Loyalty is Overrated!

In this week’s episode, the focus is on loyalty - is it overrated or not? After a difficult exit from a cooking job and having my father pass away, my perspective on loyalty was changed. 

For the Sponsor I Wish I Had, I am talking about Urban Armor Gear - incredibly durable phone cases that are light as a feather and look slick as hell. 

For the Just the Tip Segment, block scheduling is on the menu. For work, for home, give it a try and let me know. 

My Whisper In this week is Morning Brew and their amazing daily newsletter. Pure, unbiased news - get everything you need in five minutes. 

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Transcript

Let me tell you right now, loyalty overrated
What's up everyone, welcome into another episode of The Story lesson advice podcast. Part of the Saturday is Saturday media network. Sid media.net. Thank you very much for listening. A couple of weeks, we are going to have the second podcast come out. I hate reading a book review podcast. Let's can also be a video podcast as well. I'm going to be reviewing casually books that I found helpful and useful over the last couple of years or months, in a very casual way, because I do not like to read. So it's going to be a Cliff's Notes version, a kind of down and dirty Review, I'm going to talk about really the things I like, not really give a full book review, because who the hell am I right? All right, anyway. So what did I say? I said, loyalty is over rated. And I've got a great example that starts with the death of my dad. I know, just bear with me. So back up a few months, actually, a few years. So I've talked about before, on previous episodes about my father, he passed away back in August of 2014. And I was cooking at the time. And right when I started going to culinary school, excuse me, right when I got out of going to culinary school and started working at my first job, which was at the Dallas Country Club, a great place, we had all the toys, all the customers really, really need. within like two weeks of me starting there, got a phone call from my parents saying my dad had cancer. And there was a couple of years later until he passed, but that whole time I was down in Dallas slugging it out in the kitchen, my parents were up in Michigan, and you know, I missed out on a lot of opportunities still saw him for holidays, and birthdays and things like that, but it just wasn't wasn't the same. And with my dad being sick, and me working, and you know, not being at a job where I could take time off really, it made it really really difficult. And my my dad and my mom, they were great about it, but especially my dad, you know, considering he was the one that was sick, it was really understanding is like, look, this is what your this is your career, this is your life, you know, do not sacrifice it for me, like be here when you can but I totally understand and and we'll help each other and be with each other from afar. And that was good to know. But I still kind of carried this guilt around with me. But I still couldn't I really couldn't do anything about it. I was making nine bucks an hour just starting out what am I going to do ask for weeks off at a time so I could go be with my parents. So anyway, fast forward to I'm there, you know, two and a half years and my dad was getting pretty sick. And I, I knew that I was going to probably only see him one or two more times before before he passed. And this was in the summer of 2014. So I ended up stumbling on another job he got another offer to be kind of like a almost like a sous chef but not really which was a step up from where I was at in a step and pay and responsibility and really learn how to cook at the Dallas Country Club. And this next job is going to give me the opportunity to kind of learn the more the bookkeeping and the business side and ordering food and you know all that kind of stuff and kind of leading people which there just wasn't room for me to do it at the at the country club, which is fine. So hemmed and hawed talk to my wife decided to take the job. And the way that it worked out when they wanted we meet to start, it allowed me a certain window of time to go up to Michigan and spend time with my with my parents, and my dad, knowing that he would probably wasn't going to be here for too much longer. But the only way I could do that was if I gave a 10 day notice, instead of a two week notice now 10 days, 14 days, whatever. And it really bothered me, and I kind of hemmed and hawed about it and talked to my wife. And she was like, Look, this is a chance to see your dad 10 days versus 14 days, you know, you're essentially a line cook, who cares? But it bothered me because I felt like I owed the employer something and looking back on it now, like, holy shit, was I thinking the wrong way. But anyway, I submitted my 10 day notice I talked to the chef that I worked with directly for a long time and explained the situation he was understanding the executive chef was not he was not very happy with me, and was upset and you know, loyalty, and how could you do this to us and you're leaving us in a bad spot. And, you know, I explained my career opportunity, and that Dine, so those two things like, you know, leave me alone, but he wasn't very good about it. So anyway, I went up, got a chance to spend time with my dad. This was in July, and had a really good time. I was there for a week or so. Came back started my new job a month later, my dad passed away. So with that, had I been stuck on this idea of loyalty or whatever, I really wouldn't have been able make the trip work. Because that four days was four out of the six or seven that I ended up going up to Michigan to spend time with them. So the moral of the story and the reason I'm telling this story was that, man, me, finally kind of breaking free of my mental shackles of what I thought I owed, the company that I worked for. Had it had I not done that I would not have seen my dad one last time and spent good time with him, it would have been when they came to visit me and I was working, you know, on to the holidays, or whatever. So the story there is, thank goodness, thank God that I was able to kind of break free of my mental shackles and and do that, but that really stuck with me that the executive chef was not really understanding about that. And I had given you know, nights weekends, holidays, like all cooks do would work, you know, multiple stretches of 1416 days straight without a day off all that kind of stuff. And not a pat on the back. That's that's the job. That's the life of being a line cook. But million times they asked, you know, he asked me directly Hey, can you stay late tonight? We need help, or we have an event? Can you help? Can you go work this event? Can you go do that? My answer was almost always yes. Because I didn't mind helping. I wanted the experience. I wanted to learn to get better. And I could work with some of the other chefs there and just learn and learn. So my answer was almost always yes. And in a situation like that, I was hoping for more understanding, but did not get it. All right. And now it's time for this week's sponsor, I wish I had. And this sponsor is a company that I have purchased their product, and I've had it for about six months. And I absolutely love it. Back in about six months ago, I was looking for a new phone case for a new phone that I was getting. And I was super excited. But I needed different than the case that I had previously, the qualifications that I needed this case to meet was, I needed to be durable, I needed it to be lightweight. And I needed it to be easy to take my phone in and out of. And then the final thing is I also needed it to have some tactfulness. So when I was holding on to it, it wouldn't slip out of my hand, I got a new phone, it was a 14 Promax. And the phone is a little bit heavier. And I needed something that I could count on to be durable. So did a bunch of research watch a bunch of YouTube videos of people way smarter than me and more educated than me about cases and everything and landed on this case here for the YouTube audience you can see, which is urban armor gear. And they make super super durable lightweight cases for all the smartphones out there all the tablets for laptops and MacBooks. 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Okay, so the story was worked at the country club for a couple of years, and had a chance to leave and go somewhere else and also had a chance to go spend some time with my father before he passed. The caveat was instead of giving a 14 day notice, I was only able to give a 10 day notice I had been there for a couple of years. Like I said, I was really involved in a lot of the kitchen operations. I had a lot of the recipes, I had a lot of that stuff going. So I had quite a bit of responsibility there. But at the end of the day, I was just another line cook, I wasn't a sous chef or anything like that. So talking to the chef that I really reported directly to he was very understanding for my career opportunity. And the fact that my father was sick. The executive chef however, it was not. And it was a little bit of a problem. And that really stuck with me and bothered me about like man, I you know, I've really given a lot to this company. And you know, I'm not looking to leave here to walk across the street for five cents more. There's there's some extenuating circumstances here. So I was hoping to be a little bit more understanding than that. And I have sort of a mini story that ties into this lesson as well. Before I went to culinary school and switched careers and everything, I worked for a large transportation company that was worked there, started in Green Bay work in Chicago, then moved to Dallas and work there. And all in all, I was with the company for about eight years, and very good company, still a very good company. They're an industry leader. And I still have a lot of friends that work there. Really good stuff. The office that I ended up working in, when I got to Dallas sort of started to devolve over the years and it kind of became just not a great environment. I've talked about this in previous episodes as well. And long story short at the end, I ended up getting fired and part of it was I I was in culinary school, they knew that and I think they knew I wasn't going to be there long term. Part of it was I probably most definitely was checked out after a certain point. And then part of it was, and again, this is where it ties back into this loyalty piece was that I had been there for eight years, I had done a several jobs, I had helped open two offices, I really been a, you know, a face of our office and our division of the company and been really involved in a lot of things. And, you know, within 30 days, poof, and, you know, nothing happened to me, my performance wasn't rock bottom or anything like that, there probably was a decline. Because of, you know, just like I said, going to culinary school, and kind of my heart wasn't in it anymore. But not even a conversation about, hey, let's, let's work to turn this around, or, Hey, we see, we've seen some issues here, let's, let's address them, and let's talk about them. And that's a person that's not the company that would make a decision like that. But at the end of the day, companies are made up of people, and people make decisions that aren't necessarily reflective of the company's values. So when I talk about loyalty, the lesson to me that I learned is, the company can have the loyalty, right, the country club I worked at, or this transportation company that I worked at, or whatever, they can have mission statements and values and, and all sorts of things and preach, you know, community and people and family and all of that kind of stuff. But at the end of the day, it's individual people or small groups of individual people that will make decisions that will directly impact you. So for me, it was a sense of kind of feeling almost like a slap in the face. And there's probably my own ego involved in all that as well. But when I was at the country club, it's like, Hey, come on, man. You know, there's, there's real stuff going on here, my wife. And then previous to that, at the transportation company, it's like, had been here almost a decade. And I think that's earned me at least a conversation about my performance, as opposed to just saying, Hey, you're fired. And I didn't do a good job managing my way through that. And, you know, understanding severance and all that I was young, I was 2829 years old. But anyway, the lesson to me with that is that companies can have loyalty, quote, unquote, but the people who make the decisions, oftentimes, it's more transactional for them. And there's always going to be the next project, the next holiday buffet that I had to work at as a line cook, that, you know, the next deadline, the next important customer, the next, whatever, and it's just the next one, that's all it is. And it's the most important thing in the world until it's over, and then you move on, and you never talk about it again, and you just keep going forward. So there's always going to be a next whatever, when it comes to work. So the loyalty piece of it is just be loyal to your your work and your responsibility. That's it, they pay you, you show up and do work, put in an honest day's work, do the best you can, and call it a day. But the lesson really I learned from that was that loyalty is really overrated. And if you're not careful, it can bite you in the behind, because you might have this version of loyalty to the company. And, you know, they gave you a job and you've moved up to the company, and you kind of feel like you're an important player there, and you probably are. But on the other side, it can be gone in an instant like that. And it really is, it's not even a one way it's not even a one way street. It's really like a one way usefulness of companies, especially the larger they get your your loyalty is only valued insofar as it's still profitable. And I'm not trying to go on a tirade about big companies or anything, but just be leery of that to not be so emotionally invested or don't tie yourself too closely to a specific company, or whatever. And even if it's a great company, and everything is going well and all of a sudden your boss leaves and the new person comes in and everything could look differently in five minutes. Right. So that is that is a very important lesson to me that I learned. For this week's just the tip segment, I'm kind of keeping in line with some of the business stuff that I was talking about earlier with previous companies. And I'm talking about something that I am not an expert in. But I have adopted this, this behavior or this technique in my professional work. And it's really, really helped me over the last I would say year or so be really more dialed in and be much more productive. And what I'm talking about is block scheduling at work. And you may know this, you may not I don't think I'm reinventing the light bulb here. I'm just just sharing information. But it's basically a technique where you block off sections of time on your calendar and you devote it to a specific task or a specific task with a a group of subtasks that are kind of under it. So for me an example of that could be following up on leads. Right maybe I'll block off an hour With that twice a week or something like that, for that hour, I'm not answering phone calls, I'm not answering emails, I'm not doing anything else other than following up on leads. Now within that blog category, there's some, some microtransactions that are in there as well, where it might part of that might be requiring me to update my CRM tool, or part of that might be requiring me to update a, you know, an outstanding quote, or update an outstanding project or something like that. But the idea is, you kind of close off to the world, you work hard, deep core work on one task, or one group of tasks for a certain period of time. And if you watch and read and listen to all the productivity experts, they really talk about the way that you can, the way the best way to be the most successful is you kind of have to dedicate certain blocks of time to deep work, where you just completely folk shut everything out and focus, and you just go all in on whatever, whatever it is that you're doing. So for me to do a little bit less degree, the block scheduling works, where I scheduled emails, time for emails at 30 minute intervals, I'll do that three times a day. And at those three times, that's the only time that's the only thing I'm doing is I'm responding to emails, I'm checking emails, if I don't have stuff, I am cleaning out my old emails. So the whole idea is I am keeping that portion really, really tight and really up to date and really cleaned up. And then I'll move on to the next thing. So you might feel some guilt associated with that you might feel some, some self induced pressure to respond right away to an email or a phone call or whatever. But if you were in a meeting, for example, and this is what I tell the people on my team, if you're in a sales meeting with a customer, and you get a phone call from another customer, you're not stopping that meeting, right to have to take another call, you'll wait till you're done with your current meeting. And once you walk out in the parking lot or in your car, then you'll call the customer back maybe. So I would treat it the exact same way. No one else knows that you're not in a sales meeting, or that you're not doing something else. So block off that time. And if you can stick to it, it will be unbelievably rewarding. So that is this week's just the tip block scheduling, give it a try.
Okey dokey karaoke. So we talked about the story of me giving 10 days notice instead of 14 at the country club I worked at so I could go spend some time with my father before he passed away, talked about the lesson of understanding that loyalty might be a great concept at a company level, but individuals make decisions. And those individuals tend to do that in a more transactional basis. And also, that loyalty is oftentimes a a one way street or a one way usefulness street where companies will find you loyal insofar as it will be loyal to you insofar as it's still profitable, or make sense for them. But we've seen this all the time where there's huge chunks of people that that lose their jobs, or get laid off or whatever. And the response is, hey, it's business, right? It's not personal, it's business. So my advice to you, is to do the exact same thing, be loyal to your God, if you have one, be loyal to your immediate family. And friends, I'm talking to your spouse, your children, maybe your parents, siblings, if you have the maybe, and your closest closest friends, who you know, are there for you through thick and thin, and you don't need to see them every two weeks in order to keep that relationship up. Outside of that you don't owe anyone anything, including your company that you work for, including your boss, including your co workers. Now, as I said before, do your job, right, give it a good effort, show up on time, blah, blah, blah, all that kind of stuff. But your loyalty is to yourself, and to your immediate family and friends around you. And that's it not even your casual friends, you don't owe anybody anything. This is the advice that I'm going to be giving to my daughter when she's older. The advice I would go back in time and give myself which is don't feel any sort of guilt attachment or guilt Association, or anything like that. A sense of I kind of need to do this, you know that the company has been there for me, whatever. I'm not saying take advantage of the company. And I'm not saying that if they asked you to stay late one day or to come in on a day off or something that you should automatically say No, what I am saying is you come first. And you have to come first because that other direction of hey, can you do a little bit more? Can you take on a little extra work? Can you come in on your day off? That's always going to be a steady stream it no matter what your job is? When I cooked it was always meant every single time I would get a call on my day off. Hey, can you come in almost every single time and I worked a split schedule so I would work like four days, get one day off work three or four days get another day off. So like I never had two days off in a row hardly ever. So now you're saying okay, I get my one day off. And you're calling me at nine in the morning. And I'm you know got a whole nice day to relax planned or whatever and you're like you need to come in at two o'clock and then work to 11 and then oh that was your They off. So now instead of working four days, you're working eight days straight without a day off. And sometimes I would do that. But that's always a one way street, your company, hey, can you take on more work? Can you take on this project, and there's tons of accounts out there on on social media and YouTube that talk about the right way to respond to that, and the right way to kind of have a discussion with your, with your boss about that, as far as like, you know, hey, if you're gonna pay me more to do this extra work, then sure. But my advice, you'd be loyal to yourself first, to your God, to your immediate family and friends. And that's it, you don't owe nobody nothing.
Okay, for this week's whisper. It is an account, and a newsletter that I have been following for well over a year, I think almost two years. They are called Morning brew. And I get a daily newsletter from them. And the reason that I love them is because they give on biased and even reports on news and news stories. So here's the news story. Number one. Here's the unbiased facts. Here's what one side thinks. Here's what the other side thinks. Next story. And I really like that because as I get older, it's more and more obvious that news outlets are slanting their news to a certain point of view on both sides. And I just want the news. And then I'll decide how I feel about it. That's it. This was really great to be able to see, because it just gives you an unbiased take on all of the different news stories. And they have some fun stuff in there. And they have a crossword puzzle or some sort of a little mental game in there as well. But it is a daily newsletter. And they're all thing is your gets smarter in just five minutes. So if you are not subscribed, and it's cold morning, brew, and I would highly recommend that you go check them out and subscribe to their newsletter, you get one email a day. That's it, there's minimal to no advertising in their newsletter. It's just straight backs on Me. So I highly recommend checking it out. This week's whispering morning brew and the newsletter.
Thank you for listening today. Hope you found the episode somewhat entertaining. If you are so inclined, please check out my YouTube page at Saturday is Saturday Media, I'm going to be adding more videos in the form of product reviews, cooking videos, other videos like that right now. It's it's mainly clips at the podcast. But I'm going to be adding a bunch more stuff here soon. Also, if you are inclined, and on socials, I am at at Saturday is Saturday media on Instagram, that is the account that I have for this. And again, we'll be pumping out a lot of account a lot of content on that account that is not just this podcast is going to be the other podcasts that I have is gonna be cooking videos and product reviews, other kinds of helpful tips about organization and productivity and clean cooking and all that kind of stuff. So check that out if you if you are able and willing. And if you are enjoying this, please consider sharing this with somebody else and hitting the Follow button on the podcast. That helps me a lot. So thank you. So to recap this for today, the story I talked about was given a 10 day instead of a 14 day notice when I left the cooking place. And that kind of caused a little bit of a brouhaha with everybody. But I had a chance to see my father before he passed away. So take that every time. The lesson is oftentimes loyalty is a one way street, and companies will find will be loyal to you insofar as it is profitable, and it makes sense for them. So my advice based on that lesson is we need to do the same thing. As people we need to be loyal to our God our immediate family and outside of that, then that's it we need to do what's best for us in every situation. And even if that means it's a tough thing for somebody else, or another company or we leave a job but we put them in a little bit of a tough spot. If our intentions are pure and we're trying to do the right thing. We have to do the right thing for us and for our family. The sponsor I wish I had was urban armor gear and the iPhone case that I got from them. I absolutely love it. They make a ton of super durable lightweight cases for all the different phones out there. All the different tablets, even laptops and MacBooks and they even have some gear like some hats and some shirts and and some bags and everything like that. So give them a look if you are in need of a new case for your device. For the just just the tip segment I talked about block scheduling, how that can help it work and how it might even be able to help you at home. But for me, I block off sections of my day. And I focus on one task or one group of tasks without any distractions without answering texts or phone calls or emails. And that has really helped me be more productive, I'm able to get so much more done in a day because I'm not stopping every couple of minutes to be reactive, I'm doing my thing, and then I'll get to you when I got time. So give that a try. If you want, let me know how it goes. And the whispering is morning brew, there are a massive newsletter that they have every day that comes out and it's just unbiased news just gives you the headlines, here are the facts. But they just give you a really an unbiased opinion of that. They also have an IG account and a website and I think a bunch of other stuff a daily show on YouTube or whatever. So I would check them out. They are the source that I use for news because I just want the stories. I'll make the decision for myself as far as which way I want to believe or think or make sense of it or whatever. So I just love that they do an unbiased news dump every day. Great stuff. So thank you very much for listening. We'll see you next week on another episode of The Story lesson advice podcast. Have a great day.