An episode of boundless tangents starting from "everyday" cults, trusting the people who make the things we need, and an adventure of collecting surcharges as Geoff and his partner attempt to grocery shop.
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An episode of boundless tangents starting from "everyday" cults, trusting the people who make the things we need, and an adventure of collecting surcharges as Geoff and his partner attempt to grocery shop.
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Toast & Roast:
Georgie:
Geoff:
Georgie 0:08
And welcome back to another episode of Toast & Roast.
Geoff 0:13
You broke—
Georgie 0:14
I am your—what did I do?
Geoff 0:16
You broke it, you’re using my intro.
Georgie 0:21
Wait what did I do?
Geoff 0:24
Never mind, go, keep going? Um, go.
Georgie 0:26
Okay, so I am I am Georgie and I’m here with Geoff.
Geoff 0:32
Yeah, if it wasn’t—
Georgie 0:33
Or am I Geoff?
Geoff 0:35
We’re all Geoff. That’s, that’s—
Georgie 0:38
(laughs) Wow.
Geoff 0:42
That’s how you start a cult.
Georgie 0:45
Everyone’s Geoff.
Geoff 0:47
You, you are Geoff, I’m Geoff, we’re all Geoff.
Georgie 0:54
That sounds like a cult alright.
Geoff 0:55
What is Geoff, really, but a name. But an identity, an identity
Georgie 1:01
Yes...
Geoff 1:01
We can all—nah.
Georgie 1:05
It sounded like a movie.
Geoff 1:07
I saw a tweet recently they were like, what’s the closest thing to a cult that you’ve joined?
Georgie 1:12
Okay, go on. Tell me.
Geoff 1:14
I don’t know, actually, probably owning a Tesla is probably the closest thing to a cult. Minimalism is kind of cultish. But I don’t I don’t like read up about it or chat to people about it. But I think Tesla has its own like default cult. As soon as you own one, oh my god, you’re part of the group.
Georgie 1:35
Yeah, I think it must be anything that anything that many people feel, I think are otherworldly, or out of reach. Which maybe like, a lot, like, people aren’t really into Tesla’s because they can’t afford to buy one.
Geoff 1:54
Yeah, people don’t like Elon Musk. That’s also another thing.
Georgie 1:58
There’s that too.
Geoff 2:00
Okay, for me, personally, I don’t really care who makes my stuff. As long as that I’m not like directly funding, you know, World War Three or something across the world or like, blood diamonds. Like I’m good. As long as they’re not—
Georgie 2:14
But what if, what if Elon was like, evil and he—oh yeah. Here’s an interesting thing, I guess. So remember how I had that big rant about ASOS and I said, I didn’t want to buy directly from ASOS because of this whole thing.
Geoff 2:32
Oh yeah.
Georgie 2:32
I bought, I bought this top from from a seller on eBay. And it just happened to be the ASOS brand. But it doesn’t, didn’t mean that I supported them and stuff like that. So like, I was gonna ask you if Elon Musk did a thing that you totally, like, disagree—like, like, if he turned out to be example, like a child molester? Would you then be like, Oh, shit, I can’t support any of his things anymore.
Geoff 2:57
Shit. Child molester, I’m not allowed to say yes now, what are you—?
Georgie 3:04
Okay, maybe, maybe don’t use that as a specific example. But if you—
Geoff 3:09
Okay.
Georgie 3:09
...purchased things from like a company, and then you found out that somebody from that company advocated for something that you were like, personally, really, against? How would you feel like how would you approach that?
Geoff 3:22
I mean, okay, okay, let’s put it this way. I still shop on Amazon, despite the fact that Bezos is like building a $450 million yacht in a in a river that it can’t actually exit from and they have to frickin just dismantle the bridge right. Now, do I agree with building a $450 million yacht? Probably not. But is he doing it? Sure. Did we give him the money to do it? Yes. But yeah, like fundamentally, I’m, I’m taking a pure consumer stance, and it’s like, I like the product. I’ll use their product. If they turn out to be child molesters, that’s a different story. I guess. Like, maybe not maybe if we’re funding his child molestation activities. But you know, it’s, uh, it’s a hard question to answer. To be honest.
Georgie 4:21
Like, what if, what if Elon Musk like left Tesla—
Geoff 4:24
Oh, I don’t care.
Georgie 4:26
Because then he wouldn’t be associated with the comp—because this seems to happen, right, with, with like, big name people who, who are in involved with some big corporation and they get arrested or something like that.
Geoff 4:38
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Georgie 4:39
And then they usually get fired or something anyway, but then I was also thinking about, what if it was a smaller company?
Geoff 4:46
No, I really don’t care if they went to jail or anything. It’s like McAfee, right? He he went to jail. People still need antivirus software. He makes anti virus software.
Georgie 4:55
Wait you said people still need antivirus software, but in that episode, where we talked about it you were telling someone to not—
Geoff 5:00
Yeah. Yeah. But like people, maybe, need anti anti virus software? No, I mean, if they get put in jail, that’s their fault. They’re just misusing the money like that they’ve earned, you know, I’m very, I guess I’m slightly capitalist like that, like they’ve developed something, they’ve sold it well, up to them to use the money. What, what we are, like, what I’m doing as a consumer is just purchasing things. Yeah. I mean, like if Elon left Tesla, I may sell the stock. But I would keep my car, I’d still buy the car. It just makes their viability as a investor a little bit questionable. When the main visionary disappears from the company. Having said that, I don’t buy stocks, Meta stocks, Amazon stocks, or Google stocks just because I, you know, find their business not that interesting or not that, you know, show be profitable. But funding Meta stuff—Meta’s a different one, right. Meta has got a lot of shit going on. And—
Georgie 6:23
Yeah.
Geoff 6:23
80% of it’s probably not good. And I don’t want to buy into a company that, and I don’t even use Facebook. So maybe I do. Maybe I do react to—
Georgie 6:33
You use Instagram.
Geoff 6:34
...the owner of things. Yeah, that’s a questionable one as well, huh.
Georgie 6:41
Yeah, because I think, I think someone said to me once ages ago saying that, I may not have Face—have Facebook and never had Facebook. But there’s probably some shadow profile of me as a result of me using Instagram like, fine. I’ll deal with it. Like.
Geoff 6:58
Yeah, just forget about it. Just just forget about the hole in the argument. That’s fine. Yeah, Instagram. It’s a sad one. Because like, they got bought by Meta, and, or previously Facebook, and now it’s owned by them. And they’ve read you already got that, following. Some people may not even know it’s owned by Facebook. But—
Georgie 7:23
I was pretty upset when they announced that. Yeah, because I was like, yeah, I did have that brief moment of this kind of goes against shit I’m passionate about, but then by the same token, right, you know, that I uh, actively avoid Google products.
Geoff 7:39
Yeah.
Georgie 7:39
But like, I’ll, I’ll still watch shit on YouTube without an account. So hi, there’s probably a shadow profile for me as well. And like, ugh.
Geoff 7:49
Yeah, they’re probably locked up your IPs and be like, okay, this IP is IP Person X. And they do all these things. The, the, yeah, the, I mean, that you could say that Instagram is not a very healthy platform either, we’ve talked it about a lot. And it can be a healthy platform as well. So you’re like, well, do you want to be on a unhealthy healthy platform? Eh. So yeah, anyways, you’ve, you were, you’re, you were busting, busting—
Georgie 8:25
I was busting to rant.
Geoff 8:26
To rant. Before I derailed the cult thing.
Georgie 8:32
Also needed to go to the toilet. But—
Geoff 8:36
Yeah, I mean, you stood in line for a while, right? Did you need to go toilet while you’re in line?
Georgie 8:41
No, no, but um, I hate, I hate standing in line. And I can probably talk about this for a really long time.
Geoff 8:43
Lines are funny, right? Lines are great, and bad at the same time. I like how humans, like will naturally form lines. When there’s not, it’s not necessary.
Georgie 8:53
Yeah, it’s like who did who decided that? Like, when you’re waiting for something, you just stand behind a person.
Geoff 8:59
Yeah. Yeah. It’s like I’ve been to places where there’s a large counter, there’s multiple people serving and you can literally walk up, it’s kind of like butchers, most butchers, you don’t like line-line up. But you go like, oh, hey, okay, you go over there and... a bar you don’t necessarily line up for either, as far as I know. But I stood in one spot one time and then all of a sudden there were like three people lined up behind me. I’m like, guys, like, you don’t need—people, you just don’t need to stand behind me, this like whole, whole countertop, like just walk up.
Georgie 9:00
It’s one of those like, implicit is an implicit like, sort of slightly assumed etiquette things.
Geoff 9:42
Yeah.
Georgie 9:42
Like, it’s like, because the bar is like a long bar.
Geoff 9:46
Yeah.
Georgie 9:47
And, and people sometimes sit at it, but then that’s also the place where you order your drink. And then, I don’t know, it feels like oh, maybe I should line up so that the bartender knows that I was here next, but then the bartender kind of knows that anyway. And it’s like, how do I know that you know?
Geoff 10:04
Yeah.
Georgie 10:05
That I was here before this person and so on. And so—
Geoff 10:08
It feels fairer.
Georgie 10:09
The bartender—yeah. I was going to say if the bartender doesn’t realise that or they missed somebody, then it’s kind of on the customers to be like, oh, this person was there first. Serve them first. And it’s all this weird, it’s a bit weird, strange.
Geoff 10:23
I’ve had the nice people that do that. The, that’s like the—yeah, really funny thing, huh. It’s like you said, etiquette, it’s it’s more... a... it feels more controlled. More like orderly? So I guess people would like to be orderly, maybe? And it’s also fair, right? The person in front of you, is the person that goes next, and then you get to go next. If there is no line, then you’re like, I don’t know, when I’m going to get my turn. Like you literally don’t know.
Georgie 10:59
You get freaking anxious. Yeah, this happened to me recently, where when somebody comes, and they don’t realise that a line has formed. And this is weird, because this has changed a bit because of the pandemic and social distancing. And the amount of space between people in a queue like these days, so I was at the medical centre. And there was a woman with a baby in a pram, and she was, for some reason, she was talking to the receptionist for a very long time, like I was—I came in and she was already there. And she was talking for a while. And I thought, well, I need to go in there and tell them I’m here because I have an appointment. So I had to, quote unquote, line up, but there was no existing line, right? So, and there was nobody else at the other at the other desks. There’s just one receptionist in this bar. This this line, what do you call it? Like?
Geoff 11:58
Counter.
Georgie 11:58
Like the counter, right? Yeah, yeah. So I just stand some distance behind this woman with the pram and when I say some distance, I mean like because everyone’s still wearing masks and shit and we should still social distance, I was, there was some distance between me and the woman. And then this person comes in this guy and he I don’t think he realised I was in the, in the queue which which to be honest, I was the only person in the queue so it doesn’t kind of doesn’t look like I’m, there is a line and I think he had come out of one of the doctors waiting—not, one of the doctors offices or rooms and then needed to come and do something at the counter. But he stood kind of like next to me. And so it was kind of like if you if you drew a line between myself and the woman with the pram and this man there probably be a triangle but I didn’t really know why he was standing there. I thought he was just standing there because there was not so much room behind me because if you stood behind me the near the front door is how small this place was and how much I was distanced. But then you stand next to me, you kind of in the in the way of like, just general thoroughfare, like people walking. But anyway, he stands next to me. And it turns out he didn’t realise I was in the queue because as soon as this woman with the pram was like done talking, he just walked up and I was like, “Excuse me I was here first”. And he didn’t get it.
Geoff 13:28
Oh no.
Georgie 13:30
And I was like, I was here, and the lady at the receptionist, she, I’m, I’m pretty sure she noticed that I had been there for a while while this woman with the pram was talking for a while and then she had to kind of explain to the guy that I was there first and it was all very odd but I was just like... I don’t understand. And... lines are weird now because because we still kind of socially distance and it’s just strange.
Geoff 13:58
Yeah, so you were in line. Avoid joining the line cults.
Georgie 14:06
I just... Oh my god, I just want to okay, wait actually, can go to a big massive sidebar about lines?
Geoff 14:12
Yeah. Love a line.
Georgie 14:15
Have you been to, have you been to any Disneyland or like.
Geoff 14:18
Yeah.
Georgie 14:18
Or Disney World.
Geoff 14:19
Florida Disney World.
Georgie 14:20
So, so you know, like that people line up for a ride at any theme park. It doesn’t even have to be Disney World.
Geoff 14:27
Yeah.
Georgie 14:28
I just had this story that I wanted to share. So, Nick is is really good at like kind of planning efficiently to make sure that when we go to like a theme park, we’re not waiting in line for a fucking long time. So like they have those fast passes. Okay, here’s another thing that I think is a massive cult. This is a sidebar to the sidebar, by the way.
Geoff 14:51
Yeah.
Georgie 14:52
But like, that you pay money.
Geoff 14:54
Yeah...
Georgie 14:55
Actually, Disney is a cult in itself, but you pay money for this thing called a Fast Pass. Um. And I think, do some of them do for free? I don’t know.
Geoff 15:05
I’ve never heard of a free Fast Pass.
Georgie 15:10
Okay, all right, well, let’s just say you pay. Because I can’t remember. But you pay for this thing where you get to basically book in advance what rides you want to go on. And I think you get three or there’s like a certain limit, you can only get one every hour or something like that. So you have to pick the time at which you want to be, or you plan to be at this ride. And there is a another line, another queue for the people with the Fast Passes.
Geoff 15:35
That’s really—
Georgie 15:36
It’s usually half the length of the regular customers queue.
Geoff 15:40
Yeah. Like let us put like a privilege aside. I think it’s gotten really intricate. I think the first time I went to Disney World with the Fast Pass, it wasn’t that complex, you got a Fast Pass, you join the Fast Pass queue, anywhere you want. You just walk up, walk into the Fast Pass queue. You’ve got it? And I think Goldcoast, their Fast Passes work kind of like that, too. When was the last time I saw Fast Pass?
Georgie 15:43
Like Movie World?
Geoff 16:14
May, maybe Movie World? Probably Movie World. Anyways, yeah, it’s it’s gotten really complicated. You have to book and you only have three rides that you can book at? Geez.
Georgie 16:28
I think it differs from which which Disney, Disneyland, Disney park you’re going to, in what country and so on.
Geoff 16:36
Yeah.
Georgie 16:37
But I remember the very first time I went to Disneyland, I went to the Tokyo one with my ex ages ago. And I didn’t understand anything about Disney and oh my god, I don’t even really want to talk about Disney. But when you go to Disneyland, you have to—it’s probably a good idea that you plan your day there, because—
Geoff 17:07
Absolutely.
Georgie 17:07
If you want to try and go on all the rides and you don’t plan, you could be in queue for fucking two hours, which is exactly what happened to me. Because my ex and I didn’t really know anything. We just thought well, that’s cool. Let’s go to a theme park, right? It’s fucking, it’s fucking packed in, especially in the Tokyo one. And all I remember just as a really shitty, as a really shitty experience, is we were waiting for two hours—it could have been a bit more than that—for this popular ride called Big Thunder Mountain, which is like a it’s like a what’s called Big Mountain Railroad.
Geoff 17:47
They like their mountains like huh, Big Thunder Mountain, Space Mountain, like Rocky Mountain, Splash Mountain.
Georgie 17:56
But it’s one of the traditional ones that they have them at every almost every Disney park.
Geoff 18:03
Yeah.
Georgie 18:04
And also for people that don’t know, it, Disneyland in every country is almost exactly the same or they have like the same, they tend to have the same rides.
Geoff 18:12
It’s like the McDonalds of—
Georgie 18:13
The Magic Kingdom. Yeah.
Geoff 18:15
Of theme parks.
Georgie 18:16
Theme parks.
Geoff 18:17
The funny thing is like, not to be mistaken, the one in Florida which is Disney World is about five theme parks combined.
Georgie 18:26
Yeah.
Geoff 18:26
Magic kingdom being one of them.
Georgie 18:28
Which is what Disneyland is like based on. And then there’s... fuck, forgotten them.
Geoff 18:34
Yeah, EPCOT, Animal Kingdom. I can only remember those ones.
Georgie 18:39
Yeah, you think like, oh it’s a bunch of five theme parks, but like you literally, if you wanted to thoro—not even thoroughly, if you wanted to have fun each and every one of them you got to stay in this fucking isolated thing for like a week. Like you gotta, you gotta stay on s—I was gonna say on campus—on site.
Geoff 18:56
Haha on campus, join the cult? Have a demountable.
Georgie 19:02
For it to be convenient and shit. I mean, there’s a whole there’s an entire live like, you can actually buy a fucking property really close to Disney World—
Geoff 19:14
So—
Georgie 19:15
You buy a house that’s like themed—have we talked about this?
Geoff 19:17
I don’t think so. But my family have a timeshare in—
Georgie 19:21
No, no!
Geoff 19:22
In Florida... it is the Disney World Marriott. And so I, my family’s gone at least, oh probab—oh I think the only time... we’ve only gone three times. But what you can do at timeshares, which is really cool is trade it for timeshares in other countries. So that’s something my dad’s been doing just trading it for, you know, Marriott stays in, I don’t know, Sydney, you can go in Japan. You could go anywhere in the world really? These are really handy stuff. It’s like an investment type stuff. But yeah—
Georgie 19:55
Still say it’s like a scam.
Geoff 19:57
It is, it is currently a um, a questionable thing that I like to own I think that’s going to try get rid of it. Because obviously we can’t travel that frequently anymore. Or doesn’t want to travel that frequently anymore. But yeah, we had Mickey Mouse shaped waffles. It was great. It’s a good time, Disney World, yep. I need to go back at some stage. Maybe. I really don’t want to go to the States though.
Georgie 20:27
Yeah.
Geoff 20:28
Anyways, so you got to plan.
Georgie 20:32
You got to plan. I don’t want to go into detail about it. It’s, I find it personally exhausting to plan like for literally a theme park.
Geoff 20:40
Yeah.
Georgie 20:41
You know, like, when it comes to planning a holiday, like even even then that can that can be like, you know, a bit a bit tiring. But then you’re just doing this for one theme park. So anyway, two hours in this in this queue for this Big Thunder Mountain ride, which was—I don’t know if I would say it was worth it. But it was a good ride. So yeah, but, in the queue. So you can buy snacks around the theme park and I don’t know if it’s just the Japanese one or the Tokyo one but they, they sell turkey legs. So it’s like a chicken drumstick almost in the you know, foil.
Geoff 21:20
Sounds very American, turkey legs.
Georgie 21:22
Yeah?
Geoff 21:23
Sounds like something people eat for like, for. Thanks—is it Thanksgiving or maybe Super Bowl? Anyways, turkey legs sounds...
Georgie 21:32
Thanksgiving, yeah. Yeah. So they have them at the, at the Disney at this Disney park, Tokyo Disneyland.
Geoff 21:40
There’s a photo here on Google, is just the person holding a turkey leg like in front of Disneyland.
Georgie 21:44
Yeah.
Geoff 21:45
Is this a Disneyland thing?
Georgie 21:47
I don’t know if it is. I think it is, because it’s not chicken. I know people will probably, I don’t know, a turkey in general. I don’t know. It’s—
Geoff 21:56
It’s a bit gamey?
Georgie 21:57
Seems American to me. I mean, I don’t mind it. I like in terms of like the actual meat itself. But I just feel like chicken is more common. That’s just what I feel, like maybe it’s just because of my upbringing. But that’s just me. Growing up as a Asian person in Australia, that just, I never ate turkey, it was always chicken. So anyway, there was a girl in front of us in the queue with, like two of her friends. And she was eating the turkey leg. And like just all I remember is that my ex was constantly making comments about this, this girl eating the turkey leg. And you know, I remember later talking to Nick about standing in queue with people that you know, sometimes it’s okay with, you’re with a friend. Or like you know your partner and you enjoy their company and just chatting while you’re fucking waiting.
Geoff 22:50
Yeah.
Georgie 22:51
But if the company is shit, I am I am in this queue with someone I don’t particularly like. And then like this goes on to, this leads to what if you start chatting with a stranger in the queue?
Geoff 23:05
Oh I hate that!
Georgie 23:06
You get into some horrible convo.
Geoff 23:08
I hate talking to people in queues. And people who talk to me in queues. Nope, I can’t do it. You’re trapped there. It’s like people talking to you on planes, right? Like, please don’t, please don’t talk to me. Don’t try to connect with me on this flight.
Georgie 23:25
So the funny thing is that like literally today, I was at the, I was, I was in a queue waiting to try some clothes on at the shopping centre. I actually knew the people in front of me, they go, they work at my gym, but I was trying... I wasn’t in the mood to chat. So I was trying really hard to not make eye contact and not chat. And I don’t think they listen to this podcast, but they have me on... I think one of them has me on social media.
Geoff 23:58
This is why you don’t become a regular at a place and you don’t have anyone recognise you.
Georgie 24:02
Well, I don’t, right. I literally went to a place that I had been to like maybe once before in my life, but my main rant was about how I had actually planned. Okay, so this is so funny. I don’t want to plan to go to a theme park, but I plan like my shopping. So I could have bought these things online. But I just I didn’t want to... And this is funny because my dad works for the postal service. And it’s like cool to keep him in a job if I keep ordering parcels and ordering clothes online. But I didn’t want to order because I only wanted a couple of things to try on. And I didn’t want to order it and exhaust the you know, use up energy in the in the carbon, whatever. You know, I’m, I’m thinking about the environment here. And then if I didn’t like them, I’d have to return them, which is also energy if I sent them back by post.
Geoff 24:57
Yeah.
Georgie 24:58
And so I had planned like—and this is before I got sick—I literally planned like I’m gonna go to this store and literally look at this specific top that I was looking at online, or I’m gonna look at this like jumper etc etc and so I literally made a whole plan, and then I was like the shopping centre has the has the stores I want to go to, and I was going to go in, and there’s this one, these specific, very specific things, like shopping list, right? Like when you go to a supermarket you’re not going to go in there and get, you know, all the easter egg upsells, you just came, went in there for like, real eggs you know?
Geoff 25:27
I think you grossly understimate people impulse purchases, but continue. I’ll go on that. Like yeah, just a quick sidebar, yeah, Dorinda and I went went to Cabramatta for banh mi. And we wanted, we wanted to try two different banh mis from two different places. And we had planned it, you know, go to this one and then go to that one. Took us fucking, like 40 minutes to find the first place because just kept going in circles and Maps was like, no help, we’re like, it’s got to be here. So like, keep going round around in circles and like, alright, this, might be in this building, and it was inside a building in the end, not on the street side.
Georgie 26:15
Oh my god.
Geoff 26:15
So yeah, we know very well the art of planning to a tee and it not really working out.
Georgie 26:24
Yeah, far out. So I was yet I was in this queue. And I ended up having to wait to try on some clothes. And I’m just like, it’s so exhausting there. Like I actually, every I feel like every time I’ve gone to the shops for, like—I’m just saying clothes, but like in the past like couple of years, I am reminded of how much I actually hate it now. Like, because my shopping habits have changed and I try to plan what I want to buy or try on and or check out physically in a store. And then I’m like, wow, I should have just, I should have just done this online, it would have saved me a lot of time like in travelling to the place, and then like waiting in the fucking queue, which I didn’t really anticipate was going to be fucking busy but whatever. I mean, that was probably my fault. But also just dealing with people in public. It’s very exhausting now, just being around all these other customers also, like, shopping. I’m like, fuck.
Geoff 27:23
Yeah, just having to... Yeah, never having to wait in line for a while and then like now given a given a probably a mediocre line would even just make me feel like, this is, this is tiring. I didn’t have to wait in lines before.
Georgie 27:41
Yeah, I don’t know if I’m spoiled, though. By like, being able to order online. I don’t know if it’s specifically that I’m spoiled. Or am I—is my tolerance for like—
Geoff 27:50
We’ve grown to certain, accustomed to a certain level of living, and we find that going back it’s difficult.
Georgie 28:04
Yeah, like, you know, okay, I have nothing against like, like, what do you—what they call it? Staff, retail staff—doing their job and saying, “Hey, how are you, can I help” or whatever. But because I am very intentional, now, when I just go in when I go in and buy something. I feel bad when I literally, walk in the store, go and get this, like—this is, this is my what I’m mapping out in my head. Like I’m like, I want to buy this like sunscreen or whatever. I know exactly what I want to buy because I looked it up online. I walk into the store, and I want to walk straight into this on the screen, grab sunscreen, go to the counter, and then fucking pay for it. And then because I’m all good and shit, I brought my own bag so don’t give me a bag. And then I—and then leave. But every time I walk in the store it’s always like yeah, like, they they go “hey, how you going” which is fine. But then I feel like some massive obligation to walk around and pretend I’m looking at shit, but I literally just need to go and get the fucking sunscreen, go and get the sunscreen, go to the counter, and then not make any chitchat, and, and then just somehow it doesn’t work out that way, because I feel some massive obligation—
Geoff 29:13
That’s really interesting!
Georgie 29:15
...to browse.
Geoff 29:16
Is it the same urge you get when like you go to a bar or an establishment and you need to use their Wi Fi but you don’t have to buy anything but you do anyways because you’re sitting there using their Wi Fi?
Georgie 29:34
Kinda?
Geoff 29:35
Because I did that once.
Georgie 29:36
I mean—haha.
Geoff 29:38
I was in Switzerland and I went downstairs to below the, below the hotel and went to the bar and I like, okay, they have Wi Fi here because that’s where the hotel told us Wi Fi existed. So I went in there then I was just like, using the Wi Fi I’m like, “uh, I should probably pay for something”. So I got to the counter and buy a bottle of Coke, which was 7.5 Swiss francs. And I don’t know if anybody’s converted Swiss francs before, but back then it was something like $10 to $12 in Australian, and I was like, did I just pay twelve dollars for a Coke. It’s $10.76 Australian. $10 For a glass bottle of Coke, which is like 300 mls or less or whatever. I’m like, Jesus, but that was the kind of guilt that I felt when I walked in there, like uh, I should probably pay for something, even though they didn’t really care, probably. But yours is a weird one. Why do you feel like you have to browse?
Georgie 30:45
I don’t know, it just feels like, it feels very strange. I think—
Geoff 30:52
You lost the ability to shop in in person. You not know how to shop in person anymore?
Georgie 30:59
I mean, it could be like an internalised like, habit that I have of when I do, when I used to shop in person, I would browse.
Geoff 31:09
Yeah.
Georgie 31:10
But now that I’m like, very intentional, but I think it is the environment. If the shop is really empty, or there’s not a lot of other customers, then my incentive to like literally just grab the thing and go to the counter is like... I feel very out of place. If I spend basically 60 seconds, only, in the store, and I’m like, I feel like I should give this retail stuff something to, somebody to look at and feel like...
Geoff 31:40
You’re empathising way too much with the retail staff.
Georgie 31:42
I know, it’s so shit.
Geoff 31:45
The The funny thing is, we were going grocery shopping the other day on Friday, right? So Dorinda and I were like, okay, cool. We got the day mapped out, went to, went to Cabramatta for some banh mi. And everything was like, open, poppin’. You know, everybody’s so busy, so busy. Then we’re like, alright, after this, we’re gonna go grocery shopping. We go to the Woolies that’s in—oh we drive back home, go to the Woolies, and it’s closed, right? And I’m like—
Georgie 32:20
Yeah.
Geoff 32:21
Okay, it’s, it’s uh, it’s Easter. Like, oops, it’s a public holiday.
Georgie 32:27
Yeah.
Geoff 32:27
But the thing is, we drive up to one of the doors, like, in the car park with the glass like, sliding doors and then that’s locked off. They’re like, you gotta use the other one to get to get in. So we get back in the car, drive it, like just halfway across the car park, park it again. Then we get out of the car. We go upstairs. And they’ve gated off all the Coles and Woolies. Can’t even get up the escalators to the food court. So it’s like oh, everything’s closed. All right. So what do we do? Find another Woolies, that’s closed too. Aldi—that’s closed too. I’m like, do we just go back to Cabra? Shit was open! But then we ended up going, I guess to Campsie. And we finally found a couple of Asian grocers open. But—
Georgie 33:19
Yeah, yeah yeah.
Geoff 33:20
We had gone a little bit loopy. So we knew what we wanted to buy, but none of them quite had anything.
Georgie 33:26
Oh my god.
Geoff 33:28
None of them had—
Georgie 33:29
I think I know where this is going.
Geoff 33:31
...quite had anything. So we knew what to buy, but we didn’t know if they had it. So we had to go through every aisle to figure out if they had it and we got so fucking smashed with all the snacks, we just get, like going like, oh shit. I like that. Alright, let’s just buy it. Just ended up walking around, just a ton of snacks. Nothing that we actually needed, until the very last grocery we went through like three grocers, and we finally actually came to one that had things that we wanted like sweet potato and like sm... Did we even find anything with spinach? No, we didn’t actually. But anyways, so we just amassed all these snacks. And the worst thing was, is that they’re all Asian grocers. So they all have a surcharge on card. And we didn’t bring any cash obviously. So they’re like 10% surcharge, 20 cent surcharge, 30% surcharge? No joke. We paid 40 cents surcharge at one place, getting a durian, durian pancake. By the way, if anyone has not heard of it, it’s like a mango pancake. If no one’s heard of a mango pancake, it’s this like yellowish pancake that it’s kind of like wrapped into a small parcel about the size of your palm, has some mango in it, sometimes has some cake in it. Like a sponge cake, and cream.
Georgie 34:55
Cream right.
Geoff 34:56
Yeah, has cream, majorly it’s cream and mango, plus a little bit of sponge cake. So they made a durian version of this one, and I paused when purchasing this thing because I saw the surcharge was 40 fucking cents. This is not Easter public holiday surcharges. These are just card surcharges.
Georgie 35:19
It’s pretty normal. Yeah. I was gonna say that Asian groceries are, in and of themselves, a giant trap. I feel like I always go in there and you go to the snacks.
Geoff 35:31
Yeah.
Georgie 35:31
And you’re like, I just want like, Hi-Chew. Hi-Chew is like this fruity, fruity, chewy candy, and just go they just want that but you see Hello Panda.
Geoff 35:42
Oh, yeah.
Georgie 35:43
And then you see Pocky.
Geoff 35:45
Yeah.
Georgie 35:45
And then you see fuckin—I don’t know if you eat those haw flakes, like the pink coins, that are like, and they also come in like—
Geoff 35:52
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Georgie 35:52
They come in rollup form.
Geoff 35:54
Yeah.
Georgie 35:55
Then you see tamarind.
Geoff 35:56
Yeah, it’s dangerous.
Georgie 35:58
And you see dried orange peel.
Geoff 36:00
And then you see like dry, dried shredded squid. And you’re like, I really want that right now.
Georgie 36:08
Roasted seaweed. In different flavours.
Geoff 36:11
It’s like, I guess it’s for us a huge nostalgia, nostalgia hit. We go into a grocery and you’re like, this is sit I ate as a kid. And I don’t know why but I want it right now.
Georgie 36:25
I really need to have it.
Geoff 36:27
I’m an adult. I can make my own snack decisions now. I’m gonna have it. So we picked up so we picked up a strange thing. We... I don’t know if you see—you get these like, bars, kind of like a yeah, bar. And it’s it’s made up of these rice puffs, and it’s kind of like sticky, and it’s kind of sweet. Anyways, they made a durian version of this one. Usually, it’s just vanilla flavoured. This durian flavoured. Doesn’t taste great. But we’ve got like 12 of them now.
Georgie 36:59
You’re screwed.
Geoff 37:04
And then I saw this cake, this layer cake thing, uh, the best thing—
Georgie 37:08
Oh my god which one?
Geoff 37:09
It’s called a polo, there’s a lot of layer cakes there. But.
Georgie 37:13
Yeah yeah, that’s why I wanted you to describe it.
Geoff 37:16
It’s pandan with coconut cream in the middle. And—
Georgie 37:20
It’s green. And then, and there’s brown sugar?
Geoff 37:23
No, no just coconut cream and pandan cake, ish. Thing is, I never tried this before, but I’ve seen ads of it in Malaysia as a kid. My family claimed to deny that they know of this product. I’m like, how do you? What? Am I the only person watching TV here? Anyways, I ate one and I was like, it’d be so bad if this is, this is not good, because we have like 20 of them now. It turned out to be quite good. It’s kind of like a pond on Twinkie if you’ve ever had a Twinkie.
Georgie 37:57
Yeah I’ve had a Twinkie.
Geoff 37:57
Yeah. It’s kind of like a pandan Twinkie, slightly better than a Twinkie because a Twinkie cake is very...
Georgie 38:04
Dry?
Geoff 38:05
Dry. Yeah.
Georgie 38:06
Gross?
Geoff 38:06
Kinda gross. This one’s at least a little light and fluffy. So yeah. Did a bit of—
Georgie 38:14
So they weren’t that bad?
Geoff 38:16
Yeah, we have to get cash out for the banh mi, because none of the bad me places had had a had card. It was actually really interesting. Being back in such an Asian place where like card is not normal.
Georgie 38:30
Yeah I haven’t, I think the last time I went to Cabra was, I went to, I think I went to a yum cha place and that was easily like 10 years ago, I think.
Geoff 38:39
Jeez, yeah, actually, I went past that yum cha place you probably know, it’s called like... it’s like called Golden something. Golden seafood empire.
Georgie 38:51
I think you might be right. Like I literally went there with some uni friends like yeah, it would have been like 10 years ago.
Geoff 38:59
Wow.
Georgie 38:59
Very Asian of me to not have been to Cabra for a while.
Geoff 39:02
Back to the shipping thing versus like going to the store.
Georgie 39:05
Oh yeah.
Geoff 39:05
Right. So I have a unique problem, right? Everybody. Posties cannot—
Georgie 39:11
Oh god, here we go.
Geoff 39:12
Posties cannot find my fucking door. And I’ve come to a halfway point. I now just do Click and Collect wherever possible because I just drive to pick it up. Because I just can’t be bothered, a) waiting for postal to get to my place, and b) I have a car so why not just like go back and pick it up myself. I get it basically instantly. If they have it in stock. If they don’t, I wait a couple of days and then I go pick it up. So that’s my middle ground. I don’t, oh I guess I lined up one time because there were multiple people who came for Click and Collect. But generally you don’t have to line up. Just to, just to buy it. Pick it up. Click and Collect your sunscreen or clothes.
Georgie 39:59
Yeah? Maybe. But I’m also like—
Geoff 40:02
You want to try them on.
Georgie 40:02
Can’t be bothered driving. Yeah, I mean yeah, but still like even with this trying on thing I’m like, oh my god it’s, it’s probably a lot easier if I just order numerous parcels from like The Iconic, and fucking just return—
Geoff 40:18
Yeah trying to be environmentally friendly.
Georgie 40:20
Yeah the bother for me now. Yeah the bother for me is in returning them—oh, you know, it would be so much easier to return them if I had a motherfucking printer. Because then I could print the label to return it and just stick it on the parcel and there’s literally a postbox like at the end of my street and, put it there, but no, because I don’t have a printer, and I used to go to this—funnily enough—Asian grocery, to—
Geoff 40:48
Oh, that’s really interesting.
Georgie 40:49
To pay, and literally pay with fucking coin—oh actually no, I think—so it would have, it would be good to pay with coins because you’re gonna get a surcharge but then I would pay to print with my card and then there’d be a surcharge so of course I’d try and see if we had any loose change lying around which we now don’t, because—and I’m going to like a million tangents here now—but we don’t have any coins here because there used to be Westpac bank near where we live—
Geoff 41:13
Oh my god you’ve...
Georgie 41:14
And that’s was the only place that we could deposit any actual cash. And before they closed, Nick went and got all of his physical money to put in there so that we wouldn’t have physical money lying around. But anyway, this Asian grocery closed as well, so I can’t print my fucking return labels, which means I have to walk to the post office, and guess what, my neighborhood does not have a post office, which means I have to walk for like 20 to 30 minutes—
Geoff 41:39
I...
Georgie 41:39
One way to the post office to print the return label, to return... so you can see this a lot of energy wasted here.
Geoff 41:45
I love, I love the coin thing. I collect coins just to pour it into the coin counter thing at the bank so that it would then coin count them and then deposit it in my bank account. That’s fun. But I don’t like, I don’t like having coins. But the, I mean, at that stage you know how much printers are, Georgie?
Georgie 42:12
Oh my god, what are we gonna go down this route?
Geoff 42:14
They’re like 50 bucks, you can literally buy a printer for 50 bucks.
Georgie 42:19
But isn’t it the ink that’s expensive?
Geoff 42:20
That’s true the ink is is probably the the hard part to come by.
Georgie 42:25
But like also, like going back to like literally one of our first topics of this episode. I’m a fucking minimalist. Why do you think I want a printer to print a return label approximately once a month? Or less? Often?
Geoff 42:38
Having said that, yes, I think once a month your ink might actually dry. Like it might, it might, might dry and you may have to get a new cartridge. I’m... I mean, I don’t print anything. The, oh, so what’s cool, I really like Sunglasses Hut. I was looking at Sunglasses Hut, you can actually click, you can collect and then you can like try it on there, and then you can actually just give it back to them in store.
Georgie 43:09
So it’s a try on in store, like you’re basically—
Geoff 43:11
Basically. Because they don’t always have the have the styles that like in the store and they have to ship them in sometimes. But you can click, yeah, you go to the store, collect the thing that you ordered, put it on and then like put it back in the box and they just hand it back to them. It’s like basically clothing should go do that right? They just have a front, just front desk, they’ve got some changing rooms you click, collect, here’s your clothes, go try it on, just give it back to them, easy.
Georgie 43:42
Okay but the thing is, like sunglasses are easy to try on, you stand there and put them on your face, right?
Geoff 43:47
Yes.
Georgie 43:47
With like clothes, you, like there’s probably customers already in the store who didn’t do like Click and Collect and Try on.
Geoff 43:54
No, no, no, stores. No store. Literally just a counter, like, like a, like one of those satellite kitchens, just a counter, click, collect, pick up the clothes, there’s a, there’s changing room next door, go in there, change, don’t like it, give it back.
Georgie 44:11
Okay, but here’s another rabbit hole we’re gonna go down which is changing rooms. They’re so shit!
Geoff 44:16
Oh the curtains. Don’t get them.
Georgie 44:18
Yeah so... but then the lighting in there is often shit. And then like at home, okay, and maybe I know all your shirts are black, you can’t empathise with this, right, you’re just gonna be like, “that’s black, that goes with black”. Hahaha. I need to know whether this green shirt is gonna look really good with my pink fucking shorts I’m wearing right now, with my blue jeans, with my black shorts, right? Like it’s it sucks. It kind of sucks. The whole chain of experience is kind of designed to be a massive failure or—
Geoff 44:59
It’s like an afterthought for some reason. The clothing store has an afterthought of a changing room. You know, they’re always crammed in weird places. And—
Georgie 45:09
Yeah, and the, the lighting’s designed to make you look good in the lighting but then you take the—
Geoff 45:13
Oh, that’s interesting.
Georgie 45:14
It looks a different color. Yeah, there’s, it’s so shit.
Geoff 45:17
I think we have a business idea that we’ll talk about offline. And that is a great place to end this podcast. So if you hate lining up and dimly lit, or perfectly lit changing rooms, let us know in the, in the metaphorical comments below.
Georgie 45:43
@ us. You can @ us.
Geoff 45:44
Don’t forget to follow us on @toastroastpod, Twitter, Instagram, you can add us anytime. Happy to chat way more about this stuff, obviously.
Georgie 45:54
Yeah, and you can listen to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and let’s just say the big durian for now since you seem to have mentioned that quite a few times.
Geoff 46:07
Yeah, so new episodes every Monday.
Georgie 46:09
See you next week.
Geoff 46:11
Bye.