:12
  Dish out three bucks. Some people give you the 3
• 1:46:14
  bucks. Not even want the book.
• 1:46:16
  Like, that's nice, you know, and so I, I always felt like we were
• 1:46:22
  doing something good because every other page was a picture
• 1:46:25
  of a missing kid. Yeah, you know, and it was like,
• 1:46:29
  OK, this is who we're trying to find.
• 1:46:32
  Help us out. Do you know if if the work you
• 1:46:36
  were doing, did it lead any directly to finding any
• 1:46:40
  children? Did you hear of any developments
• 1:46:42
  while you were there? No, no, I don't know.
• 1:46:44
  It didn't go that deep. Just if you ever look at that
• 1:46:49
  website, there are 10s of thousands of missing children to
• 1:46:52
  this day. I mean, I don't understand how
• 1:46:55
  people disappear, but they. I've I've got a theory but it's
• 1:46:59
  it's super messed up. But it oh, it's probably close
• 1:47:03
  to the truth. I.
• 1:47:05
  Think it's the the net, the networks of, of paedophiles.
• 1:47:10
  I, I think it's got to be, I think what happened, especially
• 1:47:14
  back in the day, because obviously back in the day it was
• 1:47:17
  quite a common phenomenon in, in the United States, you know, the
• 1:47:21
  kids on milk boxes of milk cartoons and stuff.
• 1:47:26
  I, I think it's an organized network that operates across the
• 1:47:31
  world And, and I think that, you know, obviously these days it's
• 1:47:39
  gotten a lot easy. Oh, sorry, not easy.
• 1:47:42
  It's gotten. People are more.
• 1:47:46
  Secure. How can I put this?
• 1:47:50
  Back in the day, in both the States and the UK, you'd have
• 1:47:53
  kids just playing out in the street and there wasn't much
• 1:47:56
  worry that people would leave their doors wide open and stuff
• 1:47:58
  like that. So obviously more kids went
• 1:47:59
  missing. I don't know in the specific
• 1:48:01
  statistics these days, but I would wager people that are a
• 1:48:04
  bit more conscious of this, you know, more protective and just
• 1:48:10
  generally more aware that these things are going on in the world
• 1:48:13
  and to just be more protective of their kids.
• 1:48:15
  Because I, you know, in fairness to people back in the day, I
• 1:48:18
  don't think people really fathomed that, you know, there's
• 1:48:21
  people out there just waiting to just snatch your kids.
• 1:48:24
  You know you, you trusted your neighbors, you trusted your
• 1:48:27
  local community or whatever you know.
• 1:48:29
  Yeah, there's more awareness, but there's still predators out
• 1:48:34
  there. Oh, 100%.
• 1:48:35
  But what I'm saying is the general public maybe now is more
• 1:48:40
  aware of that, more cautious than decades prior, you know,
• 1:48:44
  maybe. Yeah, I mean, I hope so.
• 1:48:47
  I mean. Yeah, same, same.
• 1:48:50
  I, I don't know what I could do on an individual level other
• 1:48:54
  than happen across somebody who is in trouble.
• 1:49:00
  And in case you don't know, I learned this recently.
• 1:49:04
  If somebody raises their hand, raises their hand like this, OK,
• 1:49:09
  I'm not good with mirrors and stuff.
• 1:49:11
  Okay, where the finger? Come on, Mike.
• 1:49:17
  Okay, where you see four fingers up, either like this or like
• 1:49:21
  this. This is a signal for help.
• 1:49:25
  Yeah, I saw, I saw a video. Person.
• 1:49:27
  About this recently. Yeah, and it doesn't matter
• 1:49:30
  which hand it is, apparently. If they hold it behind them as
• 1:49:33
  well like that. Yeah, yeah, if as long as you
• 1:49:36
  see the the thumb folded over like this, it looks like they're
• 1:49:40
  waving, but it's it's a signal that says I've been kidnapped or
• 1:49:46
  I'm being held. So.
• 1:49:49
  So we need to get more people to realize that because I just
• 1:49:53
  learned about it a couple months ago.
• 1:49:54
  I had no idea myself. Yeah.
• 1:49:57
  So that's, that's The thing is like you got to tell people need
• 1:50:00
  to know that that hand signal is an important thing to have the
• 1:50:05
  the four fingers and the thumb hidden.
• 1:50:08
  And that's not just a wave, that's that's a help, that's an
• 1:50:12
  SOS. And if I see that, I'm going to
• 1:50:16
  be all over it, yeah. I suppose we just need more
• 1:50:22
  awareness really. That's yeah to stop it.
• 1:50:26
  But I hope, you know, like the Epstein files and all that.
• 1:50:31
  I hope the somebody breaks it down.
• 1:50:35
  I was. Hoping that the.
• 1:50:37
  Bottom of it. I was hoping it would expose
• 1:50:39
  more, to be honest, but it just seems like it's been made into a
• 1:50:43
  farce. I mean, you've got all these
• 1:50:46
  names and no arrests. Nothing's happened.
• 1:50:49
  I'm like, right, OK, So what even are we doing?
• 1:50:53
  I. Don't know if they're being
• 1:50:54
  threatened or if people who could possibly do something
• 1:50:59
  about it are being are that. It's it's in the it's in the
• 1:51:03
  courts. I mean, obviously Epstein is
• 1:51:05
  that is, you know, dead or allegedly dead.
• 1:51:09
  That's the official story. Maxwell, his right hand person
• 1:51:12
  is in prison. But then I don't know.
• 1:51:17
  I think that the thing that begs the strangest question is you've
• 1:51:20
  got all these lists of names, all these photos of him with
• 1:51:23
  various people that he was clearly close with and just no
• 1:51:29
  investigation into any of them really nothing.
• 1:51:32
  It's. Just oh, I know.
• 1:51:35
  And they say that Todd Blanch, the new director of the, what is
• 1:51:39
  he attorney general, is going to be dropping it.
• 1:51:45
  He's not not going to investigate it at all, saying
• 1:51:48
  it's, you know, there's nothing there.
• 1:51:50
  There's nothing to look for. It's like, yeah, there is, yeah.
• 1:51:55
  If you dig deep and there's on all.
• 1:51:57
  These justice. Yeah.
• 1:51:59
  Yeah, there's there. Well, a little bit.
• 1:52:01
  OK, let's, let's look, let's just look at this like and look,
• 1:52:04
  we move over our experts, but let's just look at this
• 1:52:07
  logically. Yeah, there's this guy who has
• 1:52:10
  all of these connections all around the entire world.
• 1:52:13
  And the best that we know is that he was just a businessman
• 1:52:17
  who had a bunch of investments, investment portfolios, and he
• 1:52:20
  made his money from those investments and the connections
• 1:52:23
  he made and, and so on. But how did he get those
• 1:52:26
  connections? Well, he's just the most
• 1:52:28
  charismatic man in the world. You know, he just happens to
• 1:52:32
  upon these people. No, like things like that happen
• 1:52:34
  for a reason. That's number one.
• 1:52:36
  Number 2 is looking at the man had a fucking island and there
• 1:52:42
  was a lot of weird, weird stuff on that island.
• 1:52:46
  And it's been proven that, you know, he was operating, you
• 1:52:51
  know, committing these crimes. And there's lots of people who
• 1:52:55
  visited that island. Now, people will argue, OK,
• 1:52:58
  well, he was just, you know, the fact that they're on an island
• 1:53:02
  doesn't incriminate them. And I'm like, OK, no.
• 1:53:05
  However, when you hear about a person that spends a lot of time
• 1:53:10
  with criminal right and they're constantly.
• 1:53:14
  Assume guilt by association at that point.
• 1:53:17
  Yes and no. I mean.
• 1:53:22
  You have to suspect it's. By suspicion, yes, I think it's
• 1:53:27
  at least worth. But OK, if you, if, if someone
• 1:53:30
  is being investigated for and they say drugs trafficking,
• 1:53:35
  well, you know, like selling drugs, right?
• 1:53:37
  And there's people that are around them often who you can't
• 1:53:41
  prove that they're selling drugs, but they're constantly at
• 1:53:44
  clubs with this person, constantly photographed with
• 1:53:47
  them. The police would look at that
• 1:53:48
  and go, OK, these are what do they call it?
• 1:53:51
  Persons of interest. And they they would investigate
• 1:53:54
  them. They would question them.
• 1:53:55
  You know, have any of these celebrities, any of these people
• 1:53:58
  that have been connected to Epstein been interviewed?
• 1:54:01
  No. I don't know.
• 1:54:05
  Do you look? Certain, but yeah.
• 1:54:07
  Yeah, right. Do you look at any of the
• 1:54:10
  writers on sub stack? No, I'm hearing more and more
• 1:54:14
  about sub stack though. You've got to look at what's
• 1:54:17
  going on on Sub Stack because that's there's a wealth of
• 1:54:20
  information. This is where all the
• 1:54:22
  independent investigative journalists are going.
• 1:54:26
  That's why I run my blog there to, to pick up readership,
• 1:54:34
  because it's becoming a very strong place for independent
• 1:54:41
  voices. There is a lot more to the
• 1:54:46
  Jeffrey Epstein story than than you're aware of.
• 1:54:49
  I could go down the rabbit holes of the conspiracy theories that
• 1:54:53
  he's still alive and that and that and that the person who is
• 1:55:00
  in jail as Maxwell is not her. It's a plant, it's a body double
• 1:55:11
  somebody who got paid to go to prison.
• 1:55:15
  There's and there's, there's lots of other evidence that
• 1:55:21
  people are presenting that assume that this is just a this
• 1:55:31
  is this big operation is still in business.
• 1:55:35
  Jeffrey Epstein's just not the proprietor anymore.
• 1:55:39
  But there's, there's still the trafficking going on.
• 1:55:43
  There's other islands out there or something like islands where
• 1:55:50
  things are happening, the cannibalism aspect of it that
• 1:55:55
  they've talked about. Which?
• 1:55:58
  You ever heard about that? OK, well, that's that's another
• 1:56:01
  one that maybe, maybe not Mother Jones has decided that no,
• 1:56:08
  there's no cannibalism involved. But that's other people have
• 1:56:14
  other theories and there and that's The thing is until
• 1:56:19
  there's absolute proof of something, it's all a theory do.
• 1:56:26
  You think, well, if I know, I. Hope so I'd like I like closure.
• 1:56:34
  I like getting the dishes done. You know, that's what I'm saying
• 1:56:36
  is I like to I like it. I like a clean plate placed on a
• 1:56:41
  shelf and, and knowing that's that's part of why I, I wrote my
• 1:56:46
  life into a website so that I could show you exactly what I've
• 1:56:53
  got and it's orderly and it's neat and, and now you know well
• 1:57:00
  and there's no, there's no mystery to it anymore.
• 1:57:02
  I'll. Tell you what, let's have a
• 1:57:02
  palate cleanser. Let's have something positive.
• 1:57:05
  OK. Tell me about the bar job where
• 1:57:08
  you met your wife. Oh, I didn't work at the bar.
• 1:57:13
  Oh, no, I actually, I, I, I didn't work there at the time.
• 1:57:16
  That wasn't working. I was, we were drinking.
• 1:57:19
  I just met her because we were drinking.
• 1:57:23
  The guys I was living with at the time, Brad and West, they,
• 1:57:28
  we went into town. We lived in a in a shack, a
• 1:57:33
  trailer 9 miles up in the mountains up above Yellowstone,
• 1:57:38
  Gardner, Montana. And we go to and I'd been living
• 1:57:42
  there with them for a couple of weeks after I met them.
• 1:57:45
  And we went down to with the to the K bar and the Blue Goose and
• 1:57:54
  we went to there's 6 bars in town in Gardner, Montana at the
• 1:57:57
  time. So we go to the Blue Goose and
• 1:58:01
  Brad introduces me to a girl he dated a few weeks before, which
• 1:58:06
  was my wife Ellen. OK, And he's she's playing,
• 1:58:10
  she's playing pool with her girlfriend Tammy, which I was
• 1:58:18
  like, well, if he's still interested in Ellen, I'm
• 1:58:20
  interested in Tammy and Tammy is real pretty too.
• 1:58:23
  So I'm going to talk to them. I was 2223.
• 1:58:30
  I was, I just looked up now and you're right.
• 1:58:33
  It says cleaned up the bar on Saturday and Sunday mornings key
• 1:58:36
  holder positions. It describes the the job as a
• 1:58:40
  swamper. What the hell is a swamper?
• 1:58:42
  That's a western United States term for a janitor.
• 1:58:47
  Oh wow. They only they don't say swamper
• 1:58:50
  in Florida. They don't say it anywhere but
• 1:58:53
  Montana, Utah, Idaho, Washington state.
• 1:58:59
  Everybody out there knows what a swamper is.
• 1:59:01
  You said swamper. Yeah.
• 1:59:03
  It's a regional thing. Yeah.
• 1:59:05
  Yeah. Nobody else says swamper
• 1:59:08
  anywhere. But I didn't know what a swamper
• 1:59:11
  was. A swamper.
• 1:59:12
  OK. Is that what I am?
• 1:59:14
  OK, fine. Anyway, so I wasn't working at
• 1:59:18
  the bar at the time that I met her.
• 1:59:19
  I was. I was, I think I worked there
• 1:59:22
  later, but I know I worked there later.
• 1:59:26
  I wasn't, I wasn't employed there at the time.
• 1:59:29
  But anyway, try, you know, got got to meet her and hang out
• 1:59:36
  with her and Tammy for a little bit.
• 1:59:39
  And then I met her a few nights later.
• 1:59:43
  And then we just started dating and hanging out and I, I said,
• 1:59:49
  hey, after a couple of months, you know, we were almost
• 1:59:52
  exclusive, it's felt like. So I said, do you want to move
• 1:59:55
  in with me? And I mean, within 90 days of us
• 1:59:58
  meeting, we moved in together and we've been together ever
• 2:00:01
  since. That's a big.
• 2:00:06
  I didn't know any better. What what compounds you to you
• 2:00:11
  just really in love like? I liked her a lot.
• 2:00:14
  Yeah, Yeah. I was like, oh man, it'd be so
• 2:00:18
  cool. I mean, we could split rent fun.
• 2:00:22
  You're like, I could save some money here.
• 2:00:24
  That's right. I had a good, I had a good sales
• 2:00:27
  pitch at the. Time.
• 2:00:28
  So what was your sales pitch to win her over?
• 2:00:33
  Look at this. Yeah.
• 2:00:36
  See. Yeah.
• 2:00:37
  Come on. Yeah.
• 2:00:39
  I was skinny. I was skinny and hot.
• 2:00:41
  Had long hair. I was.
• 2:00:45
  She was skinny and hot and had long hair.
• 2:00:47
  I mean, it was just a match made in heaven.
• 2:00:49
  There you. Try any one liners or is it just
• 2:00:51
  straight chatting? No, nothing.
• 2:00:55
  Nothing special. I didn't try anything.
• 2:00:58
  I, I, I was just being myself. She's being herself.
• 2:01:02
  We've just fell for each other, that's all, you know?
• 2:01:06
  Yeah, it was, it was very nice. And it's always been so I, I, I
• 2:01:12
  know. I mean, we've been together
• 2:01:13
  since 1987. So that's 39 years now.
• 2:01:19
  Wow. You see the mistakes you can
• 2:01:23
  make that'll change your life. Don't go to bars.
• 2:01:29
  Kids stay. What, what keeps what, what
• 2:01:36
  advice could you could you give, like keep keeping a marriage,
• 2:01:39
  you know, happy, successful, etcetera.
• 2:01:43
  Oh man, you know that's a tough one because even I don't do it
• 2:01:47
  right every day. Sure.
• 2:01:49
  But you seem you seem happy. You guys seem happy.
• 2:01:51
  Oh, I am, Yeah. I, I say give your spouse a lot
• 2:01:56
  of leeway, You know, if they want to, if they want to do
• 2:01:59
  something, let them do their thing.
• 2:02:01
  You know, don't chain people just, you know, and support what
• 2:02:06
  they do. If they say I want to go here
• 2:02:10
  and see China, OK, I'm all for it.
• 2:02:14
  If I if I want to write screenplays and I want to start
• 2:02:21
  a Film Festival, OK, you do that.
• 2:02:27
  Let's see what happens. Good luck with that.
• 2:02:31
  You know, you got a both sides they had it's a partnership.
• 2:02:37
  Then you have to be able to not try and control the other
• 2:02:41
  person. And that's, that's really what
• 2:02:43
  it is. That's that's my opinion is, is
• 2:02:46
  don't try and control your the person you love.
• 2:02:50
  Just set them free and you know, if they're good butterfly,
• 2:02:55
  they'll, they'll stick around, you know, and if they're not,
• 2:03:01
  it's not meant to be. Thanks for sharing man, some
• 2:03:04
  really great advice there. Appreciate it.
• 2:03:06
  I try. Have you ever considered writing
• 2:03:10
  about the many jobs you've had? I feel like there's a book here
• 2:03:14
  to be honest. Oh well, I, I started writing
• 2:03:17
  some of the blog. If you look on the page on my
• 2:03:21
  website called witnessing stupidity, I wrote, I wrote, you
• 2:03:28
  know, that was an essay series that I attempted.
• 2:03:30
  And it's a story unto itself that I, I, I, I'm proud of.
• 2:03:37
  I, I like what I wrote and it's, you know, it's there.
• 2:03:41
  I'm not, I'd rather talk about them then write about them.
• 2:03:46
  You know, it's just one of those things.
• 2:03:48
  I've got other stuff I want to write that I'm focused on.
• 2:03:51
  So I got another book. I was, I alluded to the one man
• 2:03:58
  podcast yesterday. OK, I'll, I'll give you a teaser
• 2:04:02
  on what that'll be. It will be the first person
• 2:04:07
  account of a sea creature, Loch Ness, not human.
• 2:04:17
  Nessie. I don't know, maybe.
• 2:04:22
  A sea creature. I think you have so many good
• 2:04:25
  ideas man. I've got I, I know what, I know
• 2:04:28
  the story in my head. I know the story in my head and
• 2:04:31
  I, I will write it. And I think the best way to tell
• 2:04:35
  it is right into the microphone here and that's it, you know,
• 2:04:40
  and then then add a little music and couple sound effects maybe
• 2:04:47
  and, and see if anyone likes it. I don't know how long it'll
• 2:04:54
  take. I don't know if it'll be a one
• 2:04:56
  off or be the longest lasting series of all time.
• 2:05:03
  No, it won't be. It won't be that, but that's,
• 2:05:08
  you know, there's other stuff I want to do then keep writing
• 2:05:10
  about me. That's the thing that's I my
• 2:05:15
  story is interesting only so far and and it's my life is not all
• 2:05:22
  about me. It's about the everything else,
• 2:05:26
  and I can, I think I can convey a lot more with fiction and
• 2:05:32
  storytelling that I can with facts, because the facts are
• 2:05:37
  just not always that interesting to read.
• 2:05:42
  Maybe. But I will say this, I think if
• 2:05:46
  we've established anything with both of these episodes, it's the
• 2:05:50
  you're a good storyteller and there's many stories involved
• 2:05:53
  with, you know, your jobs and you know so much that comes with
• 2:05:57
  that. Like you've kind of talked about
• 2:05:58
  how you make good friends, you make your wife you, you're good
• 2:06:02
  times, bad times. You know, it's very much an
• 2:06:06
  insight into you over the years. You know, there's there's a lot
• 2:06:09
  of good stories, a good, good advice, good.
• 2:06:12
  I mean, I think, I think like for example, one thing I took
• 2:06:15
  from it and relate to as well is like, you know, be willing to
• 2:06:19
  take risks in life, be willing to throw yourself out there and
• 2:06:22
  learn new things and see where life takes you kind of thing.
• 2:06:26
  You, you really have to. You can't just get stuck in one
• 2:06:31
  place. I knew one guy I worked with at
• 2:06:34
  Avis. His name was Steve.
• 2:06:37
  Tall skinny Mormon guy him and his wife met.
• 2:06:44
  I don't know if they met at the job or if they met at their ward
• 2:06:47
  at church, but they both worked at Avis and Steve told me the
• 2:06:54
  most boring shit plan of a life anyone ever did.
• 2:07:00
  He said Yep. So now me and I forgot his
• 2:07:04
  wife's name were married. And so now we're going to have
• 2:07:11
  some kids and and he learned Japanese.
• 2:07:15
  That was the thing. He he went on his Mormon mission
• 2:07:18
  in Japan so he could he was the only guy at the counter could
• 2:07:21
  speak Japanese. So when Japanese people came, we
• 2:07:24
  got Steve out of the back or on the phone and it was no problem.
• 2:07:29
  All the Arigato, it was perfect. You know, he got it done.
• 2:07:36
  So anyway, he said, he told me his five year plan, how it was
• 2:07:44
  to finish his college degree in, I forgot exactly what, but it
• 2:07:51
  was like some kind of public relations that worked with the
• 2:07:56
  Japanese culture. And he goes and so I'll do that
• 2:07:59
  and work as a liaison between the for some company.
• 2:08:05
  OK, so now he's fictionalizing or projecting that he's going to
• 2:08:09
  have a workforce, some company as a liaison between Japanese
• 2:08:14
  culture and and American culture, which that's a good
• 2:08:19
  role, a good goal. And he goes and I'll do that for
• 2:08:25
  2530 years and I'll will me and what's your name?
• 2:08:30
  We're going to have like 667 kids.
• 2:08:33
  I think we're going to stop at 7, something like that, He says,
• 2:08:36
  because Mormons like to have lots of kids.
• 2:08:38
  It's just the, the culture, you know, and he goes, I'll, I'll
• 2:08:43
  raise them all to we'll have some boys, we'll have some
• 2:08:47
  girls. And either way, I'm going to
• 2:08:49
  raise them to, I'll go to college and do things that
• 2:08:56
  support me and the wife. And we'll pay off the house and,
• 2:09:01
  and we'll start a couple of we'll get these kids set up in
• 2:09:05
  their own houses. And then I'll have grandchildren
• 2:09:12
  to take care of. I'll be able to retire early
• 2:09:14
  because I'll make so much money being this liaison for the
• 2:09:17
  Japanese and, and then all the kids can take care of me for the
• 2:09:23
  last 20 years of my life. And when I turn about 75, I'll
• 2:09:26
  check out. I'm like, OK, he really
• 2:09:30
  nutshelled that, but he also made it really boring.
• 2:09:35
  Yeah, I know what you mean because there's some interesting
• 2:09:37
  stuff in there, but a lot of it is so like typical, I think.
• 2:09:42
  I think it is a little bit boring if you if you plan
• 2:09:44
  everything out. Plus, we know.
• 2:09:46
  We both know like that. Look, what's that old
• 2:09:49
  expression? I'm not religious, but it's like
• 2:09:54
  humans make plans. God laughs like it's, you know,
• 2:09:57
  like you can never know what's coming around the corner.
• 2:10:00
  And variety is the spice of life.
• 2:10:03
  Spontaneity, trying different things.
• 2:10:05
  Who wants to say the same thing for fucking?
• 2:10:08
  Years of your life for their whole life.
• 2:10:09
  Why would you plan your life like that?
• 2:10:12
  I don't know. Well.
• 2:10:12
  This is why people have midlife crisis, because it's like they
• 2:10:15
  get to a certain point and they're like, man, I should have
• 2:10:17
  done this, this, this, this, this, this.
• 2:10:19
  Yeah. I don't know man.
• 2:10:22
  I think that Steve Jobs was a tortured soul from from what
• 2:10:28
  I've seen, You know, because he was so focused on that stupid
• 2:10:31
  iPhone that nobody needed, nobody asked for that.
• 2:10:37
  He didn't think about anything else.
• 2:10:42
  I don't know. I I I heard that he was Then he
• 2:10:47
  got cancer and died. I.
• 2:10:48
  Heard that he wasn't close to his family or or something like.
• 2:10:51
  That right. He was so focused on that one
• 2:10:54
  thing, you know, Yeah, it made him a financial success.
• 2:10:57
  But did he have fun? I don't know.
• 2:10:59
  Doesn't look like it from what I can tell.
• 2:11:02
  I mean, if it's not saying for some people work is their life,
• 2:11:04
  and that's not necessarily a bad thing.
• 2:11:08
  I think having purpose in life as a human being is important,
• 2:11:11
  you know, But I mean, variety is a spice.
• 2:11:15
  I like even even if you do work is your life.
• 2:11:17
  I mean, you got to, I think it's important to really look at
• 2:11:22
  everything in life and and make the most out of everything, even
• 2:11:25
  if it's something simple like just seeing the sunset, you
• 2:11:28
  know? Yeah, seeing the country I
• 2:11:30
  wanted to do, I wanted to do everything from the time I was
• 2:11:34
  very young. Now there's many things I don't
• 2:11:36
  want to do. I, I, I want to try.
• 2:11:38
  I don't want to skydive, you know?
• 2:11:40
  Yeah. Me neither.
• 2:11:41
  My wife wants to skydive. I I was like, OK, I'll watch.
• 2:11:46
  So have fun. Fingers crossed.
• 2:11:50
  Good luck. You know, there's, there's, you
• 2:11:56
  know, I, I've ridden a bicycle and I've fallen off and fell
• 2:11:59
  flat on my face and it's no fun. So I, I'm kind of done riding
• 2:12:03
  bicycles, even though I have to do that today.
• 2:12:06
  Go get my car from the shop, ride my bike over there.
• 2:12:10
  I could walk, but the bike's faster.
• 2:12:13
  And, you know, it comes with that, that little bit of risk
• 2:12:18
  that we should all have in our lives, you know?
• 2:12:24
  Final question for you, man. OK?
• 2:12:26
  I can't believe how much time I've taken off you.
• 2:12:28
  You've been an absolute sport. You've been brilliant.
• 2:12:31
  Upcoming projects, final thoughts that you'd like to
• 2:12:33
  share of our listeners? Anything at all.
• 2:12:37
  Well, I think you're doing a great job, so I want to wish you
• 2:12:40
  all the best. Please keep in touch and let me
• 2:12:43
  know what happens with your, with your thing, all my all your
• 2:12:49
  listeners. If you're going to provide
• 2:12:51
  links, link them to my website and stuff and they'll find
• 2:12:55
  everything out they want about me.
• 2:12:57
  If they want to link, that would be great.
• 2:13:01
  And I'm, I'm open to talking to anybody about just about
• 2:13:05
  anything. I, if you have anybody who's a
• 2:13:13
  fan of yours, who likes TV, film and fancies themselves a
• 2:13:22
  director, producer, please ask them to look at my stuff and get
• 2:13:30
  in touch with me if they like something.
• 2:13:31
  Because I'm all about sharing. And I, I'm happy to work with
• 2:13:40
  even a low budget novice who like a student who wants to
• 2:13:46
  produce something and doesn't have their own script.
• 2:13:49
  Use one of mine, you know, get, get some work done.
• 2:13:54
  You know, as long as my name is on what I wrote, I'm happy to,
• 2:14:00
  to be a part of that. You know, I had a guy, I've had
• 2:14:04
  two productions done by other people that were based on my
• 2:14:08
  work. One was my coffee poem.
• 2:14:11
  A guy did a, a play based on coffee and he did it.
• 2:14:18
  And I unfortunately, I didn't live in the town at the time.
• 2:14:23
  I never saw it. He didn't film it, but he said
• 2:14:25
  it went well. And other people I knew who went
• 2:14:28
  to it said it was beautiful. He wrote original music.
• 2:14:32
  He he he wrote a play based around my 15 page poem Coffee.
• 2:14:39
  And another guy took my short story that he saw me workshop in
• 2:14:47
  in acting class called I am not John Denver.
• 2:14:53
  And then he turned that into because I looked like a lot more
• 2:14:57
  like John Denver at the time. Now I've outlived John Denver.
• 2:15:00
  He died at the age of 53 or 55 or something.
• 2:15:02
  I'm 62. I'm 61 anyway, so I looked a
• 2:15:08
  lot. If I put the round glasses on, I
• 2:15:09
  look really like John Denver, old John Denver now.
• 2:15:13
  But anyway, he took my script and he said, hey, I want to do a
• 2:15:19
  short film with you in it. And I want to call it They
• 2:15:22
  Spelled Wednesday wrong, but it's basically your script.
• 2:15:25
  So he does that and he made a nice short film about a guy who
• 2:15:30
  thinks I'm John Denver in a bar. And the big joke about it is
• 2:15:35
  that everybody in the bar is somebody, everybody in the bar
• 2:15:42
  looks like another dead rock star.
• 2:15:46
  So he dressed everybody up like you see, you know, there's
• 2:15:49
  there's Jim Morrison there, there's Jimi Hendrix, there's
• 2:15:53
  every like, well, not, not all of them are dead.
• 2:15:57
  You know, he he had he had like the Grateful Dead guys, he had
• 2:16:03
  the Bob Dylan look alike. He had he had all these look
• 2:16:06
  alikes in the bar and about I'm the only one that the guy
• 2:16:09
  recognized is and so so that was a layer too.
• 2:16:13
  And that's what I love about working with people.
• 2:16:17
  Like, I didn't think of that, but he did.
• 2:16:20
  So he took my script and he made it into his own.
• 2:16:23
  And I got to see it, you know, and I was in it.
• 2:16:26
  Yeah, I'm in it too. So I got to act in that as John
• 2:16:31
  Denver or the guy who's not John Denver, because that's, that's
• 2:16:35
  basically my only line. You got the wrong guy, dude.
• 2:16:37
  It's not me. That's that's it.
• 2:16:41
  I'm not John Denver. Well, listen, my idea, I think
• 2:16:47
  that's 2nd that. I think it's good to always get
• 2:16:51
  to collaborate with people and see what you can get and flesh
• 2:16:53
  out from things. I'm waiting for him to call.
• 2:16:56
  Just call me collaborators. There you go.
• 2:17:01
  Mike it's, it's been a, it's been an amazing journey.
• 2:17:04
  It has. We've spent a lot of time
• 2:17:06
  together these two days. Yeah, I got to go get my car out
• 2:17:10
  of the shop. Yeah, I got to go eat and live.
• 2:17:14
  Yes, yeah, you're 5 hours ahead. It's almost 8:00 where you are.
• 2:17:19
  I. Literally came straight from
• 2:17:20
  work to to do this and I'm so glad I did man.
• 2:17:24
  Where do you work now? I'm juggling a bunch of
• 2:17:26
  different jobs in between things.
• 2:17:29
  Yeah. So it's.
• 2:17:30
  But it's like it was a physical one.
• 2:17:31
  It was a hotel job, and I was just eager to get out and do
• 2:17:36
  this. And yeah, you, you made my day.
• 2:17:39
  Thank you so much, man. Really, really appreciate it.
• 2:17:41
  Thank you. I appreciate it.
• 2:17:42
  I'm very happy to be here. I wish you all the best for the
• 2:17:45
  future and. Likewise.
• 2:17:48
  All right. Take care, Christian.
• 2:17:49
  Take care, man. To all the listeners of
• 2:17:51
  Christian Reef Podcast, thank you so much for watching and
• 2:17:53
  listening. Make sure to go out of your way
• 2:17:54
  to check out Mike's stuff. I'll make sure it's available.
• 2:17:58
  And as always, be safe, be well, and I'll see you all in the next
• 2:18:03
  one.