Like I posted about recently, several of the male friends closest to me all agreed and said that during interviews, engagement/wedding rings should be taken off. Consciously, we know we’re not supposed to judge people based on their personal lives, but we cannot control our subconscious. Of course, during a job interview, the interviewer would be discreet in observing something like that, as it would be illegal to ask “Are you married?” or “Are you expecting to have children soon?” But, noticing details like whether a woman is wearing an engagement ring or wedding band in a purely social setting can also be discreet, too. It’s just that… some men choose not to be discreet about it.

I was at my friend’s birthday event tonight, and two different men, friends of my friend, in two completely different conversations, called out my wedding rings and how “shiny” they were, and asked when I got married. Is this what the world has come to now? Is our conversation so boring that you had to ask me about my marriage, or were you secretly hoping that I was single because you thought I was really cute or had a pretty laugh, and then got disappointed when you found out that I had bling on my fingers? Because in both of those conversations, after we discussed my husband and my wedding and even my rings, those conversations completely ended.

What ever happened to just being friends with the opposite sex? Now that I’m married, I’m no longer able to make new male friends? I swear that these people secretly teamed up with my mother because she’d love to hear this story right now and insist that I should not associate with any men outside of my husband, family, and work (and only for work purposes).

I cannot even count how many interviews I have been on since my college years, when I was interviewing for different internship opportunities in San Francisco, Boston, and New York. I’ve had so many good and really terrible experiences, but I would say that one of the worst ones I’ve ever had happened this week.

There’s really nothing worse than interviewing at a company that does not have the foresight to realize that in a job interview, “interviewing” is happening on two sides: the company is evaluating the prospective employee to see if s/he will be a fit for the role and company, and the prospective employee is also at the same time evaluating the company and every single person s/he is meeting with to see if this role, team, company, and culture being presented is going to be a match. It is disheartening when companies do not realize that prospectives are evaluating them, and instead choose to see their companies as the “catch” and don’t work to “sell” who they are to the prospectives. This happened on Monday, when I had a phone interview with two hiring managers. One hiring manager said little to nothing, showing he did not care to ask questions or really elaborate on anything, and the second hiring manager was basically reading questions off his “interview question list” as he called it and had no real social skills conveyed over the phone. He was awkward, monotone, and did not seem to sell through why it would be great to work at their company. It was all about their technology stack and nothing else. I’d sum this interaction up in three words: dry, humorless, and completely uninspiring.

These are the types of tech companies that shoo away talent. No one wants to work with a bunch of lifeless, monotone robots.

Back to reality and the cold that is still New York City here in March. We’ve just passed Daylight Savings Time, yet spring seems so far away. The snow storm is coming (she has a name; Stella!). And me not thinking at all, I went to the grocery store at around 5:45, thinking that I should really get all the household staples for the week. That was really smart.

I arrived at Fairway on 86th street, and the “no cart” line is so long that it wraps around the produce section and nearly goes out the front door. The pasta shelf is nearly empty, and I literally grabbed the very last half gallon of whole milk. People’s carts are filled with not fresh produce, but mostly boxed and processed foods… you know, things for quick reheating and instant gratification and hunger satiation. Everyone on the Upper East Side of Manhattan seems to think that tomorrow, people will literally all be snowed in and trapped in their apartments. Yet, according to today’s weather report, the snow is meant to stop at around 2pm tomorrow. No one is going to work who can work from home. New Yorkers are always overreacting to every little threat of bad weather. It’s comical at times, except when I have to deal with the long lines that are a result of everyone’s shared paranoia.

Vietnamese food is all the rage in New York City now. Over the last few years, trendy restaurants have been serving bun, pho, and banh mi like my mother never would have predicted. There have always been decent spots in Manhattan Chinatown, with my favorite banh mi spot out in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, but no place has really stood out to me as being a place I really love.

In recent months, new “modern” Vietnamese spots have opened, ones that claim to use ingredients that are locally sourced, meat that is grass-fed with no antibiotics and hormones, and organic produce. One of these spots is Hanoi House in the East Village, where my friend and I met last night. I was skeptical about paying $16 for 16-hour Northern Vietnam-style pho, but I was tempted, especially since I want to get my mind out of the thought that “ethnic” food should be “cheap.” My friend and I shared a manila clam rice porridge, a papaya and pig ear salad, and the 16-hour pho with bone marrow, and I couldn’t have been happier. The pho was probably one of the clearest, cleanest beef broths I’d ever had, with a depth where I could literally taste all the elements of pho: charred onion, roasted and simmered bones, star anise, and all of the other different herbs. If the broth had stayed hotter for longer, I probably would have finished it all myself after my friend had her share.

There’s really nothing worse than taking medication. Medication sucks. I don’t care what you think about this because who wants to take any substance regularly every day unless it’s weed or something else that actually makes you feel good and happy? I say this because I’ve come down with a bit of a cold in the last couple days, and as my home remedy, I’ve been making massive amounts of hot water with honey, lemon, ginger, and turmeric. I took maybe two packets of Theraflu begrudgingly, but as I took all this, I thought about how at the last two offices where I’ve worked, the office managers always stocked Emergen-C in the medicine cabinet, and people flocked to it like birds during cold and flu season. At the first sign of a cold, as though Emergen-C was the end-all cure for all colds or nasal congestion, people would dissolve it in hot water and drink their berry or orange artificially flavored vitamin C as though it was God’s gift to humankind. It was always one of the most disgusting things ever. People are really into their artificial 1,000-mg serving of Vitamin C as long as it’s in a packet, it’s not natural, and you have to pay extra money for it as a dietary supplement or medication. Let’s just forget the fact that vitamin C is water-soluble, which means that once your body has taken in 100% of its daily value, it will just expel the rest of it out of you. And let’s also forget that you can eat your orange or apple or whatever fruit of choice that is really high in vitamin C and basically get better nutritional and health value out of that.

Our society has truly stopped valuing what is naturally healthy (real food! Fruit! Vegetables!) and instead has turned to medication and dietary supplements as a substitute for leading a healthy lifestyle. And they think they are being smart for it (hence the excitement and self-satisfaction in taking Emergen-C in the office. It’s like an announcement I constantly hear at desks near mine when the weather becomes cold).  It’s really no wonder why people come down with the cold every year (the average adult in the U.S. gets the common cold 2-3 times per year!) multiple times, why obesity is so high, and why Americans as a group are just so unhealthy compared to the rest of the developed world.

Just eat your damn orange, drink your lemon water, and be healthy.

One thing that always gets people out of work early is a well priced happy hour in New York. However, “well priced” and “happy hour” seem to mean different things to different businesses, especially in the Flatiron area where things tend to be pricey in general. Tonight, I met with my colleague and then two friends for dinner at Casa Neta, a new chic Mexican spot that opened, and the “Happy Hour” was $10 margaritas and $8 beers. Well, that’s what the website said. Then, you go to the bar, and you find out that the $10 margarita only applies to the classic margarita, not the flavored ones, and in my excitement I ordered one hibiscus margarita, then one mexcal margarita. And the bartender didn’t say a word about the pricing until the check came. And when I did order a classic margarita when my friends arrived and we had a table, the drink never came until 45 minutes later, when I had to remind the waiter I ordered it. This place was bullshit.

We had a somewhat early evening show in the West Village tonight, so I decided to go downtown with my laptop to do some work at a coffee shop while waiting for Chris to come back from his work trip. I have a very long and full Yelp bookmark list, which includes not just restaurants and bars, but also interesting coffee shops throughout the city, and I know I will likely never get through any or even all of them given that every single time I try going, I fail. These shops, no matter what time of the day or what day of the week I try to go, are almost always full. If they are not full of laptop workers, they have poor acoustics and are extremely loud, meaning that they are pretty much impossible place to get any real work done. I sadly ended up at a Starbucks on Hudson. At least I had my own table to work at.

That’s the thing about New York. It doesn’t matter what neighborhood or what time of day or week. It’s not just the trendy restaurants and bars that have queues. Even the cute and innovative cafes have waits.

Years ago when interviewing for jobs, I was told by pretty much every single male friend I trusted that they’d advise against a woman wearing her engagement and/or wedding band during a job interview. It didn’t matter whether the people conducting the interviews were male or female; it would be better to not give any sign or mention that you’re either in a serious relationship, engaged, or married.

However, my male friends all said that male minds, though consciously knowing it’s wrong to discriminate against someone who is married or engaged, their subconscious mind is a completely different thing. One of my male friends, who was single at that time, said to me, “Yvonne, just take it off before you walk in.” He said he really didn’t want to admit it, but the smartest choice would be to not wear your engagement ring. He was speaking from the perspective of a single and looking man, someone who may subconsciously be looking to hire someone who could have the potential to be his future mate. All my hopeful ideas about how society has progressed were shattered. This is one of my most progressive friends giving me this advice. He doesn’t even trust himself, and he especially doesn’t trust prospective (male) employers considering me to be part of their workforce.

I shared these depressing thoughts with my friend, who at the time was working and living in Singapore. She responded by saying it was far worse in Asia because there, it’s actually legal to point blank ask your job candidates during interviews if they are engaged, married, have children, or expect to have children soon. There’s no law banning it from being asked.

What is worse, the conscious or the subconscious? They are both evil.