Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Google Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Email | RSS | More
What are the 3 worst words in the English language? • Why Larry hates Labor Day (and you should too) • What does Labor Day really mean? • Why is it a Commie holiday? • What happens when you turn 30? • How do you keep it from happening to you? • What do women say when they turn 30? • When is it time to quit your job? • How do you know when some chick is the one• All this and more!
Labor Day. The crappiest sounding holiday of them all. It’s nothing but a 72 hour throat punch. Because the fact that we’re working at all is an admission of failure. We’ve not managed to do what Zuckerberg did (steal Facebook) or Bezos did (destroy books and retail) or Musk did (con the government into subsidizing his over-priced rides.) So now, after a summer of seamless crises (few of which ever amounted to more than their Twitter hash tags) we’re supposed to celebrate…what? That… we work therefore we are?
Work sucks. That’s why it’s a pay check not a play check. But what if you could minimize the misery and maximize the $$$$ and pleasure? What better time to explore this than Labor Day? While your friends bemoan the end of summer and drink themselves into a stupor, you’ll be listening to this episode so that next Labor Day, you’ll have something better to do than swill room temperature PBR and eat Beenie Weenie off soggy paper plates with those cheap-ass plastic forks that snap if you so much as spear a chunk of stale potato salad.
In this episode, meet Nippon Nick and Don, two dudes who’ve had their fill of working for Japanese corporations, where Karoshi is common. What is Karoshi? It’s the good and honorable “overwork death.” As Nick tells it, in Tokyo some guys like to change it up by leaping in front of the bullet train or from a tall building. That would make more of a statement than face planting on your keyboard. If you’re going to die for your job, at least give them a big mess to clean up.
What the hell went wrong with work? It wasn’t always this way. When the 5 o’clock whistle blew, Fred Flintstone slid down the brontosaurus’ neck and was MIA until Monday morning. Over the weekend, it was drive-in movies and bowling with Wilma and Barney and Barney’s very pointy wife, Betty. Today, Fred would not dare leave work until dark and clock in Saturday and Sunday for overtime.
On Monday morning, once George Jetson dropped off his pointy wife (Jane) and got to the office, the first thing he did was put his feet up on the desk for a snooze. Today, Fred and George would be Karoshi candidates, no matter where they worked or what they did. Because somewhere along the line, this Karoshi crap became… acceptable.
Screw that. At the Take No Sh*t Dojo, we spit on Karoshi and all its endorsers and practitioners.
So now listen closely and hock up a massive loogie as we express our disdain for over work and corporate sycophants. For this is the… Point of No Return.
This. Karoshi. Sh*t. Stops. Now.
And then go to Patreon and join the dojo.
And then follow the show on Twitter here and Tony Spumonte here. (Follow Tony before they ban him. They don’t like what he tweets.)
And get a TNS Dojo tee shirt here.
Email us your problem at thatlarryshow@gmail.com.
See you next Tuesday.