episode 102

The podcast hosts discuss their second episode and the viewership of the first episode. They talk about a friend who walked outside in socks and carrying her shoes, despite the previous discussion about wearing socks outside. They then discuss the issue of allowance and how the amount of money Alex receives varies depending on the tasks she completes. They also discuss their different perspectives on the amount of work Alex does and the attitude she sometimes has. The hosts then talk about the responsibility of doing chores and how it relates to future employment. Welcome, everybody, to the second episode of our podcast, The Tame and the Tyrant. Welcome back. So, more than one person watched the first episode, so we decided to do a second one. And I'm not embarrassed because nobody watched it. I mean, what? I'm not embarrassed because people watched it. There we go. So, Alex was going to be embarrassed if no one watched the episode. So, luckily for her, we got a good amount of views, so we decided to come back and try it again. Give us a second episode. How's your week going so far, Alex? It's good. I had a lot of tests, but... Oh, I hurt my ankle. How'd you hurt your ankle? I was doing a heel click, and the ground was, like, unleveled, and I hurt my ankle. Oh, okay. I see. I see. So, I want to call back to our previous episode, because our discussion really centered around your socks. You remember, if you recall, we were talking about how you wear your socks outside and how there was a big, you know, kerfuffle about the socks and how they are being worn outside. And then, lo and behold, yesterday, I believe you had a half day of school, right? Do you want to tell me about your half day? What did you do? Oh, so, we came from school, and luckily, all the snow was melted, so it wasn't that cold. Like, it was cold, but it wasn't. And the ground was, like, muddy and stuff, and then we, like, walked to my friend's house, and we dropped off our backpacks, and we walked around the center, and then we went back to my friend's house. Okay. So, then, you hung out at your friend's house, and then you called, you texted me and said you wanted me to pick you up around... 2.30. 2.30. Right around the time you would normally get off school, correct? Mm-hmm. And then I drove up there to pick you up, and what did I witness with my own two eyes? Not Alice. Not Alice. But one of her friends, walking outside, in the muddy, snowy, muddy ground, in a pair of white, nice, dry-fit socks, and carrying her shoes. You know who you are. Carrying her shoes. I know she watched... I know you're watching. ...the first episode, and her dad watched it as well. I know you watched it. I'm feeling for you, sir. I had those socks on outside in the snow, and if I got you in trouble, I'm sorry. I owe you a pair of socks. But, I saw that, and I thought, wow. Even after watching the episode, and I know she watched it, she still walked outside... In front of him. ...and I was just looking, looking for her dad. I was like, oh, I hope he's in the car, but it wasn't him. But it was hilarious. It was funny. Okay, so you had your happy day on Wednesday, and you walked with your friend. Okay, so that's good. That's going to lead us into our main topic of discussion for today, which is... Allowance is a very, very hot-button issue in our house. I feel like I don't get enough bang for my buck, so to speak. And Alex thinks that she does too much for the money. I do not. I never said that I didn't do enough. I didn't say that you didn't do enough. You just did. You think you don't get paid enough for the amount of stuff I ask you to do. I never said that. When did I ever say that? Okay, so then if you feel like you do the right amount of work for the right amount of money, then you shouldn't have any staff when I ask you to do stuff. Because when I ask you to do stuff, and you get all smoky and... Oh, man, I don't want to do stuff. Then it makes me feel like you don't think you're being valued as an employee here at Nasty Corp. You know, one of my highest paid employees, I might add. You got all the benefits. Because I'm the most helpful. You have medical, you have dental, vision. You got Lululemon. You got crazy perks here at Nasty Corp. I feel like when I ask you to do stuff, you should just cartwheel over to it. So do I not? Here's my point. You talk about me like I don't do anything. Don't say you don't because that's the vibe I'm getting here. You might as well just cartwheel over and do whatever. I do it. No matter what, how bad my attitude was about it, I always end up doing it. Do I not? Understood. But, I feel as your direct supervisor that I shouldn't have to deal with the attitude because the job pays so well. And you should just be like, oh man. It sounds like you want it like it's an office. It's not an office. It's a home. It is. It's a corporation. This is a corporation. Everything's a business. Everything's a business. So one of our main issues is I don't know how much money I'm going to give Alex per week. Because it varies. Sometimes she does more. Sometimes she does less. So when she does more, I give her more. And when she does less, I give her less. So the way I determine that is lunch. If she makes my lunch for work, I feel like she deserves more money. Considerably more money. But right now during the holiday season, we have a real Christmas tree. And that real Christmas tree is causing some real havoc in the living room as far as pine needles and needing to be watered and turned on and all that stuff. So rather than paying Alex the extra money to do my lunches, I instead will pay her to do the trees for the next couple of weeks. I pay her ahead of time. At the beginning of the week on Sunday. So on Sunday, she got her money. So I require her to do her job now for the rest of the week. And I feel like when she doesn't do the job, I should be able to recoup some of my losses. There's only five days. And if you're supposed to do five days worth of work, and you miss one day worth of work, that's 20%. I feel like I didn't get 20% of that money back. Alex does not agree. I never, oh my god. Oh! Don't do that. Have an intelligent conversation. Okay, sorry. Carry on. No, it's your turn to talk. But I don't want you to go, oh my god, I'm Alex. Sorry, sorry, sorry. I never. Um, you see, he's making me out to be a bad person. You're not a bad person. You're literally. You're so terrible with boys. He's like, she never wants to do anything. And I think, she doesn't believe me. She doesn't feel it. When, I told you. You were like, wait. By your own admission, by your own admission, you give me the attitude. And all I'm saying is I don't want the attitude. It's my turn. I don't, I don't. So if you don't want the attitude, just say that. Okay, I don't want the attitude. You don't need to be like, she doesn't agree. She doesn't agree. Well, because the attitude proves that you don't agree. Because, let me tell you, let me tell you. Above the tree. He came to my room one Sunday, and we discussed this thing, and I was like, yeah, like, whatever, I'll do it. Like, money is money. And now, I haven't said anything about having to do it. I have not brought it up. At all. I came home from school after the grocery store, and I went and checked the tree on the water level, and I picked up whatever tinsel was around it, and I'm not like over there. Because I knew that I needed to do it. Did you do it yesterday? Yes, I did. I checked the water. When? Growing. Growing? You're not always here. When? To see it. What? Why? What? What? You think I didn't do it? No, I'm just asking. What? You weren't asking. I wasn't asking. Okay. All right. I said it in a completely believable state. Okay. All right. Okay. Now, how do you think your allowance should work? Because it does seem like you don't think it's a perfect system. Well, my parents, they're like ... This is what me and you think, because I give them their allowance. Oh, sorry. Sorry. Sorry. We're talking about you and me. Sorry. Sorry. Can I talk about what mom says real quick? Sure. Absolutely. My mom is like, I was doing chores when I was nine years old, this, that. Every time we bring it up, she brings up her freaking chores. I was like, I never said ... That Puerto Rican household doing chores at nine. I literally never ... I never was like, oh no, I don't want to freaking dust the living room every three days. I never said that. If you wanted me to do more, tell me that you want me to do more, but she's like, oh, but I don't want to tell you that you have to do more. Exactly. Exactly. This is your house. Right? If you walking down the hall and you see a piece of trash on the floor, even if it's not your trash ... And you're telling me that I leave trash in the hallway? You should pick it up. No. I leave trash in the hallway? But if you're in the kitchen and you're making yourself bread or sandwich or whatever, cut yourself a piece of cake or whatever, and you walk over to the sink and there's some dishes in the sink, you don't just put your dishes down and walk away. You should know, be cognizant, and say, hey, you know what? Let me wash those dishes, because if I don't wash them, they're just going to keep piling up, and then I'm going to leave it for the next person. And the next person is usually myself or your mother. And then a lot of the time, I'll get into the kitchen, and it'll be a bunch of dishes in the sink. And it's you, and it's Gracie, and it's not us. And they're just there for us to watch. And I don't know if you knew this, but we're the heads of this corporation, and you guys are the custodians. This corporation, this corporation, this corporation. Hey, listen. You joke, but I'm trying to set you up for later on in life, because you're going to have a boss one day who's going to expect that you do things that you're supposed to do. Not wash the dishes. That's a metaphor for everything, for life in general. You're going to need to file reports. You're going to need to do projects and stuff. And your boss isn't ever going to want to have to sit there and tell you everything that you need to do. They're going to want you to know what you have to do and can do it. And if you're not going to do that, they're going to replace you. And I know this sounds like heavy-handed now, because you're 13, and you don't have a job, and you don't really care about this stuff, but it's important that you realize everything now is going to be able to be used later on in life. The things you learn now, the lessons you pick up now, are going to be a lot better off later on, because you don't have to learn that. You don't have to learn to take action, because you already learned it in your home. Your parents instilled that in you. You don't have to leave something for somebody else, when you can do it yourself. Why leave anything to be done by somebody else, when you can do it in the moment? It's always easier, it's always faster, it's always better. Do it in the moment. These are things we're trying to instill in our kids now, at an early age, so they don't have to learn them as adults, when they're not here with us. They don't have to be aware with all the bigger things now. Alright, okay, so explain how you want it to work. Well, I think I have time to do, like, I don't have homework. I usually finish everything at home. I mean, at school. So it's like, I get paid $25. Between $20 and $30. $30? Between $20 and $30. $30? Okay, anyway. Anyway. Anyway. I don't, I think, like, I do different things, but it's not, like, consistent. Like, I'll give my sister a bath, but, like, I won't do that every day. I'll do it maybe, like, once or twice a week, and then maybe the other week I'll, like, do it more. So it's like, I do things, but not, it's not like how I pack the lunches every day. You know what I mean? I think, like, I need something that I, like, have to do every day. So you would like, like, your friend has a chore list. Yeah, because she has a different one every day. So it's, like, more interesting. Okay, so you'd like, okay, on Thursday you have to cook dinner. On Monday you have to wash dishes. On Tuesday you have to give Gracie a bath. What do you mean as in wash dishes? Like, after dinner? Yeah. Okay. I did that, literally. Yeah, but that's what you want. That's what you would prefer. Because then I won't have to be, like, oh my God, you don't do that. Okay, but. Because I'll do more. Okay, but understand this. And I want you to look at me when I say this. Even if you have a specific job to do, if you're walking by some dishes and they're in the sink, I still expect you to wash those dishes, even if it's not your job. Okay. Because I don't walk by things in the yard. I don't walk by things in the house. I don't leave things on the floor for you guys to pick up. Your mother doesn't do that either. If you don't walk by things, why should you? True? Uh-huh. All right. Next topic. Okay. All right, what do you want to do next? Do you want to do your questioning thing? Would you like to do our snack of the day? We went to, the way we live, our town is really small. There's not really a lot of crazy stuff going on here. But we recently got a five below. It's so sad. It's so exciting that we got this thing in our town. I went in there today to pick up some snacks for the pot. We like to try different snacks. None of these things I've tried. I'm not sure if Alex has tried them. I think we had something similar to this. In Mexico? No, in the universal box. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Something similar, but not that one. No, it's not that. We did try the universal boxes for a long time. Hey! Sponsors. Sponsors. But then also, we wanted to talk about our favorite internet hack. We're around, we probably have like four or five more minutes left on the pod. We're trying to keep it around 20 minutes. Would you, what would you like to do? We can do your internet thing. Your hack? Mm-hmm. Okay, so what is a hack that you live by? That you've tried and you found, maybe on TikTok or Instagram or something like that. Somebody told you, what is a hack that you once did it to, you found it on the internet, and now you swear about it? Well, I don't know if it's a hack because like a lot of people do it, but the heatless curls, like with the heatless curls on. Like I do that almost every night to my hair, like for school. And like, you like just twist it around your hair. It's not, there's like so many different kinds. So when I have it turned on, and it's like not that comfortable to sleep in, but I like how like loose the waves are. So I'd recommend that heatless curl. Okay, the heatless curl hack. As you can see, I do it every night as well. I put in my heatless curls, aka nothing. You have no hair. I have zero hair today. Thank God. Shout out to Champion's Barbershop in Bridgewater for getting me right. So my internet hack, I swear by it, I never did this until fairly recently, is putting the boiled egg in ice water, and it makes it easier to peel. And I swore that, you know, it was weird. Peeling eggs is weird. Like there's like this little thin film. Like the fiber, I don't know. This very thin film that's on the, like the base between the eggshell and the white part of the egg. If you can get that thing off, then usually the egg will flip off. Like we'll just, the shell will slide right off. So that's how I always did it, to try and be real meticulous and get to that film. But you always like dig your nails into it. Like every time, this gives me the ick. It's so disgusting looking because after, it's like it has all the nail and like the chunks like come out. Mine, I'm a boss at peeling eggs. Okay, but that was before. But now, that was before I got the hack. Now with the hack, as soon as I throw that bad boy in the ice, I pull it out, I drop it into the pan, like from like shoulder height and the egg just peels right off. I don't even use my tools. And that's thanks to the internet. Thank you, shout out TikTok. Searching at night and I found it. I love the hacking. I use it all the time because my daughter, her younger sister, my younger daughter, Gracie, loves boiled eggs. We go out and she's like, aha. I'm like, oh, what do you want for breakfast? Boiled eggs. She's like, no, they don't have those here. Don't be weird. 20 minutes to boil an egg for you. So we boil a lot of eggs here. And that's one of the funniest things is my peeling of eggs. I also can't peel green bananas. I'm terrible at plating. I'm the worst ever. Like, I cut chunks out of cherries. Okay. I think we need to try this. What do you want to try? Okay. All right, let's try. What is this? We got these. Herbert Beth. They're fat-free, nut-free, and gluten-free. Oh, man. Whoa, I think that was an accident. Okay, so. It looks like Earth. Search here. Oh, my God. Wait, let me do it. Is this a ball, or is this food? Oh, it's a gummy, bro. Oh, it's food. What a scam. Oh, my God. It's so weird. It feels like a stress ball. It definitely feels like one of those water balls from the middle of the mall. It's one of those things that you buy, and then you squeeze them two times, and they float. It feels like that. It smells like blue, though. It smells like blue raspberries. Yeah, you know how, like, everything blue. I hate blueberries. That's a story for another time. No, it just smells like blue. I should tell them my story. Ready? Go. Oh, my God. There's jam in the center. Oh, my God. They're low-key. It's way too big for one bite. I know that now. But it was fake. But it's not bad. They're okay. I like the center, though. It's really gummy. Oh, my God. It wasn't that bad. I would finish this bag. There's two more left. But I wouldn't bite. And it's very blue raspberries. Doesn't it sound blue? No. Here. No blue tongue. That's kind of fine. Yeah. That reduces one point. But for something so violently blue, it's not. It literally tastes like what the color blue would taste like. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's a good description. Okay. Let's wrap it up here. We went over a little bit. But before we did, we were talking about Internet hacks. And I want to show you one. He likes to think that he invented this hack, but he didn't. I invented this hack. I saw it on the crazy Russian hacker guy. And I've been doing that since 1996. And this is a fact. When I was a kid, I got a Whoopie Pie. And Whoopie Pies are basically just like cupcakes. And it was so good. But it was way, way, way, way too expensive. And I didn't get them anymore. But I did realize that a cupcake, if you rip off the bottom and put it together with the top, it looks like a Whoopie Pie. I've been doing this since 1996. Way before I had the Internet, I invented this. People will not give me my flowers. I invented this in 1996. Little fat kid in Boston. I did it. And I take full responsibility for this. And me and that crazy guy, we can have it out over it. But I invented it in 1996. Peace out, guys. Have a good one. Bye! Oh, shit. Oh, my. Ew. Now, this is not that bad.