Month: May 2023

What is leadership?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Overvalued.

Now I could be real nihilistic and period full-stop this post with just that and call it a day, but then it would sound like something traumatic had occurred, and I wanted to be vaguebooking about it or something, which is not accurate at all. 

This post stems from a conversation had over dinner a night ago where it was determined that I lacked ambition, because I don’t really want to strive for any leadership positions in my career. The thing is, I’ve been in positions of leadership already, and although I did take a lot of satisfaction in being the best leader I could and the relationships I cultivated with my reports, it really still amounted to a tremendous addition of stress that I feel is wholly unnecessary at this juncture of my life, and I would much rather just be given objectives and the space and means to do my job to the best of my ability and be for the most part, left the fuck alone.

The problem is that I feel that the working world we live in places a tremendously inflated sense of worth in leadership, and not nearly as much in the ability to get shit done, as in the people with the ability to actually move a company’s objectives forward.  I’ve made no secret that throughout my career, the most difficult people to work for are the people that I know can’t do my job in a moment of need, and I find it tremendously difficult to respect and accept any sort of judgment of my talent from those who have zero idea of what I do.

If I could rephrase my original statement, it’s not that all leadership is overvalued, but there’s just so much piss poor bad leadership exists out there that it just makes me feel like all of it is overvalued, overrated and feeds the narrative to how the working world is just so broken and misguided.

At my previous employer, I was promoted into a position of leadership, which I willingly went into, because I felt that I had reached a ceiling with my entry-level designer role, and I felt ready to move up and try to climb the ladder within the company.  But the thing is that even though I was in a position of leadership, it was always, always important to me that I still know how to do the jobs of my former peers now reports, because there was no way I could be any sort of leader unless I knew the job at the same granular level from those who have to do it.  But because I was promoted from within and I wasn’t brought in to abruptly lead people whom I didn’t know, I felt that I was very successful at being a leader on my team, because everyone knew me, knew my background, and knew that I was good enough to be a decision-maker.  It’s just that I had a massive cunt of a boss above me that actively made my life a living hell to where I had no choice but to cut and run, regardless of how much my team brought satisfaction to me professionally.

So that’s where I’m really going with this, is that it’s not that I lack ambition and don’t want to be a leader, it’s that my whole idea of leadership is that it’s something that grows organically and leadership rises and takes shape, and it’s definitely not something that can just be plugged into a team or a company, by someone who has fluffed up their resumes and qualifications in order to get the job.  That type of leadership is the leadership that I don’t want to strive for, even if it makes it look like I’m not ambitious.

I’d like to work a job where I’m paid well for the work that I do, and I want to get so good at it, that I organically rise to a position of leadership, to where I can lead in the best way that I think I can, which is typically by example, and typically in a servant leader capacity, and not some game-playing schmuck who only knows how to delegate and live in Excel and Outlook all fucking day and have no actual talent.

Unfortunately, like so much world, that’s just now how things operate these days, and short of me winning the lottery, it doesn’t seem likely that I’ll be a part of a working world that jives more with my ideals and ideas that work ethic and talent competency is what’s needed, instead of the ability to “play the game” and “it’s who you know” and other flaky bullshit that shapes the job market today.

Dad Brog (#112): The inevitability of needing less sleep

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

For the last few months, the daily routine has been as such:

  • The girls go to bed at 7 pm
  • At around 10:30 pm I tell myself that I need to start winding down and go to bed early, ultimately do anything but, actually go to bed at around 1 am
  • Alarm #1 goes off at 6 am for me to take dog out
  • Alarm #2 goes off at 7 am which I promptly disable
  • Alarm #3 goes off at 7:10 am and I finally get up
  • Prepare breakfast for the girls
  • #1 usually wakes up by 8 am, promptly comes down to start breakfast
  • #2 is woken up five minutes later, promptly brought down to start breakfast
  • Dad mode engage

It’s not always easy, but it’s the life of parenting.  I wish just once in my life that someone else would do this for one morning without me having to be out of town, but I don’t foresee that happening anytime soon, so every single day of my life for the last year or so has been like this.  Obviously nothing involving kids lasts forever, and I knew that there would come a time in which the schedule was going to start deviating, and I believe that time has finally come. 

Over the last few weeks, more often than it hasn’t, #1 has been waking up earlier and earlier in the mornings, and it sometimes throws a monkey wrench into my morning routine, since when things go tits up and she decides to not be chill in her room and wait until 8 pm, I have to bring her down lest she wakes #2 up earlier than hoped, and she’s a colossal pill while I’m trying to prepare breakfast.  Some mornings she’s cool with hanging out in her room and calmly peruses books or plays with her stuffed animals, but usually she’s up and announcing to the baby monitor that she wants to go downstairs, or just whining loud enough to where I’m worried she’ll wake up her sister and things will really go poorly.

The easy solution is to just start waking up earlier so that I can have my peaceful mornings of calms before the storms of parenting, but I’m already sleep deprived enough, and I really dread the idea of doing it.  I’d definitively have to go to bed earlier in order to accommodate it, but I already feel like I don’t have enough time to myself as it is, and it’s difficult to want to sacrifice even more time for myself when I already feel like I always sacrifice too much of myself already.

I really am harkened to the days of reading old Calvin & Hobbes comic strips where Calvin starts waking up at ass o’clock on weekends much to the chagrin of his parents, and now I’m the square unnamed dad character.  But the mornings of angsty kid and grumbly dad aren’t good for anyone, and something’s got to give eventually, and realistically speaking, it’s most likely going to be me.

Yet another losing faith in humanity scenarios

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In one of my friends group chats, one of my bros posted a picture of himself with a book, attempting to be funny; it’s okay because he’s black obviously.  Now of course there’s a part of me that did think it was funny, but more than that, I had more questions than I thought it was amusing the whole irony of black guy perusing book with inflammatorily racist title.  Namely, the curiosity on if it really were a book with 328 pages with nothing but the N-word in it, or if it were just an attention-grabbing title, with the contents of the book actually being something substantial.

Nope, it was the exact polar opposite in the sense that it actually had absolutely nothing at all inside of it, as in zero text whatsoever, between the header and footer of every page.  And according to Amazon, it’s not even actually 328 pages, so it’s more like 242 blank sheets of paper sandwiched into a book form, and it’s somehow $14.99 on Amazon, and shocking to absolutely nobody is that it’s been purchased enough to have a slew of verified purchasing reviewers doing their best jobs of being internet comics and failing predictably with “reviews” of it.

All the same, what we have here is another classic example of people out there in the world who knowingly put out means for people to spend actual currency that are useless, pointless, known wastes of said currency; and then to no surprise, people go out and actually do it, because they think it’s funny and/or they really are that stupid to where they’re completely at ease with dumping their cash for goods or services that serve no purpose whatsoever, instead of, possibly putting it to any good use at all.  Not for themselves, not for charity, not for anyone at all, but basically the equivalent of knowingly setting their own personal cash on fire.

It’s like the idiots who raised $50,000+ for some clown’s GoFundMe trying to make a potato salad, or that time where Cards Against Humanity had a live-streaming sale where people paid in real-time to keep an excavator operating digging holes for absolutely no reason, or when Cards Against Humanity literally sold nothing for $5 a pop and still raised tons of money.

People just, love to throw their money away, when they think in doing so, they’re in on some clever joke.  And it’s instances like this where it’s apparent that some people have too much money or too little intelligence or both, and it just turns into scenarios where the end result is just a nihilistic feeling of disappointment and losing faith in the species to where people would rather spend $5 on nothing than putting it to absolutely any form of productivity instead.

I know this is rich coming from a person who has spend an inordinate amount of money on replica wrestling belts, but at least those purchases are going to businesses or individuals, or parties where amassing money is some sort of objective, and not knowingly throwing it into a barrel fire.

And here’s the worst part; while looking up the particular book, just to get my facts straight, it turns out that it’s not alone.  I wish I could say I were surprised by this, but of course I’m not surprised, that there are basically two other alternatives, with one of them literally changing out one word and adding “Fun” into it, while the other is just fewer alleged pages.  And that’s just on Amazon alone, I can only imagine how many other copycat “publications” of this same title are floating out there.

Naturally, people are buying them, and aside from disgust, I’m also a little envious in the fact that these clowns are also getting a cut of the purchases of their bad jokes, while I’m struggling to make ends meet every single month and always looking for ways to try and make some extra money in order to have some breathing room.  I can’t say that I wouldn’t be above trying to capitalize on bullshit to make money, but there’d probably be a part of me that wouldn’t want to be a flagrant hypocrite in order to try it out.

This is what we call a smart bride

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I would have killed to have had a wedding food budget under $2,000: Georgia bride sparks internet debate after revealing that she had catered her wedding with food from Chili’s

Camp me firmly and unquestionably on the side that is completely on board with catering from Chili’s.  I would have been willing to shave my head if I could have paid 1/6 of what I ultimately paid for catering at my wedding.  Not to mention the menu itself sounded perfectly adequate, if people didn’t hear the Chili’s name attached to it:

served guests an all-Chili’s menu including chicken tenders sliders, egg rolls, chips and salsa, Cajun chicken pasta and salad

I know the woke society we live in is all anti-chain and tends to automatically dislike restaurants like Chili’s, but I have no problem with Chili’s.  In fact, of all the lily-white chain restaurants out there, I’d go out on a limb and say Chili’s is probably among my favorites if not my favorite one.  Their ribs are fantastic, they used to have these tacos that were both good and economical, and frankly there’s nothing on their menu that wouldn’t hit the spot on any given day.

When a Taco Mac is slammed to the gills despite the fact that they’re a chain restaurant themselves, just regional, it’s nice to know that I can probably get expedient and quality table service from a Chili’s if there’s one nearby, which has been the exact case more than just a few times in my life.

I feel like I went to a wedding within the last year where the menu was kind of like this, and I’ll be lying if I didn’t say that it wasn’t completely satisfying to go back up for seconds and get a generous helping of chicken tenders with three different dipping sauces.  It might not have been from Chili’s, but the menu seemed to have some overlap here.

But seriously, I’m completely on the side of this bride who sounds like she made the best of her budget and went with an option that provided decent grub at an extremely economical price point, and I feel like anyone who criticizes her choices probably needs to get their pretentious heads out of their pretentious asses, and get over their prejudices of chain restaurants.  More so if they themselves have never had to plan a wedding and deal with the ridiculous cost of catering, because that shit is absolutely bonkers and they 100% put a cost on the fact that it’s for a wedding in the pricing.

The Galactic Starcruiser experience shutting down pleases me

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Surprise, surprise: there aren’t as many people willing to plunk down nearly $5,000 for two days, to live out Star Wars fantasies, as Disney decides to shutter the Galactic Starcruiser experience in September

I like to think that this was some convoluted experiment by Disney, in seeing just how far they could push a price tag before it actually proves to be insurmountable by even the richest of the privileged class.  And it appears that they’ve found their answer with the Galactic Starcruiser, and that roughly $1,200 per person per night for a two-night experience seems to have found that breaking point where they just can’t swindle enough people in order to remain open.

Now I like Star Wars, even though my fandom has been put through the ringer throughout the passage of time and the growth of the internet.  Sure, my fandom has been disrespected, invalidated and questioned by the smarmy segments of fans that feel the requirement to test the level of interest, and the internet has more than opened my eyes to just how shitty and insufferable the base majority of Star Wars fans are, but there’s no level of dedication to the property I could achieve to where I would think it was a good idea to drop nearly $5k in order for mythical wife and I to have a two day LARP in the world of Star Wars.

All through the journey of speculation, development and execution of the whole Galactic Starcruiser idea, it was pretty early revealed that this was something that really only those with the deepest of pockets would be able to partake in.  And when stuff like this is priced out of oblivion for the rest of the, well world, I begin to feel resentment towards it, so it makes me feel smug satisfaction to hear that Disney is pulling the plug on it, in such short order.

At the same time, I feel more disdain for the Mouse at not just, lowering prices, and making the whole thing a little more attainable for the rest of us pleebs, because if it weren’t more than my property taxes, I’d probably be interested.  The idea of shuttering it versus lowering the prices is an egregious act of arrogance of the biggest asshole variety that really could only come from the money printer known as Disney.

But when it really comes down to it, good riddance to an experience that really was catering to the 1%, and it’s very amusing that even the 1% reached their limits with this whole idea, to where even a company that’s so adept at glorifying their wins and hiding their weaknesses like Disney, to have such a public and monumental L on display.

Because as an annual passholder, I can say all this shit, because nobody hates Disney more than their annual passholders.

Of course the Braves had to sell their jerseys too

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When it comes to clowning on the stupid shit that happens in professional sports, nobody is exempt, especially the teams that I say that I am a fan of.  After all, nobody hates X more than fans of X, so when the Mets were getting dunked on for their ludicrously large sponsorship patches on their jerseys, it wasn’t because they were the Mets, I would’ve done the same to absolutely anybody.

Which brings us to the Braves, who have also jumped aboard the sponsorship patch train, because they clearly need the money; $588 million in revenue in 2022 barely covered the spike in the cost of eggs that occurred.  And much like the Mets who sold their jersey sleeves to a local entity, the Braves sold their sleeves to an Atlanta company, Quikrete, which is among the leaders of the entire concrete industry in the western hemisphere.

But not only did they sell their sleeves to Quikrete, they also did exactly what the Mets did, at first: not really consider just how ridiculously large the sponsorship patch would actually be on their sleeves.  I mean seriously, the patch is maybe a 25% size increase from being the primary logo on the entire fucking jersey, and the Braves would become the first franchise in baseball to go the route of futbol, and have the chief sponsor be the biggest focal point of the jersey, even over the team’s name or city.

I don’t know how many people reading this (zero) have any understanding of embroidery or any experience with it, but it’s tremendously difficult to engrain any sort of details in embroidery.  That being said, Quikrete’s likely insistence that their logo look like it was on one of their signature yellow bags of concrete probably explains why it’s so fucking huge; in order for the tiny little wrinkles to show on the corners of the bag that help make it look like a bag of concrete are the reason why the whole thing has to be the size of an actual bag of concrete, making their logo shout louder than a MARTA rider hoping to avoid the post-Taylor Swift concert rush.

Either way, my theories about how the patches might affect player performance for the Mets now also apply to the Braves.  And considering the Mets’ performance was pretty pitiful, and the fact that they relented and actually redesigned their sponsor logo, let’s hope the Braves wizen up a little bit sooner than the Mets did before their nice little cushion they’ve build in the National League disintegrates.

Speaking of which, among the best slams on the internet to emerge from the mass-dunking on the Braves for selling out, was this particular gem that I chuckled heartily at:

Right to the jugular.  Good job Barves, for never straying too far from the need to be greedy.

I’m surprised it survived this long, honestly

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

TIL: The Greenbriar Mall Chick fil-A was the first-ever Chick fil-A opened, in 1967.  But it’s closing for good now

I did know that a large part of the original expansion for Chick fil-A’s strategy was to get themselves into mall food courts, like they did at Greenbriar Mall.  I remember the first time I ever encountered a Chick fil-A, it was at Landmark Mall in Alexandria, Virginia and like most kids embarking on a journey towards childhood obesity, the main standout was the fact that they had waffle fries.

But it’s interesting to learn that the very first Chick fil-A that was opened was in Greenbriar Mall, and it’s even more fascinating to know how it has managed to survived throughout the passage of time, because the passage of time hasn’t been particularly kind to Greenbriar Mall.

Since I’ve lived in Georgia, Greenbriar Mall hasn’t exactly been known for the best of things, and off the top of my head the greatest (read: not greatest) hits are:

  • Former home to the only Magic Johnson theater on the east coast which ultimately succumbed to the increase of crime and shenanigans and closed down
  • One of the hottest areas on crime heat maps in the entire Metro Atlanta area
  • Where a massive flock of sneakerheads gathered in the middle of the pandemic for the release of the latest Air Jordans, garnering global ridicule

Needless to say, I didn’t even know that a Chick Fil-A was in the mall and yes I have been there before, because it was pretty much where the last Circuit City in the area was, and I have gone a few times in the past to get computer shit.  But it’s safe to say that Greenbriar Mall was basically the inspiration for Chris Rock’s entire routine about black malls, and even Donald Glover’s Atlanta show acknowledged it as much.

But considering the company as a whole is extremely guarded and calculated with their locations, I’m amazed to have learned that they stuck it out for over 50 years in that location.  I’m assuming that history had something to do with their staunch tenacity at staying put, plus the fact that since the company is based in nearby Hapeville/College Park, there’s something about keeping the OGs intact as long as possible. 

However, there’s no denying the unsatisfactory area that Greenbriar Mall and surrounding area have become throughout time, and I can’t say I’m the least bit surprised to hear that they’re shuttering the location.  I’m more surprised that they managed to last 50 years there, so at this point, it’s not really so much a sad departure, as much as it’s kind of like a sort of honorable death from the Night’s Watch.

And now their watch is over.