A significant portion of the August 29th 2019 episode of The Adam Carolla Show podcast’s first half recently featured a beef with his employees about them not doing a seemingly simple task over a period of many-asks by the boss that resulted in an on-air rant, then questioning, and then one of the mentioned employees of said rant, Dylan Wrenn, getting on the microphone to angrily tell Adam that if he thinks Dylan is so “stupid” then to “fkking fire him”.
Boss Carolla seemingly just wants an office in the recording studio warehouse cleaned… why is that so impossible? Why is it a subject that has to be avoided so many times to cause this on-air confrontation? These are not rhetorical questions. Please someone answer them for me because I am as baffled as Carolla is in this segment of his show and I’m positive that many, if not a majority of listeners are sympathetic to the employee side of the conflict – so tell me – enlighten me on what exactly is going on under the surface here that makes Carolla’s “please clean this office – during normal hours [not overtime or getting there early or anything extra]” so offensive?
Before continuing, skip into the first 5 minutes of the show and listen up until the 48 minute mark by either looking the episode up (I play all podcasts at 2x speed so that would be my choice, but few others seem to like that option) or by listening via this link here.
The only premise you need is that Adam Carolla, the host, is the boss. Co-hosts Bald Bryan and Gina Grad are the male and female voices that open the show and then later on, defending his colleague Dylon is Chris “Maxapada” as he is nicknamed on the show (his real last name is Laxamana). Please listen first.
Now, my “WTF is wrong with kids these days” questions that I have [about people who are my age or within 10 years of age]…
Why is there so much animosity toward doing things?
Adam brings up a previous angry employee, Gabe, who was angry at being told to clean an office used by 2 other people and asks why it is so offensive to do more than 33% of the organization within a shared space. I ask this as well… As Adam notes in the show – it is possible for one to expand up to 40 or 50% you know, adding that “you’re allowed to walk down the street and pick up a wrapper that’s not from YOUR candy bar”. So why is this concept so offensive to this generation? Obviously if there is a pattern of one person always doing extra cleaning of others carelessly created messes, that would be an injustice that I’m positive Adam and anyone else would recognize, but wtf is the deal with being pre-emptively angry over the possibility of being victimized in that way, before even performing the requested task? Maxapada points out that Adam has trained him to rinse coffee mugs that people leave out around the studio there half full with coffee even if they aren’t his and Adam says “I would say, look its not your coffee mug that’s sitting on the sink half full with coffee but if you’ve been here for 2 hours, you could give it a rinse” as cohost Gina Grad chimes in noting that “It’s your office” and Adam continues that he’s not asking anyone to do anything that he doesn’t do all day and that when you have kids – that’s your whole life is picking up things someone else puts down. So WTF is the problem here? I get that you don’t want to be a parent to your co-workers but that’s where the mentality of “no one act like a child” comes in and then no one is mommying anyone else or a group of manchildren – they’re just keeping communal spaces clean and tidy. Why is that so wrong?
What is up with this need to be praised by the boss?
Adam asks “is Dylon pissed? what is he upset about?” and Maxapada says that Adam is being too hard on Dylon about the whole office thing. So Adam asks “what is the hard part, on me?”, prompting an appropriate giggle from Gina Grad (lol) as a clunky way of asking essentially “what am I being unreasonably hard on my people here about?” and Maxapada says that Dylon “does a lot of hard work for the show and just doesn’t organize his office” – the implication being that if you do good work at the place you work, then any aspect where your negligence causes a problem should be overlooked and unspoken because you are competently/expertly/ wonderfully/whatever-ly doing your job elsewhere… THIS. MAKES. NO. SENSE… if you think it does then please enlighten me on what duh-moment I’m missing here, because that enlightenment wasn’t provided when this was brought up on the show.
Adam accepts the premise of what Maxapada is saying and challenges it by asking “So he works hard for the show… and you don’t work hard and Brian doesn’t work hard and I don’t work hard or everyone works hard?” to which I was squirming in my chair begging for an answer to exactly that logical extension because I’m desperate to understand the thinking behind the person who says such a thing.
I remember the feeling of anger and shame in a sense of being attacked for not doing something I was told when I was 6 or 7-ish and thinking that the oppression I was experiencing was unjustified just because I am me and I’m so awesome and great and I made the Richardland brand based on entirely that little-kid-with-only-child-syndrome premise to mock and satirize it but now when I see it exhibited and defended with righteous indignation by adults, I just don’t know WTF is going on… Adam again accepts the premise completely and asks “he works hard for the show. Alright. What’s that have to do with not cleaning his office?”
I now ask you, the reader and listener who agree’s with the employee after hearing the rant – what is the answer to that question??
Why is your motivation based on being told how awesome you are instead of DOING A GOOD JOB?…
Maxapada’s response is about morale at the studio being low “with all this office cleaning [talk & nagging]”, prompting the no-duh response question from Adam of “how do we resolve this office cleaning [issue that you’re affected by]?” because these employees seem to be entirely oblivious to the infinite loop of disaster they’re causing themselves by:
1- Not doing a thing asked of them,
2- Thereby guaranteeing and necessitating it coming up as an issue repeatedly in the future,
3- Continuing to not-doing the thing asked of them, this time with the reason that their morale is low because they’re getting nagged about the Thing-they-won’t-do so much…
Dude… I swear on a stack of Bibles that I’m legitimately seeking an answer on the genuine perspective of this mentality: what is the Adam Carolla position in this equation supposed to do/say/react with exactly? The only thing I can think of is exactly the thing that Carolla thought of, which is that if a persons morale is low – maybe they need to take some time off and come back refreshed. Cuz that’s what you would do with someone whose work you typically like but are having a problem with that they are attributing to low morale. This is where Dylon got on the microphone and gave the opposite of a “you can’t fire me, I quit!” declaration and instead said “Fire me!”. His reasoning is, again, that he’s being personally attacked. Raising the question:
Why are you taking the criticism of your refusal to do a task at work as a personal attack?
I have had this exact exchange with several people in various capacities throughout my pirate ship business career where I say that I am experiencing frustration at their lack of doing a thing I asked them to and their response is an abstract posture about the thesis of what I’m saying actually being that I think they are “[fill in the blank with things I never said about them]”. With the Carolla crew, it went down like this:
Dylon: “I’m confused because if you do think I’m as fkking lazy and atrophied and stupid as you think I am, then FIRE ME!”
Adam: “Okay, would you *like* to be fired?”
Dylon: “I would like to have a job here where my work is respected and people don’t scream at me on air for a fkkin radar cord that I didn’t put on your shelf, but FIRE ME if you think I’m this STUPID.”
Adam: Okay well, let’s take some time off and we’ll figure out the rest. If you’d like that….
And then Dylon left and presumably packed up and quit. Carolla continued upon Dylons departure from the microphone, saying:
Adam: First off… I don’t think I’m screaming at anybody – I think i’ve made my opinion pretty clear that I would like the office cleaned…you may not have taken the radar cord and wrapped it up with the jump rope – that may be the OTHER person I asked to clean the office – but its still in your office that’s not being cleaned so thus I can’t find it… What am I confused about here? Other than ‘morale is low’, what is the – Bryan – what would your take on this be?”
Bryan adds a quasi correction that while he didn’t hear Carolla talk about the subject earlier that day or whenever this incident occurred that was frustrating him, that Carolla did refer to himself as being “animated” in his frustrations about the office being cleaned (so in other words he’s saying that while Carolla isn’t “screaming” on air and doesn’t sound like he was screaming off the air, he wasn’t “not screaming” about it either) and that Bryan thinks it’s justified to be annoyed.
So Carolla asks the peanut gallery at large, “what part of this is me being unreasonable?” and asks the shows announcer Mike Dawson. Dawson says “I don’t think you’re being unreasonable” and Carolla asks “I’d like the office cleaned…why can’t Dylon clean the office he works out of” – because this is literally the only place to go with this subject… You’re asking for something to be done as a boss and a person is saying they won’t do it or just aren’t doing it, so the questions is “what is unreasonable about this ask?” and SOME-one needs to step up and answer exactly that.
How is the work you do seemingly unappreciated by the Boss just pointing out that which you repeatedly refuse-to-do that is causing a problem?
Adam asks “how does ‘organize your office’ factor into me not thinking you do work?” – yet another struggle I’ve frequently asked my crew members when faced with exactly this premise.
Maxapada’s response is “The only thing we hear a lot of the time from you – I’m not saying that you need to compliment us all the time – but its a lot of complaining – I know that’s Kindov your thing too – but it’s just, we hear a lot of why you’re upset with us”
To which I was audibly yelling at my phone the answer the Adam responded with himself saying “don’t you think if you cleaned the office around the 35th time I asked you to do it, it would help step towards that goal? What about never doing what I’m asking you to do? Don’t you think that interrupts the Praise Pipeline?”
Results
Dylon was previously given the opportunity to question and counter Charlie Kirk, the Conservative Republican founder of Turning Points USA