Episode 70
He Smashed Into It — Then Waited 9 Hours To Tell Me To My Face
Right. Semicolons.
There is one rule of semicolons. I wonder if you can guess what that is. I was a journalism major and the first time my professor taught us the situations where a semicolon is appropriate, I put my hand up and told him the only rule is don't. If you disagree you may want to skip this episode. But not before you bite me.
But that's just one of the things we have for this week, friends.
We walked out of the house to go and get french fries and there was a car two houses down that didn't look right. When we tracked the skid marks back to their origin, we quickly found out why.
I'll tell you all about Carlos.
Spoiler alert, this story is not going where you think it is.
Then Ask L2, from Ray: everyone tells him the money's in the room, but the room is two hundred people, a buffet and compulsory eye contact. Is there a version of networking that doesn't involve the room? Grab a pen. I have the lesson plan for you.
Membership community for awesome people who know they're worth more than the standard average mediocre white men: http://whatthefractional.com/
📞 Voicemail line, for Ask L2 questions, small talk, brags and fights: https://differentnotbrokenpodcast.com/voicemail
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Transcript
Kyle goes over and looks and he's like, "Oh, no, he definitely hit your
Speaker:car." And there were some gigantic, like, scratches all over the bumper.
Speaker:The bumper was misplaced.
Speaker:Taillight was cracked.
Speaker:It was, like, a whole thing.
Speaker:So he goes over and knocks on the window, and there's no response from this
Speaker:person sitting in the front of the car.
Speaker:None.
Speaker:And he knocks again.
Speaker:Nothing.
Speaker:And he's like, "The guy stirred a little, but there was no response." And
Speaker:we're like, "Oh, shit." This grown-ass man sat on my porch and cried for 30
Speaker:straight minutes. Welcome to You're Not Too Much from the Different, Not Broken
Speaker:Network, a podcast about how you're not too much, they're not enough,
Speaker:space expands, so let's fill it.
Speaker:There's one rule of semicolons, and that is don't use fucking semicolons.
Speaker:That's really the only, like, hard punctuation rule I have
Speaker:is don't use semicolons.
Speaker:They're awful.
Speaker:It's unnecessary punctuation.
Speaker:There's nothing that a semicolon does that you can't do with a period and
Speaker:starting a new sentence, or in some cases, a comma, or in rare cases, a colon.
Speaker:There's nothing that a semicolon does that cannot be done by
Speaker:much simpler punctuation.
Speaker:It is grandiosity in punctuation form.
Speaker:It is infuriating.
Speaker:Every time I see somebody write a sentence with a semicolon, I'm like, "Why do
Speaker:you need to show people that you're so impressed with yourself?" There's a word
Speaker:that I can't think of, proving how not impressed with myself I am right now.
Speaker:It is snootiness in… No, there's a better word for it, and my words are
Speaker:not working right now, but I hate them.
Speaker:I hate them.
Speaker:I literally was a journalism major in college, and I focused, or I,
Speaker:or my specialty track was editing, and I was like my professor,
Speaker:who I'm still very close with, I was like his superstar student.
Speaker:He once pulled me out of a test because I d- not only got something right,
Speaker:but I found the correct answer for it, which I didn't have to do, but I'm a
Speaker:nerd, and so I did, and he pulled me out of the test to be like, "Nobody's
Speaker:ever done that. I'm so impressed with you." And to this day, he's the reason,
Speaker:or he's one of the reasons, one of two reasons why my ego is so unreasonable.
Speaker:But even during that class, which was, like, the first editing class…
Speaker:Pretentious is the word that I couldn't fucking come up with before.
Speaker:But even during that class, he was, like, teaching the situations where in
Speaker:AP style a semicolon is appropriate, and I raised my hand, and I was like,
Speaker:"I'm sorry, the only rule of semicolons is don't use fucking semicolons."
Speaker:And he was like, "I need to know more about this." And so to this day, he will
Speaker:ask me about my opinions on semicolons because I get so angry about them.
Speaker:They are useless punctuation.
Speaker:They do not need to exist.
Speaker:They are only there to make already self-obsessed people feel more
Speaker:impressed with themselves over the quality of their writing, and you
Speaker:can make simpler sentences that are easier for people to read.
Speaker:If it's, like, poetry or something, do whatever you want.
Speaker:There's no rules in poetry.
Speaker:Whatever, I'm not gonna tell you what to do in poetry.
Speaker:But if you're trying to build stuff that's consumable for other people, get
Speaker:out of here with your fucking semicolons.
Speaker:And this is also bringing me back to one of the most embarrassing moments
Speaker:that I ever had in college, because it was not related to semicolons.
Speaker:Do you ever just know something and not realize it's weird?
Speaker:Or like just assume that everybody else knows that too, and then you
Speaker:find out that it's just you, or like it's not common knowledge?
Speaker:So I was in that class, and again, Rick Brunson, who was the teacher of that
Speaker:class, I am still very close with him.
Speaker:We talk all the time.
Speaker:He is one of my favorite people in the world, and I call him my life coach
Speaker:because every time I'm having a meltdown about something, I call him and he
Speaker:listens to me and doesn't call me crazy, or only calls me a little bit crazy.
Speaker:And also, his wife is a goddess among men.
Speaker:We were very early in the editing class, and he was going through what
Speaker:prepositions were, and he said, "Can anybody tell me what a preposition is?"
Speaker:And me, being me, and remembering second grade, said, "It's anything a squirrel
Speaker:can do to a log." Which I thought was how everybody learned what a preposition is.
Speaker:It turns out, it is not.
Speaker:It turns out that might have just been me.
Speaker:Because in the middle of class he burst out laughing and
Speaker:was like, "It's a what now?"
Speaker:And I was like, "It can be above the log, beside the log, inside the log,
Speaker:next to." He was like, "No, I mean, that, that tracks, but is that really, that's
Speaker:how you know…" I was like, "Am I not?
Speaker:I don't know what to do with this." And so he, he is the kindest man in the world,
Speaker:and I said something shocking enough to make him laugh at me in front of a
Speaker:whole class of people, which tells you how strongly we feel about prepositions.
Speaker:But also is one of like a handful of… I only have a handful
Speaker:of embarrassing moments from college, but that's one of them.
Speaker:Because in front of an entire class, I said, "It's what a squirrel
Speaker:can do to a log," and nobody knew what I was talking about.
Speaker:So anyway, semicolons are stupid.
Speaker:Don't use semicolons.
Speaker:And amnesty for squirrels and logs.
Speaker:Have you ever had a day that just, like, you could not have
Speaker:predicted how it's gonna turn out?
Speaker:And then you get to the end of it and you're like, "What just happened?"
Speaker:And not even really in a bad way.
Speaker:Maybe like just like a wild and ridiculous way, but just kinda
Speaker:look around and go like, "What?
Speaker:Where, what did I just exist through?
Speaker:This is… I could not have predicted this." It reminds me, this is
Speaker:unrelated, but whatever, side quest.
Speaker:It reminds me that Anchorman is one of my favorite movies ever, and I can
Speaker:literally quote it from beginning to end.
Speaker:Maybe not literally, but almost literally quote it from beginning to end.
Speaker:I know it that well.
Speaker:I don't even have to watch it on screen anymore 'cause I can watch it in my
Speaker:head, because I've seen it that many times. But the reason that Anchorman is
Speaker:one of the best movies ever made is not just because it's so funny and stupid
Speaker:that you just laugh the whole time, but it's because you could not have
Speaker:predicted in a million years that movie was gonna end in a Kodiak bear pit.
Speaker:You- there was no way you were, there was no way you could predict that.
Speaker:It… That was completely a surprise.
Speaker:These are the philosophical conversations I used to have with
Speaker:my friends when I was too young to be having these conversations.
Speaker:Not too young, but just like, I don't know why I was thinking about
Speaker:this stuff when I was 18 years old.
Speaker:But Talladega Nights was the follow-up basically to Anchorman, and you knew
Speaker:exactly how Talladega Nights was gonna end, and it did end exactly that way.
Speaker:So it was a funny movie.
Speaker:It's still a funny movie, but it wasn't a sensation because it was exactly
Speaker:the formulaic movie you thought it was gonna be, except for Sacha Baron
Speaker:Cohen having horses that are also gay.
Speaker:But you could not say that about Anchorman.
Speaker:There's nobody who was like, "This is definitely gonna end up
Speaker:in a bear pit." Nobody knew that.
Speaker:Anyway, that's how this day felt to me, because it was just
Speaker:like a super normal Sunday.
Speaker:We had kind of a chill weekend.
Speaker:Kids were hungry.
Speaker:I had looked at my husband earlier that morning and said, "Why have you not
Speaker:taken me to Chili's for french fries?"
Speaker:And he said, "Is that a thing you want to do?" And I said, "I, I wouldn't
Speaker:ask you that if I didn't wanna do it."
Speaker:And he was like, "How was I supposed to know that?" And I
Speaker:just kinda like gave him a look.
Speaker:What do you mean, how are you supposed to know that?
Speaker:He's like, "You've literally never asked for this before, ever."
Speaker:And I was like, "That seems like your problem. Like, why am I not at Chili's
Speaker:having french fries right now?" So anyway, he started to get ready to go to Chili's.
Speaker:I've literally never asked to be taken to Chili's, ever.
Speaker:I just woke up that morning and I was like, "Man, Chili's
Speaker:french fries sound really good."
Speaker:Nothing sounds good at Chili's, but all right.
Speaker:That day it was Chili's.
Speaker:It takes us a long time to get out of the house, not for any other reason
Speaker:than none of us wanna leave the house.
Speaker:And so we finally got ready and walk out the front door.
Speaker:Kids are still, like, shuffling to get their shoes on and stuff, and look,
Speaker:and there's a car like two houses down that very clearly has the front wheel
Speaker:on the right side, like, turned under.
Speaker:And it was that moment of, like, hmm, that's not supposed to be like that.
Speaker:And it was also, like, three feet off the curb, and it was, like, just far
Speaker:enough off the curb that you were like, "Hmm, that's weird. I don't know how
Speaker:that guy got there. Okay." And I just assumed that it was, like, abandoned,
Speaker:like maybe somebody got into a car accident and they hadn't towed it yet or
Speaker:whatever, and that it was just abandoned.
Speaker:There wasn't anybody in there.
Speaker:So then we, like, look at the pavement, the asphalt, and see that
Speaker:there's, like, a skid mark, like a long mark on the concrete that
Speaker:looks like that it led to that car.
Speaker:The problem was it seemed to be coming from my car that was parked out front.
Speaker:Now, my car is gigantic.
Speaker:It's a 6,000-pound SUV.
Speaker:It's huge, and I got it because it's huge.
Speaker:Because aside from the fact that we have many people who we travel with on the
Speaker:regs, we have house horses, and they have to be put in a vehicle occasionally,
Speaker:and that requires quite a large vehicle.
Speaker:But also, once you start driving in a vehicle that is almost your
Speaker:height off the ground, one, it's not good for your Napoleon complex.
Speaker:Two, you don't like driving in the vehicles that are on the ground.
Speaker:It just doesn't feel as good.
Speaker:I like being all the way up there.
Speaker:Anyway, so I love my car, and my car's only, like, six months old,
Speaker:maybe a little more than that.
Speaker:I was like, "Did he, did he hit my car?
Speaker:He wouldn't hit my car, right?
Speaker:It was just parked there.
Speaker:He's down there.
Speaker:I don't know how that would happen." Kyle goes over and looks, and he's
Speaker:like, "Oh, no, he definitely hit your car." And there were some gigantic,
Speaker:like, scratches all over the bumper.
Speaker:The bumper was misplaced.
Speaker:Taillight was cracked.
Speaker:It was, like, a whole thing.
Speaker:So we're looking at it and we're like, "Somebody hit my car."
Speaker:I, I didn't put the pieces together yet.
Speaker:There were two very clear pieces of what happened literally sitting
Speaker:on the street in front of me, but I did not put them together yet.
Speaker:And I was like, "Dude, somebody hit my car when it was parked here? Like,
Speaker:when did this even happen?" So he goes over to the windshield, which
Speaker:I would not have seen this before getting in my car because it was on
Speaker:the windshield, and I can't see on the windshield from standing next to the car.
Speaker:It's that high off the ground, and I am a very small person.
Speaker:He reaches in.
Speaker:There's a note there that says, "Please call so and so.
Speaker:I hit your car.
Speaker:Here's my phone number.
Speaker:I'm an Uber driver," and it happened at 4:30 this morning or 4:50 this
Speaker:morning or something like that.
Speaker:And I was like, well, okay.
Speaker:I was annoyed, but I was like, at least they left a note, whatever.
Speaker:And I'm like, do I call this person first?
Speaker:We need to get a police report.
Speaker:We need to call the insurance.
Speaker:He's an Uber driver.
Speaker:How do we get to the insurance for Uber?
Speaker:I'm not sure how to do any of this.
Speaker:And my husband being the better procedural one of the two of us walks
Speaker:up to the car that's in front and sees that there's a person inside.
Speaker:So I'm still processing the fact… It's like 2:00 in the afternoon
Speaker:when this happens, and this thing happened at 5:00 that morning.
Speaker:I mean, that's the time that he put on the note that he left.
Speaker:So he goes over and knocks on the window, and there's no response from this
Speaker:person sitting in the front of the car.
Speaker:None.
Speaker:And he knocks again.
Speaker:Nothing.
Speaker:And he was like, "The guy stirred a little, but there was no response."
Speaker:And we're like, "Oh, shit." So I, of course, pull out my phone.
Speaker:I don't think the car was on.
Speaker:I'm not sure.
Speaker:But not only is he sitting in his car non-responsive, but he's in Florida,
Speaker:and it was like 100 degrees that day.
Speaker:Any number of things could have happened aside from the fact that he had clearly
Speaker:gotten into an accident with our car.
Speaker:So we called 911 and said, "There's a non-responsive person in this car.
Speaker:Can you please send the police for the police report for the accident and then
Speaker:an ambulance?" The police got there first. And in the meantime, he had woken
Speaker:up, and he genuinely was just asleep.
Speaker:And when you consider the fact that he had been there since 4:00
Speaker:something that morning, 4:45 that morning, yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker:That makes sense.
Speaker:And so he got out and he was super apologetic, and so, so kind, and so
Speaker:upset about everything that had just happened, and was completely upfront
Speaker:about what happened, and that it was completely his fault and totally an
Speaker:accident, and he had somebody, he had a fare in the car, and his first concern
Speaker:was making sure that they were okay and then getting them into another car.
Speaker:And then he was told by Uber not to walk up to any of the houses, and they were
Speaker:gonna send a tow truck, and it was 10 hours later and they still hadn't sent
Speaker:the tow truck, but he was fine with that 'cause he was waiting for somebody
Speaker:to come out of their house and go to the car so that he could talk to them.
Speaker:And I was like, "You waited for 10 hours?
Speaker:Really?
Speaker:Okay." Totally floored by the fact that he stuck around for the tow truck, but
Speaker:also, he also was like, "I was hoping not to leave before I got to talk to whoever
Speaker:this happened to, but I wasn't allowed to go up to any of the houses." And I
Speaker:was like, "First off, that makes sense.
Speaker:That is good advice from Uber." Regardless what you think of them, it is good advice
Speaker:to tell your people, "Do not walk up to strange houses in the middle of the night.
Speaker:We will handle that part of it." And they did. So the police came first. When they
Speaker:came, we were like, "Okay, he seems fine.
Speaker:Go check him out and make sure that he doesn't need medical
Speaker:assistance, but we've talked to him.
Speaker:He's up and walking around.
Speaker:We don't want you to think that we called for medical assistance and we didn't
Speaker:actually need it." And they were like, "No problem." So they went over to him,
Speaker:and it was, like, the first time that I've been immediately in this situation.
Speaker:But they went over to him.
Speaker:He told them the whole story, same story he told us.
Speaker:He was completely upfront about everything.
Speaker:He just looked exhausted, which obviously he's been in his car for 10 hours,
Speaker:so he's gonna be exhausted, but this was, like, existential exhaustion.
Speaker:This was not I've been sleeping in my car exhaustion.
Speaker:And so the police came over to me and they were like, "Okay, he gave
Speaker:us all the information that we need.
Speaker:The only thing I don't understand…" The woman police officer said this to me.
Speaker:She's like, "The only thing I don't understand is why he didn't just call
Speaker:the police in the middle of the night." This was a, a gentleman with brown skin
Speaker:who very clearly had a thick accent.
Speaker:And I don't know where he was from, or I didn't know where he was from at the time.
Speaker:He later told me.
Speaker:But I was like, "I wonder, can you think of any reason why, in the current
Speaker:state of the US, he would not have called the police?" And she kinda
Speaker:looked at me and I was like… And she goes, "No, I don't think it's that."
Speaker:And I was like, "Are you serious?
Speaker:Is that…" So I literally in front of her looked at my husband and
Speaker:went, "Go stand with him, please."
Speaker:And she goes, she goes, "We're leaving." And I was like, "That's
Speaker:fine, but we're gonna stay with him."
Speaker:She literally looks at me and goes, "You're gonna, you're gonna stay
Speaker:with the guy who hit your car?" And I was like, "It's a car, it's fine.
Speaker:Nobody got hurt." And so she goes, "All right, I'll give you the
Speaker:report." And she was very nice.
Speaker:She was polite, she wasn't confrontational about it, but
Speaker:she truly did not understand.
Speaker:Kyle was sent to just go stand with him, just in… Like, who knows, but just in
Speaker:case, especially because we had called and, like, we thought we were calling for
Speaker:an ambulance, and then he turned out to be okay and we didn't need the ambulance.
Speaker:Then we walked over, and the police were still writing the report,
Speaker:and I was like, "Why don't you come sit on the porch with us?
Speaker:You can sit on the inside, we'll sit on the outside, just in the
Speaker:event that anything gets weird." He was like, "Thank you so much.
Speaker:This means so much." And we were like, "We'll just be here, just in case."
Speaker:I wasn't gonna leave him out there by himself.
Speaker:So it turns out he's from Puerto Rico anyway.
Speaker:He was fine, but also, that doesn't super matter in this current setup.
Speaker:So we did that, but that really wasn't the, the biggest part of it.
Speaker:I was shocked that they were shocked.
Speaker:Do we really live in just, like, two different planes of reality,
Speaker:where this would not oc- Like, how does this not occur to you?
Speaker:But whatever.
Speaker:So we did what we did.
Speaker:We didn't need them anymore.
Speaker:They had done their part.
Speaker:They could leave now.
Speaker:We didn't need them to do anything else, was really the
Speaker:vibe we were trying to give.
Speaker:So they had called a tow truck for him.
Speaker:They had called the city tow truck for him, because the tow truck he
Speaker:was waiting for that Uber covers was taking forever, and it…
Speaker:he showed me.
Speaker:It had, it was basically saying, like, another 15 minutes every 15 minutes,
Speaker:and had been doing that since 6:00 that morning or 5:00 that morning or something.
Speaker:So he was, like, totally stuck, because he didn't wanna leave his car abandoned
Speaker:and then the tow truck driver not take it, but he also, like, couldn't reliably
Speaker:say when they were gonna get there.
Speaker:And the city was like, "No, you gotta move the car. You have to… If our tow
Speaker:truck gets here first, you have to use it, because you can't leave a disabled
Speaker:car." It was, like, barely a foot further off the curb than it should be.
Speaker:It's not like it was in the middle of the road.
Speaker:It was a little bit too far off the curb.
Speaker:My husband looked at them and was like, "What if I just move it?" He's
Speaker:like, "What if I just push it over to where it needs to be?" And they're
Speaker:like, "Well, you really can't leave a disabled car." And he was like, "What's
Speaker:the difference between a disabled car and an abled car if it's on the curb?"
Speaker:And they were like, "If you can figure it out, we're not gonna say anything."
Speaker:But it was just a whole bunch of stupid stuff, but they kept saying to him,
Speaker:like, "You have to get the tow truck. The tow truck has to come and move this
Speaker:car unless the other tow truck comes first." And so I looked at him and I
Speaker:said, "Is that okay? Can you use their tow truck?" And he kind of doesn't answer.
Speaker:And finally they walked away, and it was just him, my husband, and
Speaker:I, and it kinda started to rain.
Speaker:And he was like, "I just need to wait for Uber's tow truck." And I was like,
Speaker:"Is that because of employment or…" And he goes, and he literally bursts into
Speaker:tears and says, "I can't afford the other tow truck." And I was like, "Oh, okay.
Speaker:How much does the tow truck cost?" And actually both my husband and I said it
Speaker:at the same time, if you wanna know. We disagree on everything except these
Speaker:exact situations when we are, like, fully in lockstep. I was like, "Cool.
Speaker:How much does the tow truck cost?" He's like, "I don't know." One of the
Speaker:cops was leaving, and I was like, "Do you know what the tow truck costs?"
Speaker:And she's like, "I'm not really sure.
Speaker:They'll tell you when they get here and when they test the distance."
Speaker:And so I looked at him, I was like, "Don't worry about it.
Speaker:We can figure out the tow truck.
Speaker:Don't worry about it." And he's, like, sobbing.
Speaker:Big guy, absolutely sobbing.
Speaker:And I was like, "Don't worry about it." And he's like, "But I hit your car."
Speaker:And I was like, "It's just a car.
Speaker:You didn't hit, you didn't hit my kids, you didn't hit my family.
Speaker:It was a car.
Speaker:It's a car.
Speaker:It's a car that's gonna get fixed.
Speaker:It's a car that your insurance is gonna pay to fix.
Speaker:We're fine.
Speaker:It's still drivable.
Speaker:We're fine." And he was so upset about it, which I understand.
Speaker:I would be the same if I was him.
Speaker:Just having made that kind of mistake, I would be the same
Speaker:level of upset that he was.
Speaker:He's sitting there, and we were just talking, and you get a sense that there's,
Speaker:like, something else going on there.
Speaker:We had him come up and sit on the porch and wait, because it was a f- fricking
Speaker:100 degrees out, and we were waiting for them to give us paperwork and whatever.
Speaker:And so he came and sat up with us while he was waiting for the paperwork
Speaker:and to get the citation and whatever.
Speaker:And I said to him, I was like, "What did you do before you drove Uber?" And he
Speaker:goes, "Oh, I was a civil engineer." And I was like, "What?" And he goes, "Yeah,
Speaker:I was a civil engineer for 30 years.
Speaker:I worked between two companies for 30 years, and then I got laid
Speaker:off last October, and I haven't been able to find another job.
Speaker:The end of last year, my, my doctor told me that I needed to go start driving
Speaker:Uber so I could get some income because we were through all of our savings,
Speaker:and for the first time, I had high blood pressure and high cholesterol,
Speaker:and that's never happened before, and he said it's all related to stress."
Speaker:He's like, "And we ran through our savings, and so now I drive Uber,
Speaker:but I only do it early in the morning because there's too much traffic later
Speaker:in the day, and that makes me anxious."
Speaker:And I was like, "God damn." And I was like, "So tell me more about what
Speaker:you've done." He's done procurement for, like, multinational companies.
Speaker:He's got a degree.
Speaker:He's got a background in more things than I can count.
Speaker:I said, "Do you have a resume?" He sent me a super professional resume that he's been
Speaker:sending out to anybody who will listen.
Speaker:And so, at this point, like, the car, I don't even… The
Speaker:car is, like, a year ago.
Speaker:I don't care about it.
Speaker:I was like, "Whatever." My husband's like, "Did you get
Speaker:that?" I was like, "I don't care.
Speaker:Don't, don't ask me about cars.
Speaker:I don't care about cars anymore." But we just talked for a long time.
Speaker:When I say to you this grown-ass man, big guy, probably closer to
Speaker:retirement than not, sat on my porch and cried for 30 straight minutes,
Speaker:and any time he would stop talking, he would just burst into tears again.
Speaker:Because the last year has been absolute shit, and he did nothing to deserve it.
Speaker:That's not to say that anybody ever does anything to deserve it, but
Speaker:bro was just trying to do his best.
Speaker:He was just doing the job he's always done, and then not only does he get
Speaker:into this accident, which he obviously felt horrible about, but he loses his
Speaker:only mode of transportation and his only source of income at the same time.
Speaker:So thankfully, the Uber tow truck did come.
Speaker:He didn't have to pay for the other one.
Speaker:We would have paid for it anyway because it wasn't even much money,
Speaker:and we weren't gonna let him absorb that stress on top of everything else.
Speaker:Uber had already given me all of the information about the repair for the car.
Speaker:They had already reached out to us.
Speaker:He did everything right.
Speaker:He did everything that you're supposed to do, and then he sat there and waited
Speaker:for us for over nine hours to come out and say, "I did that to your car." On
Speaker:top of the fact that this man has so much stress on his plate and in his
Speaker:life right now, that I probably wouldn't have run, but I probably would've run.
Speaker:No, I wouldn't have.
Speaker:But I would've thought about it because it's just, like, the last thing.
Speaker:Who needs this on top of everything else?
Speaker:It was one of those moments where it was just like, we could have chosen
Speaker:to be mad because he damaged our car.
Speaker:We would've been right for being mad.
Speaker:Nobody would've faulted us for being upset that he hit our car.
Speaker:But when you take a step back and you look at the things that are
Speaker:happening in front of you, like, this poor guy is the byproduct of a
Speaker:shitty economy made shittier for no reason, getting screwed by all of the
Speaker:things that are happening around us.
Speaker:He doesn't need me to get mad at him.
Speaker:He's got that on lock.
Speaker:He's got that part handled.
Speaker:And even the cops were kinda like, "You don't need us to do anything?" We're like,
Speaker:"No, we just needed the police report so we can file it with the insurance.
Speaker:We don't need… What do you think we're gonna do?
Speaker:He's here.
Speaker:He's been here the whole time.
Speaker:Not only did he leave a note, but he waited for us to come out of the house."
Speaker:Those people don't exist.
Speaker:People like that don't exist, especially after everything he's been through.
Speaker:He should've lost every shred of humanity that he had left, and he didn't.
Speaker:He's supremely human still.
Speaker:Anyway, so they got his car taken care of.
Speaker:We've been texting with him since.
Speaker:He sent me his resume.
Speaker:I posted it all over the internet.
Speaker:My understanding is that he's gotten a couple of interviews
Speaker:out of it, which is amazing.
Speaker:But if anybody in the Orlando area, or really anywhere, pick a place, I'll
Speaker:send it to you, is looking to hire a super experienced civil engineer who
Speaker:has gotten the shit end of the stick that he did not deserve at all, reach
Speaker:out to me by one of the various and sundry ways that you can find us on our
Speaker:website, and I will send you his resume.
Speaker:He is a sweet man with the integrity for days, and we need
Speaker:more Carloses on this planet.
Speaker:We need more people who are willing to wait nine hours to tell somebody they
Speaker:made a mistake, despite the fact that the universe has given them 1,000 reasons
Speaker:not to have that level of integrity.
Speaker:So if anybody's got a job for Carlos, hit me up.
Speaker:You can also find me on LinkedIn.
Speaker:Obviously, most people know I'm on LinkedIn, but if you don't, you can find
Speaker:me on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/elletwo.
Speaker:And there's a link in the episode description, 'cause we do that, too.
Speaker:Ask L2.
Speaker:Ask L2 from Ray.
Speaker:He asks, "Everyone tells me the money's in the room, but the room is
Speaker:200 people, a buffet, and compulsory eye contact. Is there a version of
Speaker:networking that doesn't involve the room?"
Speaker:I mean, yeah, I've done it for the last five years, and it's been
Speaker:wildly successful, so I'm gonna go with yes, that does exist.
Speaker:Now, I will say this is in direct violation of my brand and all of the, the shit
Speaker:that I've spewed for the last several years, but I will say that I went to
Speaker:an event a couple of weeks ago that was a very targeted group of people.
Speaker:I got invited.
Speaker:I didn't know anybody.
Speaker:Actually, when I got there, I realized I knew a lot of people there, but that's
Speaker:'cause the field that I'm in is, like, accidentally very incestuous, and we've
Speaker:all worked together in other places.
Speaker:So I did know some of them in advance, but a lot of them I didn't, and I got
Speaker:more business from that experience, and that's not why I was there.
Speaker:I was just there to be basically, like, part of this panel of
Speaker:people they put together.
Speaker:I was not there to… I guess in theory I was there to network, but really I wasn't.
Speaker:And just by, like, chiming in when people were talking about the things
Speaker:that they ran into and people would ask questions, "What do you do?" And
Speaker:it just happens to be that I'm kind of in this career transition where I
Speaker:used to run my own startup, and now I sold my startup, and so I'm now
Speaker:consulting with people who run startups.
Speaker:All of these people run startups.
Speaker:I got more very concrete business from, and, like, things that have
Speaker:converted in the weeks since, from that experience than I have in
Speaker:that amount of time any other way.
Speaker:Now, I've had the same level of success and gotten contracts of the same
Speaker:merit without ever putting shoes on.
Speaker:I don't think you have to do that.
Speaker:I got an opportunity to do that, and it was a really cool opportunity, and also
Speaker:it opened me up to the idea that maybe I should do that more, but every week?
Speaker:No.
Speaker:Every month?
Speaker:Probably not.
Speaker:If I get an opportunity to go to another conference that has the same
Speaker:kind of concentration of people…
Speaker:And again, to your point about eye contact, which I fully get,
Speaker:this was very curated. Everybody was going to the same events.
Speaker:They created opportunities to have to talk to people.
Speaker:Everybody ate together.
Speaker:Like, literally for three days, I didn't have to think about food.
Speaker:I didn't have to think about drinks.
Speaker:I didn't have to order anything for delivery.
Speaker:I didn't have to cook myself any- literally everything was scheduled for me.
Speaker:It was my freaking dream.
Speaker:Everything was scheduled for me.
Speaker:There was a calendar that told me everywhere I had to go.
Speaker:They decided where I needed to be every minute, and then for the couple
Speaker:of minutes that I needed to not be those places, I just was like, "Guys,
Speaker:I gotta dip out 'cause I have a couple of things I gotta get done for work."
Speaker:And they were like, "Cool. See you in a little bit." But that was the perfect
Speaker:experience for me, because there was a place I needed to be at a time all of
Speaker:the other people were going to be there.
Speaker:I got to see the same people multiple times.
Speaker:That was the perfect networking experience for me if I had to be in person.
Speaker:If I was going to a conference where setting my own schedule or deciding
Speaker:what things I was gonna go to each day, and there are thousands of people
Speaker:there, and whether I was gonna end up meeting the five who needed my services
Speaker:or not was pretty up in the air, that's a different beast, and that would not
Speaker:have met my brain where my brain is, which is, I had to do zero logistics,
Speaker:so I was able to do the people-ing well.
Speaker:That being said, go find online communities for the field that you're in.
Speaker:Go find groups that you can join.
Speaker:There are Slack communities, there are Facebook communities, there are all
Speaker:sorts of different… People have social media-like communities that are private.
Speaker:I own a couple of them myself.
Speaker:There are places that you can go or take part in that have people who are either
Speaker:looking for what you do or also do what you do, and you would be surprised how
Speaker:much business you can get from people who do exactly what you do, even though
Speaker:you're technically their competition.
Speaker:That's just not the way that people act in the real world.
Speaker:You get referrals from people who are, quote-unquote, "your competition" all
Speaker:the time for any number of reasons.
Speaker:So go find the online version of that gigantic room.
Speaker:Will I say that you don't ever need to be in the room?
Speaker:No.
Speaker:If there's a way that you can stomach it or find rooms that are appropriate for
Speaker:you, I really have come around to the idea that maybe that's not a bad idea,
Speaker:but it doesn't have to be the only thing you do and it's not the only place that
Speaker:you're gonna grow a business at all.
Speaker:There's plenty of other places.
Speaker:Thanks for being here, guys.
Speaker:Have a good day.
Speaker:Love you, mean it.
Speaker:I forget that there's an episode description.
Speaker:I don't ever look
Speaker:at
