The very first corporate job I ever worked made it feel like I was back in high school.

I swear everyday felt like a social event. Office gossip. Performance reviews gone bad. Someone dating someone else (aka how I found my wife). Drinks after work.

Laughter, grumbling, and more laughter is essentially how we spent our days.

Truthfully a lot of it was robotic work.

1. Run report to get refreshed data. Check.

2. Copy data from report. Check.

3. Paste data into weekly report. Check.

4. Add a friendly blurb to email of report. Check.

5. Send report. End.

And then you would rinse and repeat, while spending your time monitoring numbers in between reports, and then eventually chatting with co-workers throughout the week as described above.

The thing about working on this team though was, if you actually wanted to get work done in the office, forget about it. Especially if you desk as near an aisle or common area. You were going to get visitors left, right, and center.

“Oh, I’m just stretching my legs.”
“Hey, what are you doing?”
“Are you on a call?”
“Let’s go down for coffee”

And the list went on and on. Technically you’d call these all distractions. And you’d probably right most of the time. Someone showing up to your cubicle, someone instant messaging you or phoning you. Someone just flat out doing something to get your attention - you’re distracted.

BUT - there’s a whole bunch of science behind this where, according to a study performed by Dr. Gloria Mark from the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Irvine, depending on where these “things” are coming from, they could be distractions OR interactions. Meaning, if someone calls you and interrupts you but they’re working on the project that you’re working on, people commonly referred to it as an “interaction”. But if buddy from across the office just shows up to talk shit about another co-worker, that was considered a distraction (a fun one at that!)

The research also showed that the average time an employee spent working on a task before they were interrupted - involuntarily or voluntarily - was 3 minutes and 5 seconds. And then the time it took for them to get back to that task was about 23 minutes on average.

Now you don’t have to feel so bad for checking Instagram every 5 minutes while you sit doing monotonous work. That said, these metrics were all from people who work in offices with other people. If you work from home, I’m sure you’re interrupting yourself way more often and for way longer. I know I do!

This week's issue is a 4 minute read:

🗺️ Battle of the maps

🎵 The new way to make an entrance

🎡 Food your stomach will hate you for

Maps: Apple vs Google

Last week we talked about whether you were a Cherry Coke person or not.

This week I’m here to divide you all over again.

Are you an Apple Maps person or a Google Maps person?

And you can’t say Waze, Google bought Waze so it’s basically the same thing - sort of.

Well if you’re an Apple Maps person then you already know how much effort Apple has put in to making their maps much cleaner and more detailed than Google. At this point, it just feels like Google has given up in trying to make anything look good, let alone function like it was 2024. 

There’s a whole Google Home rant I could go on…why does it suck so much?

Apple has really been focusing on making their maps experience better so I had to do my own research. First and foremost, I will say that Apple has a much cleaner way of understanding when to turn. I find with Google, if you don’t know where you’re going, it can feel like you need to do last minute turns sometimes, which is obviously dangerous. I’ve missed many highway exits because of this!

Apple’s interface just feels quicker and smoother as well. We all know navigating Apple products, when done right, is probably the best user experience one could ever ask for. Whilst Google tends to just put their rainbow colouring on the product and call it a day. Don’t get me started on trying to sync Google devices to my Google Home app.

Lastly, check out these differences, you tell me what you’d prefer to look at:

Trending: Entrance Music

The same way tall socks aren’t just for Gen Z, entrance music is no longer just a thing for professional wrestlers. That said, I think pro wrestlers have realized this in recent years and 200% have stepped their games up.

No one more than Shinsuke Nakamura.

Who else can say they have their own personal violinist to walk out to?

Everyone and their dog seems to have entrance music these days. Heck, even the dogs at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog show (a mouthful) walk out to grandiose, classical music adding prestige to the show.

Entrance music has essentially become a meme for any interaction IRL.

Donald Trump survives an assassination attempt on July 13th. Only days later he walks out to Many Men by 50 Cent at the RNC. For the 2 of you who don’t know, Fifty was shot 9 times and lived to rap about it.

@lastreetradar

Donald Trump’s first appearance after incident, walks out to “Many Men” by 50 Cent 😳 #donaldtrump #50cent #manymen #LAStreerRadar #Parody #😂

Earlier this summer Blink-182 kicked off their One More Time tour in Orlando.

Fittingly, with this being a reunion tour and essentially one last rejuvenation for the band, they kicked the tour off with the Undertaker’s entrance music-

…the wrestler who essentially kept coming back from the dead.

The Food of the CNE

Everyone remembers where they had their very first deep fried Mars bar. It was probably not that far away from the deep fried Oreos, deep fried cheese cake, or deep fried butter. Why would you want to eat deep fried butter??

Every year at the Canadian National Exhibition (CNE to locals) some form of food concoction goes viral, usually for all the wrong reasons.

This year is no different.

Of course there’s a Taylor Swift inspired thing. Topped with “Wildest Cream” <pause>, “Lavender Haze” crunch, and Lover cotton candy, these deep fried cheese curds seem a lot more corny than they are cheesy.

If you don’t watch where you’re walking you might fall in a tub of hot cooking oil. No, for real, everything gets deep fried at the CNE.

Case in point: karaage soft-shelled crab on a stick.

Ok finally something that isn’t deep fried. Tzatziki New York cheesecake. Topped with tzatziki butter cream and pita chips - is it a dessert or a greek appetizer?

And when you’re done eating all of these gifts to the carnival gods, wash it all down with some JALEPENO LEMONADE.

Who’s going to the CNE???