The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Navigating Work’s New Normal: Quiet Quitting and Coffee Badging With Business Psychos Podcasters

Starting point is 00:00:00 You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Wow, that kind of surprised me. She sure came in on that one hard. Welcome to the Big Show, my family and friends. We certainly appreciate you guys here.

Starting point is 00:00:50 As always, the Chris Foss Show loves you. We've been around for 16 years and 2,000 episodes, and I think we're going to quit 16 more years from now. Just hang on for the next 16 years, and I think we're going to quit around year 30 or something. That or when I die. They'll just probably still pop. They're probably just going to stick a mic down into the coffin and just, I don't know, you'll just hear the maggots eating me. I don't know.

Starting point is 00:01:11 That sounds macabre to start a show. Jesus Christ, Chris. Anyway, go to goodreads.com for just Christmas. LinkedIn.com for just Christmas. Christmas is one of the TikTokity and all those crazy places on the internet that the Christmas show is. Today, we have two young, amazing young ladies on the internet the chris faust show is today we have two young amazing young ladies on the show they are the purveyors of this amazing podcast that i i got a great laugh off when i saw the title business psychos podcast that was the second title we were going to use before we settled on the chris faust show we have mary schwab and katie Bickford on the show with us today. We'll be talking to her about their psychotic podcast for business.

Starting point is 00:01:49 Katie and Mary met 15 years ago, meeting at an Insight meditation retreat outside Boston with Dan Brown. She was talking about the Harvard psychologist and Booza scholar, not the Da Vinci code, when they say Don Brown. They were just being in the process of soul-searching, both still deeply entrenched in the mindset of living for work. And over the years, the pair have enjoyed hours of deep chat about personal development, surviving and thriving one's career.

Starting point is 00:02:14 Mary has spent the last three decades building transformative capabilities at a top-tier consultancy. Oliver Wyman and Boston Consulting Group has held executive roles, top 1%, in change management for large financial institutions. Katie has over 20 years of experience in building global revenue teams in high growth tech companies,

Starting point is 00:02:35 achieving $3 billion exits through public listings or private equity acquisitions. She's also the author of Paranama Method, a Guide for Personal Transformation. Welcome to the show, Lise. How are you? Awesome. Happy to be here. Katie, did I get the title of your book right? You got it.

Starting point is 00:02:52 You landed it. There we go. Now we have to ask you, because I've never heard of what a paranama is. Wasn't that a song off the album 1984 by Van Halen? Paranama. Doot, doot, doot, doot, doot. I'm going to have to pay royalties. I think that's probably the more PG-rated misnaming of the method.

Starting point is 00:03:19 It's actually, the term is Paranama, but it's a Sanskrit word. It's an Indian word. And because I'm just saying it in English, I'm saying it's Parinama, but it's a Sanskrit word. It's an Indian word. And because I'm just saying it in English, I'm saying it's Parinama. So anybody who says it any other way is good to go. So can you just give us a quick meaning on it? Because I'm wondering. Yeah. So Parinama, the word itself, it means transformation that's both practical and philosophical, you know, and it's kind of very similar to what our podcast business psychos is about which is about transformation and really

Starting point is 00:03:54 up leveling yourself you know through self-actualization and making you know in our case your career better by doing things that are both introspective, but also things where you actually have to execute them and do things differently. You got to execute differently. That's a fact. It's the same thing. You get the same results. So do we get a.com from you ladies yet?

Starting point is 00:04:18 Yeah, we're at businesspsychos.com. Super easy. So hence the title. I got a good laugh off it. It's very catchy. why why did you choose this title we wanted to bring a little bit of light to a serious subject when you talk about navigating your career and all this good great stuff we the show is really about how to navigate the complexity of work culture and modern life without becoming a psycho. So we like to, I mean, you got to make fun of this stuff.

Starting point is 00:04:48 But we talk about things that we say execs aren't supposed to talk about so that our listeners can make the work game work for them. And we have fun. We make fun of the absurdity of it all. Everyone's very concerned about work. They're reevaluating their relationship to work right now. It's a very serious subject. So psychos brings a little bit of light to it.

Starting point is 00:05:08 Ah, a little bit of, I think, levity. Is that the right word? Yeah. Yeah. Katie, do you want to throw in for any of that on that answer? I think Mary did a great job with explaining that. Yeah, I think that one of the things when we were starting to work on the podcast, people suggested things like, you know, business therapy, and neither of us are therapists.

Starting point is 00:05:31 And so the idea that we want to talk about things that had like a psychological and also talk about business, because ultimately, the purpose of the podcast is to talk to people about how to actually succeed in business, not just the talk track that you hear where people either, you know, taking it way too seriously or in burning out or are, you know, kind of taking, you know, a really negative approach and, you know, kind of torpedoing their professional credibility as a result of that. There's a lot of psychosis and psychoticism.

Starting point is 00:06:11 Are those two different things? I'm not sure. I flunked high school. I flunked second grade. That's a joke. So I haven't used that callback joke in a million years. I flunked second grade. Who the fuck flunks second grade, man?

Starting point is 00:06:22 So you have great content on on here mental health at work breaking the silence and building resilience high performing toxic cultures versus low performing healthy ones that's kind of interesting the pain and power of outgrowing people in places that sounds like my first 10 marriages the perils of overachieving fear validation and burnout ageism in the workplace that's a really big deal for people our age, or my age, I should say. Be yourself. Navigating authenticity in the workplace. You know, I tried that, but I was walking around in my underwear at the office,

Starting point is 00:06:53 and HR called. Conquering toxic shame. Navigating power, control, and empathy in the workplace. Or punching people in the face. No, I just made that one part up. Let's see. Work isn't family. The pitfalls of blurring professional lines. No, I just made that one part up. Let's see. Work isn't family. The pitfalls of blurring professional lines.

Starting point is 00:07:08 Yeah, that's always a problem, especially if you try and mate with someone at work. Real friends or convenient allies. The truth about workplace friendships. Yeah, be careful, folks. Don't do it. Yeah, so you guys got some great content you're putting up. And what do you hope people gain from the podcast what do

Starting point is 00:07:25 you hope they come away with when they listen to it i think the first thing is that they're they're not alone you know the tagline we talk about things that people aren't supposed to talk about there is a game there's a theater to a lot of the corporate work world and when you're young and by the way you said we're of a different generation. We're of the same generation. I've heard you say on the show before, we're Gen X. We're all tracking about the same. And when I was growing up, I don't know about you, but I had this idea, this fantasy of what work was. You'd stay at one company for 30 years. You'd maybe get a watch when you're 40 or 50th year, right?

Starting point is 00:08:01 They don't do that anymore. And I thought, hey, if you work really hard, everyone appreciates what you do. You'll get well paid. You'll get promoted. You'll be taken care of. It all makes sense. And then you start to understand the complexity of it, the politics, the interpersonal dynamics. And you realize that it's not as straightforward as that. And no one really talks about this. It's like a, it's a little bit of that wizard of Oz. Don't look behind the curtain. All right, if you scratch at the veneer too much, some of it starts to come away.

Starting point is 00:08:33 Certainly your boss isn't gonna tell you that it's all a game. They're not gonna tell you don't work hard. It's actually more of who you know. So we do wanna have an honest conversation about how to navigate all of these things this isn't a hey burn the place down companies are bad and that's that's not what we're doing here it's just you know your trusted mentors who've been through this who've walked through these

Starting point is 00:08:56 paths before giving you a little bit of the tea to tell you about how things really work how to take care of yourself and how to play the game so that you can get what you want out of it. Because I think something happens along the way where you forget why you're even working. What are you doing it for? What's the greater purpose? Why am I here? Yeah. It's always that fun part. You know, tell us a little bit about yourself. So you guys ever done a podcast before? Give us a little bit of history of how you navigated the business world. You know, what gives you the acumen in your experience of business to talk about these things, of course. And kind of maybe what motivated you to grow up, become entrepreneurs and influence there.

Starting point is 00:09:36 I'll give each of you a shot at that. I'll start. I grew up in northern New Jersey. I come from a blue-collar family, you know, raised by my dad. Smart guy, entrepreneur. He was a mechanic and fireman by trade. And he was of a different generation. You know, we call him the boomer now, which I hate even using that word because it's so pejorative. Okay, boomer. Yeah, exactly. But he was a boomer and he grew up in a different time. He had a challenging life and money grew up in a different time.

Starting point is 00:10:08 He had a challenging life and money problems and all that good stuff. And I would probably guess he did not have a family where there was a lot of healthy communication going on. Oh, it's overrated anyway. Yeah. I mean, it's better to have trauma. It toughens the soul, right? It makes you a better character. So, you know, as a result, you know, I did not have you know open communication with my dad but from the time i was a teenager until probably my early 30s i'd go to his house on a

Starting point is 00:10:34 saturday morning and we just sit at the table drink coffee and we just talk and every once in a while like a little emotional exchange would would sneak, in between politics and community gossip and all that. And so I think the podcast for me, I mean, I love the intellectual side of things. I certainly love talking. And Katie and I have been friends for a while and we love to talk. But I think there's something that scratches a different emotional intimacy itch there that goes back to my relationship with my dad. And frankly, I just find that, I don't know, you talk about it on the show, Chris, about stories. So I think there's something about people sitting down and talking to one

Starting point is 00:11:15 another that just makes you feel very alive. It makes you feel really present and kind of a part of something bigger. And I think podcasts are awesome for it. Definitely. And if I could jump in on that, you know, you've obviously heard me say stories are the owner's manual to life or what we think. And people are the sum of all their stories. There's another quote that I have that's about that. And they're so important.

Starting point is 00:11:40 You guys mentioned earlier in the show about how it's important by sharing our stories that we find out we're not alone. You know, it's really easy to get isolated and depressed and, you know, why is this happening to me? And it feels like the whole world or universe is, you know, beaming some sort of crisis down onto you. And you're just like, you know, why does the world hate me today? But, you know, so many of us, the human experience, we share it. And it's that sharing that really helps. I mean, it's an old story. I haven't regurgitated in a while.

Starting point is 00:12:13 But years ago, I think 2014, when my dog passed, it was an immediate shock. And I wrote this huge long post about what I was going through that night. And, and just the, it was my first, basically my first dog and, and basically my child, since I'm a single guy and my dogs are my kids, you know, I can't afford kids.

Starting point is 00:12:34 I can't afford all the divorces. So I skipped that too. I'm still saving up a few million. I'm up to about $3 million and I'm just waiting to meet the right woman so I can get my first divorce facilitated. Anyway, that's a joke. Marriage jokes on the Chris Foss show. But basically, basically, I sat there for half an hour looking at this post going, this thing is so selfish. Me, me, me, me, me. Oh, pose me. My dog passed away uh and this just seems like the most selfish post i could ever make and it's also very personal which i didn't really want to share at the time i've probably become

Starting point is 00:13:14 more personal authentic now since then when i saw the magic of it and i remember i was passing out and i was just like fuck it i just hit press and I went to bed and it was one of the most magical things I ever did because of how much it helped and reached other people and the next morning I woke up to people calling me and people crying and people in the comment section going wow I never knew I never got closure with my dog passing I never got closure with my dog passing. I never got closure with my father or family passing. I never dealt with some of the emotional issues of death and stuff. And you just pouring out your soul and opening your chest and letting it all bleed out in text,

Starting point is 00:13:58 you know, moved me to a point to help me facilitate those things. And it helps so many people. Years later, people still, hey, you remember that that post you did that really helped recently when whatever happened and i just realized how far reaching it was and how helpful it was other people when for me it seemed like a very selfish moment so that's the beauty of what we do and when i meet people that they're like i'm not going to write a book and share my story oh No one wants to hear my grievances or whatever. But no, this is the owner's manual life. This is by hearing other people's stories, you can learn how they got through their cathartic times and survived.

Starting point is 00:14:34 And so they can give you a roadmap out, a blueprint out. Katie, want to jump in here with your thoughts? Yeah. First of all, thank you for sharing that, Chris. That's really beautiful. I think that one of the things with our podcast, where we go into really deep stories that involve being humiliated and coming back from it, doing stupid things. I mean, there's one story and I think statute of limitations now applies where I was a pharmaceutical rep for a large company and I reached into my supply and started taking my own

Starting point is 00:15:10 drugs. But I think that to me, one of the things about the podcast is there was never really a reason for me personally to do one until this really became clear. And I think one of the biggest things is that right now, professional life is going through this huge change and there's so much anxiety around it because of all of the layoffs. And there's also a lot of stuff with social media where I think people feel really guilty about having professional jobs where they feel like somehow they're missing out on life and they're doing everything wrong. So there's a lot of shame where they're looking at trust fund people who have

Starting point is 00:15:46 goat farms and, you know, people, all this, you know, like people, yeah, fuck those people that like people are like knit for a living and it's,

Starting point is 00:15:53 it's not for a lit, it's not a livelihood, but they see it. And I think what it does is it just really doubles down on the sense of, I work at this corporate job. You know, I'm such a loser when if it's reframed, where we're looking at working in corporate and professional jobs as a chance to have access to capital, and it's makes money. And then if we look at that as a chance to

Starting point is 00:16:16 think about, okay, what do I want to do with that money? So instead of just doing, you know, consumerism, and just trying to buy a bunch of crap, it's okay, let's reevaluate our lives about what we want to build on our terms. So a lot of what we're talking about in the podcast is for me and my background, I'm kind of the wild card of the two of us where I've lived in Bali and India and done all sorts of this crazy stuff in addition to doing, building companies and stuff. But I'm, it's, and I actually want to come back and be like, look, eat, pray, love, like eventually you have to come back to your life. And, and I know there's like

Starting point is 00:16:55 this whole thing where it's just go out and live your best life, but there really is a practical life you have to come back to and being able to make the most out of a professional career so that you can live the life that you ultimately want that aligns with your values. It just, I think there's a really important place right now to be talking about this. Definitely. You know, right now, COVID really changed a lot of the game. I mean, it did change the game. I've got COVID right now. So thanks COVID four and a half years later for the first time the people like he's not going to survive the episode 2001 but you know people really question stuff i mean i i had a cathartic moment of losing hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and it's being shut down that

Starting point is 00:17:37 we go out and do interviews on and you know i i sat down and said, I can lose the two last members of my family that are standing and they can be gone tomorrow. Who gives a fuck about cars and careers and money? And I mean, it's important, but, you know, it just really hyper-focused, you know, even my guy friends. We started saying, I love you, man, when we would hang up after talking because you never knew if you're going to see anybody again. Chris, I was down in New York City where it was sort of ground zero when COVID hit. And I was actually living down by ground zero itself. And we would hear sirens day and night for weeks. And like a mile up the road, side highway they had like by the convention

Starting point is 00:18:25 center was like a mobile morgue unit like they were scary freaking times like we forget it's been like what four and a half years yeah but like it was just profoundly disturbing and a lot of us and we're lucky that we could there were many people who couldn't work during that but we we were lucky but it was also very surreal to be on a conference call talking about performance reviews and then be like googling whether i need to wash my groceries you know is this like really this like dissonance of is this like how am i continuing with this and and also is this social experiment because all of a sudden we're not seeing each other we're not commuting no dinners or concerts but we're not spending money too

Starting point is 00:19:06 was the was the not being able to see people like yeah i we always took it for granted and i like really missed it i go out all the time now just to just to enjoy it because you know who knows when the next thing's gonna that's kind of it brought a real fragility. It made me look at my life. I don't know if I've talked about this on the show. I might have, but it made me realize that I was in the last third or fourth quarter of my life. And most people don't realize that midlife isn't 50. Midlife is 37 with people's life expectancy. And if you're over 37, that might shock you, but it's true.

Starting point is 00:19:53 And I looked at when my dad passed and I realized that I'm, I'm in the third or fourth quarter of my life. And many people that are probably Gen X are, are there. And that's assuming that you get a full run, you know, you'll get hit by a bus tomorrow. God forbidding, forbidding shit. And if you're listening to this podcast, don't get out in front of the buses, please. This week, maybe next week. Anyway, we don't lose readerships. But, you know, I realized how important it was.

Starting point is 00:20:15 But the same thing transcended into business where people were like, started questioning what they were doing. Do I love what I do? Why should I do this if I don't love what I do? Why not go pursue my passion and start my own thing instead of working for the man? And a lot of people, I forget the term they had, but a lot of people switch companies and they kind of started really questioning with their passions and what they wanted to do. There are a lot of great books written during that time during COVID too. I kind of miss it for the books that we had on the show, but people started questioning, you know, the who, why, where,

Starting point is 00:20:53 what, and what am I doing? And, you know, kind of waking up from the sleep of, you know, doing the same thing over and over the hamster wheel. And it really changed things. You know, I mean, they still can't get people back in the office on clawing them back from remote work you know you guys are talking about this as you're doing this on your podcast because you're flushing this out in kind of this new sort of environment that we work in where you have remote hybrid and then you have the complications of that as such if you want to get into that yeah we just did an episode on quiet quitting, which is like this new term where you just kind of show up and go through the motions or even don't go through the motions. We've received a letter from someone in the audience that was almost kind of like feeling guilty a little bit. I think he sounded like someone in finance, I think.

Starting point is 00:21:42 I don't remember. But he had like an advanced degree and he's not lazy, but this is what I'm doing. I check in. So I badge in. So the company thinks I'm in the office and then I get coffee and then I leave an hour later. And I go home and I watch Netflix and I take a nap and I go to the gym. And should I be feeling guilty about this? Like he's getting good performance reviews and it's an interesting new normal,

Starting point is 00:22:09 as you say, along with the work from home and not working from home debate, which is really, it's not going away. I think so much of COVID, as you were saying, made us reevaluate things that even at a minimum, commuting an hour and a half, two hours every day, and then spending money on that and dry cleaning, and in some cases, taxes, people are like, what am I doing? Even if I'm not totally changing my job, this is crazy what I put myself through.

Starting point is 00:22:38 And once that genie's out of the box, and you know that you can work from home, it's really hard to get it back in there. The quiet quitting, certainly we talked about it on the last show, is it just feels like almost a sick day that's not going away. It feels like a spirit sick day, you know? I like that. I was joking around with Katie

Starting point is 00:22:56 that whenever I'm sick, I watch Harry Potter. I just binge the Harry Potter movies. That's like my little self-soothing thing. And I have to admit like when i first heard about quiet quitting because i am gen x and because i was you know massively independent and making my own lunch in first grade and you know all this kind of stuff right now i'm about to say get off my lawn get off my lawn you kids you kids oh my god when did that happen when did prince become the oldies

Starting point is 00:23:26 channel? So, I have a little bit of bias, right? I'm aware of this bias I have. This kind of resentment that, hey, I did this. Why are you kids not doing this? This isn't fair. But there is something to be said around jobs where you're making

Starting point is 00:23:41 Excel PowerPoints, Excel and PowerPoints that no one sees, that no one cares about, that doesn't mean anything. Day after day, and you're making Excel PowerPoints, Excels and PowerPoints that no one sees, that no one cares about, that doesn't mean anything, day after day, and you're dealing with all this interpersonal politics and this grind. And by the way, at any moment,

Starting point is 00:23:54 you could be reordered or laid off, at any moment, right? Because the US is a higher fire at will country, very few social guardrails, and everyone's just grinding and we're tired and sick. And I think quiet quitting is a bit of a protest in a way. And I think it's just people are tired.

Starting point is 00:24:13 I don't know, Katie, you have a view. Yeah, I think that one of the things about quiet quitting is really similar to anybody who's worked at a job where you're just kind of treading water. It's not that challenging and you're not getting that much out of it is how exhausting it is. And it's not really winning because you're trading your life. It's your life that you're trading to just kind of like, you know, you're sort of just to collect a wage. And also there's this aspect of deception that you have to really navigate. And I know that, you know, Mary, we've talked about this, that people, nobody feels like they're winning at life when they're quiet quitting. I mean, and maybe there are a few, I don't know any of them. And, you know, to the

Starting point is 00:24:54 point of, you know, return to work, Amazon just announced the, you know, five day work week back in the office. And I was just talking with a, you an HR professional and they were saying look it's now part of the negotiation and it's part of you knowing what your market value is because you can push for how for the arrangement that you want and if you're somebody who has to actually take the actual bare minimum that's going to be something but. But it's like that's now going to be part of negotiating offers is not only compensation and benefits, but also it's what is your in-office arrangement. Yeah. In fact, I just heard of this yesterday. I was on TikTok. I know that's surprising to people, but I spend hours on there. Me too. Especially when I have COVID, I just lay

Starting point is 00:25:43 in the field position. And So it's very helpful in surviving COVID. But I guess this came out around July of this year, 2024. But Amazon has been cracking down on employees who come in the office, they get coffee and they leave. And they call the term

Starting point is 00:26:00 coffee badging. Yeah. I think I just gave you a new episode. Yeah. And so basically, you know, episode yeah and so basically you know they check in so when they use the door the door security card they know you know amazon goes okay they showed up at the office and then they grab their coffee and they leave so amazon doesn't know they left because you don't have to swipe your card to leave. Maybe they should change that. But I think that would be against fire code. And so they called it coffee badging. I was just like, my God, another term on top of quiet cutting.

Starting point is 00:26:34 And it's designed to circumvent their RTO, return to office policy. It's just a term show at this point, folks, which requires five days a week and you know basically I guess what Amazon has done is they're now tracking the hours they spend in the office and they're putting cameras and sensors I suppose to make sure they're wandering around and on their desks and we've had lots of authors on the show and researchers and professors who've written books that describe the do's and don'ts or what their opinion is because everyone seems to have a different one of what people should do yeah it's become really interesting how they're tracking employees it's like a cat and mouse game now right and i i know

Starting point is 00:27:14 someone personally in my network at their company they had this administrative assistant ring of deception where all the ea's would take turns going into the office and they would exchange their badges. And then one EA would take three or four badges, you know, tag all the other people in and then they don't, you're Wednesday, I'm Thursday. And then they cracked down and fired everybody. Oh, really? Wow. Yeah. And in another company, there's something, have you heard of mouse jigglers before? Now keep it PG. yeah yeah my brain's my brain skipped a beat there yeah yeah but yeah it's the yeah go ahead it's a little device because you know many companies they have monitoring software that runs behind so they can see how how many hours you're spending in word or or online and and so there's a tool apparently you can connect to your mouse that you can open

Starting point is 00:28:02 up a word document you you know, and it, you know, put some some letters in there, and then the mouse will continue to move, which is supposed to trick this surveillance software. And of course, they can tell that you're not really working. And so that deception will also get you fired. And so you see these things pop pop up on LinkedIn all the time. But it doesn't feel like we're talking about kind of like the root cause of the sentiment. We're not talking about, we're just focusing on this, this game and chip. And you just think everyone's spending a lot of time, like no one's doing the work. We're not talking about the work. We're not talking about what a company produces. It's now this dynamic, this, you know, are we engaging employees or are they, are they coming into the

Starting point is 00:28:41 office? Like we're, yeah, we're, we're kind of going down a rabbit hole on it. And I think it's, I don't know. I think hopefully it will end somewhere where we're going to talk a little bit more about having meaning about your work, which I think is kind of closer to the root cause of mouse jigglers and badging. When I heard it on TikTok, they called it coffee badgering. And I was like, what? But the term on the proper search is coffee badging leave it to tiktok to embellish anything yeah or people not to you know it's just ham-handed the average citizen trying to do news

Starting point is 00:29:17 over there on tiktok and it looks like there's a pay-to-quit program that amazon has implemented to surrounding it they for one when your employees that are new, it's 2000 severance package in the fourth year, it's up to 5,000. So this is ironic. Once again, the term show, we'll call this the program's tagline tagline is called,

Starting point is 00:29:38 please don't take this offer. Isn't that ironic? Wow. Yeah. But I, it seems like like what what employers are doing now i think i was reading recently the bank of america is now offering 25 an hour for the the unpopular jobs which are basically the grunt work work at the office jobs so they're actually starting to pay a premium to the people that are coming in. And then it seems like HR is trying to weed out people and get new people in and tie them back into working in the office.

Starting point is 00:30:12 So who knew you had to remake contracts for that? But welcome to 2024. You remember after COVID, it was especially in finance where I worked. Finance had never been particularly work from home friendly. Like, you know, everyone likes its open floor plan. Everyone likes to see each other. And then of course the pandemic sent everyone home and then everyone was like, this is great. And then it was like, okay, it's safe now. Everybody come back and everyone went, that's okay. No, no, no, no, no. We mean it now. And

Starting point is 00:30:40 at first it was a little more carrot than stick it was like we're gonna have you know pizza and bagels it's gonna be great oh yeah pizza parties and and they were just trying to get everybody back in and then you'd see on linkedin you know it's just it's kind of it's it's kind of makes me roll my eyes but pictures like hashtag better together hashtag in the office you know connected and all this stuff and everyone's smiling and everyone's like, nope, we're good. Never mind. We're good. And then finally, it's like, no, no, no, we mean it now.

Starting point is 00:31:10 And so there was like this two years after the return to the office where there's like a staring contest. And then finally it became, okay, now we mean it. And then, you know, kind of calling the bluff, there was a consequence model. And the consequence model is you get fired, you know, or you're not gonna get promoted or something like that. And now I think most places are moving back to five days a week, certainly the banks are moving back to five days a week, and now tech. And so there's really nowhere to go, because I felt like in the beginning, it was going to be a, you know, the smart company was

Starting point is 00:31:42 going to offer everyone work from home and get all the best and brightest people. And it didn't happen. Everyone locked arms. All the CEOs locked arms and said, no, this is what we're doing. I do. I have read, though, that the companies are still embracing remote. And sometimes it's because they can. You know, they just have the setup and operations like software and stuff.

Starting point is 00:32:01 They are doing pretty good with with hiring and getting and getting those people put together is what i'm reading the you know it's just it's just it's interesting thing so there's so many different things in the new dynamic of remote there's so many different things that were a problem in business before with your guys's podcast we should get a plug in for the name as long as we're referencing it plug plug away the business psychos podcast as it were you guys have plenty of material you could probably do 10 000 episodes plus with that because there's so many different issues sexual harassment of course di stuff in the in the workplace you know who broke the copier that sort of thing who broke the copier i think that's like a five-episode series, Chris.

Starting point is 00:32:48 Who left the copy of their butt in the copier tray, dispenser tray? Those are the simple times. Those are clearly a butt. That's the reason to go into the office is that kind of chaos. People forget about the joy of that kind of ridiculousness. That's what I miss from the thing. I mean, it really, when it comes down to it, you know, I work, I work from home since 2004. I was doing remote work all this time.

Starting point is 00:33:13 And when everybody started doing, I'm like, Hey, what, what the hell? I've been here forever. You guys are acting like this is new. And I was kind of aware that they were going to have issues. What are some of the other things you guys have talked about so far on the show and some of the episodes? Let's tease out some of the episodes. What are some of the things you guys discussed so far that maybe surprised you or some great episodes that you were like, wow, that was kind of wild? And we've talked about the quiet quitting, I think, a little bit.

Starting point is 00:33:38 Yeah, I think shame. You mentioned we did a shame episode. That's sort of a little bit left of center for things that you'd see on on LinkedIn and traditional business podcasts. Certainly some cultures shame is a big driver. It's a big motivator on how you succeed, how you manage other people. We did a really interesting story about, you know, being on a conference call with somebody and your boss, just, just humiliating you in front of everybody on the conference call. And certainly, I think, maybe back in the day, you know, in the 80s, and even the early 90s, this kind of behavior was normal. I mean, you look at Mad Men and some like succession and some traditional businesses,

Starting point is 00:34:21 you can't, I mean, it's a good thing. You can't get away with that so much everywhere now, but it's almost like we're still mid-change and you have a lot of different generations in the workforce at one time. So you have people who used to work in an environment where some of this behavior was completely appropriate. And then you have, let's say, Gen Z coming in where they're, you know're finding that very antagonistic, very threatening behavior. And you have a lot of complexity in how you run a business when you have people who are just experiencing those different norms very, very differently. Yeah. And they look at things differently, the Gen Z and the millennials and stuff than us Gen Xs because we were the greatest generation ever.

Starting point is 00:35:05 So shaming is bad then? Shaming is bad. You don't learn when you're shamed. Your brain shuts down when you experience shame. It's not great for learning. It's not great for trust, for teaming, for innovation, for creativity. Shame is not a great motivator. It's not a tool to run your business.

Starting point is 00:35:23 It's not a leadership skill for sure. Damn it. Note to self. You got to watch the podcast. You got to watch the podcast. Note to self. Note to self. I have COVID.

Starting point is 00:35:34 Note to self. Stop shaming people in the office. All right. Maybe I'll do that. Maybe I won't. Yeah, and you don't need a harassment suit either, right? So from a risk perspective, the environment's a little bit different now where you need to be careful. That's true. I mean, really, shaming is a sport in my office.

Starting point is 00:35:56 So it's a survival sport. It's a survival sport. You may want to do a podcast on that. Yeah, we may need to do an intervention on your office. Yeah, that live intervention. You may want to do a podcast on that. We may need to do an intervention on your office. Yeah, that live intervention. Chris, it sounds like you like the shaming part of it. There was a time.

Starting point is 00:36:15 I think you misunderstood what the shaming topic was actually about. Yeah, I did. You're really leaning in. I'm trying to figure out why it's bad. But once again, there's no HR department at the Chris Foss Show. We fired them they fired themselves you shamed them you shamed them out of the out of the building we said we're over this dei stuff you've gotten too far you know there's there's but there's an endless amount of topics between leadership and business workplace ethics workplace morals shaming the there's always

Starting point is 00:36:42 the sexual harassment stuff that's always great i remember we got our first sexual harassment complaint in our company against two employees or one employee to the other and it was two guys i never expected that to be a thing i was expected it would be a female and a male but you know hey the adventures of business are just endless. Yeah. And you mentioned ageism before. Certainly, the statistics show that the folks in the boomer generation who are still working, they're putting off retirement for whatever reason, probably for- Because they don't have any money for 2008. Yeah. And our generation, the older side of X is they're starting to approach retirement age is not ready.

Starting point is 00:37:30 And what you have is a lot of pressure at the top of the pyramid as the younger generations are coming up. So unfortunately, a lot of folks over 45 are not getting callbacks for interviews. Recruiters are filtering out people of a certain age. There's a lot of analysis around perceptions that people of a certain age don't want to learn, they are adverse to technology. And we're not done working yet, right? It brings up a lot of difficulty for especially as you have like reorgs and layoff patterns happening, where people lose a spot at a company and you can't get back in now you're now you're completely unprotected. So there's a lot of people

Starting point is 00:38:05 I know who are trying to figure out how to rebrand themselves. So even taking, you know, you take dates off your resume. You don't put what date you graduated high school or college. You don't want to age yourself. It used to be customary that you'd say, oh, I've got X decades of experience. Now you don't want to say that. That's not good now. Now you don't want to do that. And it's true. Like I have a bunch. I don't have that problem since no one will hire me and I completely do not work well with others. And I've been that way since 18. So it's really gotten bad. I've just gotten worse over time. That's the other reason we don't have

Starting point is 00:38:39 an HR department too. And there's the shaming competition. Shaming is almost like an Olympics here at the Chris Foss show. It actually, we award a gold medal yearly as Duke and shame the hardest and make people,

Starting point is 00:38:53 you know, whatever. You're not kidding, are you? Maybe. Maybe not. But we do have nets outside the windows

Starting point is 00:39:00 like Foxconn of Apple. So, just to make sure people don't get too depressed and jump. We can't have that. We need to stay alive because we need to shame them more. Can you tell it's really a thing here?

Starting point is 00:39:10 Anyway, it's a bit people calm down. Don't write me. But I segue too many times and now I'm lost and I've got COVID brain. This has been very insightful guys. I'm looking forward to the future episodes of your show and finding out what's going on. You know, maybe you guys can flesh out that shaming some more or whatever other topics we've talked.

Starting point is 00:39:29 I think another topic you guys could have, I could probably make endless bits on this, but another topic you guys should do is if we were allowed not to wear pants at home and do Zoom calls in our underwear, why is it we can't do that at work?

Starting point is 00:39:44 I think this is unfair i think this is discrimination you're asking all the right questions yeah and we should be able to walk around in a robe at all at the office and be comfortable you know people have those timeout rooms at the office you know what i mean they have their little they have little whatever timeout rooms in silicon valley where they can some people have nap rooms and stuff. If we're going to have nap rooms, we should be able to walk around in underwear. Come on, man. I mean, I don't have to shower.

Starting point is 00:40:13 Let things breathe a little bit. Three or four days, let things breathe a bit in an open environment. Office space, what could go wrong? Yeah. Hey, Bob, when was the last time you showered i don't know man i've been day drinking and working and stuff and day drinking the office needs to make a comeback too although in silver gun valley that never left i think there's plenty of day drinking and gummy ingesting in the offices these days that's probably another episode

Starting point is 00:40:38 they're microdosing in the in the in the I'm not going to say anything about what's on my desk right now. Are you feeling very attacked by us right now? I am. I'm feeling assaulted. First year after me for shaming. And you're shaming me for shaming. I want to call you out on that, by the way. You're shaming me for shaming.

Starting point is 00:40:57 That's the tactic I use when HR calls. I'm like, are you shaming me? And they're like, no, you have a problem. And I'm like, I feel like this is a microaggression who can I talk to about this and like us and I'm like yeah but you guys are the problem so I need an HR

Starting point is 00:41:14 department that oversees HR so anyway this is why I can't work with other people and I'm not allowed to there's actually a judge who says I can't do it next week though I get one of my six ankle bracelets off And I'm not allowed to. There's actually a judge who says I can't do it. Next week, though, I get one of my six ankle bracelets off. So, ladies, it's been wonderful.

Starting point is 00:41:34 Give us the final pitch out for people to subscribe to your show. Check it out. I'll give you both a shot at that. Yeah, we're at businesspsychos.com. You'll find links to all the places you can hear and watch us and get in touch with us. We're also on Insta, Facebook, and YouTube at Business Psychos Pod. And if you like LinkedIn, we're over there too on Business Psychos Podcast. Katie?

Starting point is 00:42:01 Yeah, I'd also add in, we have just added a hotline for listener comments, questions, and we just... Psychos, yeah. And so we are inviting our listeners we actually just spliced in our first voicemail in an episode to share their comments stories and even show ideas like ideas for topics that's that's driven a lot of what we've brought to the table is, you know, what are people wanting us to discuss? And so please, we ask our listeners and new listeners, hopefully, that will come along to just keep the feedback coming. We love it. It sounds like a lot of fun. Psychos, you guys, are you going to be like, you know how there's the Swifties of Taylor Swift?

Starting point is 00:42:44 Yeah. I actually do refer them to psychos. Our outros are all about you talking directly to our psychos. Your audience members are these psychos. I think there's a few other people who make music and stuff. They have their terms for their fans and stuff like that. Our fans are just called unemployed and homeless. No, we love you guys out there.

Starting point is 00:43:04 Get jobs, really seriously. But thanks, Mary and Katie, for being on out there. Good jobs, really. But thanks, Mary and Katie, for being on the show. We really appreciate it. Awesome. Had a great time. Thank you. Very much fun. It was great to have the psychos on the show. On a show run by a psycho. Complete psycho. After 16 years, I can't take this anymore.

Starting point is 00:43:20 At least the COVID part. Thanks for tuning in, everyone. We certainly appreciate it. Go to Goodreads.com for Jess Chris FrispFast, LinkedIn.com, FortressCrispFast, CrispFast, one of the TikTokity, and all those crazy-ass places on the Internet. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time.

The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Navigating Work’s New Normal: Quiet Quitting and Coffee Badging With Business Psychos Podcasters

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