222. Ask old people! Answering Reddit’s funniest nostalgia questions - Summer Sessions Episode 3

0:06Hello and welcome to Truth, Lies and Work, the award winning podcast where behavioural science meets workplace culture we are brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the audio destination for business professionals my name is leanne i'm a chartered occupational psychologist my name is al i'm a business owner and together we usually help you simplify the science of work but as it's summer we're doing things a little bit differently yeah if you listen to the last few episodes you'll know that we tend to do them on our terrace uh with uh perhaps an adult beverage um and much more relaxed and we try not to talk about stuff which makes you think too hard so just a bit more silly i mean we're never really the most serious of podcasters are we no but if you're listening to this lying on a sun lounger in the glorious bulgarian sunshine um then one hi look us up we're very near yeah we're in bulgaria but also yeah um on one hand do you really want to be listening to a podcast on your holidays on the other hand i'm sure you've actually specifically tuned in because you know that this is the podcast you do want to listen to yes when you're on your holidays and uh those of you who are astute enough to realize perhaps old enough to realize that the theme tune was slightly different today because this is the um it is 30 years ago aol would do something called dial-up internet uh kids won't know this but uh you'd be like mom get off the phone i'm on the internet they used to that's what we used to happen um and that was what you used to hear whenever you dialed up so um it went away this week so they closed it down and so there's no more dial-up in the US.

1:32I'm not sure it's done. It may still be in the UK and other places, but not in the US. I don't know, but I will miss that. Dong, da dong. Welcome to AOL. I remember that. The first email internet we had was AOL. So we thought, as it's making us feel a little bit old, we'll run with it. So I came across a subreddit called Ask Old People, and some of the questions were brilliant. So I've picked some at random. Al's going to, and Al and I are going to answer them. After this very short break, we'll see you in a second. The dirty little secret is that most businesses think they know their customers.

2:08They have the data, the records, the history, but it's scattered across three teams and four systems. And in our case, it's about 216 ,000 spreadsheets, which means nobody can actually use it. What you should be doing is using HubSpot because why? HubSpot connects it all. Every interaction, every support ticket, every conversation into one platform every team can work from. So when sales talk to a customer, marketing already narrows the full story. And when you know more, you grow more. Nice. Check out HubSpot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses.

2:45Okay, so if you are maybe our age, we're in our 40s. Yeah, Leanne's 40, I'm 47. Yeah, 47. And we don't think, we don't feel particularly old. No. equally we're very aware to our gen z workforce colleagues we're really freaking old we're ancient we're dinosaurs i think as well because of the age we are we do remember but probably more than than younger millennials i'm still classed as a millennial but more so than younger millennials i remember what life was like pre-computers pre-internet um and because of that I do feel a bit old. Yeah, exactly. I went to, I graduated school in 1993, which is before most, before most, in fact, before any Gen Z was born.

3:30Yeah. Yeah, a long time before. So, yeah, so we have, so we thought we'd just go through, and was it a subreddit you found? Subreddit called Ask Old People, and there's some brilliant ones on there. I tried to pick the ones that are somewhat work-related, or just interesting, maybe more, yeah reflections on life and some are just a bit silly so i've got 19 al i've numbered them one to 19 do you want to pick a number yep we will choose number 11 number 11 you know you're not allowed in bingo to say the say legs 11 and you know that kind of thing anymore that's what they do anyway sorry carry on number 11 what's something a young person can do to instantly earn your respect oh i know exactly what this is if they ask an interesting question and shut up and listen to it listen to the answer i think that there's so many the problem the problem with young people these days is but i think that a lot of people because they've grown up have access to all of the information they don't really value information and i think there's a huge difference between information as in stuff that chat gpt can give you and wisdom which is someone who has actually yeah who's actually lived it and usually messed it up um so yeah that's that's mine what have you got one i was i was thinking something similar like curiosity genuine curiosity um and yeah ask yeah exactly that asking questions and actually wanting to to hear the answer and i think that as well particularly as you get older you want to still feel relevant so particularly to a younger person to ask you a question they genuinely want the answer to um and you know what people in general i respect people who are curious and also i think if you if you are genuinely asking don't do this don't pretend to be curious because we'll we'll see through that we're twice your age sonny we we'll see through that but if someone does ask a question and they're genuinely curious then one that makes us feel good that we are still relevant but two it also shows that they're interested in learning about the i about the wisdom behind something about how things have evolved because like we say with chat gpt now i feel like you almost get diet coke information from chat gpt and you don't really get the whole like okay well this is the answer but this is why the answer is the answer and i think that someone who asks that a lot of people say that the future is um like history just repeats itself or whatever and so that's why a lot of historians are very good business people because they've understood that there's really only like six motivating factors in the world or six things that can happen but anyway i'm doing an old person waffle you give me those eyes carry on no i think i think i think that's a nice a nice summary curiosity essentially absolutely so do you pick another number yeah uh six generations in the workplace um i've deleted the actual question you've deleted it i did there was another little things with i think it was something like what do you wish younger generations knew about older generations in the workplace oh that's kind of similar to the last one but i maybe this is just one of those like envious things but i wish that wish that people knew that it was really freaking difficult to get information and data back in the day there used to be a couple like there'd be whole departments whose idea, whose job was just to put together spreadsheets and put together reports of people.

7:01And often you wouldn't have a clue what's going on. You know, dashboards, there's only a relatively new thing in dashboards. So I kind of wish that people knew that it was really pretty hard to make a decision back in the day. And a lot of it had to be on gut instinct. And also probably lots and lots of meetings. But that's a bit of a wishy-washy answer. Have you got better one um i think it would be for any young person who's feeling a bit overwhelmed or unsure is i promise you the vast majority of us have no freaking idea what we're doing yes no idea what we're doing we might have a slightly better idea than you do because you've got 20 years more experience but we really we really don't don't have that much more of an idea and also what I really I think that I was I was I did fall into the trap of in my earlier career particularly as a woman perhaps when I was a kind of starting my career which would have been in the in the noughties is I had this idea that oh people will take me seriously when I'm older they're just not taking me serious now because I'm young and I think that is one I can promise you people do not take you more seriously when you're older they still find ways to to not take you seriously they don't want to but I think it can feed into your sense of I think confidence in your ability and what you can bring so I think it would be to know that as a young person you have so much value to bring to all workplace situations and ignore all the noise around gen zed young millennials and slacking off and blah blah blah um we all have a lot more in common than than you think yeah and the reason why us older people look like we might have got got it together is because we've had 20 years more time to make the same mistakes you're about to and so it's not a question of us knowing more it's a question of us having tried a lot of other things um and they're not worked out yeah do you want to pick a number then i will go with number 13 unlucky uh what's something that happened much more quickly in old age than you were prepared for becoming irrelevant yeah i didn't i don't not sure at what point it seemed to happen overnight that i went from being like fairly cool thing on the pulse knowing what's going on to now feel like there's an entire generation who just thinks i'm cringe like when did that happen sorry you're asking me yeah you I think you're still cool but then I'm old so yeah my mine is switching cost mine is when you know when you're doing a task or you're doing something and then someone comes along and says oh can you just grab me that thing and you go and you find it on your hard drive where you find it wherever and then you go off and you give it back to them and you get back and you go hang on a minute what the hell was I doing and I find it so especially if you're doing something which is relatively complex where you have to hold lots of things in your head, like classic examples, when we're putting together our Thursday episodes, when I'm doing that episode, I have to hold all of the, all, everything the interviewer said in my head so that we know that when we interrupt them back in the studio, it all fits in together.

10:20It's boring, boring, boring. But that is something where if I get interrupted, then I just lose it. And I have to go back to like almost a square one and just go, okay, I'll read through the interview again switching cost maybe it's just me but it's massively massively um it's a big problem for me yeah no I think it is I think just your general energy levels as you get older and I'm not sure whether it's because you've got more aspects of life that require your energy whether it be in terms of your finances or things that going on with family or yeah just general life admin takes up more room than I expected it to when I was young I probably didn't realize how little life admin I had in my early 20s um so I think yeah we're just generally speaking our attention is more split across different areas so find that focus time in work and also I think as well there's much there's a lot more distractions work-wise than there used to be like when I started work I didn't have a mobile phone for work I only had a computer in the office so if for example I was thinking a work problem through at home as you tend to there was no other real distractions it wasn't like your phone was going off or you just had that deep literal space away from work to think something through whereas now as well you've got slack pinging every five minutes and emails pinging all the time and yeah there's lots of things to steal your attention away yeah and i think the they call it asynchronous communication is it i can't remember what does that mean is that is that the one where it's slack yeah yeah so asynchronous communication it's like a both both a blessing and a curse because it means great you could in theory just ignore everyone for eight hours then the end of the day go and answer your messages but then you're going to probably find someone who's who sent you 16 messages going where the hell are you and then they're going to call you and then they're not going to call you if they're millennial or gen z but then they're going to come and find you so yeah it's yeah it kind of was a simpler time it was it was speaking of which there was a question that was similar actually let me find it when we're on the subject yes number 19 were people more relaxed before the 2000s their follow-up was i've heard before that people used to be more relaxed back in the days before the 2000s is that true i'm not sure people were more relaxed necessarily but i think they had clearer boundaries of what was work time and what was relaxation time i think about my dad you know my dad had fairly kind of high high pressure job um that would require him to be on call and things like that he was electrical engineer high voltage substations were his were his world um so you know if there was a weather event then he would be on call and have to go in to make sure that you know manchester still had electricity but that was rare and it was literally like what you call it like an act of god isn't it like a freak weather event whereas when we were on holiday he didn't have a mobile phone he didn't have a laptop there was no way of anyone from the office contacting him unless they want to actually phone the hotel he was staying in or send something via mail which people just wouldn't do no he wouldn't do so for him i think he was he had a very high stress job but had very clear times where it would be work isn't even accessible to me right now i can't even check that email if I wanted to so I think maybe people maybe had a bit more balance a bit more their rest and recovery time was more effective perhaps yeah so during those times that people probably were a bit more relaxed yes and also to a certain extent you were you were limited by capacity because my dad used to bring home paperwork and he had like you know a 1980s old school briefcase which meant that you are literally limited to the amount of stuff you can bring home whereas if you are at home then you you and you're working you likely have got everything on dropbox one drive whatever it's going to be you've got access to everything so in theory someone says can you do this thing for me you can't go well i've not brought it home with me because it's going to be in the cloud you'll be able to access it so it was almost like a capacity thing and i think there was there was a double thing because i think my dad was very stressed and i remember him working saturdays and um at the dining room table and late into the evenings probably same as your dad so maybe maybe they weren't quite as relaxed it was maybe the problem might be that it took longer to do anything because you were doing things in triplica remember my dad having these like um these uh what do you call them carbon like copy things yeah yeah so young kids if you're wondering what cc stands for an email it stands for carbon copy and they used to carbon copy someone in so you just usually used to literally write a memo on on a one piece of paper it would go through a carbon copy into two others and then one would go to the person and then one someone else would go to their secretary or admin assistant and then someone would go into the file or something so anyway blast from the past sorry what was the question again people more relaxed before the 2000s i think probably overall i think yes i think overall yes but in certain periods of time yeah and i think that we all thought that the internet and mobile phones everything was going to make was going to be the answer we all thought ai was going to be the answer because then you'd be like well life's gonna be so much easier i've got someone defer all my tasks to that wouldn't it be so much easier if i could just quickly check something up on on on the company drive you know what were our sales figures last quarter type it into you know into your database it brings you up you didn't have to go down to the records department and go and speak to marjorie who is generally about a 90 year old woman who would be in charge of the records you have to go and do that so you'd think oh it's gonna make things easier but in actual fact no it's kind of done the opposite because there's there's the expectation that it's simple to look up a document so therefore why wouldn't you say to someone oh just favor well i know it's saturday but just look up that document and send it to me yeah absolutely and also the things that are lost in that interaction actual having to walk take a break away from what you were doing really great for for refocus and those micro opportunities to rest and recover having a conversation with marjorie relationships one of the best ways that we can we can build our our sense of connection and well-being and belonging so there's all those little moments that used to be part of everyday working life that are now completely taken away because it's all it's all just behind the computer screen yeah and also you wanted a coffee or a sandwich you went to the coffee shop or the sandwich shop you didn't get on uber eats and get it delivered to your desk so you had like you said you had that micro break all this convenience has basically just given us more opportunity to work yes yes absolutely so talking of work should we have one more before the break yeah what have you got there lee or do you want me to choose a number yeah choose a number uh let's go for number two number two what plan b did you choose after 30 that ended up better than your original plan I think we might both have the same answer here.

17:32What's yours? Podcast. Me too, podcast. Yeah. And I even trace it back to the original travel podcast to a certain extent, because although we weren't doing that for commercial reasons, that sowed the seed of doing 120, 160 episodes and that, that sowed the seed for this one. We've made this one a lot more straightforward to get set up and get started. So yeah, the podcast, I think we won't, well, you tell the story. When we first decided we wanted to do the podcast, what was it going to be? It was a marketing stream. It was a way for us to promote the consultancy we do through our consultancy, Oblong.

18:05And then we got picked up by HubSpot Podcast Network really early on, maybe seven, eight episodes in. And what an amazing opportunity because we were on the accelerator program. We're given access to all these resources and opportunities and funding. So it then became something that wasn't even a plan B. It was just something we did, a marketing play. then actually became plan A because this is a really great way to build something cool and make a living from it as well. So yeah, I guess it was a plan B because with A Sideways Life, which is our first podcast, it wasn't that we ever started that with a view to monetize it because we started it as a way to just record what we were doing, traveling and living abroad.

18:51But I think there was a part of both of us that thought, well, as a brand, it could be something at some point. And still could be. And still could be. So yeah, the podcast. Well, I've got another one actually, which is kind of weird because when I first started my second business, my first business was a load of rubbish, didn't know what I was doing. Second business I started was this give me some beer business I talked about two or three weeks ago where we delivered alcohol to 24 hours. Basically it's Uber, but for alcohol. And this was 2002. And I got it completely wrong and I went bankrupt and I got two houses repossessed.

19:24so my plan a was to turn that business into i wanted one of one give me some beer in every single um town in the uk university town of the uk it was going to franchise it was going to be huge that went the wrong way and then my house got repossessed and then i learned about repossession and then i started a company that helped people who were getting repossessed and we basically bought the house and rented it back to them and that's what really gave us our wealth i suppose and so that was my plan b which turned out to be i think and that was funny enough that was around 30 31 i think that happened so yeah yeah yeah what is it that cliche saying but life's what happens when you're busy making other plans anyway you said something about a break how we need we need to put in our ads so our lovely people at hubspot continue to pay for our life yet so we'll see you in just a few seconds you know the drill did you know that the uk's number one management podcast.

20:20That's us, by the way. That's us, yeah, yeah. And the UK's number one marketing podcast are both on the same podcast network. We actually have a lot in common. We both use behavioural science to help people do better at work. And we both had to wrangle Rory Sutherland on an episode. And two out of three of us are devilishly good looking. And you're not going to say which. Fell, host of Nudge, UK's number one marketing podcast. It's brought to you, we need to do this in threes. The HubSpot Podcast Network. The audio destination. Or business professional. Seamless. Seamless. Tell us about your latest episode, Phil.

20:54We've just done an episode on fake fandom and how New York indie bands are paying agencies to create fake TikTok videos about how much they like their work. And we talk about the behavioural science behind fandom and how that encourages people to enjoy the music and all of that good stuff and do some big things about how this affects the world of politics, business and brands as well. It is. It's such a good show. Of course, you'll hear all the stuff you want to hear about how to grow your business by using behavioral science in your marketing. But there's also just some really interesting episodes that will be right up your street.

21:25Personally, I enjoyed Can Balsamic Vinegar Make Beer Taste Better? It can. And are we all just status-seeking monkeys? I am. Go and listen to Nudge wherever you get your podcasts. But come back. Yeah, come back. Definitely come back because Nudge isn't as good as this, so come back. I'll cut that out. Keep that in.

21:46Okay, welcome back. If you've joined us now, what an odd person you are. Why would you join a podcast halfway through? But just in case you've forgotten, we've got a list of questions from a subreddit called Ask Old People, is it? Ask Old People, yeah. And we're assuming the role of old people, although probably we are as far as the young kids are concerned. Yeah, young to some, old to many others. Yes, we're skibbity toilet. Okay, so I'll choose a number then. How about I go for number 15? Number 15. Oh, no, you just did 15, I think. No, I haven't. Okay. What's 15? Oh, interesting. Similar to what we were talking about before the break, actually.

22:26Do people who go through extreme trauma and loss actually become stronger or more successful? Or is that just something people say to comfort us? Oh, what are your thoughts from a psychological point of view? Obviously, trauma is a very broad term. Extreme trauma can look like a lot of things. And so without dwelling too much on that, the thing to know is we all have a window of tolerance in terms of the type of extent of the trauma and stress that we can manage. And that looks different for everybody. So, for example, I'll tell the story before the break about how I'm going bankrupt. That's a significant trauma.

22:59That could have completely derailed some people and took a very different life trajectory for the next 10 years. For you, it was very traumatic and stressful, but you are able to use it in a way that created opportunity so then it comes down to your individual level of tolerance the actual nature of the trauma and loss in terms of do you become stronger or more successful I mean yeah because resilience is literally defined as kind of your ability to bounce back and if you've been through a trauma or a loss and you've been able to bounce back reflecting on that and the hope it gives you and optimism it gives you going into the future that's all part of what we call psychological capital as is our self-efficacy our ability to or our belief in our abilities all those things can help us become stronger and more successful as a blanket term I think it's problematic isn't it because it can belittle the impact in of the trauma somebody's going through so I think I think yes to an extent people will say that to comfort you but also yeah it can be absolutely true depending on the nature of the trauma how you respond to it significantly within that the support network you have around you to help you respond to that and how you can actually reflect on it in a very very detailed way as we actually talked about when we talked about our when we got kicked out of bosnia episode we went through a very structured process of reflection and reflective learning and thinking is really effective in terms of helping us build our resilience because we start to connect the dots of how we were able to bounce back um but and yeah i don't know what do you think i think there's there's two parts to this i think um we all have adversity we all have challenges um throughout our life and i think there's kind of like the stacking thing where if you get if you've had a really tough year and then you lose your job that is that could be like you said that thing that pushed you over whereas if you've had an all right year and you lose your job might be like well this is devastating but i'll bounce back so there's that the second part of it is i think is where you are in your life and i think that you know the older you get the more you realize you've got less time to recover and this is the one thing which i think i'd love people under the age of 30 to understand i'm sure they do, I'm not being patronizing, but I would like everyone to understand this, is that in the majority case, you've got decades, decades and decades to recover.

25:36So if you make a mistake, and it is a big one, it doesn't matter. Whereas if you're in your 70s, and you better, you know, let's say you invest in something, your entire life savings, and it goes, you haven't got those decades to recover. So I think that part of it is that yes, people are saying it to try and make you feel better of course they are of course they are i 100 believe that every bad thing that happens has got a good thing behind it it's just you might not see that for a year or even two years or even five years you might not see it but i think there's that um but then i'm hopelessly optimistic um and thirdly i think it's down to your stage of life yeah i agree with all that and i one thing i would i would add is that positive mindset is something you can train yourself in is something that you can practice as much as you'd practice something like mindfulness or physical health going for a run it is a muscle that you can strengthen and that's not to that's not to bury the trauma or bury the immersion and cover it with toxic positivity that's ultimately gonna crumble it's understanding that any type of traumatic life event whether it be in in work or outside of work requires processing and if you're processing that in an effective way and reflecting on it in a way that you can consolidate the lessons and and what you want to take forward with you then you will be more likely to be resilient and more likely to overcome future challenges um so yeah if you're interested in anything like that i'd recommend dr audrey tang series of books which I recommend all the time um it's the leader's guide to mindfulness leader's guide to resilience and leader's guide to well-being doesn't have to don't have to be in a leadership position um to to make the most of these books lots of great self-coaching exercise in it that is all about this type of positive psychology and and how to how to build up our psychological capital so check those out yeah just a quick side um if you're wondering what old people did back in the day then they did what i did which i bought from second hand i bought some tapes in a big presentation box they came in a big like a four um that's letter for you uh you americans a four like parcel with tapes that you pulled out you put in you listen to and i listened to toby tony robbins i listened to uh jim roan i listened to all these kind of things and you go now it feels really quite cheesy to say that and it probably was a bit cheesy at the time but that's what Leanne was saying that was building up so if I was into sports and I wanted to play tennis then I would practice every night tennis and then I'd become probably quite good at tennis a bit better than the rest whereas um sorry not better than the rest better than the average I meant whereas my practice every night was listening to these tapes so that built my resilience up which is why when something bad happened I'm like that's okay yeah we'll work it out so I'm not saying necessarily go and listen to Jim Rohn or um or anyone like that and in fact Do be careful who you choose to listen to because a lot of people out there are a load of rubbish.

28:43But, you know, work on building resilience. Okay, Leah, are you picking a number or am I? You go for it, love. Okay. Have we had number eight yet? No. If you could ban one question from ever being asked, what would it be? Oh, I think I know the answer to this. How arrogant am I? I think I know the answer to this question. I have an answer for this question. um mike i would i would want anyone who asks the question how do i do this the quickest way or what's the shortcut to really boils my bag not sure that's a saying you imagine if that went that went viral hashtag blow my bag um i really hate that because it's like that's just lazy like if there was a shortcut everybody would know and they'd take it and there wouldn't be a shortcut anymore.

29:36That'll be the long way, but stop asking for shortcuts. There's rarely a shortcut. The only time where success comes before work is in the dictionary, as the cheesy old thing used to say, but it's actually kind of true. So I'm sorry to break it to you, but that guy on TikTok who says, well, I'll send you just an 8 ,000 pound course and I'll show you how to do, you know, triple your money in crypto. No, no, there's no shortcut because if he knew how to triple his money in crypto, he would do it day after day and would never ask you for any money. What do you think, love? I think that's a good one.

30:12I think for me, it's any question that is leading in a way that is trying to prove the other person wrong or make them look silly or stupid. Give us an example. Anything that comes out the mouth of someone like Andrew Tate. Do you know what I mean? Or that breed of influencer. I'm going to do a new metric on the podcast. is going to be called TTT, Time to Tate. The Average Time to Tate. A-T-T-T. I haven't brought up the Tate for ages. No, you haven't actually. No, but I knew who you were talking about when you were going to say there was someone who was an arse, yeah. Just that breed. And what I hate as well is now we're seeing it in terms of like the whole Trump, J.D.

30:52Vance with Zelensky in the Oval Office. That was just an ugly, ugly situation. They're asking questions they don't want the answer to. They're asking questions to make him look bad or prove him wrong and I see that type of behavior breeding in certain circles and call it the manosphere now aren't they on socials which I think is unfair to men to be honest because the majority of men I know aren't like that but I just think any question that is loaded leading or includes the word because oh this is our this is our thing Lee thank you for that she just just chipped that up I just going to get my head on it.

31:32Anyone who says to you, ask you a question and then use the word because they don't give a shit what you say. So example, hey, Leanne, have you ever been to Bulgaria? Because what am I about to say? Something about how you went to Bulgaria? Yes. Or something really negative about Bulgaria that's now going to make me sound, now I have to disagree with you. So you're looking for conflict. Yes. Not got time for people who look for conflict. No. There's enough of it in the world. You don't need to go looking for it. If you want to, to be fair, I don't think it's a nefarious thing. But if you're from the UK and you watch Saturday Kitchen, then I do like James Martin, the host of it and the chef.

32:12He's a decent fellow. But once you hear this, I'm sorry to ruin Saturday Kitchen for you forever. Every question he asks, he always puts a because. And whenever he puts a because, he's either talk about himself or talk about something he wants the guests to know he knows about them. so yeah sorry for ruining saturday kitchen for you there but you'll hear it with piers morgan you'll hear it with you know a lot of the the people out there who they're sort of shock jocks howard stern etc not about you it's about them another one for you al what's a bit and we're talking on a similar similar theme what's a behavior that you used to tolerate but will no longer entertain regardless of how many decades you've known a person oh i think it's bitching about people i used to be a salty little bugger i used to i used to love nothing because i was really insecure as a kid and then also as a as a young adult or even old adult and you have to i think you have to be insecure to be an entrepreneur and i hate the word entrepreneur but that's what we're calling it these days because otherwise if you're satisfied with yourself and your life then you don't want to actually grow so um uh i used to be quite do you hear what happened down there?

33:23God, they got in so much trouble. They messed it up so bad. I'm like, surely they can't have done that. They're really intelligent. Meaning, I was asking those questions. Surely they can't do that. Really intelligent. Because I'm sure I've heard them being intelligent. No, no, no. They totally messed up. Now, someone starts talking to me like that about someone or a group of people not interested. What about you? Have you got one? I think in a workplace setting, any form of sharking cheating what do you mean by taking advantage so for example right and this this is how things stay with you and i must have been 25 or 6 when this happened so you're talking 15 years ago and it's still me off so i was a job coach which meant i helped people who were unemployed more than likely for a long period of time we gain work and there was a rule within the team because there were occasions where a customer would change job coach whatever reason whether it be a capacity issue or one of us would change location or whatever else so there was a there was an there's always an element of risk in terms of you were helping somebody find a job then they get moved to another coach that coach would then be with them when they got said job so it wouldn't go against your targets yeah so the general rule in the team which was reinforced supposedly by our manager was that if you've put a note on the system specific about a job that you support this person with regardless of when they get that job and if they're with another coach that will go in your figures your performance figures so for example it was like customer interviewed for um admin position at royal mail expects to hear november

35:062012 you old man i know um and this is what i basically had so then when i'd been moved on to another contract but still had the same target just in a different area so i i did like to check up on my customers and see how they're getting on particularly ones that were done really well were getting really close so i logged on to system found this person um and the new their new job coach had claimed their job with Royal Mail for the admin position that they heard of at that time. Not cool, man. Not cool. Not cool. So I phoned my manager and was like, um, can you explain this, please? This doesn't seem fair.

35:43Oh, it doesn't matter, Leanne. It doesn't matter. You're on target this month anyway. It doesn't matter. No, it does matter because if we're all allowed to break, that rule isn't upheld. It's no longer a rule. so we're all going to be shocking each other it just annoyed me and you know what you you know who that person was yep cc no the coach oh like okay yeah i know you mean yeah i'm not going to use that word but at the time i was like okay i'll try and let it go but i'd never really quite trust this person but i tried to get on and ultimately throughout my entire career with that company she was always the one that was taking opportunities away from me from my team taking the glory for herself not acknowledging the successes that we had making my life difficult always and now it's like if somebody behaves like that i'm not working with you anymore because if we have a conversation and you know it's like okay no i understand let's address that of course fine but this no i've not got the time because it's not gonna end well no no and in sales there is that horrible thing in sales you tend to most organizations tend to move towards everyone's in it for themselves and it's because of that and it's such a shame where there was one company i used to sell telesales stuff for um and um it was actually a really cool company because there was one girl in there sorry i can't look at me this is why i'm old because i said girl and she was a woman uh one woman in there i can't remember her name began with m um and she used to always do a target very solidly very quietly do a target by thursday and then friday i think i've said this before on the pub friday she'd ring up keep ringing up selling and then give it to the people who were short of their target.

37:23And then they did on Monday, they worked. I mean, to be fair, maybe she was just like, I don't know. There was no angle there. No, she was just a lovely person. Lovely person. And I've worked in more sales-based environments where people weren't like that at all. So yeah, to the point where a person who used to direct the calls when they'd come in, if there was a queue or waiting time, um there'd been that role had been a new role created and i was asked by this person who got the job whether i was going to apply for it and i said no i'm going back to university in september there's no point and he was like yeah but you could get it for nine months and it's like almost twice the salary i was like yeah but i'm not going to take the opportunity away from somebody who really wants it um so when then that person would would if i was a bit behind on my target would send me the really good calls.

38:16Oh, amazing. Because it's that, it makes your respect, doesn't it? Right. So if you are under the age of 30, you are listening, karma is real. I can't show you the science behind it, but it is real and it will bite you or it will kiss you on the ass, whichever the two is worst. Lee, I feel like we're on about 35 minutes now, so we've probably got room for about 10 more minutes. Yeah, I've got some quick ones to go through. What were old people saying when you were a kid about how things were back in their day? One thing I remember so clearly was my nan saying to me, like, you don't understand.

38:56Back in my day, we had to go to the bathroom outside. What? Yeah, my dad said, I think my dad said he remembers in his lifetime when they got an indoor toilet. My dad was born in 1946. So it's not like old, old. Yeah, it's kind of weird, isn't it? And that's what makes me feel old now, that you say my grandparents were saying that. It was definitely a thing in the 50s and 60s when both of our parents were alive. And now we're talking about how AI is potentially going to replace knowledge workers. It's like, how have we got from only just getting indoor toilets to computers taking over our jobs in, what, 60 years?

39:41Nuts. And that makes me feel old. yeah i think also the um i think this is a typical parent or grandparent thing to say oh back in my day we used to leave the doors unlocked um and uh and you know all that kind of stuff but then in the same in the same vein they'd also talk quite disparaging about disparagingly about certain certain groups of the population demographics and um and um so yeah it was kind of like weird but nostalgia is always nostalgia is not the same as it used to be is it that's why let's leave it at that what's the oldest email address you have in terms of number of years oh so my oldest email address is a hotmail email address yeah and i probably started it in about 2008 i think i can well i'm pretty sure i had an email address back when i was on there's something at aol in the uk Well, it was in the UK, but also there was something called CompuServe, I think.

40:39Any of the people my age will remember that. It came free on the front of a CD or a disc, came free on the front of a computer shopper magazine. And I'm pretty sure I had a CompuServe email address, which I would have been around about 15. So that would be 1992. Oh, no, but that you still have now. Oh, still have now. Oh, no. Oh, that's just less interesting. Gmail. email i've had it for about 20 years and honestly i think there's about a quarter of a million emails in there yeah yeah no my very first email was an aol email of course oh that's that's a that's a it's a misleading question leanne i'm sorry i think i think it's just it's funny that it blows young people's minds that we have email addresses that are like 15 17 20 years old and the other thing i thought it's quite funny when someone's got an email address they obviously set up in in college like um roger 69 kind of thing and they're still using it today and it's like um yeah anyway um what things did old people in your day used to do at work that made you cringe oh i remember when i was first started out in the networking circuit back in about sort of what would that be about 1999 um and i remember distinctly meeting people and particularly they were they were very tight but there was they were men of a certain age um and they used to grab my hand shake really hard squeeze really hard and then turn it so that their hand was on top of mine and be like hey my name's dave dave i'm dave i'm the sales guy dave what's your name dave and they Yeah, exactly.

42:20They must have been to some kind of seminar where they say, if you say your name four times, I'll remember you and then turn your hand over and they'll be like, who the hell's this? Oh my God, I've got to submit them straight away. What about you? I think general misogyny. I'm not saying it doesn't exist now. It absolutely does. But it was a lot more transparent when I joined work in terms of I was the one that was looked at to go make the tea. And yeah, talk down to and called sweetheart and that type of thing. I know it still exists now, but it was a lot more. And that used to make me cringe.

42:54Even back in the late 80s, early 90s, I remember people used to describe, oh, drop it off at my girl's desk, will you? At his secretary's desk. Drop it off at my girl's desk. That's why my mum watched Mad Men. And she's like, I can't stand how the misogyny, how bad it was back then, because she was back in the workforce about the same time. And I keep saying to her, Mom, it gets better. It all goes up. I don't want to ruin it for you guys if you've not seen Mad Men, but it kind of goes the other way. Anyway. Yeah. Yeah. Mad Men is a great series to watch, to see the evolution of work, even in those, what, 30 years that it covers or 20 years it covers.

43:33Yeah. And then you can see at the end just how progressive it is, but then also how much we moved on in the, God. And how backward it still was. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. What was your first experience of using computers? my first experience, I've got, I remember two. Because to be clear, we are old enough to have lived a good amount of our lives without a computer. Yes. That said, I was, I must have been about seven or eight years old. And my dad bought a, God, I can't remember what they're called. I wanted a BBC basic or a BBC something, computer, Acorn or something was. But he bought something else from Tandy back in the day.

44:18And it was a computer that had a, you got a separate tape player and you plugged your tape player into your computer and you could play stuff. And I used to program in basic. I'd spend like my holidays, four days writing, hand coding a racing game so that on the fifth day I could play it with my keys. So that I would be at about seven, which would be about 1984. Early adopter. yeah yeah and i'd see surprising how well i did with the ladies later on in life actually that's not true you did very well thank you very much yes later in life i did um computers i don't remember my first time and we had them at school um but like the old ones that were like dos where it's just like black screen green font um but the first like the flashable memory i have about computers was when i must have been about i don't know maybe i was in early high school so maybe 11 and my dad sat me down in front of a of the computer his work computers but he'd got his first laptop and it was like did it have a nipple in the middle between the between the two letters for your mouse i can't remember but it was a weighty thing it was a weight like took two of us to carry it to the table and he he opened it up and he was like leanne i want to show you something this is called the internet and it's going to changed the world wow and i was like what's that then um and he was absolutely right and within probably three or four years everyone's online on msn chat um myspace accounts and like um but yeah that was my first but it's funny to think that when this actually goes on to our next question which is what about your uni life would you would sound weird today though the ability to research information online was still very limited when i went to university in 2003 like you'd have to go to the library and you'd have to find the journal and you'd have to photocopy it if you want to take it out of said library or you'd borrow the books to write your essay you couldn't just google it google was google even a thing no couldn't google things so it was it was a lot more a lot more manual and speaking of manual another thing that was weird about life at university i did type up my essays but there wasn't a portal to submit them so i had to print it off take it down to the administration office which was like five miles away go to the office get like a like a cover sheet that had a sticky bit in the corner where you'd fill out your name and your student number and then fold it down and stick it so it could be marked anonymously and then we'd have to then go back in on a certain date when we were told in our lectures that that marking was ready and we'd go and collect it from same admin office and if you didn't go to a lecture you were screwed because nothing was online.

47:06I remember where you said you couldn't, there was no portal. And I was like, why the hell would be a portal? I don't understand why there'd be a portal. Because I remember all of our stuff was either printed out in the last year of my university was printed out in 1998 to be printed out. But in the first two years, 95 and 96, it was all handwritten. And you put a punch, punch, two holes in it. And you'd use treasury tags to go through the punched holes and you'd hand it in to the actual lecturer. You have to go in there. What's a treasury tag? A treasury tag is like a little piece of rope, a miniature piece of rope with two, like a T-bar at the end.

47:45And what you used to do was you'd punch, like you'd use a hole punch. A hole punch is a, and you used to take these A4 pieces of paper. A piece of paper is like a tree. And basically it was a way to keep something that had got holes in the side of it. If you didn't have like a file for it, you put these treasury tags through, like temporary lever arch file sort of thing. Brilliant. Wow, we are old. We are old. A couple more quick ones for you.

48:13This is quite funny because I know you'll have a good answer to this. Question about radio back in the day. Hi folks, hope you're doing well. Just had a random thought and wanted some insight from people who lived in a time before advanced technology. Rude. When you would hear a song on the radio and really liked it, but did not done a name of it how did you find out the name oh you couldn't well there was a couple of ways so you sometimes what you used to do is you'd have your tape recorder close to your radio wouldn't you and you try and record a song just after the dj had said something said the last what you thought was the last words and invariably one in three times they'd come back in and go oh by the way and you'd be like oh man i'm recording this but then they also used to do something called back announce and with a lot of the a lot of the songs you just play them and then back announce what it was but i remember distinctly when i first heard a shazam on my iphone 3 i remember distinctly going this is the future of the world this is what everyone's been waiting for and then it just kind of like just died a death didn't it but yeah but it's when you'd have like you'd have magazines like oh yeah what was the enemy enemy yeah if you were cool yeah so then you'd see like the name of it or it'd have like the lyrics printed in it or you just go to school and play it to your friend on your Walkman that you'd taped off off the radio illegally and ask them if they'd heard of it we'd listen to the top 40 charts on a Sunday you used you exactly did that that's how you knew we'd watch top of the pops on a Friday Thursday night top of the pops is exactly what you would do you'd listen for three hours in a, and you couldn't skip forward, and it would be three hours of playing all of the top 40 songs from 40 down to one, and you couldn't miss it because that one song you really liked, you didn't know it was.

50:01Oh, you don't go to the bathroom for three hours. No, exactly. No. So that was it with Dr. Fox, and who's the guy who does the Confessions of Radio 2? Simon? I can't remember his name. I'm sure you're shouting it, but yeah, he was originally, I think, one of the top 40 guys. Yeah. it was such an activity though wasn't it that was just sunday afternoon sorted do you know what i did see something i took the other day someone saying what right i've got a great idea so what it is it's podcasts but it's just streamed live and someone said dude that's a radio i saw another one that was like has anyone just thought about like having one mobile phone that's dedicated for the house everyone can share it if anyone needs to get in touch with anyone from your family they can just phone this one dedicated mobile phone in the house it's like dude it's landline anyway anything else before we go i mean there's a slightly deep one that might be nice to finish on um did you worry about finding your passion or was work just work do you have an answer to this i was mindful of wanting to do a job that felt i felt connected with so things like fine because professional services was very much the vibe of our our day wasn't it so things like accountancy and lawyers i just didn't it sounded boring um so psychology was something that i'm sorry joe your sister is each each their own isn't it to me it felt boring um so we yeah i've told the story before so i won't tell it again but basically i had an experience when i was in high school with a psychologist and i thought what she did was really cool and then pursued it from there and then after i finished my undergrad i didn't really know what avenue of psychology I wanted to go into so I took a year out and I remember probably my third day of work waking up to my alarm at like half past six and thinking is this it is this it is this what adulting looks like I go to work to a job I don't particularly like don't get paid very much come home watch tell you go to bed and do the same again the next day nah not for me so I guess from a fairly early age I was probably 21 yeah work needs to be more than just work I think I was quite lucky in that I did teacher training for two years trained to be a master teacher and then I went it went and part of that you have to go in for a term and teach and teach training um in a school and I went in there and I was like I first of all I really didn't enjoy it secondly I know I think I'm sure I used to sit there and drink whiskey till three o 'clock in the morning with my housemate then go to bed and then get the train at five o 'clock well you could when you're in You could.