S1E26: The Great Trash Can Battle, AI at Work, and the Best Career Advice We Ever Got

Pam and Deb are back talking about their ongoing silent standoff over the kitchen trash can. They swap stories about their earliest jobs, the worst career advice they’ve ever received, and how AI is showing up in their work lives. 

Transcript

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Sam. Hey, welcome back to she Said. She Said after a little bit of a break. I am Pam Prior. My doing a podcast with my lovely wife of 34 years, and we are glad to be back on the air again. We talk about just what happens in life when you're sharing a home, sharing a life, sharing a daughter, sharing three dogs and two very different personalities. Yeah, I don't even know where to go from there. She just goes totally off script under Brinehart. I. I have a coach. I am a pharmaceutical exec, and I mostly balance Pam, unless it comes to, like, talking to y' all, in which case really can't shut her up. So that is that. And I do go off script a. Lot, all the time. That is one of the big differences. Frances gave you permission. But what I need to point out to you is, do you know that we've been in a battle for two weeks that neither of us has switched, spoken a word about? I know you know what it is. The trash can in the kitchen. So y' all tell me if this has happened to you. I come downstairs one day, and for whatever reason, first of all, the trash can has always been in the perfect spot. It's not always been there. It's not always been there because there's the sink right in front of me where you do a lot, and there's a counter over here where you do a lot. And you can turn around right behind you from the sink and throw stuff away. And you can just do a quarter turn from the other counter and throw stuff away. Perfect spot for it. So I come down one morning, and it's moved. And it's not just moved to another good spot. It's moved like, it's in a good spot. Out of the kitchen. No, it's in the kitchen by the back door. Oh, my God. The back door is in sort of the eating nook by the back door. And I'm like. And I lived with it for a few days, and every time I went to throw something away, I turned around behind me, went, oh, shit, and went and opened it and put it in. And then all of a sudden, they went, you know what? I'm putting it back. And I put it back, and it stayed there for two or three days. Then I moved it back, and then it moved back. And now almost every day, the trash can goes back and forth. So I was wondering if you knew we were in the battle. I figured there's this. I know. I decided. I just decided to not say anything. I just figured, okay, I'm just gonna move it back. Do you want to tell me your logic for putting it in a place that makes no sense? I feel. Yeah, I feel it's not that it makes no sense. So let me be very clear. Our kitchen is basically a U. And on this side, the U is the sink, as she said. And then there's. She said there's countertop, and then there's more stuff this way. Anyway, on this side of the U, there's now an open spot because I had moved the putt rack, which is. Nowhere near where you make trash, mind you. But it's. But it is outside of the way of everything. So now this. There's more space between the. Like, the island, which is in the center of the U, and the outside. Outside side. So I just. I like the. I like a little more room. Yeah. And I. I like a trash can where it makes sense. The trash can makes sense exactly where it is. Yeah. Well, I think I put it back, so you're right. It's all right. I can move it anytime I want. So anyway, Anybody else have those? I wonder if other people do that kind of stuff. I'm guessing they must. I. I've got to believe that there. Have to be things that are like, this makes no sense. The other thing that. The other thing that I do frequently is you. I don't know why it is. We each have a glass with our toothbrush heads in. In the bathroom. I don't know. 50% of the time, I find your toothbrush head in my. In my glass. There's got to be a little bit. Why can she just not use her own glass? That's very different, too. Brush head in her glass. That's very different. They're not. But they look exactly the same. So then I have to look at them and say, okay, which one is mine? Which one's hers? Because they're the same. Yeah. Except that. So that's not a battle. That's not. I think having two glasses just makes complete sense. Like, I'm not putting it in there because I don't want to use the other glass. I don't think I put it in there. I think you make that up because I never put it in the other glass. Who puts your toothbrush in? I don't know. Somebody's doing it. It's you, hon. Somebody's messing with it. It's you. It's probably you in the middle of the night. Yeah. Yeah. Francis, what's your opinion on the trash can? Oh, boy. I could go either way. I Don't like taking your sides. Yeah, fair enough. That's fair. It's the whole point of she said, she said. It's so responsible. This is one where it really is. I'm right, she's wrong. No, just for the record, I mean. I. I get it in either place. And I will tell you that when we redo the kitchen and we have an island, I'm happy to put a. A cabinet drawer in there where it belongs. Where. Yeah, yeah, no, I get that. I'd even put it there. I didn't put it in that location. Interestingly, I hate it there. It's right in the middle of where we're cooking and prepping things. That's the point. No. 2 seconds to take your stuff and just move, like, literally two feet and throw it in the other place. It is pretty funny because we have. It's really two feet. I. I have no, like, concerns or issues about the aesthetic. I think our house looks great. You move the furniture a lot. It looks great after you're done. I always love how the house looks. There are just, like, a couple of things. She's blind. I am blind. But there are like, one or two things that I'm like, do anything you want, but, you know, just don't screw with this. And it's the nest. My office, and now the trash can. The nest. The nest. That's it. But everything else can shift. And actually, you can move the nest. I have moved the nest. As long as it can still meet all of the requirements. Has to be a plug coming from the left because the plug is right. I know what it is. I know the. I know the requirements, but they don't know the requirements. There has to be a plug on the left. There has to be room for me to go back and forth in the chair. I have to be able to see the tv. And that's really it. I'm not very demanding. There needs to be a table nearby. Yeah. It's pretty straightforward. It's the place for all her. I love it. Just have to have a place to hold all your. That's exactly in the room that we all hang. But that's it. There's a whole house for everything else. All right, so we. Today, what we're going to talk about. Yeah. Our favorite job. Was that the first thing? Our favorite job. Your favorite job, and then advice. Yeah. That's the best advice you receive. Yeah. What's your favorite job been ever in your long and industrious career or illustrious career? I think my favorite job is the Job I have now. That's a great answer. I mean, every job has been a. Every job has been a favorite. You know, when I've had it, as I've moved through it. Every job has been a favorite. That's a blessing. Yeah. I mean, I don't. I'm trying to think, is there. Is there any job that I like, totally hate it. No. Yeah. I actually feel the same way. And I know that I'm really lucky that that's the case. Like, blessed. Yeah. Because I've had. I don't know, I could probably count them up. What about the mailroom? You. So you talk about the mailroom with such fond. Fondness. Well, that's what I was gonna say. Like my favorite jobs, if I were to pick them right now, is this one right now, which I just love and which is, you know, being a fractional cfo, running a book, running my own company, and being in the mailroom at dupont, which was a monster of a company and a mailroom and me. And what I realized with that is that I make fun out of any job I have. Because you're there. Have fun. You're doing it well, like, even if it's counting inventory. No matter where I was, I was doing good things. Like, that was the thing that proved me. I was like, there was always something that was good for somebody in my work. Yeah, I do. I. I do have a fondness for my first job at dupont. What was that? I was an expense ledger. Accounting. Right. You got my voucher. I was. I got the. I got the. I got the 8080. Yeah, but that, that, that was a fun job, I think, because it was the first one. Right. So like the first real job. Yeah, it was so organized and there was like your. Your life had like this really cool routine and. And at the time, you know, dupont was big in Wilmington, so we owned all of these buildings downtown. So I just like, I viscerally have memories of like the smell of. Of the building and the Montana. Yes. They all had different smells. They all smelled a little different. I just remember like walking to, like walking to, you know, and by the way, they had like all the amenities there. There was pharmacy and the hairdresser and all of the things. And we just would go for, you know, go to eat lunch out in, you know, out in town and then come back. I. Those things. That was such a. That was a special. That was like a special time. Yeah, I agree. That's really was. What you're describing is where I had my mail run and we were in a building kind of off of the main campus, about a block of the bank of America. No, Customs know it. Customs square down on 8th and K. Yeah, I know where it is. And so it was a good two blocks, three blocks to the main building. So I had the benefit of being in dupont, but being away. Yeah. And I had my own mailroom. Was. The main mail room in dupont was chaos. There were like a hundred people in it. You got to do one little thing. I got to run the whole. My whole mail room because it was just me, which is, I think, why I liked it. I was 17 years old, and I, like, owned my own mailroom. It was awesome. I guess I've been an entrepreneur my whole life, but, yeah, I think my second favorite one was also equally as theoretically mundane. But it was a blast. I did it with Carlin. There were two of us, and we had microfilm machines. Oh, you did the micro. So all we worked in the. I worked in the freight area. All of the old freight bills and all. All the old freak claims went away and came back on microfilm, which was these reels that looked like a small version of a VHS tape. And you'd put it in this big old machine and you'd crank it and you'd manually crank it. And then you could hit a button to have it crank itself. But you'd have an index number you were looking for. And there was a table with an index of which microfiche, which microfish thing or film thing to pull. And there was micro fish, there was microfilm, the two different machines, and you got to look for the thing. So I set up races with Carlin and we had a blast. But we got so much done because we were. We were racing. So we were always finished, like, with our entire pile by, like, noon. So we got to do other things. Yeah. So I think that's kind of what I like about any job is how can I do it better, faster, more fun. And then. And you're doing it now. Now AI is helping you do it better, faster, more fun. So true, right? Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Like. Yeah. How much is AI? That's a great point. I'm going to divert. Yeah, go. We can divert. How much is changed your day to day life and your day to day. Work like crazy gangbusters. So I will say, at work, we were just. We were. So my boss just came back from the officers meeting, and at the officers meeting, the head of the company said, we want everybody using AI ChatGPT is going. Enterprise is Going out to everybody, we want everybody trying to figure out, how do you incorporate this? This is going to change us, this is going to make us faster, more efficient, blah, blah, blah. And then he said, and we know, because we have, we know who has access and who's using it. We know that right now there's about 30% or 40% of the executives were using it and of the, of the officers were using it. And we're like, we want to see that at 100 officers. I like. So they're watching. So anyway, I, I got, I got. Like the old days when they had all of a sudden start using email and couldn't. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Couldn't have their, couldn't have their second or there have been printed out stuff. Yeah, yeah. But I use it almost daily. Really almost daily. And like I get mad at myself for not thinking, oh, I could have. Just, I could have thrown that in and it was funny. So now we've decided in our slt, we've decided that we're going to designate, you know, some portion of time, once a month in each of our SLT meetings to talk about how are you, how, you know, what's a new use for AI, how are you using it today just to encourage us to be doing it. But in some cases it's simple. Like I was away for a bunch of days and I just said to her, I'm like, you know, tell me, you know, find me all of my action items over the last, you know, everything that is actionable for me over the last five days. It looks at your email and reads. Through all my emails. It gives me a summary. That's Copilot, right? Which is fabulous. That's Copilot. Although I just found out that we can have ChatGPT look at our Outlook and at SharePoint and stuff. So I'm going to be playing around with that. Oh, that'd be nice. Because I do enjoy, I do enjoy me a chatgpt. I enjoy working on, prompting. I enjoy talking like, have you created a bot yet? I have and I'm starting to. And I'm starting to. And I was talking to folks in my, in my, in our SLT meeting about creating bots for certain activities that we do and like. And because Mike said what my boss did, we had to read, I don't know, it was like 18, 18 scientific proposals to kind of decide what we're going to fund for this round. Right. And so what he did was he took all of the proposals, downloaded them all, put them all up in ChatGPT and said, Here are my criteria for a good proposal. And he said, is it unique and novel, innovative? You don't see it in research. Are there papers that are relevant? What's the, you know, have they rationalized a whole bunch of questions? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then the thing. And he said, and then give it to me in rank order in a table, blah, blah, blah. And he spits out. And he did spits it out. And then we had a meeting. And as we went through it, we ranked as a group and our ranking was almost exactly the same because you fed the right criteria in as, as, as. I mean, but think about it. There was a, there was, there was a leadership team of nine of us. Nine people for an hour. Nine people for an hour. GPT probably did it in a heartbeat. Well, and he had to define it, but only once. But I said to him, like, Mike, he goes, it was, you know, it had a couple things that were not quite right. I'm like, turn that into a GPT, Teach it the new things that you wanted to do. And this thing is going to get to know how you assess projects and then you can have that be, you know, the project assessor. And my friend Leo, he's making, he's, he's basically starting to program a digital twin. I like that. So he's, he's feeding it all kinds of information about himself, things he knows, blah, blah, blah. And he's gonna have a, he's gonna have a bot. So if, if he's never not around, somebody can go in and ask Leo, you know, and get answers. That would be him. It would be Leo answers. Yeah. Fascinating the way people are thinking that. We are probably, probably a year behind the curve with these things that we're doing, which is that. Let me ask you a question though. Yeah. What about proprietary information? So, so uploading scientific papers made me. Go, we're not load. So we don't put anything with identifiable information. It's all sort of generic. But, but our Nothing is trained like our. That's Europe is enterprise. Nothing leaves the building. They don't train on any of our information. So we get the benefit of everything external, but nothing is training on us. So there's no limit to what you can put up there. We have limits on what we're putting up. They've talked about that. Okay. Because I know when I'm using it for clients, I always ask their permission ahead of time and I always redact it so that you, you get the numbers, but you don't get Anything. You get the numbers and a story, but you don't get any details. Yeah. And that protects everybody, just in case. But that's the thing people are saying, what about privacy? Like, you can fix that. You can fix that really easily. Just make it a generic question or a hypothetical without the detail. So it's going to be. Yeah, I mean, it's just going to be wild. It's going to be wild. I mean, and I love the fact that they're challenging us to find new ways to use it. Everybody should be. If pharma's on it, guys, we're, we're behind the eight ball already, right? That big companies and corporations are at this point. I mean we need to be, I mean it's being used, it's being used in almost, almost every single new system that's being developed right now is Internet incorporating it. And like the Internet, what we're doing, what you just described, and I've said this before with what I teach my clients is about 100th of 1% if a 1 millionth of 1% of its capability. Yeah. Like what's happening out there with AI today is mind blow fun. I know so. Well, that's what think. Have you ever asked ChatGPT for advice? I, so I always, when I, when I, when I ask it to work on a project with me, I'll put in a lot of information. This is what I'm doing. Here's some, here's some background. I give it a whole bunch of, I feed it a whole bunch of stuff and then I ask it to, you know, summarize how you, you know, summarize this information and you know, and give me an approach for blah, blah, blah. And then I'll say, I always ask her, by the way, my chatgpt is a her. I always ask her, is there anything that I didn't tell you or is there anything that I didn't ask you that would make this more compelling or that would make this a stronger case? So in that regard, I always, I always ask her for advice. Yeah, I think that's, that's a really good point. And one of the, I'm using that as a lead in one of the questions we had to address today was have you ever gotten advice, really bad advice from somebody at work and when was that and what was it? And I think I really haven't gotten bad career advice except once. And it really wasn't advice. It was just a very selfish move by a supervisor. I know exactly which one you're talking about. And so I, like, I said, I worked for amazing people my entire career, with two exceptions, which is amazing, because I probably worked for 30 people, 20 to 30 people over time, and only two were, like, complete duds. And one of them, who will remain nameless and genderless, but you know who you are. When I got the best offer in the world that anybody could get, like, if you worked at dupont and this new joint venture called dupont, Merck called you and said, do you want to come work for us? That was like getting the tap on the shoulder for the major leagues. Yeah. And you were, you were a golden person if you got to go from the parent to that. And I had a benefit. I had an in. Right. Nepotism's great. My old boss in R and D had gone over because they took his group, and he tapped me on the shoulder. I'm like, I'm in. And I went and told this supervisor, and they said, so you need to say no to that and stay here. And I said, oh, do I? And why is that? And she said it as if it was. They done it. They said it as if it was an order. Like, you know, you've got to say no, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, what? And they said, well, I'll look really bad if somebody leaves the group. Oh, come on. So that is, first of all, the opposite of what leadership is. What you want is leadership that creates a culture that makes people want to come, grow and stay if they want to, and grow and leave. Find ways to move on. Like, one of my, my things for, for any leader is the biggest honor in the world you can have is to work for somebody who worked for you, because that means you gave them, you helped contribute to an amazing person. So it was like, I didn't know that at the time. I was young, but I'm like, what? And that was, that was the worst advice I ever got. I don't know. So hard not to use the name. I don't know that I've ever had really bad advice. Not even, like, really bad work. Like a couple of the one bad boss at dupont, Merck, early, in the. Early years, I don't know that he. I don't know that, that they gave me bad advice. You know, frustrating advice, maybe, but, you know, but I, I, I was young, you know, I think that that was probably the, the realization I was probably. There were. There were five things that were said that frustrated me. But looking back at it, was it, Was it maybe right? Yes. Was it couched in language that Was not great. Probably. Yeah. Was it self serving? Yeah, maybe a lot. But I, But I will say I've gotten some wonderful. I mean, I've had. Give me two examples of great advice you've gotten. So the first one would just, Would just be if someone, if someone gives you that offer, just, just go. Just, just take it. Like, seriously take it. Okay, cool. And that, I mean, for however many reasons I was like, hesitating about, you know, jumping a. Jumping a job, and someone's like, what's the, what's the downside? Take it, take it, take it. So it's like constantly grow. That's great. That's. You know, I mean, like, that was, it was, that was the message. It was like, get more experience. Broaden out. Like every single, every single opportunity that you have to make a move, you know, take it. You know, take it. It's. They're not, they're not bad. I think the other thing was somebody just telling me, just be you. Like, really to, to be me. I know that, you know, when I was younger in my, in my leadership journey, I had this sense of, oh, you know, this is what a leader should look like. This is how a leader should act. Got it. And someone said to me, no, we put you in this role for you. You figured out you're inherently a leader. Be you not. You're not somebody's picture of a leader. Well, it's not even that, like, it was. It's not even that I was. It was even that I wasn't my image of a leader. Right. Like, I thought I had to be a suit. I thought I had to look a certain way, I had to talk a way, certain, certain way. And they're like, no, like, we hired you to be that for, for you. And then, you know, then you realize the inherent value that you have just by being your own self. Yeah, it's interesting. The best pieces of advice I've gotten. One of the best pieces I've gotten is one that I hated when I got it. And it was our, Our dear friend Steve Layton, who pretended he was Lindsay's grandfather when she was born so he could get in the hospital and see her. But his was what he said to me was at one point, we had just done this absolutely heroic weekend to get something done, and I came in on Monday. I'm like, okay, we gotta write awards for everybody. This was a great weekend. Everybody pitched in, we got the thing done. Aren't we awesome? And he went, I think we reward you when you don't have to do heroics. And I was like. And I hated it. I was so mad. I remember being furious about it. And now I know. That's exactly right. That is exactly right. The way you want to lead, the way you want to do things is to preclude crises that need heroics. Right. Duh. Yeah. But then other good advice I've gotten Dave Marburger. It's a marathon, not a sprint. Oh, it's marathon. Which sounds like it's just trite. But he used it in some really good examples so that I didn't burn out. And then he also would say, don't let the highs get you too high and the lows get you too low. Yeah. And that didn't ring as true for me when I was working at Tasty Cake at the time, but it really rings true as an entrepreneur. Yeah. Because you know, we're on this. You're on it, you're on it. Boom. Yeah. I really don't want you doing boom. Which is not how I like to. And I definitely am not an up and down person. And even emotionally, oh my gosh, she's straight. So you know that, that it's, it's good advice and I'm able to do it pretty easily. But, you know, the roller coaster's real. It's just how you react to it, which is everything. How do you perceive what's happening? And that's perceive and react. And that's really the only practical thing to do. So both good and bad. And don't overdo it. Don't under. So that one ended up having a lot of depth. And then the other thing I remember was Sharon Howitt. And at the time I was kind of this brash 30 year old, 33 year old, I guess. And I was like, just driven. And I wanted everybody else to be. Be driven. And I wanted them to not make mistakes. And I didn't want to make mistakes. And you were either good at your job or you were bad at your job. Like, there was no gray. Yeah. You had a lot of black and. White at my right old, ripe old age of 33. I remember you. And she pulled me in one time. She goes, so. And I was in a bad mood one day, like, just mad because, like, nobody did anything right that day. I didn't do anything right then. Nobody else did. I was just grumpy. She pulled me in and she said, you need to know something. Whether you like it or not, you're perceived as a leader in this organization. So you can either step up and recognize that and recognize that when you're in a mood, everybody's going to follow you. So if you're leading with joy and appreciation and all that versus leading with anger and frustration, that's going to make a huge difference in a whole organization. And I was actually interviewing her for a job when she gave me this advice, and she's like, so do you think you can get a handle on that? And I went, wow, That's. Wow. That I knew in the moment that was great advice. Fair advice. And boy, so well given. I didn't realize that Sharon did that. Oh, yeah, that's awesome. And it was so well given because it was a compliment. And now you have a responsibility. So it's the first time I realized that, number one, I was a leader. And number two, that leadership came with responsibility. And not just that came with responsibility, but just. Just that your own demeanor, your own. Your own energy has the ability to affect other people around you. Other people. And at the time, I was like 30 people on the project. Yeah. Yeah. So that was really good advice, too. That's great advice. That's the. Yeah, it really was. I never forgotten that one. So that's my list of advice and stuff. All right, I think we've covered all our topics for today. There's no game, right? No game. All right, cool. So look, if you've gotten any good or bad advice at work, drop. Drop it in the comments. We would love to see it because we've probably all heard some semblance of it. I'm sure you've all heard some semblance of the stuff we brought up, too. And let me know where your trash can is. We'll see you next time. Trash can is just fine. The trash can is just fine. What are you going to tell them to do for us? Hit. Hit like subscribe. Drop a comment in the comments and tell your friends to come and meet us because it's kind of fun because. We never know what we're going to talk about next week. Have a great one. See you.