A former colleague from two companies ago reached out to me over LinkedIn last week after I had posted that there were open positions at my current office, so we met up for a coffee and tea break at Madison Square Park this afternoon to chat through what he was looking for, why he might be interested in my company and our open role, and why he wanted to leave.

I honestly still couldn’t believe he was there. He had changed roles and levels many times since I left, but I found that place to be the epitome of everything I cannot stand about career and job life in today’s day and age: substituting activity for achievement, people pushing paper without any purpose other than a paycheck, a glorification of the completely mediocre due to politics and favoritism. We discussed this and of course, as conversation continued, we talked about updates on our own lives since then: I got married! I changed jobs twice! He got married AND had two kids! He moved from Queens to Long Island! He owns a house with a front AND backyard! I moved from the Upper East to the Upper West Side!

Whenever I catch up with a colleague after a long time of not seeing them, it’s always these same high-level updates we tend to share, these so-called “milestones” in human life: marriage, children, house or no house status. What if I suddenly just said, hey, I’m doing volunteering for foster care children! Or, by the way, my brother died from suicide, so this is how I view life now?

How deep is a casual catch-up really supposed to be, or is it really just meant to be superficial since the ultimate motive is that one person wants something from the other? I’m honestly not sure.

After over ten years of working full-time, I can say that I’ve seen quite a number of interesting interviews, both from an interviewer as well as interviewee standpoint. I’ve been in interviews where the interviewee has been extremely arrogant or insecure. I’ve seen candidates do hand stands and discuss why they preferred crunchy versus smooth peanut butter. I’ve been interviewed by stone-faced people and those who want to make it seem like the interview is more of a casual chat rather than a situation during which they’re being evaluated. I’ve also felt like at one time, I was being hit on during an interview. But what I’ve never seen is a candidate who felt so comfortable chatting with me that she would ask me what office gossip I have to share or ask if the room we were in was bugged because she’d previously been in rooms that were bugged, and words she shared privately were being exposed. This actually happened this afternoon as we were interviewing a potential candidate for an open role on our team.

I realize that in 2018, especially in a city like New York, we’re really in an employees’ market when it comes to hiring and retaining talent. Now is actually a really good time to be looking for a new job. But if you are feeling so comfortable during an interview that you would actually ask about office gossip, regardless of whether you are joking or not, which introduces questions about the toxic culture you could potentially bring into an organization, don’t you kind of think you’re crossing a line?

In the summer time in New York City, there are a lot of great, free events that happen throughout the city for those to enjoy, such as Philharmonic in the park, free big-screen movie nights in the park, and live theater productions of Shakespeare in the park. Unfortunately, when you live in Manhattan, you need to arrive at all these locations extremely early, i.e. take half a day off just to stake out your spot because these free events are in massively high demand. But I guess when you venture out to the outer boroughs, there’s no need to arrive that far in advance. We met some friends for Shakespeare’s All’s Well that Ends Well tonight in Sunnyside Gardens Park in Queens, and we got there just half an hour before the show was to start, and we still had decent spots to claim.

The production wasn’t that incredible; this play is one of Shakespeare’s least popular ones for a reason, and the acting was just so-so. But I do appreciate the access that we have to these events for free, and that the arts can be so accessible to anyone in the city. It’s definitely something to be grateful for.

It was a colleague’s birthday last Saturday, so her boyfriend had a gorgeous bouquet of mixed flowers delivered to our office for her the Friday before. Although they’ve been together several years and even live together, for whatever reason, he doesn’t know that she’s allergic to pollen… or if he does, he forgets. When the flowers arrived, my colleague immediately moved them away from her desk, and then asked if she could leave them on my desk. It was kind of a weird request, but since she knows I enjoy flowers and am not allergic, I figured it would be a positive externality for me, and all I’d need to do is replace the water every other day.

I kind of don’t understand how you can be in a long-term relationship with someone, though, and not be aware and remember something so basic as their allergies to something like pollen. Isn’t that a massive partner failure right there?

A couple of colleagues I’m friends with were in town from San Francisco this week, so a bunch of us went out to catch up over Korean barbecue, beers, and soju, adding to a very gluttony eating week for all of us. Seven of us went out, and while we’re digging in, one of my colleagues, who happens to live in a suburb of New Jersey that is right outside of Fort Lee and Palisades Park (which are known for having large Korean populations and thus a lot of great Korean food), says that he’s actually never had Korean barbecue before. He’s just a year younger than me, and we’re all sitting there looking at him incredulously. Of course, we’re all being a little judgmental, thinking, how could you not have ever had Korean barbecue before when you live just minutes away from one of the largest Korean suburbs in the tri-state area? He was certainly enjoying himself while eating, but since everyone at the table was generously eager to try new foods that they weren’t familiar with, we really didn’t understand his lack of discovery and curiosity here. At least we’re here to de-virginize him in this regard.

Tonight was our end of quarter celebration dinner at Dinosaur Barbecue, where we feasted on pulled pork, brisket, ribs, Mac-and-cheese, among other delectable artery-clogging delights. And as these events always go, I end up hearing extremely random anecdotes where I am left with question marks in my head afterwards.

A colleague of mine, who is pretty much a creature of habit, a homebody who, in theory, likes travel, but in practice, actually really hates it (for a three day trip, she thinks she should pack at leas 6-8 outfits because… how will she know what she feels like wearing on any given day of the trip when she wakes up?), mentioned to me that when she and her husband are having fights, usually after having a bit to drink, Chris and I often come up as a heated point of contention.

“What?” I asked, quizzically.

“Well, the two of you lead such an exciting life!” my colleague exclaimed. “You two are always traveling all over the world all the time that I cannot even keep track of where you are! And (husband) and I — what do we do? We just stay home, fixing things in our house. We don’t go anywhere! We don’t see anything! We haven’t seen any of the world!” (If it was not already clear, she was a bit buzzed).

She continued. “So I told him, “Yvonne! You met Yvonne! Yvonne and her husband travel and see the world! They know the world! We don’t know anything of the world! I want us to do that! Why don’t you ever want to take me anywhere? EVER? We are so boring compared to them!” 

I gently reminded my colleague that she hates packing, she always complains when she takes work trips, and she doesn’t like being outside of her comfort zone, so I don’t really think she wants to travel the way Chris and I do. She laughed and said it was probably true, but she wanted to do different things (in theory, again), but her husband didn’t want to. And they were always drunkenly yelling at each other to the point of saying they would leave each other, but then they realize at the end of the day that they have no clue what they’d do without each other and make up. Then, a week or so later, it starts all over again.

How romantic. And how very functional.

If it wasn’t already clear, I’ve been really getting into my Instant Pot. Five perfect and delicious dishes later, I’m completely hooked and want to try to cook as many things as possible in this stunning cooking machine. A colleague friend of mine who is based in Europe who still has yet to buy one, said she was inspired to want one after reading this inspirational profile in The New Yorker called, “The ‘Butter-Chicken Lady’ Who Made Indian Cooks Love the Instant Pot,” which also includes this woman’s infamous butter chicken recipe at the end. The recipe seemed simple enough with most things in my pantry and freezer, so I figured it would be something fun to make within my first ten uses. I made it yesterday for dinner with a couple of tweaks, and it was delicious, probably just as good, if not better, than any butter chicken I’ve had in a restaurant. I posted about it on Facebook and Instagram, and multiple people messaged me for the recipe.

And if that was not already encouraging, a colleague told me at the office today that he was planning to make it for dinner in his Instant Pot with his wife. He was asking me about what I tweaked and even texted me a few times with preparation questions. Another colleague and her boyfriend were so inspired by my Instagram Story posts on my Instant Pot usage that they ordered their own Instant Pot last night. And this coming weekend, a third colleague is planning to make the same butter chicken recipe with his fiancee!

Maybe I’m the equivalent of my office’s Butter-Chicken Lady now, or Instant Pot Lady?