Transcript:
Transcript: Episode 18 (Part II, Dialogue)
[00:00:00.570] - Oliver (Host)
Okay, César. Welcome back, listener, to this special Cliffhanger episode, this special second part, which is not something I intend to do very often. I don't intend to have such a long self-obsessed speech as I had in this episode. But unfortunately, the circumstances meant that I had to split it into two, especially because I had missed the previous week. If you find anything in this podcast hard to understand, remember that there is the transcript available at www.morethanalanguage.com. And if you can hear any odd noises in the background of this podcast, I do apologise. The reason for that is that we are staying with César's mother while we look for a flat somewhere in Spain. So César, welcome back to the podcast, welcome back to Spain.
[00:00:58.830] - César (Guest)
Thank you.
[00:00:59.880] - Oliver (Host)
But that's not the topic of today's episode. Instead, we're going to be talking about careers.
[00:01:06.190] - César (Guest)
Career shifting.
[00:01:08.210] - Oliver (Host)
Career shifts. Something that you and I, and basically every millennial, we've done a lot of it. So, we've discussed careers before, but this is the first proper careers episode. What do you think of my long and varied career path? I'm sure that years ago, this would the stuff of nightmares - my parents would have been horrified by my inability to stick with any particular career.
[00:01:37.770] - César (Guest)
Yeah, I think that's one of the biggest fears of many parents, right, that their children are not completely focused on their career or they're changing jobs all the time. But as you said, our generation - (Are we millennials? Yeah, we are millennials. Yeah) - tend to do this more often than our parents, because firstly, there's less security. Back then, most people I know in Spain from my parents' generations have worked for the same company for 40 years. That's just impossible in Spain nowadays because the economy is more, there are more turnover, there are more companies are setting up, also more companies closing down.
[00:02:26.670] - Oliver (Host)
So you could say, a good word for that would be that the economy is more volatile.
[00:02:30.310] - César (Guest)
Volatile, exactly. Yeah, way more volatile. Entrepreneurship is more common nowadays as well.
[00:02:37.110] - Oliver (Host)
So you mean an individual deciding to set up a business, have a startup, that kind of thing?
[00:02:44.230] - César (Guest)
Exactly. Or people working as a freelancer, so having their own little projects and not working for the same people all the time.
[00:02:53.070] - Oliver (Host)
I suppose that that's much more possible now because of the internet.
[00:02:56.430] - César (Guest)
Exactly.
[00:02:57.140] - Oliver (Host)
You know, our, our business that we have together - well, that I have attached myself to, Spanish Language Coach. That is an internet business at the end of the day.
[00:03:08.180] - César (Guest)
And we've been doing it from the UK, and now we're going to be doing it from Spain.
[00:03:12.960] - Oliver (Host)
Exactly. The other thing that I think is funny about it is that I've talked in the past about the importance of parental pressure in my life. The idea that I did a lot of things when I was younger to make my parents happy, to make my parents proud. And you're always quite bemused and confused by how important my parents' opinions remain in my life. That, you know, I consult my parents on lots of things, and essentially, I feel sometimes like I still need the approval to make big decisions. With law, I went into law basically because I knew it would make my parents proud, even though I knew very quickly that I hated it. And then I left law basically because my mum acknowledged that it wasn't the kind of job that she expected it to be, that she had seen my older sister and me go into law, and I think that she'd always thought, "Great, prestigious, stable, well-paid job", which it is, but it wasn't what I think that she hoped for for us. I think she thought that it would be a more fulfilling job and a job that maybe was more stable than it really is, or a job where you didn't need to work yourself to death, for some law firms, in order to progress.
[00:04:39.360] - Oliver (Host)
I think that when she actually saw the realities of law, she was much more amenable, she was much more open, to the idea of me quitting.
[00:04:47.990] - César (Guest)
And at the end of the day, she wanted your happiness rather than not having a good job, but being completely miserable.
[00:04:57.360] - Oliver (Host)
But I think that it's hard for my mum and hard for me and hard for lots of people to separate those things, though, because even if you accept that a job is making you miserable, it's hard not to think, "Oh, well, they'll be more miserable if they quit. If you just hang on and you just push through, then it will get better." And I genuinely, it didn't get better the whole time that I was working in law, and I don't think it would ever have gotten better because most of the lawyers I know don't enjoy the job, but do it because of the money.
[00:05:29.780] - César (Guest)
Yeah. Also, the thing is it depends on your situation. In our case, we are extremely lucky because we didn't have any external pressure to keep the same job that we were doing. We didn't have a mortgage, we didn't have kids, we didn't have someone to take care of. Right? But for some people, they just need to keep doing it. So we are extremely lucky and it's, like, we talk from that privilege of, "We've been able to do this career shift, we've been able to take a salary cut." We've been able to... Because we didn't really care, not like, 'lower down' our lifestyle, or...
[00:06:08.850] - Oliver (Host)
We didn't care about, kind of, lowering the, our 'quality of life'. Because what you mean is, we didn't care about having less nice things. We didn't care about going on fewer or less expensive holidays. Yeah.
[00:06:25.750] - César (Guest)
And it's not like... I mean, at least, I haven't been to many expensive holidays. Because when I was making money and having a good salary back in Barcelona before becoming a teacher, I was saving, saving up almost all the money I was making. Because deep down, I knew that I needed to save that money in order to take that "faith leap"?
[00:06:47.650] - Oliver (Host)
That leap of faith.
[00:06:48.630] - César (Guest)
Sorry, leap of faith, and try to create something on my own.
[00:06:54.020] - Oliver (Host)
Well, I suppose for me, I don't feel like my life was particularly luxurious when I was paid much more when I was a lawyer. But I think that I simply didn't think about money like I think about money now. I just, you know, if, if - it sounds ridiculous, but if my iPhone broke, I bought a new iPhone. I didn't worry about it. Or I would go out for dinner when I wanted to go out for dinner.
[00:07:19.320] - César (Guest)
Whereas now you try to cut down on little expenses like have (having) too many coffees.
[00:07:28.010] - Oliver (Host)
Yeah, well, I'm - It's always in the back of my mind, the financial situation. Do I have the cash to pay for these things? But I don't actually notice a big difference in terms of my happiness around my spending, my consumption. I go out for dinner less, but I don't, I - I think if you go out for dinner a lot, you stop appreciating going out for dinner. If you go on really nice holidays, then you stop appreciating just the fact that you're going on holiday. And the other thing I feel about lots of very well-paid jobs is sometimes you need that money, you need those expensive holidays and those expensive dinners to make it worthwhile. You basically need to spend that money to keep your happiness at a base level. Because if I had been working those jobs or that job and unable to spend that money for whatever reason, I think I'd have been very, very unhappy. Does that make sense?
[00:08:21.700] - César (Guest)
Yeah. As we say in Spanish, "nadie da duros a dos pesetas", which means basically nothing is free, right? If you have a really demanding job, a really stressful job that might have an impact, yeah, that's not going to come for free. You will need to pay the consequences.
[00:08:42.410] - Oliver (Host)
I said something maybe - I don't think controversial - but I said that probably my least favourite job were the early ones in retail. You've also worked in retail.
[00:08:51.790] - César (Guest)
Yeah, not in a clothes store.
[00:08:53.850] - Oliver (Host)
You worked in a chocolate shop? No, sorry. You worked in a... Okay, I'll tell you why I made that mistake. You worked in a phone shop that is now a chocolate shop.
[00:09:04.130] - César (Guest)
Yeah.
[00:09:04.600] - Oliver (Host)
Okay. So I know that in Valencia there is a chocolate shop that used to be a phone shop.
[00:09:09.130] - César (Guest)
Exactly.
[00:09:09.750] - Oliver (Host)
And I thought that maybe you'd worked in both of those different things. I knew you worked in a phone shop.
[00:09:13.730] - César (Guest)
Yeah.
[00:09:14.220] - Oliver (Host)
So is that the only retail job you've ever had?
[00:09:16.510] - César (Guest)
Well, I worked as a waiter for many years. Well, for many years. Since I was 15, which was illegal.
[00:09:23.630] - Oliver (Host)
Yeah, child labour.
[00:09:24.680] - César (Guest)
Well, not child, well, I guess it was child labour.
[00:09:27.210] - Oliver (Host)
That's why it's illegal.
[00:09:28.630] - César (Guest)
Yeah, but just like, over the weekends and things like that. When I turned 16, it was legal already. Yeah, for a few months, it was legal. It won't have any legal implications for my parents, right?
[00:09:42.840] - Oliver (Host)
There might be some sort of statute of limitations. I think that the Spanish Guardia Civil probably has bigger problems on its hands.
[00:09:53.170] - César (Guest)
And then I worked in retail for a few years as well in a phone shop selling telephones? Yeah. Very stressful. But it was, it actually... I built a lot of... Not resilience. Resilience, patience as well. You have to be polite at all times, and some people are extremely rude when it comes to their phones and things like that. And I had to juggle then university and the shop as well.
[00:10:26.060] - Oliver (Host)
When I was working in the stationers in my first retail job, I found it so stressful for such a stupid reason that I actually didn't put it in the speech because I felt embarrassed to say it. But I really like studying maths. It was one of my best subjects, and for A-Levels in the UK - they're the exams that you do when you're 18, and you can do three, normally three, sometimes four subjects - and I did four, I did Latin, Ancient Greek, and then Maths, and then extra Maths, like Double Maths, so I really liked Maths. It was not common at all to do Double Maths then. But for some reason, because I would get so nervous when I was working on the till at this shop, when people would try to make my job easier, because, you know, let's say the cost of the goods came to £4.90, they would give me, like, £5.40, so I could give them 50p back. And I would, I would be totally unable to do this most basic maths. I would tie myself up in knots - that means I would get myself very confused, very stressed - and you could see, like, well, I imagined the pity in their eyes and then also the judgement of the modern educational system that this teenager could barely, you know, add up one and one. And I felt like screaming, "I swear I'm good at Maths!"
[00:12:02.870] - César (Guest)
If they only knew...
[00:12:03.920] - Oliver (Host)
But well, I mean, they didn't need to know anything. They could see that I was rubbish! So yeah, I actually found that job really stressful for the stupidest reasons. And in fact, even after university, when I worked in the clothes shop, I only worked on the till a couple of times because then the manager of the shop basically took me away and was like, "It's not for you."
[00:12:22.650] - César (Guest)
He didn't trust you.
[00:12:23.750] - Oliver (Host)
Yeah, go and stand at the front of the shop and smile.
[00:12:25.590] - César (Guest)
You got that really beautiful smile, so I'm sure that, that had been a good idea. Actually, I completely understand because money made me really nervous. Cash made me nervous as well. And especially, I don't know if it's the case in the UK as well at the time, but you had to be extremely careful because - no, not everyone, obviously - but some people try to rip you off with money. Basically, if they gave me a €50 note, I would be like, "Okay, you've given me €50. It's here." You know? Because otherwise, they might have given me €20 note and then when I give the change to them, they'll be like, "No, I've given you €50". And then you've got this situation, and so...
[00:13:10.230] - Oliver (Host)
Well, maybe that's what was happening in this shop that all of these people had realised that I was a soft touch, that I was a bit of an idiot. They would give me easy maths problems to solve and then walk away with extra change because they would try to help me out, so they'd be like, "Here, I'll give you £5.40, and then you give me £20 in change." And I would probably have done it, just to end the interaction.
[00:13:35.090] - César (Guest)
"Take all the money, Sir..."
[00:13:36.130] - Oliver (Host)
Maybe now I'd be really good at the till, now that everyone pays all the time with contactless. But I was, I was terrible. I was probably worse at that job than any other. What's the worst job you've had that is least well suited to your skill set? In what job would you say have you done the worst job?
[00:13:55.120] - César (Guest)
I worked as a waiter in the VIP area of one motor competition. I won't say the name.
[00:14:03.860] - Oliver (Host)
A motor? Oh, yes.
[00:14:04.400] - César (Guest)
Yeah.
[00:14:05.650] - Oliver (Host)
Like a motorbike competition"?
[00:14:07.820] - César (Guest)
Yeah, like a motorbike competition. And I didn't like the experience. I didn't like the way the waiters had to carry the tray, which basically we had to hold with our neck and a band, the tray. It was a very high tray.
[00:14:24.370] - Oliver (Host)
A very heavy tray.
[00:14:25.500] - César (Guest)
Very heavy tray, but very bulky as well. And in general, I don't like the idea of VIP experiences. I don't really want to be VIP. I think it's so classist.
[00:14:38.400] - Oliver (Host)
We should actually say that VIP stands for-
[00:14:42.910] - César (Guest)
Very important person.
[00:14:43.450] - Oliver (Host)
Yeah, very important person, very important people. So, you're against VIP areas in general.
[00:14:49.350] - César (Guest)
Well, the name, I think, is terrible, VIP. I think they should rebrand it, you know? Because I don't want to be in a place where people are more important than me or we're more important than someone else. And also because many times the people who go to these places actually are people who are not important, because who is important in the first place?
[00:15:09.840] - Oliver (Host)
We once paid to go to the VIP Lounge of an airport; do you remember?
[00:15:16.450] - César (Guest)
No, we paid to go to the Lounge at the airport.
[00:15:20.060] - Oliver (Host)
That's what I just said.
[00:15:20.910] - César (Guest)
Yeah, but it's not the VIP Lounge.
[00:15:22.630] - Oliver (Host)
Oh, come on.
[00:15:23.420] - César (Guest)
I'm sure I would have rejected going there.
[00:15:25.460] - Oliver (Host)
What, if they'd branded it VIP Lounge?
[00:15:28.100] - César (Guest)
But you can call it "premium experience".
[00:15:30.340] - Oliver (Host)
It's the same thing, though. You've just said, in fact, that they should rebrand it.
[00:15:34.400] - César (Guest)
Exactly. That's what I'm saying. But people, if they think they go to a VIP, they might think they're... I mean, I don't, I just don't like, and especially because in these places, specifically, many people are guests, so they've been invited by someone else. They haven't even paid to be there, and they feel even more important. So they look down on you. And I didn't like the way some people there treated my colleagues because some of them didn't have a lot of experience, so they might have, you know, spilled the tea on someone's jacket and things like that.
[00:16:09.500] - Oliver (Host)
Did you do this?
[00:16:10.670] - César (Guest)
No, I didn't. My job was actually quite easy because I was just carrying this huge tray.
[00:16:16.520] - Oliver (Host)
What was on the tray?
[00:16:18.310] - César (Guest)
Like little canapés. But, like, they were, like, in a glass.
[00:16:24.050] - Oliver (Host)
So quite heavy?
[00:16:25.540] - César (Guest)
Quite heavy.
[00:16:26.510] - Oliver (Host)
Okay. You just didn't like being in that world?
[00:16:30.370] - César (Guest)
No. I prefer being in a more relaxed world where everyone is the same, very important and non-very important people.
[00:16:38.360] - Oliver (Host)
So if we win the lottery one day, I shouldn't expect the premium experience or the VIP.
[00:16:43.320] - César (Guest)
No, I'm okay with premium, not VIP.
[00:16:45.790] - Oliver (Host)
Okay, fine. Well, I'll be sure to research just premium experiences instead of VIP. Lovely. This is going to sound a bit like a job interview. Like, "what are your strengths and weaknesses?" Or "where do you see yourself in 10 years?" What would your dream job be? And you can't say this one.
[00:17:11.380] - César (Guest)
Well, I think my job nowadays is probably very close to what I've always dreamed of, which is basically having a flexible job, flexible work schedule, being able to, you know, make decisions about the things I want to put out there in the world, being able to help people learn a language which is a really good skill, extremely sustainable because I'm not producing anything.
[00:17:48.470] - Oliver (Host)
Physically?
[00:17:48.990] - César (Guest)
Physically, yeah.
[00:17:50.090] - Oliver (Host)
So we can't expect any Spanish Language Coach merchandise.
[00:17:53.370] - César (Guest)
I don't think so. And not a VIP Experience either.
[00:17:57.040] - Oliver (Host)
Yeah, well, exactly, with VIP T-shirts, VIP Lounge. Okay, just the Spanish Language Coach Premium Edition. Okay, so I mean, ultimately then it's a little bit like I was saying in my speech about teaching, no? Because you said about the importance to you now of helping people. And I actually, I don't consider myself a particularly generous or charitable person, but I actually really did enjoy helping people, helping the students. When I left teaching, it was really touching, the things that they gave me. You know, yeah, I got gifts, mostly chocolate - we had a lot of chocolate in the fridge - but the cards and things like that, a couple of them made me cry.
[00:18:45.320] - César (Guest)
Yeah, I saw you.
[00:18:46.340] - Oliver (Host)
Yeah. Well, I'm ashamed as a British person to have cried in front of anyone. Luckily, I held it together, I didn't cry, in front of my students. But it really meant a lot more to me than I expected it to. And I was quite, even though I love teaching, I was quite happy to go because it was an exciting opportunity for me to come here to Spain. It wasn't a sad thing. It wasn't even that bitter sweet, mostly. But some of the students, when they said goodbye and everything, and they said how much it had meant to them, that was actually quite touching. And I feel myself almost getting a bit emotional now because it's nice to have that impact on someone's life, to have a positive impact, which I certainly never felt with law. Even if we went out for, like, client dinners and stuff, I never felt that I had done anything that made them genuinely grateful to me.
[00:19:39.610] - César (Guest)
It's very impersonal, I guess, because you were a banking lawyer, and big corporations are not-
[00:19:47.580] - Oliver (Host)
Yeah, I did a lot of work with Green Growth Funds and things like that, but even then, the work that you're doing that will go on to help people - because banking law helps people, you know, it does, even if people don't to think about it that way - but you don't work with the individuals themselves that are going to be helped by the big deals that you do. You know, the people whose lives are going to be changed because of infrastructure, investment, they're not there in the room with you. And I suppose also I was a very junior lawyer, so I wasn't having big impacts on deals in the way that if you were a senior partner, they might be grateful to you in a different way. But it is a very nice thing to feel like you've helped people.
[00:20:32.990] - César (Guest)
And especially, like, yeah, I think with teaching, people are very appreciative?
[00:20:41.590] - Oliver (Host)
Appreciative.
[00:20:42.652] - César (Guest)
Appreciative.
[00:20:43.150] - Oliver (Host)
Yeah.
[00:20:43.210] - César (Guest)
Also, you can be rewarded economically, which obviously is important because you need to make ends meet - you need to make money in order to live. But yeah, it's a very fulfilling career, I think.
[00:20:58.090] - Oliver (Host)
Well, César, is there anything else that you wish to say in this special part 2 episode?
[00:21:03.250] - César (Guest)
No. Well, I just want to say I hope you enjoy your new job. It's probably easier for you since this job has actually been your side hustle for two years. Because you've been doing a podcast with me and we've done an online course together. And so, it's not completely new for you, but I hope you enjoy doing it full-time.
[00:21:26.150] - Oliver (Host)
It's a lot of pressure for you now because you're my boss. And also, who am I going to bitch about my boss to?
[00:21:33.440] - César (Guest)
Not me!
[00:21:34.100] - Oliver (Host)
Well, you're my only proper co-worker that I see in real life. So, it's going to be quite hard. I'm just going to end up bitching to myself!
[00:21:40.840] - César (Guest)
I'm sure you will call your mother when I go to the toilet.
[00:21:44.450] - Oliver (Host)
Yeah, well, I mean-
[00:21:45.320] - César (Guest)
"I can't stand him!"
[00:21:46.870] - Oliver (Host)
Yeah. Well, I mean, it is something I used to do about previous bosses, talk to my mum and complain. So yes, maybe. Well, thank you, César, for your time today.
[00:21:57.340] - César (Guest)
Thank you.
[00:21:58.720] - Oliver (Host)
Thank you, listener, if you've made it to the end of this special two-part episode, I promise not to make a habit of it. But thank you very much for listening. And as I said at the end of the last one, please do rate, subscribe, follow, and pass on the podcast to anyone else if you've enjoyed listening to it. Thank you very much for listening. Bye-bye!
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