Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Full Auto Friday - Round 88

Episode Date: January 14, 2022

Rapid Fire Q and A to finish off the week: 1. Am I selfish for wanting to move on from a family business and pursue what I think is my passion 2. Advice on how to protect yourself from a carjacking in a large and violent city 3. How do I effectively communicate to management that I disagree with their decision 4. What would I have done with my life had I not joined the military Enjoy

Ladies and gentlemen, what's up? Getting ready for full out of Friday 88. And before that, though, we're not going to talk about sponsorships. What we're going to talk about is something that people ask me about all the time. And that is where am I actually going to be when I do some public speaking? So I do actually, shockingly, have something coming up because I've been turning down almost every offer that I get because I've decided I don't like traveling. However, I digress. On the 5th of February, 2022, which is the year we're currently in, myself, Mike Glover, and Jack Kerry, also known as Jack Carr, we're actually going to be at the Fieldcraft Survival HQ, doing a full-day leadership summit. If you are interested in that, or what that sounds like, the best place to go, the most direct link that I know of is actually in my Instagram profile.

So it's right there, click it, and come join us. Or don't. But that's it. Let's get into a little Q&A to finish off the week. Oh, here we go. out of Friday, 88. Try to keep this under 30 minutes. I feel like 30 minutes is the perfect amount of Q&A. It doesn't drive me crazy and I don't think it drives anybody else crazy. So let's dig in. Question number one. To give some background, I am a 36-year-old man who has worked in the family business all my life. We're in the construction industry and I started in the warehouse when I was 12 years old working summers. Throughout high school and college, I worked summers at varying levels.

and since graduating I have been full-time for nearly 15 years wearing many, many hats, as tends to happen in a family business. I work under my dad and my uncle with a brother and now several younger cousins who have come on board while our company continues to grow. It is hard work and I'm always on in some capacity. It's all I know in terms of work. Years ago, I started to feel detached due to workload and stress. Many of the projects I was running and had previously run pushed me over my limit, which has continued to happen. This couple with the fact that my wife and I have had trouble conceiving got me wondering why as I was continuing to work in this capacity. After a long period of self-reflection, I realized that to a very high extent I was pushed and groomed to be on the path that I was on.

I'm quite sure that had I been given free rein on my career path, I would not be where I am. And it's not all to complain. I have made very good living doing what I do, working together with my wife, our house and possessions are paid for, and we have a solid nest egg growing. But I couldn't help but continue to wonder about a better work-life balance in what career I would have chosen on my own. About two and a half years ago, I decided that my chosen path would have been one in service.

The idea of firefighting dawned on me and it was like a giant light bulb went off in my head. I enjoy helping others, being active, and also some calculated risk. After some research, I enrolled in a nighttime EMT program, and after completion I joined a volunteer fire. department who ran an accredited academy. I was able to complete while working. Turns out I'm pretty damn good at it. I excelled all around finishing first in my class in each program, which

I will say feels good to put a whoopin on some younger trainees. I know exactly what you're talking about, and you should feel good about that. I've continued to serve at the volunteer department and have gained good on the job experience. My wife 100% had my back the whole way, which has been massively helpful to me. I have now begun to explore. I have now begun to explore the a career change into full-time firefighting. Given the state that I live in, I would likely need to relocate to get a full-time position with benefits based on my age. My wife is totally on board with this. Her career background would allow her to work pretty much anywhere. I have started the process of applying Colorado and a few other states to see if I really have a shot.

Moving away from our families would be difficult for sure, but we both seemingly look forward to a change and have started calling it our act two. So now here is my moral conundrum. I have an immense feeling of guilt over leaving the family business despite everything I have been through. My dad and uncle have worked incredibly hard to provide for their family and grow the company. They are both in their early 60s with no talk of retirement, but they could benefit from slowing down a bit. Pulling the pin at this point feels selfish on my part. I feel like I owe it to them. I am the oldest of the next generation and definitely have the most experience as well.

I feel like walking away now puts an undeserved burden. on everyone. On the other side of that coin, I feel like if I don't pursue my act two, I'm going to look back with a lot of regret when I am older. What is the best way to approach my family business aspect of the situation? They all know I'm a volunteer firefighter, but I don't think they know how serious I'm about making this big change. If I were to get a job offer, I likely will not have much control over how fast things move. So I have purposefully, purposefully, purposely sought out the departments that are not officially hiring until later in the year. And how do you deal with family guilt and the feeling of selfishness? And a lot of people who will

say you need to put yourself first sometimes, but that isn't hitting home with me for some reason. Thanks for any advice that you may have. Damn. Good backstory. I appreciate that. And you know, I actually come from a line of an individual in a family business. My father's father's father. was a brick mason in Santa Cruz, California. My father's father was a brick mason in Santa Cruz, California. My father was a brick mason in Santa Cruz, California. And I spent all of my summers, either doing junior lifeguards or working for my dad. Some of the best lessons I have ever learned in my life came on those job sites.

And one, I've talked about this in the podcast many times, and it was something that was reinforced to me when I was in buds. but I think I learned it, and not even intentionally, but just through the execution of working for my dad. But it was the idea and concept of keeping your world small or chunking your goals into digestible, approachable segments. We used to go to, let me, when I worked on a job site, I moved shit around for clarity. And I think my dad would, uh, would not deny that.

I wasn't building anything. I was helping people build stuff by moving shit around. Palettes of bricks would show up. And pallets, I definitely mean. plural oftentimes. And we're talking 500 bricks and you would have brick tongs that can carry six at a time. And when you were looking at a stack of pallets and you realize that your whole daily job is going to be removing them six or 12 at a time, depending on how strong you are and how good your balance is going up the ladder, that can be overwhelming. And it was at that point in time that I

just started worrying about six at a time or 12 at a time or just the next trip that I was going to be going on. And that is probably one of the most impactful lessons that I have learned that I have used throughout the course of my life through buds through additional training through the seal community biting off things in that digestible chunk so that's a slight departure from this question i apologize but i it really highlights for me a lesson that i have used so often so back to your question i get it i understand where you feel like you are the next link in the legacy chain and i would have been in that position as well i don't foresee my sister ever ever gone down the masonry routes. Maybe she would have. Maybe she wouldn't. But I was the one who was working on the

job site. And if it was going to continue in the family, it would have come through me. Now, I had no desire to be a brick mason because I got obsessed with the idea super early on that I wanted to go into the military. So not once. Can I ever think of a conversation that I had with my dad about what would happen to his business? He was, of course, providing for our family and very well. And it was a skill he could have taught me and a trade that I could have made an excellent living with my hands for the rest of my life. But there was never a feeling of guilt. There was never a conversation of, hey, you're leaving me hanging out to dry. It was a conversation about what is it that you want to do with your life? And let's do everything we can to facilitate and support

that. My question to you is, you know, you described it. And it's, man, it's deep in this email. but you basically described it as you feel like you were groomed for the position that you were in. Did you have any say in that would be my question to you? Have you had conversations with your family? That would be where I would start. If you're looking at applying already and maybe right now you're looking at departments that aren't officially hiring, what are you going to do if for whatever reason they have a manning shortage or perhaps they get more funding or a new department position opens up and they go from not officially hiring to drastically needing bodies. The reason that I bring that up is even though you're trying to delay this decision, you really don't know how

much time you're going to actually have. So if you're worried about this conversation that you need to have with your family, because they're going to need to know about this, I would say the only way that you actually would be screwing your family over and being selfish is if you waited until the last minute and didn't tell them about this early. If you voice to them your honest feelings and your honest opinions about who you are and where you want to be and then you give them a lot of time, you're not screwing anybody over. And everybody out there in the world, regardless of what you do for living, to include myself in every capacity that I've ever had in any job needs to understand one thing. You are replaceable.

There is nobody on the face of the planet that is irreplaceable in the role that you are in. So I know that you, the writer of this email, may feel like if you leave, you're going to be screwing somebody else over or perhaps the business might take a hit because of that. And it's possible that they might in the short term, but in the long term, trust me, the business will figure out a way to continue moving forward. And again, I think the only wrong. answer in this would be to not have this open and honest conversation with your family. Difficult conversations are exactly that. But if you can't have them with your family,

who else are you going to have them with? And I understand the environment that they've created for you. You know, it's amazing that at your age, you're 36, you've got your house paid off. Sounds like you're building a, you're building a nest egg. That's an incredible position to be in that I don't think most people at the age of 36 are in. I'm not in that position. I'm 44. I don't my house outright. You know, I'm all constantly working on, you know, debt to income ratio, all those lovely things that adults get to worry about. So you're in a great spot. You're going to have a little bit of buffer. If you do move and you sell your house, right, you're going to have a great amount of money to put down into a new house or you could carve off some of that and give

yourself a little bit of a buffer however you want to do it. But again, it's all based off getting out in front of the information and not allowing it to be a surprise. I'd be curious to hear. You know, so your uncle and your father, they're in their 60s. Sit down and ask him. Like, do you guys still enjoy this work? Do you still want to be continuing to do this when you are 65, 70, 75? At what point in time do you actually want to turn the reins over and allow somebody else to do what it is that they are doing? You know, your departure from their organization might actually be one of the best things that could happen to that organization because they're going to have to think about.

how they have this continuity of knowledge. How do they take the business to the next level? And for them, what I mean is a level where they don't have to be so intimately involved. If they don't want to be, you know, I think back about my dad and his construction company, he has a passion for building things. I think my dad, and I can't speak for him, but I think he would agree to this, would probably have built and continue to build things with his hands as long as his body supported him doing so because he loves doing it.

And fuck, he is very good at it. He has an artistic ability with his hands that I did not genetically get, but it was amazing to watch. Maybe your dad and your uncle were in that same situation, but maybe they're not. And maybe they haven't even looked at what the next step in continuity is going to be because they just made an assumption that you would be there. And, you know, they say about assumptions. They make an ass out of you and me. And that's not always the case, but sometimes it is. And if they have just assumed that about you and you guys don't have this conversation, that's a lot.

exactly what's going to happen. It's going to make an asset of them and an asset of you and there's going to be some issues with that. But I think in this conversation, it'll actually give you the ability to help your uncle and your dad figure out how they want to move on into their next phase of business. Hire and train a manager now, maybe while you're still involved. And maybe you could be directly involved in that process. You could be somebody who left seat, right seats with this person, you could pass on as much knowledge as possible, perhaps be available to them if they need it in the future. And maybe your uncle and your dad need to restructure their business a little bit as well. And this conversation that you can have with them would give them the opportunity

to figure out how they actually want to do that. Do they want to be as involved? Do they want to take a step back? Maybe they want to shut the business down. You never know. It's unique in the role that my dad's business had because without him actually doing the work with his hand, the business didn't exist. You could always teach other people and have a mentorship program and all of those things. And those are great, but not all businesses take the time to do that. So for my dad, when he stopped actually doing construction when my mom was going through her last bout of cancer before it ended up taking her life, he, you know, rolled the garage, the metaphorical garage door down and shut the business down and there was never really nobody else to pass it on to. So it ended with him.

Maybe your uncle and your dad wanted to end with them as well. I suspect that they don't. So what they need to do is figure out how to make it live on when they are not able to do it with their own two hands. So have the conversation now. It might be difficult. It might be a scary conversation for you to have and that's okay. I think that just means that it's important. And as far as, you know, putting yourself first in feeling selfish, I don't think that an individual who is trying to figure out what is going to provide for them empowerment and fulfillment in their life is acting selfish, especially in your situation because you're very deeply thinking about the impact it's going to have on others. You're not writing an email saying,

hey, this is what I've been doing for my whole life, but fuck these guys. I'm going to go do whatever I want. You're really deeply concerned about the impact that it's going to have, which is the opposite of being selfish. And the choice. A powerful choice to think about is, say you get to the end of the lap that we all get. We all get one lap and you get to the end of it. Do you want to be at the end of that lap looking at all the things that you wish you had done? Or would you rather get to the end of that lap knowing you gave it your best effort and pursued the things that for you as a person and as a husband and as a son or as a father that empowered an enrich. you and allowed you to become the breast expression of who you think you can be. For me, the answer

of that question is, of course, the latter. I don't want to be on my deathbed full of regret of things that I wish I had done. I think the only way that you cannot arrive at that is to actually find the courage to step into these positions that are uncomfortable, step into these conversations and work your way through it, and continue to grow and evolve smartly as a human being and as a partner and as a parent, if you happen to be a parent. So food for thought, that's how I would consider it. And it starts with a conversation, open and honest, and have it early. Because, like I said, I know you're working on trying to manage how much time you have.

You know, the reality is, you never know. You might get your dream job call well before you're ready to have this conversation. And then I think it could potentially be a problem. So that's the approach that I would take. Question number two. My question for you is this. I recently moved from a major military base to a very large city where I am. my family know almost no one. The city has been experiencing a crime wave of carjackings in

particular. Two have occurred on our street and another took place a couple of miles away where they took the car with a child in the back seat. My wife and I have a one-year-old son and are expecting another one soon and we frequently find ourselves driving alone with him in the city. What advice would you give someone who wants to be prepared for the eventuality of a potential carjacking? Conceal carry and training seems obvious to me, but do you have any other tactics that you would employ in an urban environment where the likelihood of a carjacking is higher than usable? Good question. And, man, not one that I've actually put a lot of thought into. I don't feel like I've ever been at risk of a carjacking.

But I actually have heard and read news stories where these things are happening. So let's break this down and think about it a little bit. We'll go backwards. We'll go the end of your email towards the forward. Conceal carry and training seems obvious to me. Okay, cool. That's obvious. That's not obvious.

That's awesome. Let's assume, and I will assume for this, that you live in a state that allows concealed carry. And what I would tell you is think about the training that you're going to do. There are people who choose to, well, everybody chooses to conceal carry in whatever manner they choose to. What I'll tell you is, if you've never actually practice. with your firearm from a seat of position with a seat belt on and understand the steps that may be required for you to actually access and utilize your tool in a very confined environment of both forward and backwards if you have your seat belt on and left and right probably from

a center console and the door assuming you're in the driver's seat it can be a little bit interesting and I'll use an example I know some people who like to carry at the six o'clock so if you use the front of your belt like your belt buckle as a 12 obviously the direct behind that would be your six in the small of your back. Sit down in a chair and first off, conceal carry like that. If you're looking at doing this and sit down in a chair or a car and for 10 minutes and let me know how comfortable that is, it's not very. Spoiler alert. But then two, try to actually draw from that position while seatbelted in in a stress-filled environment.

And what I think you might find is as an example, the 6 o'clock concealed carry position may not be the most optimal. for this situation. I personally don't recommend it for any situation. I'm sure there's some anomalies there where I could be talked into saying, hey, you know, that might be a good idea for that specific thing. But as a general principle, I'm not a huge fan. I like appendix carry. Well, guess what goes right over the top of your appendix very often when you're seated, your seatbelt? So you've got to work your way through, you know, are you going to detach your seatbelt? Are you going to move it out of the way with your non-dominate hand? How are you going to clear the garment that's likely going to be over the top of it. So I'm not a fan of absolutes. I'm not going to

give you wrong or right answers. But what I would tell you or anybody else in this situation is that think about how you are carrying your equipment. Do you have access to it without a multi-step process? And can you fill out or could you complete the steps that you need to under a very high stress, very short time period environment? For myself personally, I do appendix carry, but I also have a magnet in my car that allows me to remove my appendix carry and put it down by my shin, the shin of my right leg. So it's just off to the right hand side of my right leg when I'm driving. And what that is is easy access without having to do anything other than to move my hand

from the steering wheel down to the pistol grip of the pistol. And to me, it's a much more convenient location while in my car. What I don't recommend is if you have a magnet like that, is just leaving it in the car all the time because you have a tool that is designed to take life that is now unsecured. Because carjacking is one thing. Car theft is another.

And somebody's smashing out your window because they're looking for, I don't know, you got a backpack in the front seat. And the next thing you know, like, oh, sweet, nice pistol. You don't want to be that asshole either. Positive control at all times. Okay, so let's go backwards. That's the concealed carry and training piece.

What advice would I give to someone who wants to be prepared for the eventuality of a potential carjacking? What I would say is the best weapon that you have available to you all time, at all times. And this particular situation is your situational awareness. People who are going to carjack you, at least from what I have seen and what I have heard about, it's going to require them to do one of two things. Actually, it's probably going to require, yeah, one of two things. At a minimum, what is going to have to happen is somebody is going to have to approach your car. That in and of itself, like just an individual or two people coming up to your car, is a problem,

but it's an easier problem to deal with than that happening after you've actually been pinned in. So maybe a car that pins you in up front and a car that pins you in in the back, giving you no room to maneuver or kind of blast out of there when people approach you. So the first one, if somebody is approaching your vehicle, and like I said, your number one, tool that you have available is your situational awareness and paying attention to what's going on around you, not pulling out your cell phone at every single stoplight, which I'm not saying that you're doing. But it's a matter of keeping your head up and out as opposed to down and in. You're not going to stop a carjacking by focusing your attention on what's happening inside the

boundaries of the glass in steel that's holding your car together. You're going to stop a carjacking from happening by paying attention to everything that is on the outside. Route selection, of course is going to be critical in this. If there is an area in town that has a higher than statistically probable chance of carjacking, don't go there regardless of whatever potential need that you may have. If you have to do something that's in that area, don't. Find another place to do it. Buffer.

Somebody's going to have to approach your car because they're going to want to probably drive it. So they're going to have to get access to your car. right obviously driving with the doors locked be a great way to let's say you're not paying attention at all but your doors are unlocked and having the ability for somebody to open your door and either gain access to your vehicle or be able to put their hands on you that's a no no right so at a very minimum let's make sure that our doors are locked and most modern cars doors have auto locks as it is but if not make sure that you lock them and keep them locked um and keep an eye of what's going on around you the buffer thing You know, and maybe this is less of a risk in the civilian world, but when it came to the vehicle training that I've done in the military, you know, the worst case scenario is not an ambush where somebody is shooting at you and you have the ability to speed off.

Like you can deal with that, even especially if your car has any level of armor employment to it. You could just peel out out of there and get out of there or you could return fire and you could leave. When it starts getting shitty is when you can't leave. and I could see this happening in two ways. One, a coordinated effort with carjackers who pin you in front to back, or two, people driving like assholes and getting right up on the bumper of the car in front of them. So if you get right up on the bumper of the car in front of you and somebody gets right up on the bumper of your car, you basically just created the situation that I was talking about.

So you're actually, from a carjackers perspective, I would appreciate it when people drive like assholes and don't pay attention because they're going to create that blockade for me, which would allow me to probably use those vehicles as well to come from a concealed position or at least somewhere that is in your blind spot that would at least get me as close as possible to opening your door or busting open your window. Avoid those two things. Keep that buffer. Don't ride up on the bumper of the car in front of you. I think your number one tool in this is actually the vehicle that you are in. Keep it locked. Keep it secure while you're in it and give yourself that space so that you can maneuver. You carry insurance for a reason. If somebody is coming

up to your car, and this is the way that I think I am not giving anybody advice or telling them to actually do this, but this is the way that I think. I have insurance on all my vehicles. If for whatever reason I saw somebody approaching my vehicle and I determined that they had ill intent for whatever reason and I have this buffer space in front of me and I have the ability to actually drive my car out of the situation that I'm in and maybe I'll end up swapping paint with somebody along the way. I would take that as opposed to having to deal with the carjacking because one I'm completely in control of and the other one you are surrendering almost all control. Food for thought, it's not necessarily advice. You don't even have that option though if you don't give yourself that buffer.

So head up and out, keep an eye, at least a pulse of what's going on in the world around you. And then think of your vehicle as a tactical maneuvering device. What you need for it to be able to do so is space. So I think that in addition to conceal carry and training is going to be the best defense that you possibly have. Never discount the power in just the skinny pedal on the right in getting your yourself out of the potentially shitty situation before it even finishes presenting itself. And that is my advice to you, sir. Question number three.

Longtime listener, first time emailer from Kentucky. I was wondering what your second choice career would have been outside of the military. I grew up mostly on mostly Air Force bases my whole life. Every man in my family has been military through generation. But I was rolled by MEPs, which is the military enlistment processing station, I believe, for having asthma when I tried to either fly or be a PJ. Also in the same year, I ran a marathon, evidently. Went through college and became an engineer, but still struggled to feel like this was my real purpose and have been considering LEL.

Having said that, I'm 25, and I feel as though my time to serve is running out. Well, sir, let me just tell you, at 25, your time to serve, if you're talking about an occupation that requires a heavy physical demand is nowhere near over. You might be a little bit later than some who started in their late teens or early, early 20s, but you have a ton of runway in front of you. No pun intended towards your desire to try to fly and not be able to do so. So don't worry about that. At 25, you're largely still made out of rubber. You actually, I would say as an adult male, your 30s are probably going to be better physically for you than your 20s. So you actually have still a ton of room to progress and get better.

So don't sweat that particular aspect of it. My second career. If I hadn't joined the military, I wouldn't be surprised to tie this back into the first question. I wouldn't be surprised if I would have gone down the construction route and at least attempted to learn the legacy family trade. But I also feel like at some point in time, I probably would have had the same thoughts that you did, where I would want to do something. that to some has a sense of a of a higher purpose or a purpose above self. So I probably would have considered LEO. I probably would have considered fire. I'm not sure in which order. There's, there's few things that I think are less funny than firefighters and law enforcement officers

arguing about who are the actual first responders and who are the second responders. It's hilarious to me. I have an immense amount of respect for both, always have, for my entire life. So I think that would have been a potential option. Academia was not going to be a route for me, or it wasn't, at least, in my late teen. So maybe later on life, I would have pursued something a little bit more neck up. But I don't know necessarily what that would have been. I remember when I was very young talking about wanting to become an oceanographer. And I remember when I was talking about that, I was young enough to not even know what an oceanographer was.

but I've always enjoyed the ocean until I was tortured with it for nearly two decades, so now it can fuck right off. But had I not been tortured with it for almost two decades, perhaps I would have enjoyed that occupation. Probably would have needed to know a little bit more about it. But those are the routes that I would have gone. What I'll tell you is this. You know, LEO, this is a common question, and so I'll just touch on it briefly. Service doesn't have to be something that is first responder. LEO, firefighter, whatever it may be, emergency call center, operator, ambulance, EMT, film the bike.

It doesn't have to be all of those things. There's an opportunity to serve whoever you are, wherever you're at in life. And that starts with, let's make sure you're a good human being. Then let's make sure if you are a part of a family or you have kids, that you are the best expression of yourself possible. So you're serving your community by making sure you're not raising dips. shit kids, right, that have the, your kids have good moral values, they have integrity, and they're trying to make the world around them better to the best of their understanding. Obviously, that will, you know, at 13, they're consumed by other things, not necessarily making the world around

them better, but they can still make good choices based off your example. You could be, I mean, you could be a sport coach. You could be a mentor. You could get involved in a variety of activities in your community that could all make the world that is when you drop a, you know, a drop of water in your personal bucket, those first ripples that they actually directly touch. So don't limit yourself to just fire police first responder. Not everybody's going to be able to do that. And that's okay. Not everybody should be able to do that. There's a variety of glass ceilings that people are going to hit in their life, whether it be hand-eye coordination, whether it be intelligence. Sorry people. Some people are too dumb to do some jobs. And when I say that, I'm talking about myself. The odds of me

ever being an astronaut are precisely and exactly zero because I'm a dirp durp sometimes right I have a glass ceiling that doesn't mean though your glass ceilinged out with your ability to make it impact on the world around you so always keep looking for that and again don't sweat being 25 man you got so much runway in front of you you got plenty of time last question I am a contract engineer at a test facility for the government we test engines and overall it is a great environment. We regularly test meaningful projects that drive for technology and I'm proud to be a

part of the test team. All of our engineers sit in our test facility and support our talented technicians in a building up for and carrying out tests. Lately our management has decided to move the engineers out of the test facility and into a cubicle farm that lacks anything resembling a good time. The cube farm is about a quarter of a mile from the test facility. This This will make it much more difficult for the engineers to support the technicians and test programs. It will diminish our effectiveness because we are not present. We do not get involved in troubleshooting or get contacted about issues in a timely manner.

Excuse me. My solution to this is going to be to use shared computers in the facility to do basic tasks so that I can be inside the facility and available for the technicians at a moment's notice. This will work for emails and administrative tasks. However, I won't be able to have my engineering laptop in the facility due to secure. concerns. So I will leave that at home and handle design and other tasks that require specific programs only available on my laptop in the evenings. I think this is a reasonable solution for myself, but there aren't enough shared laptops for all of the engineers to take this approach. My question is, how do I effectively communicate to management that I disagree with this

decision and think that it will be a detriment to the effectiveness of our engineering staff, resulting in schedule slip technician frustration and other undesired consequences without being disrespectful to management whom i have found to be generally helpful and responsive well one is awesome that you are finding your management to be helpful and responsive sounds like they have their head and heart in the right place uh before you approach them with your potential solution or your concerns what i would ask of you is to make sure you understand the why of why they made the choice to move you a quarter of a mile away. So maybe just start with a conversation or try to figure out what drove that decision. And I'm not saying that it's going to be a great answer. Maybe it was

completely and utterly logistic based, and it will be to the complete detriment of the execution of the jobs. But knowing that, the reason that they made the decision may help you when it comes to presenting them with possible solutions for the problems you see at presenting. So figure out why they did that first. And then if you have some concerns, I don't think I would, I would communicate to management that you necessarily disagree. I would communicate that you have concerns. And I would base all of those concerns exactly like you did in the email. They're all based in results that will negatively impact performance. They're not based in feelings or frustration. They're based in black and white. These are the things that I see potentially happening

if we do this. Our productivity and effectiveness are going to be going down. Now, I get the cube farm is, you know, it lacks anything resembling a good time. Don't mention that to them. That is the least valuable portion of the email. I get that like intuitively to me, I think what I would like to do least in my life is actually spend time in a suit and tie, not that you guys are. But in a cubicle, it's just for me that I know that's one thing I definitely do not want to do. So I get what you're saying. but you don't need to leave with that. I wouldn't even bring it up. Base your conversation in, this is the potential problems that I see coming from this decision, and these are some potential solutions that I would recommend. So if you're going to take them a problem, make sure you take them a solution as well. Now, does that mean that they're going to do that? Absolutely not.

but it at least allows you to voice your concern and be part of the solution. I almost said be part of the problem. You could be part of the problem. Let's talk about that for a second. How would you become part of the problem by bitching and whining and actually dragging your feet and making these issues worse, which obviously you're not interested in doing because you are sending in this email. But for those of you who are listening, we're like, well, fuck those guys. That's a stupid decision.

I'm going to do the minimum amount now so they can learn their lesson. Well, you've just become part of the problem. If you identify a problem, identify some solutions and present them both at the same time. I can tell you right now from the managerial perspective, those kind of conversations are great. Hey, this is what I see going on, boots on the ground. And these are the things that I think could be a reasonable solution. You present them to your boss. You allow your boss to make the decision.

And then guess what? Let your boss take the credit for it if they want to. Because at the end of the day, what you're trying to do is solve a problem. And that's a tough lesson to learn. But managing relationships is important. And that's what I just gave an example of of letting your boss take all the credit for that. Unless, of course, they flip it around and they give you all the credit, which is actually what they should do if they're a leader. For those of you who work for really, really shitty bosses that are completely overbearing and don't want to allow you to make decisions at all, what you might have to do is what I mentioned.

Present them with solutions and then let them take all of the credit. It's how you're going to manage that relationship. And by letting them do so, and I realize this is not part of the question at all, but it highlights another opportunity to talk about working for a shitty leader. By allowing them to take the credit, what you are going to do, and by not pushing back and by not making a stink about that, is you're actually going to develop a level of trust between the two of you. And they're actually going to be more likely to listen to you.

So you might actually have more impact and influence by allowing them to do so. Trust me, it's a tough lollipop to swallow. I've been there many times. But in the end, if you're playing the long game, that's actually the route to managing up the chain of command as opposed to directly confronting them. Because in a rock paper rank organization, if you are the subordinate challenging your boss, especially in public, stand by. It's not generally going to go well. So that's the approach I would take. And that is all I have for today.

See you all on Monday.