Five Slices #5: The worst job interview
Time with people, potato profits, Jay-Z vs Eminem, and the longest joke
Welcome to “Five Slices.” I’ll be sharing five stories and ideas from history, business, technology, culture, and art. Some will be fun, some will be useful, all will be interesting, and they’ll take you less than five minutes to read.
You can check out the complete list of issues here.
1. Anthony Bourdain’s terrible interview
Anthony Bourdain was one of the world’s most accomplished chefs and worked at restaurants of the highest level. He had a deep desire to travel the world and connect with people of all kinds. He was also a very fun storyteller, and this is an incident he talks about in his book “Kitchen Confidential.”
There was a time in his life when things weren’t going well. He was married, had a child, and was shuttling between unemployment checks and terrible restaurants that played loud music. He was utterly depressed, smoking cigarettes all day and laying awake at night with unpaid bills stacked all around him. Then he landed an interview at a steakhouse on Park Avenue. He really wanted this job. As he says:
a) This place would not an embarrassment to work at, and b) I could run a steakhouse kitchen standing on my head. In fifteen years, I had learned everything there was to know about beef, pork, veal, about grilling roasting – it was easy, the kind of simple, honest food I could put my mark on without working up too much of a sweat.
Bourdain arrived half-hour early. His interviewers were an American and a Scotsman who seemed to be the boss. Bourdain made a great impression with his resume and answered every question confidently with a touch of humor and some buzzwords. “What kind of hours would you expect to put in?”
“Why are you leaving your current position?”
“What kind of positive change could you bring?”
They were okay with his salary expectation too. And when it all seemed to be going great, the owner leaned in and asked what felt like “The Big Question.” Bourdain missed it because of a passing truck and the owner’s thick Scottish accent, so he asked him to repeat it. The owner was annoyed and asked: “What do you know about me?”
It was a strange question. Bourdain wondered what he should say. Should he pretend to be a fan of this guy? Should he act cocky? Should he sound formal? But then he decided to just be honest, and said with complete candor: “Almost nothing!”
The interviewers seemed shocked, and then they laughed and ushered him out of the room. Bourdain felt puzzled by the interaction and was halfway down the block before he groaned out loud at his foolish mistake. The owner hadn’t said “me”:
He’d asked a more reasonable question for the owner of a very successful steakhouse. He’d asked me “WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT MEAT?”
And I, like some half-crazed, suicidal idiot-savant kamikaze pilot, had asked him to repeat the question, pondered it thoughtfully, then proudly replied, ‘Next to nothing!’
It was not my finest hour.
2. How much time will you spend with…?
Before you read on, think about this: Who are the five people you enjoy spending time with the most? It could be friends, family, coworkers – think of five people.
Now for the second part: In the last one year, how much time did you spend with your favorite people? Are you happy with the number?
If yes, good for you. If not, I’m here to tell you that you’re not alone. Sahil Bloom wrote a Twitter post two years ago measuring how the time we spend with the people we love changes as we grow older. The TLDR version is:
Time with parents peaks in your childhood and declines in your 20s.
Time spent with friends peaks when you’re around 18, then sharply declines.
Time spent with your partner/spouse increases until death.
Time spent with your children increases around your 30s and then declines.
Time spent with coworkers is a big number from your 20s to your 60s.
Time spent alone keeps increasing for life.
I don’t know if this is a product of a heavily work-oriented culture, a globalized environment or a combination of many factors. But I really enjoy hanging out with my cousins and my friends, and I’m lucky if I get a few days in a year with them. Some of my friends who work abroad, I haven’t met in years. I’m not happy with that.
The thread is a reminder to be intentional about your time by making the most of time with your parents, friends, and children, and to choose your partner and coworkers wisely because you end up spending so much time with them.
3. The power of potato
In 2015, Alex Craig started Potato Parcel, a service which wrote a personalized message on a potato and delivered it to anyone you want anonymously for $10:
That’s it. A message with a marker on a potato for $10. The service apparently brought in $10,000 to $13,000 every month and he sold his business for $40,000. But here’s the crazy part: So many other businesses have been launched with the same idea – Brick or Potato, Bananas Gone Wild, Eggplant Mail – and they’ve all been profitable. So what are you waiting for?
4. Process: Jay-Z vs Eminem
What’s the best creative process? Here’s a comparison of two of the greatest songwriters and rap artists ever:
Eminem is a graphomaniac. That’s someone who has an urge to write compulsively. He carries around notebooks in which he keeps jotting down all the rhymes, lines, and word combinations that he can think of. When he sits down to actually write a song, the words come to him when he needs them.
On the other hand, Jay-Z doesn’t write anything down. He listens to a beat that he likes, sits in a corner for twenty minutes humming to himself, then picks up the mic and starts rapping.
Two wildly successful artists, two completely different processes. I relate to Eminem’s process better because you can see what’s going on behind the scenes, and it gives hope that if you scribble a thousand pages, you’ll eventually get a good one. But maybe some people work better like Jay-Z. There’s no right process, just what works for you.
Source: Rick Rubin on the Joe Rogan Experience
5. The longest joke in the world
Have you heard Norm MacDonald’s infamous “Moth Joke?” It’s one of the longest and most convoluted jokes ever and the punchline makes you want to slap yourself. I love such jokes. If you know such jokes, please reply to this email or leave a comment.
If you didn’t like Norm’s joke, you can pass. But if you did, you should definitely check out: The longest joke in the world. I still chuckle once in a while thinking of this.
Which was your favorite story? Is there anything you want to see more of? Let me know in the comments.
If you found this fun, why not share it with a friend? Thanks for reading!
Yesterday, I wrote about a game developed by one person that made 45 million dollars. I also write longer, more personal pieces like this one about my experience starting a company in India. You can check out the complete list of issues here.
I consider the Moth Joke to be the greatest Dad joke of all time.
The longest joke in the world (should I have capitalised the first letter of each word?) was an absolute hoot. Like they say, it was right up my street. What is more, it was new to me (which is getting to be rarer every passing year for me to say. At my age, I feel like I have read most of the jokes).
I have one question though (Am I the only one to have that question?): is the psychoanalysis at the end of the joke, a part of the joke?
One never knows with these jokes.