Special thanks to Dan for tipping us off on this great YouTube video which I think we can all very much relate to:
We salute the creator!
Tag Archives: Funny
Rehab phase 1 is almost complete; Phase 2 is coming
Today is our last day in Chile. Tomorrow we return to Argentina. Next week we return to the US.
Phase 1 of rehab has been intense
We have been unemployed and in South America for almost exactly 6 months now.
For 6 months we have had no deadlines and no responsibilities.
We’ve had neither cellphone nor blackberry and we’ve tried to exclusively spend our time doing things that we want to do rather than things that we were supposed to do. For instance, look how long it’s been since I last got a haircut:
Luckily, I'm getting a haircut later this week
We’ve slept for as many hours as we chose to every night (except for the damn 4am geyser tour in Atacama).
Stupid geysers. Stupid 4am. Stupid, stupid.
We’ve taken lots of daytime naps, we’ve enjoyed bottles of wine for lunch and we’ve consumed more steak then we had eaten in the previous 10 years combined.
And we'd do it again
At times, we’ve seen amazing landscapes. At times, we’ve sat on park benches and watched dogs play for hours. At times, we’ve sat on benches and had people try to steal Jen’s purse – that was entertaining.
We’ve read lots of books. We’ve tried to read many Spanish newspapers. This has gone poorly.
We’ve lived in 2 countries and immersed ourselves in their cultures- Argentina for 4.5 months and Chile for 1.5 months. We are happy to help you plan your trips.
We’ve sat in cafes for hours – in the beginning we had lots to talk about… later we just stared at each other… then we started bringing books… then we ran out of books… Now we don’t go to cafes so much.
Each of these things has been a critical part of our rehabilitation. By completely removing ourselves from our old environment and the associated pressures/peers/challenges, we were forced to gain perspective. We were humbled on a daily basis. It was annoying.
Through immersing ourselves in foreign cultures in which nothing is expected of us and no one cares about our resumes or has a vested interest in what we do next, we found perspective on who we had been and on who we want to be. At times it was freeing, at times it was frustrating – both are part of the process.
Through meeting people on the road (both travelers and locals) our perspective on what life can look like and the sheer number of different possibilities that exist and can lead to happiness has expanded immensely. As has our definition of happiness-now we think it requires frequent napping.
Finding this perspective was the goal of rehab phase 1. This isn’t the end. We don’t have any answers, but this new and broader perspective will serve as the foundation for phase 2.
Rehab phase 2: Re-entry / where we go from here
Next week we will fly back to the US and begin phase 2. We are not sad to return, we are excited to start a new chapter of this adventure. It’s like a choose your own adventure book, except written for adults instead of 8 year olds.
To say that we are ‘returning’ is not entirely accurate… we don’t have a specific home to return to. We have a storage unit full of stuff in San Francisco and a car in Seattle. We have no jobs and no place to live that is our own. And, due to poor/rushed planning all of our other clothes are in that storage unit, so we will have to continue wearing the same 5 outfits that we have been wearing for the last 6 months even though all of our sweaters and socks have holes in them. This should make a strong impression in job interviews.
We won’t be picking up where we left off, we will be starting fresh in a new city. We are planning to live in Seattle for a variety of reasons. It will likely rain a lot, but also be much cheaper.
The prospect of starting fresh is a little intimidating at times, but with our newly broadened perspective, we are excited to construct lives that offer us balance. We don’t know what it will look like exactly. From a distance, it might look like a dancing penguin. No one knows. That’s what makes it exciting.
Let's hope that it doesn't look like this dancing penguin
Jen is looking for a ‘real’ job. I plan to pursue a number of entrepreneurial projects that I have been toying with for some time. In both cases, we will only consider things that we think we will genuinely enjoy. We have already accumulated plenty of option value in our careers and are ready to cash in and find things we love. The evil mongeese can suck it.
We’d like to have a dog. And we’d like to have lives that allow us to keep the dog alive. We suspect that the dog will appreciate this as well.
We plan to have hobbies outside of work. We’ve heard that this is possible. Jen would like to teach English as a foreign language in the evenings. I’m excited to return to improv comedy. Maybe we’ll even do something athletic–fear not, we pledge to continue drinking enough wine to keep ourselves firmly out of shape.
We believe that we are ready for phase 2, but re-entry comes with a number of risks. We need to be ever-vigilant for any signs of relapse.
Signs that we might be relapsing:
If any of the following occur, we may need to buy plane tickets or at least some steak…
- We don’t actively pursue hobbies
- We eat take-out dinners more than twice a week
- We have more than 3 days in a row of unhappiness at work (a couple of days can happen anywhere from time to time – at 3, we torch the place)
- More than 50% of the friends that we spend time with on a regular basis have MBAs
- We spend more than 10% of our social interactions complaining about our jobs
- We eat lunch while still typing
- The idea of getting a dog dies due to impracticalities of work schedule
- The dog itself dies due to neglect
- Multiple instances of cancelling social events occurs due to last-minute work conflicts
- We check emails on our phone while mid-conversation with others
- We don’t manage to leave the country at least twice a year
- We achieve Starwood platinum status (and are proud of it)
There are almost certainly others. We will need your help to avoid relapsing. That is why we absolutely plan to continue this blog. It will become less about South America (though there are still tons of topics we’ve been meaning to write about on Chile/Argentina and still plan to), and more about Seattle and our re-entry.
We hope to be an example not just of a couple that left our jobs to travel for 6 months, but one that also made a successful return to our careers and are better off than we were before we left.
Stay tuned.
Any other relapse warning signs you can think of that we should watch out for??
Management book chapter 2: Perfectionists should kick themselves in the head (perfectly)
Last week we discussed the merits of building career option-value and warned about Brick Wall Syndrome (BWS) and the tyranny of the evil mongeese. This week, we’ll tackle the advantages of being a perfectionist and make the argument that if you are a perfectionist you should try to kick yourself in the head (as perfectly as possible).
Like last week, this will not apply to everyone. The truth is, this one barely even makes sense, is WAY too long and is almost certainly 100% inaccurate. If you do somehow force yourself to read it all the way through though, I hope you can agree with me that, at the very least, some of the pictures are pretty entertaining…
Why
It’s not easy to kick yourself in the head at all, let alone perfectly. It will require a significant amount of practice to get it just right. You may be wondering why I’m suggesting this. It’s mainly because perfectionism makes me cranky, but I’m happy to come up with some other reasons if my crankiness alone is not enough for you (that said, we will likely both end up regretting this).
The basic argument is that kicking yourself in the head provides all of the same compelling benefits as trying to be perfect (e.g., almost impossible to achieve, hurts a lot, not worthwhile, etc.) while at the same time being infinitely more entertaining for others to watch.
See? Entertaining, right?
You might be thinking “This is preposterous, I don’t even know why I’m reading it”
Imagine how I feel–I’m the one writing it. The worst part is it’s just getting started.
If you’ve read the last chapter about career option value, then you already know about Brick Wall Syndrome (BWS) and how it instills in you a drive to manage your career/life by continually seeking out the paths of greatest resistance and pushing yourself as hard as possible to break through all of the brick walls you can find in order to build option value (even though you don’t necessarily have any interest in these options). You’ll also know that if you suffer from BWS, any career choice that looks enjoyable and/or like something that you could really excel at without any pain or suffering will automatically be classified as an utter waste of time by the evil mongeese who are in charge of your life decisions. This much should be fairly obvious. This chapter isn’t about BWS though, it’s about another disorder–perfectionism.
Overview of disorder
At this point, I should clarify that I’m not talking about the benign and mild form of perfectionism in which people take pride in their work and have high quality standards. That’s a positive thing. I’m talking about the more extreme version that keeps people up all night obsessing over things that even they admit are a waste of time. This is the version that inevitably leads to a constant sense of failure and ensures that no matter how much effort you put into something, you always feel like you should have done more . . . and that someone else would have.
Perfectionism isn’t about building option-value by choosing difficult paths. Unlike BWS, perfectionism isn’t concerned with what specifically you choose to do; whatever you choose, this disorder’s primary focus is in making you obsess over doing things as perfectly as humanly possible–regardless of how long it takes, what other important things are going on in your life or if anyone else cares. This could lead you to do any number of things, e.g.:
- Stay up all night making sure that every PowerPoint slide in a large presentation has a perfectly matching color scheme (note: it’s not about consistency–consistency is merely good enough; the perfectionist will likely have painstakingly tried several different schemes to see what looked best)
- Spend 5 days of intense effort to do what should have only taken 1 day (it’s not that you’re slow, you simply weren’t satisfied until it was 5x better than what anyone could have done in 1 day)
- Spend all day trying to come up with a perfect third bullet point here to tie this all together in a comical way (if you are a perfectionist and have suggestions, please leave them in the comments)
Perfectionism and BWS are not the same thing. It’s true that they often come together in a tightly-strung, type-A, fun-to-be-around package, but they are not the same thing. Individually they are bad; together, they are worse. You don’t have to believe me about this; here is the proof:
Note: if this 2 by 2 doesn't constitute definitive proof to you, you may not have what it takes to be a management consultant
Self-Diagnosis
Diagnosing yourself to be a perfectionist is usually not difficult. Most perfectionists are fully aware of their disorder and often secretly (or openly) proud of it. It is even easier to diagnose it in someone other than yourself merely by observing their daily activities.
Here are some signs that may indicate you have this disorder:
- You frequently work significantly longer hours than others that have your same job and do not understand how it is that they can manage to go home so early and not be more stressed-out all the time.
- When you point out how proud you are of having gone above and beyond to make sure that all fonts/colors/icons/etc. are perfectly coordinated and aligned to the nearest millimeter (you measured), rather than receiving applause, people just look at you and shake their heads. This seems strange to you. Your conclusion from this is that you will have to try harder next time.
- When other people actually do compliment you on your work, you think they are patronizing you–you know that you should have done more, and if they think that you were good enough, then they really have no idea what they are talking about and should be avoided.
If any of the above symptoms are present, you may be a perfectionist and should continue reading for root causes and home treatment options.
Root causes
If you are an obsessive perfectionist, whether or not you realize it, and whether or not you are proud of it, what you are really suffering from is almost certainly varying degrees of the following two root causes:
1) You are afraid that someone else will judge you to be not good enough
2) You suck at managing competing priorities
Or, if you are confused (which can happen if you’ve been up all night perfecting something), you may be afraid of competing judges not managing someone else’s priorities well enough. If this is the case, see your doctor immediately.
If you are a perfectionist, you are in for a rough time. Whereas the person suffering from BWS is off prioritizing things based on degree of difficulty and perceived rewards, the pattern behind your decision processes is distinct. Due to root cause #1, your main concern is avoiding someone else thinking that you are not good enough. This is extremely stressful and requires constant vigilance. You always have to be on guard. No matter how small the task is that you’re doing, you have no choice but to go above and beyond and make it perfect–regardless of how long it takes (you really hate deadlines). Having to be perfect all the time is a lot of pressure.
This type of extreme perfectionism is primarily about downside protection. You are far more concerned about the downsides of being imperfect than you are motivated by the upsides that might come from doing a good job; unlike someone suffering from BWS, it doesn’t matter to you whether or not what you are working so hard on will lead to any rewards (real or perceived), it just matters that no one finds any errors in anything you do.
There are side-effects. This fixation on downside protection can, at times, make you fear taking risks and prevent you from attempting things that are unconventional or creative (even if you have a spectacular idea: e.g., starting a monster truck rental business). You tend to avoid things that don’t have an established set of criteria for perfection because you know that they are far more likely to result in criticism and failure (though, I think we can all agree that a monster truck rental business would clearly succeed). You may have less fun and work harder than others, but at least you won’t risk being a disappointment.
Who is this person that you are so concerned about letting down? To you, this is an irrelevant question–it does not matter who they are, whether or not you have any respect for what they think or if they even exist. Because it doesn’t matter who they are, we’ll call them Mildred.
If you’re a perfectionist, your priorities are determined by Mildred. One might say that you are Mildred-centric. You are so concerned about letting down Mildred that you will consistently assign exclusive priority to whatever things you think are important to her (even if you are just guessing). In fact, you will often obsess over them so much that you will lose sight of other things that a more rational version of you may suggest are more important (e.g., happiness, loved ones, eating tacos)–this is root cause #2: sucking at managing competing priorities.
Mildred is not the (only) bitch in this scenario
You may be surprised to hear this, but it’s almost certain that Mildred…:
a) Couldn’t care less and doesn’t even know your name (or is some minor character from your past who doesn’t remember you – e.g., your 6th grade English teacher)
or
b) Is in fact a bitch, and realizes how easy it is to manipulate you into doing whatever she wants through pointing out your weaknesses
or
c) Thinks that you actually are good enough – uh oh! Time to find a new Mildred
How you choose your Mildred
Despite your debilitating ailment, you likely still have some people in your life that care about you. These people probably not only think that you are good enough; they may even think that you are great. This automatically disqualifies them from being your Mildred. You have to look for a Mildred that exhibits either A or B from above in order to be sure that you will generate enough anxiety to perpetuate your disorder.
A fun side effect of this is that the people in your life that care about you (and who are likely also the same people that you yourself care the most about) are unable to help you. Due to the very fact that they think that you don’t suck, you will constantly discard any positive things that they ever say to you and instead make it clear to them that Mildred’s opinion is more important to you. This is awesome for them. Fear not, in time these people will go away and you will be completely undistracted and able to focus all of your attention on pleasing Mildred.
Remember, the goal of this disorder is for Mildred to be your taskmaster, and that wouldn’t work very well if you picked a Mildred that was supportive of you. This is why this form of extreme perfectionism is scientifically referred to as BMBD, or Being Mildred’s Bitch Disorder.
It gets worse
If you have BMBD and you have BWS (which often happens due to a failure to vaccinate for these things in infancy), you are really in trouble.
With BMBD alone, your obsessions are more random and tend to fluctuate. Mildred on her own may make you strive to throw the perfect birthday party for your 3-year-old one day, followed by obsessing over the formatting in your monthly report (and not even getting home from the office until after your 3-year-old has gone to bed) the next. It doesn’t really matter what you are doing; her main concern is that you are always perfecting. You may end up sacrificing other things that are important to you while in your Mildred-induced perfectionistic frenzies, but at least there’s a chance that you’ll have devoted some of your energies to things that actually do matter to you.
As proven earlier, it’s much worse if you also have BWS. If you have both, your Mildred instead will be collaborating with the other mongeese to ensure that all of your energies go into attempting to be perfect at things that are extremely difficult and that you are simply not good at. They will pick virtually impossible tasks specifically targeted to your weaknesses (because that’s where the biggest challenges and brick walls are–as mentioned, BWS sucks) and she will make you feel bad about yourself for failing to do them perfectly on your first try.
Focusing all of your energies on trying to be perfect at virtually impossible things which you are in fact not good at is no fun. It’s certainly not as fun as competing in a taco eating contest (the great thing about a taco eating contest is that everyone wins).
You know you want it
Home treatment options for BMBD
Unfortunately BMBD is not curable–as you may have suspected, you will always be Mildred’s bitch. However, there are some things that you can do to alleviate the majority of your symptoms. Similar to BWS, embracing failure is extremely helpful in fighting BMBD–if you let Mildred down enough times, she’ll stop caring so much.
If you aren’t ready to embrace failure, try the following:
Step 1: Admit you have a problem
Like so many things, the most important first step is admitting that you have a problem. BMBD is not just a harmless personality quirk; at its extremities, it holds you back, pushes people away and prevents you from having the life that you want. Upon accepting that this is a real problem, you might be tempted to lash out at Mildred… Don’t – it’s not her fault.
Step 2: Admit that you are the problem
The second step is realizing that Mildred isn’t the problem; you are. It’s true – you can ask anyone that knows you well and they will tell you.
Now that you are horribly depressed, it is time to move on to step #3. If you are not yet horribly depressed, you didn’t do steps 1 and 2 well enough–please repeat until you have perfected them.
Step 3: Perform some Mildred Judo
This step requires some introspection. If you have BMBD, it means that you suck at managing competing priorities and will let everything else slide in order to cater to the ever-changing whims of your Mildred. If you can improve on balancing priorities using a little Mildred Judo, you won’t have to worry about what your Mildred thinks. On the contrary, it is your Mildred that will have cause to worry.
The trick is to make your disorder work for you rather than against you. What you need to do is to pick a new Mildred that has a more macro view of your life… Maybe pick your future self as your new Mildred. Pick a high-level Mildred that is judging you based on how well you live your life across ALL dimensions rather than a small-minded Mildred that gets caught up on minor details and loses sight of everything else. This new Uber-Mildred will have no trouble beating up your current Mini-Mildred and setting a very different tone for what remains of your lifetime of servitude.
Note: If the number of Mildreds mentioned in the preceding paragraph is confusing, just try to remember: Uber-Mildred = good, Mini-Mildred=bad, millions of milling Mildreds mysteriously melting = hard to say. Better?
Pleasing your new Uber-Mildred will require a whole new and much healthier mindset. For instance, Uber-Mildred will be very unhappy with you if you work late and blow off spending time with your spouse. That said, Uber-Mildred will also be unhappy if you do sloppy work and get fired. What’s important to understand is that Uber-Mildred doesn’t require perfection in any one thing in particular, but rather requires that you devote your obsessiveness to trying to be perfect at balancing all of your competing priorities in a way that optimizes your happiness.
With her in charge, it’s not about having the perfectly formated report, it’s about having the best overall life (within which the formatting of your report is merely one of many other dimensions and should be prioritized accordingly). Indeed, pleasing Uber-Mildred is all about getting comfortable with the idea of making sure that you are ‘good-enough’ across all dimensions before you are allowed to expend energy to go for better/great/fantastic/boy-howdy in any one category. This isn’t easy. Uber-Mildred is a harsh mistress and pleasing her will require making trade-offs (especially in any areas that mini-Mildred was particularly obsessed), but pleasing her will ultimately please you. Isn’t that pleasant?
Step 4: Try to kick yourself in the back of the head
I suppose this step is optional, but, as mentioned previously, very entertaining for your friends and family and, depending on how extreme your BMBD symptoms have been, the least you could do is provide a little entertainment to thank them for putting up with you. In fact, if you make it to step 4, please upload a YouTube video and link to it in the comments section below.
I'm not kidding
Note: If you are also suffering from BWS, the above steps will still help you somewhat, but in addition, you will need to seek out and embrace failure (as discussed last week). A good way to make failure a part of your daily life is to travel. Immersion in a foreign culture will almost certainly make you feel like a failure several times a day. Not only will you stop looking for brick walls, you will likely have moments where you are eager to eat Top Ramen for dinner because it means that you don’t have to deal with looking like an idiot with your poor language skills in a restaurant and potentially ordering something that has calf brains in it because you didn’t recognize just one little word in the list of 10 ingredients and assumed it must be something benign like parsley. Not that I have any experience with this.
Disclaimer: The author makes no claim whatsoever to have figured anything important out or to have anything worthwhile to say about this or any other topic. He writes things like this merely for entertainment purposes–mostly his own. You should definitely not construe this as advice or take action based on it–you could end up unemployed in Chile.
If I were to write a management book about career “option value” . . .
I know a lot of people that are working very, very hard in jobs that they don’t have any particular passion for (and in many cases dislike quite a bit) in order to have greater “option value.” I was one of them; I spent the majority of the last 10 years building option value.
As we come closer to the time we originally thought we’d end this Career Break, I’ve started to think about the future and my career again. I’ve started to think about “option value” – how much I’ve accumulated and what I should do with it. If I were to write a management book about option value it would look something like the following.
It will not apply to everyone.
Sometimes “option value” is about building a great resume…
It starts young. You don’t even know it’s happening. All you know is that you have to work very hard in high school to get into the right university. You don’t question it, you just know it’s what you’re supposed to do. Everyone knows it–and those that disagree just have wrong-minded priorities (e.g., fun). You know better.
Once in college, you have to make sure you choose the right major, get the right grades, do the right internships and demonstrate the right leadership qualities in order to get the right job after graduation. If you are in pursuit of option value, determining which job is the “right” one involves very little reflection upon what you enjoy doing or what makes you happy; instead, it requires seeking out the jobs that are hardest to get, the hardest to do and the most likely to consume the vast majority of your waking hours. This is obvious.
Of course, this job is just the first such job; the whole reason you worked so hard to get it is so that you would be qualified for the next job. That’s the “option value.” There is always a next job/accomplishment/promotion/whatever–otherwise, why would you be working so hard at the current job which you barely even like? If you weren’t doing it in order to get the next job, it would be a little crazy, wouldn’t it?
Each new job will likely be harder than the last. If you’re focused on pursuing “option value,” you will likely inadvertently have become convinced that any job that would be hard and/or painful is automatically worthwhile and important; also, you’ll likely believe that any job that looks easy and/or fun is almost certainly frivolous and a waste of time. Obviously, this makes sense, even though it is sometimes hard to explain to others in a way that they can understand–fear not, this is likely due to their wrong-minded priorities (e.g., happiness).
This logic will force you to continually seek out the path of greatest resistance and push yourself as hard as you can to get “there.” The destination is irrelevant; it’s the very fact that there is resistance that makes it seem worthwhile. In other categories of your life you likely don’t have the same confusion–for example, you may fully agree that walking through an open doorway is a much better idea than trying to walk through a brick wall–but for some reason this logic gets reversed in regards to your career. We’ll refer to this as “Brick Wall Syndrome, ” or simply BWS.
Watch out for "Irritable Brick Wall Syndrome", that's even worse.
Most people fail or drop out at some point in this process–which is understandable, as it requires near-perfection as well as a fair degree of luck to navigate the course. The longer you go without a failure, the greater the pressure to be perfect all the time and the more (it feels) you have to lose. Unfortunately, being perfect gets harder and harder. The further up this ladder you climb, the more years and vitality it extracts from you and the harder it is to remember what you were doing it for to begin with. On a positive note, with each new accomplishment you earn an entirely new set of options for the future. After 5 years of this intensity you have quite a bit of “option value;” after 10 you could do almost anything. Imagine if you did it for 20 years – someday you’ll be able to do all of those things you always wanted to do – not today, but someday . . .
Sometimes it’s about accumulating money and/or stuff…
This often looks similar to the scenario above. It often layers on top of the scenario above. Having money has real benefits:
- You can afford to buy products and services that free up time (e.g., car, take-out dinners, Roomba). There are lots of things you can do with more time. Things like looking for more brick walls.
- You can spend money on stuff to reward yourself for your accomplishments and to prove to others that you are “succeeding” (e.g., houses, watches, monster trucks). Unfortunately, spending it on these things along the way requires earning even more to pay for them. That said, the value of owning a monster truck should not be underestimated.
- You can even save money so that someday you won’t have to work so hard and you can finally afford to go out and do all of those things you always wanted to do. I guess.
While it is not entirely the same thing, there is no denying that more money = more “option value.” And, you can always have more; someone else always does (we refer to them as “jerks”).
Options don’t kill people, people kill people…
There is absolutely a place for pursuing “option value” and many benefits can come from it. It can indeed get you where you want to go. . . as long as you know where that is. The thing is, you don’t really need 1,000 options, you probably only really want 5. And if you only really want 5, why spend so much time building the other 995? The trick is figuring out which 5 you want and minimizing the amount of time spent accumulating those you don’t care about.
For example, let’s say I want to go on an island vacation. It would probably make sense for me to figure out which island I want to go to, buy a ticket and go. Right? Alternatively, I could put off reflecting on where exactly to go and instead work really hard for several years to save up enough money to buy tickets to 20 different island destinations (just in case the first one doesn’t turn out to be perfect). I still won’t have gone to any islands over these years, but I will now have several to choose from and at least I won’t be sunburnt. Note: I tried really hard to come up with a funnier example for this analogy. I failed (see below, failure can be a good thing).
Pursuing options merely for the sake of having more options is not often a recipe for long-term happiness. It’s all too easy to get caught up in this cycle–especially when you are working so hard to get to the next set of options that you don’t allow yourself time to reflect upon where you are headed or what is on top of the particular ladder you are climbing–be careful, it could be an angry mongoose.
Worse, it could be a giant mongoose. BWS sucks.
One way to break the cycle…
Seek out failure. Failing early is better. Anything is better than running into an angry mongoose on top of a ladder. It’s much easier to succeed if you’re already a failure–and much harder to avoid failing if you are exclusively a succeeder. Most happy people I know have had significant failures. Few happy people that I know are pursuing options for the sake of options (though, they may have monster trucks someday so you should still be friends with them just in case).
Failure teaches you that it’s ok to fail (if this seems obvious, great–if not, be careful, you may be suffering from BWS). Failure often leads to new perspective and a more open mind regarding what “success” can look like. Indeed, failing at what you think you are “supposed to” do may open the door to pursuing what you actually “want to” do. Weird.
Don’t spend all of your time and energy getting stressed about avoiding/fearing failure (a prime symptom of BWS). Instead, embrace it–it can be more fun that you might think.
Now what?
If you’re working hard on something you don’t love in order to build “option value,” always know why you are doing it and how you plan to “cash in” on those options. You get to choose why and how, but choose. Choose something that inspires you and work specifically towards it. It doesn’t matter what you pick (e.g., travel, time with family, volunteering, ninja training course, etc.). There is no right answer and you can (and should) change it as many times as you want. The important thing is picking something specific rather than just marching forward without a destination–if you don’t choose, the angry mongeese will choose for you and you definitely aren’t going to like what they choose (it will probably be something scary, they eat snakes).
With them in charge, what could go wrong?? (Note: I am fairly confident that the $2 I paid for this photo is the best $2 I have ever spent)
Once you pick something that inspires you, it’s time to ask yourself when. How much ‘option value’ and which options do you need to pull it off? How much money? Be specific. You might be surprised. You might have more than you need already. It might be time to cash in–you can always create more options later. Plus, who knows what new ones you’ll find along the way…
Maybe you'll be able to pull this off
Wasn’t that a nice inspirational note to end on?
Note: The author makes no claim whatsoever to have figured anything important out or to have anything worthwhile to say about this or any other topic. He writes things like this merely for entertainment purposes–mostly his own. You should definitely not construe this as advice or take action based on it–you could end up unemployed in Chile.
Update: If you liked this, you may enjoy Chapter 2: Perfectionists should kick themselves in the head (perfectly)
Cafe con piernas = Coffee, with legs
Buckle up, this one is going to be interesting…
Cafe con piernas: The background
So I was in Santiago for a few days back in 2002 and I vaguely remember going on a city tour with a tour guide that told us that there are topless coffee shops here–e.g., coffee shops in which the women serving the coffee are topless. After telling us this he kind of laughed, so I laughed and assumed he was either making it up or that there was like one shop in the entire city and it was a complete oddity similar to this one in Maine (which sadly burnt down a few months after opening). I was wrong.
What we’ve learned over the past week or so is that this is actually a bit of a cultural phenomenon here in Chile and has been for almost 50 years. It’s called ‘cafe con piernas’ which means ‘coffee with legs’ and does not refer to an extra caffeine boost. It started with a place called Haiti (which still has many locations around downtown). At the time, the downtown area was full of almost entirely men coming to work (apparently the women usually stayed home) and the idea was to provide them some entertainment during the work day. So, Haiti opened some coffee bars and had the women wear provocative clothing. Unsurprisingly, this worked out pretty well and more and more similar shops kept opening.
In the mid/late 90s another coffee shop decided to differentiate itself by featuring what they called the “Millionaire Minute” which was a 60-second period during which all of the women would fully remove their tops. Again, unsurprisingly, this innovation was largely well received by the clientele and was the catalyst for a whole new level of cafe con piernas experiences. As you will see in a few paragraphs, I do not use the phrase ‘a whole new level’ lightly…
Cafe con piernas: The news report/video
I think that before I give you the details of our personal experience with cafe con piernas….
…
…
(sorry, just had a flashback)
Right, before I give you the details of our personal experience with cafe con piernas, it might be best if you watched the following video about it produced by a news agency in London in 2007 (it was aired on network TV, so should be safe for work):
Cafe con piernas news report (sadly, they have disabled embedding, so you will have to watch it on YouTube)
Ok, can’t put it off any longer. On to our personal experiences…
The misadventures of Ryan and Jen – Chapter 1: The beginning
As we were exploring our new neighborhood over the last week, we noticed a very large number storefronts with big signs stating that they were ‘cafes.’ We were like, “Jackpot, so many cool looking places to get coffee!” As we continued to explore, we noticed that many of them had either blacked out or, more commonly, mirrored windows (meaning, the kind that you only see your reflection if you try to look in)–this seemed odd…
Looks pretty normal... except for the mirrored glass and the small sign that says "se necesita señorita" which other than being a neat rhyme, means something like "we need chicks" (all of them have this sign, which for awhile seemed like a solid job prospect for Jen...)
Later, we were walking around downtown and ran into a couple of other coffee shops called Haiti (the aforementioned original cafe con piernas institution) and Caribe. These have normal windows and are usually pretty crowded.
Looks perfectly normal from the outside
Unfortunately, this picture doesn’t capture it, but you can usually see the serving women from the street and they are all wearing very short, very tight dresses. Also, the area behind the coffee bar is raised up about a foot in order to maximize the view. Seeing this triggered the memory of the ‘topless coffee bar’ comment from the tour guide during my first trip here back in 2002, so we started doing some Google research and began to learn all about cafe con piernas (including the video above and some links below).
Upon reading about these shops, you may be surprised to hear (I certainly was) how excited my lovely wife Jen became about investigating them first-hand. After watching the video, she was all excited to go check one out first thing the next morning, saying it was “a cultural experience”. If you haven’t yet watched the video (seriously, watch it) an important and likely somewhat obvious fact to know is that the shops with mirrored glass are a bit more… shall we say, progressive than Haiti and Caribe–these two are considered to be the tamest of them. Another fact you should know before I proceed is that all of these shops offer standing room only–no chairs, you drink your coffee while standing at the bar.
I suggested that we go to one of the tame ones, but Jen was having none of that. Here is a direct quote from her: “if I’m going to have to stand up to drink my coffee, I better get some ‘boob-age’.” Seriously, that’s what she said. There were other choice quotes from her as well, but I’ll save them for later; suffice to say, she was very excited–even more so than usual. I think that now, in retrospect, she deeply, deeply regrets taking this stance…
The misadventures of Ryan and Jen – Chapter 2: First attempt
There are literally 5-10 of the mirrored glass-type establishments within a few blocks of our apartment (I told you it was a good neighborhood!), and given that you can’t see inside, we weren’t sure how to go about choosing one. Luckily, my Harvard-educated wife concocted a plan; the plan was to loiter across the street from a few of them and choose the one had the most in/out traffic (we certainly did not want to be the only ones in there). It was a reasonable plan, but as we were camped out across the street from a few trying to look inconspicuous, Jen’s excitement turned into nervousness that she would be rejected because she is female. Then after 5 minutes of not seeing anyone go in or out, the nervousness escalated. We decided that we would wait until we talked to some locals and got some advice on where to go. If one wanted to say this in another way, one would say that we chickened out.
That afternoon we went on a bicycle tour of the city (which was cool), and Jen excitedly asked our guide about cafe con piernas. Understandably, he laughed. Then, he explained that there are PG, R and X rated ones and that if we wanted to learn more about them (including how to tell which was which), we should go on one of their other tours–seriously, this is a big enough thing here that it is included in city tour itineraries. He explained that here in Santiago it is often somewhat cold, so everyone wears layers and is completely covered up most of the time; in his opinion, the girls in cafe con piernas venues are merely wearing the sorts of things that women might wear on the street in a place like Rio de Janiero and that it is very popular here because it’s so rarely seen. Makes sense. The other thing he told us was that it should be completely fine for her to go into them–I later learned that that was all she needed to hear…
The misadventures of Ryan and Jen – Chapter 3: Oops!
The following day I assumed that Jen’s excitement would have blown over. Again, I was wrong. We got out of bed and she was almost jumping up and down when she said, “Wanna go get some coffee???” I said, “Really? Still?”
Her: “Yes! He said I could go!!”
Me: “Ok…”
We decided to attempt the same plan. We first camped outside of this fine looking venue for ~5 minutes:
We couldn't tell for sure what those pictures were on either end of the sign, but we were pretty sure this place was classy
We saw one person go in, but in general we didn’t love the vibe, so we ultimately decided to keep walking. About a block away we encountered this place:
We have a winner
We stood outside, casing the place, for 5 minutes or so while I repeatedly asked Jen if she was sure she wanted to do this and she repeatedly answered in the affirmative. Eventually we saw a few men go in so we sucked it up and went for it.
Oh boy.
Seriously, this is challenging to write. Taking pictures was the furthest thing from our mind (and likely would have resulted in us being beaten out back by a guy named whatever the Chilean equivalent of Biff is), so I’ll do my best to detail the experience in words (which will force me to relive this highly traumatic experience quite vividly–hope you appreciate this!)
The room was about the size of a bedroom. The coffee machines/baristas were off in the back. There was a narrow standing bar in the middle and then a counter along the walls where you could put your coffee; otherwise, wide open space. There was fairly loud techno music playing and it was dark-ish, but certainly light enough to see the staff… Also, all of the walls were mirrored (and possibly the floor/ceiling too, though I don’t remember). Equally weird was how easy it was to see out the front windows to the people on the street.
We were immediately greeted by a woman wearing the standardized uniform–5 inch heels, g-string/thong and very revealing bra; that’s all. She kissed us both on the cheek somewhat provocatively and then asked what we would like. She did not seem at all disturbed by Jen’s presence–nor did the other patrons despite what they were doing. We ordered 2 coffees. She told us that it would cost 2,000 pesos so I gave her 2,000 (this is more or less the normal price for coffee). Then she asked if we might want to give her a little something extra for her. Jen gave her another 2,000.
She went off to retrieve our coffee and we nervously looked around–which was pretty easy given all of the mirrors and the fact that we had situated ourselves at the stand-up bar in the middle. This few minutes that we had to ourselves taking in the scenery and wondering what would happen to us when she returned with our coffee was a special time for us. It probably always will be. Whether we want it to be or not.
At the time we were there (~11am) the staff consisted of ~5 girls all dressed the same and there were maybe 3 male customers–each there on their own, and each ‘enjoying’ his time with one of the staff. We had read a few accounts of other experiences at such places and had heard of one which said that the girls were unattractive, overweight and groped the customers left and right. We heard another account in which the people said that the girls were very attractive but seemed completely disinterested in the customers. In the 2 by 2 of x-rated cafe con piernas venues, Cafe Rio is definitely in the “winning” quadrant–very attractive girls, lots and lots of groping.
Note: Consulting Rehab does not necessarily condone or endorse the views of this 2by2
In fact, the word ‘groping’ really doesn’t describe the kinds of things that we saw reflected in the mirrors. The other girls were definitely ‘dancing’ with the other customers–keep in mind, there are no chairs, so it was sort of a standing lap dance. Some of the customers definitely had their hands all over (and under) the skimpy outfits of their dedicated girl. And, we also saw one girl kneeling down in front of a guy for a couple of minutes appearing to provide a special service. Truly, experiencing things like this with your wife is the bedrock of a strong marriage.
Soon, our señorita came back with our coffee and stood about 2 inches away from Jen, making it clear that she would be our companion until we left. I’m not a religious person, but I have thanked god more than once in the last couple of days that she chose to stand next to Jen and not me. Not really having a roadmap for situations like this, Jen struck up a conversation with her. We learned that she moved here 2 years ago from Peru and her 6-year-old son lives back in Peru with her mother. She’s worked at the bar the whole time and makes money to send home and to be able to go visit. She also told us that the most crowded time of day was at 1pm, right around lunch break (keep in mind, these places are closed at night and don’t serve alcohol). It was actually a very nice conversation and we would have truly enjoyed getting to know her if not for the dry humping (and more) happening a few feet away.
I don’t think I’ve ever drunk a coffee so quickly. We were out within 10 minutes. Jen was no longer excited. We’re pretty sure we had stumbled into one of the hardest core ones based on what we’ve read and it felt more like being in a brothel or extremely hands-on strip club than a coffee shop. Suffice to say that we were a bit messed up for the next few hours.
2 hours later we walked by again to get a picture of the front -- Jen's face looked like this for most of the day
It was about 1pm when we walked by the second time and we saw 7+ men walk in within 2 minutes… curious how it works when the clients outnumber the staff… not curious enough to go back. Interestingly, there definitely does not seem to be any sort of social stigma associated with walking in and out of these places… many of them are on busy pedestrian streets and we’ve seen people coming in and out of them quite a bit.
After this experience, despite our need to find an income, we decided that it was no longer a viable option for Jen to become one of the señoritas that they necesita.
The misadventures of Ryan and Jen – Chapter 4: Our tamer experience at Cafe Caribe
Because we had already done the hard part and gone into a hardcore one, we decided to try one of the tamer ones the next day to complete our research. It was a world of difference. There were men there, but also women and while the servers were definitely wearing tight dresses, it wasn’t that big of a deal.
I fake tried to take a picture of Jen to get one of the staff, but she was wise to us and mostly escaped. There are better pictures in the links below
This was basically just a normal coffee shop. In fact, I’d argue that the fact that you had to stand up to drink your coffee was weirder than the outfits the staff were wearing. This was actually kind of a fun and different cultural experience–night and day from our Cafe Rio experience.
The misadventures of Ryan and Jen – Epilogue
It’s been a few days now and we’ve mostly recovered from our experience, but as I said, our 10 minutes in Cafe Rio will always be a special time for us. Writing this has been cathartic. Let us never speak of it again.
Cafe con piernas: Our advice
If you are a tourist here in Santiago and want to be able to say you went to cafe con piernas (and it is worth checking out), go to Cafe Caribe or Haiti. If you are looking for a coffee and some dry humping (or more, did I mention there was a staircase in the back that likely lead to someplace a little quieter…), try Cafe Rio. Beware of the other mirrored glass establishments, you certainly wouldn’t want to end up in the unattractive/aggressive groping quadrant of the cafe con piernas 2 by 2.
Cafe con piernas: Other interesting links
- A female expat’s experience and perspective on cafe con piernas: http://eatwineblog.com/2010/03/26/coffee-with-legs-santiago-style/
- Another blog with some interesting thoughts on the sexism of it as well as some conversations with an owner and a bit on the economics: http://www.chipsites.com/chile-travel/fun-activities-cafe-con-piernas.html
- A food blog’s perspective: http://www.seriouseats.com/2008/04/snapshots-from-chile-cafe-con-piernas.html
- Additional perspective from the Travel Tart: http://www.thetraveltart.com/starbucks-coffee/
Our trip to the Northwest of Argentina (the NOA) in summary
In case you haven’t caught every post over the last couple of weeks, I wanted to put a quick summary of all of the posts related to our one-week trip to the Northwest of Argentina. As a reminder, we went to Salta, Cafayate, (through the the valle de Calchaquies) and then up north to the province of Jujuy, including the city of Jujuy, Purmamarca, Tilcara, Los Salinas Grandes (the salt flats) and the Quebrada de Humahuaca.
All in all, we really enjoyed the trip and it provided a great change of pace from the buzz of daily life in Buenos Aires. That said, we definitely encountered our share of issues on this trip, but that’s just how travelling works sometimes and you can’t let it ruin your trip. Anyway, here are the relevant posts:
1) Pre-trip planning: Some thoughts on trip planning for our second vacation-from-vacation before we left
2) The FlechaBus trip to Salta in Cama-suite: A humorous review of our very entertaining and rather uncomfortable 20 hour bus-ride to Salta on FlechaBus in their Cama-suite class of service.
3) A day in Cafayate: Photos and descriptions of a great day we had in Cafayate. If by any chance, you’re working long hours in a job you don’t love, please consider that days like this are a very viable, affordable and easy to setup alternative 🙂
4) Bad Experience with Local Guide in Salta: A copy of the review we wrote on Trip Advisor of our very unpleasant and money-wasting experience with a highly recommended private guide in Salta named Angie.
5) Trip Report on Salta and Northwest Argetina: A thorough and step by step review with photos of everything we saw and did while we were there along with our thoughts. If you only read one of these, read this one.
6) Review: Patios de Cafayate hotel: Our review of our (almost) great Starwood hotel in Cafayate
7) Photo gallery from the province of Salta: Including Salta city, Cafayate, Valle de Cachaquis, some wineries in Cafayate and a Goat Farm!
8 ) Photo gallery from the province of Jujuy: Including Purmarmarca, Los Salinas Grandes, Tilcara, Quebrada de Humahuaca and more
Our quick summary: Fantastic place to visit to see a different and very beautiful part of Argentina. That said, it didn’t blow us away–while we’d definitely recommend it if you’re in the area, it wouldn’t be the first place we’d recommend. We haven’t been to Bariloche or Mendoza yet, but we’d definitely say that Iguazu Falls is far more spectacular on an international scale (though a very, very different kind of experience).
Enjoy!
This vineyard surrounded our hotel, not bad...
A Brief intermission…
Sorry for the lack of posts lately.. My mother has been visiting for the last 10 days. It’s been busy.
We’ll get posting again soon. In the meantime, click the read link to watch a hilarious video
Dear purse snatchers,
Us: the couple sitting on the bench in the botanical garden reading our books and enjoying the beautiful day for a couple of hours.
You: the band of 2 women and one guy that welcomed us to Buenos Aires by teaching us to be a little bit more careful with our belongings when in public spaces.
We were a bit confused, but also flattered when you asked us for directions to Plaza Seranno in english despite obviously being locals. Of course, we were more than happy to share our map with you while your friend snuck up behind our bench and grabbed Jen’s purse in order to show us how important it is to keep a close watch on our valuables.
I’m writing to thank you for providing this valuable public service on behalf of the city of Buenos Aires–it was tremendously helpful to us and we have been much more careful since. Some people might mistakenly think that you were actually trying to steal Jen’s purse for real (and to be honest, we wondered about it as well for awhile), but upon further inspection, there are several indicators which make it clear that you had no intention of actually making off with her purse:
- The park itself: Given that the Botanical Garden is surrounded by a tall fence, has few hiding spots and has only 2 exits which are staffed by guards, it would obviously be almost impossible to steal something from someone and make a get away unless you were EXTREMELY fast or very sneaky.
- Timing/location within park: Clearly, if you had actually wanted to succeed you would have targeted your victims at night in the dark, or at least in a secluded part of the park, or at least somewhere where there weren’t other people nearby. The fact that you went out of your way to choose us at our bench in broad daylight with multiple other benches full of people not only nearby (~10 feet), but also directly facing us is a pretty clear indicator of your intentions.
- Resource deployment: Your band of pretend-thieves/BsAs-tourist-safety-officers consisted of 2 young and athletic looking folks (a guy and a girl) and one very overweight woman (for the purpose of the story, we’ll call her Helga). The fact that the 2 of you that looked as though you could run quite fast (we’ll call you Speedy and Smarty) were the two that tried to distract us from the purse by asking us directions while appointing Helga to grab it and take off “running” is probably the strongest indicator of your intentions.
When the people sitting at the bench 10 feet away suddenly yelled “THIEF!!” and pointed at our bench as we were showing Speedy and Smarty our map, we were very confused, scared and quickly becoming angry as we turned to see Helga running off with Jen’s purse. Of course, it quickly turned from fear/anger to pure confusion as we watched Helga waddle along at her top speed of 1.3 MPH away from us down the main path in the direction of several other passersby and away from any discernible exit or escape (given the tall fence and guards and all). Given Helga’s impressive land speed, we actually had quite a bit of time to consider what our next move should be…
As I turned around and saw Helga ambling off (which was almost hypnotic), my thought process was something like the following:
“Hey!!”
…
“What the…?”
…
“I should chase her…”
But then it occurred to me that this must have been a trick–I’m ashamed to admit that I briefly thought that maybe Helga was just a diversion since even in the heat of the moment it was clear that there was no possible way that she could successfully run off with anything; Speedy and Smarty, please accept my apologies for briefly thinking that you may have been deploying some sort of clever double fake-out plan–clearly that’s not something you’d be capable of (you being city safety officers and all). My thoughts continued:
“It’s got to be a trick, they want me to follow her…”
…
“Yeah, that’s it, they want me to chase her down so they can take something else…”
…
“Ha! I’m smarter than them, they won’t trick me”
…
“Wow, she’s really slow”
…
“Wait, what else could they want to take…? We don’t have anything else with us.”
…
“Wow, I’ve been standing here thinking about this for a long time now and I could still catch her in under 5 seconds…”
…
“Maybe this is some sort of hidden camera video show…”
My musings were abruptly halted as Helga–having completed her part of the plan in showing us that the purse was steal-able, and also making it obvious that she wasn’t really trying to steal it–simply put the purse on the ground a short distance away from the bench and kept on lumbering away (still at top speed). Jen retrieved the purse and we had plenty of time to look through it to make sure everything was still there while keeping an eye on Helga and having confidence that we could still catch her if need be. Speedy and Smarty were nowhere to be found at this point, but I can only assume that they had moved on to the next group of tourists they needed to welcome for the day.
Thank you again for your help. Simply reading about other people’s experience with pick-pockets and the like does not nearly have the same effect as having experienced this simulated theft that you performed for us. Best of luck with your future demonstrations, please let us know if we can put in a good word with any of your supervisors–I’m sure they would be very interested to hear how effectively you are performing your duties. I’ve included the below picture of me sitting on the bench just before the demonstration took place in case you don’t remember us:
All the best,
Ryan and Jen
(this happened a few weeks ago, but I figured it was about time I wrote it up)