Originally Aired on June 20th, 2018, This episode is the first successful recording with Gord (He hadn't agreed to be a Co-Host at this point)
The following program is for adult audiences only. This is, this is Eric and Gord. What if we're right, live right now. Are you ready? Find and like us on Facebook. Follow us on Instagram. I don't have anything to drink. I hate my life. Here we go on 3, 2, 1, 0. Well, hi there. Happy Sunday. It's June the 10th. And I'm Eric talking at you as always, from beautiful downtown Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, where if you have to argue the semantics between sexual assault and rape, you've probably already gone too far.
Okay, we'll call that long enough. That's a little shorter than normal. Welcome to, is it Just Me, a special Sunday edition. The reason we're doing a special Sunday edition is because I am canceling, um, Eric Brennan's Sunday School. Eric Bre Sunday School is just too much work or too little reward. Uh, maybe I'll pick it up again in the future, but it's really hard to do what we do on camera and, uh, try to make it fun and interesting, um, with substandard equipment.
So that was a long-winded thing to talk about. Um, welcome to the show everybody. Podcasting. Fm, very happy to be back working with Anchor FM because it just opens up a whole bunch of new doors. This doesn't mean that I'm abandoning speaker.com because they just opened three new doors for us too. So that's three more platforms where you can listen to this show.
Um, and plus, with what Anchor does for us, it's pretty much anywhere you can hear a podcast. You can hear me and Gord, speaking of Gord, how are you tonight sir? I am fantastic. How you doing buddy? I am, we're almost four minutes into a whole recording, so I'm doing really well.
We'll take our victories while we can get 'em. Exactly. How is the Province of Ontario? No one's burned it down yet. No, no, we haven't started the the riots yet, so we're doing okay with that. I'm happy with the weather. We haven't had any sweltering heat for this last, uh, almost week, so I've been pretty happy with that too.
That's been nice as a, uh, that's fantastic. As a fat ginger, I am not a fan of the heat, so, you know,
you know, after, after all, you've got winter coming in about a week or Yeah. Something that, yeah, it's usually about every three weeks you get a good blast of winter.
We're, uh, we're pretty standard Vancouver weather here. It's been, uh, cloudy and dreary and can't make up its mind. It won't rain, but it won't get nice. Perfect. Uh, very despondent weather. Yeah. The very atypical BC weather.
Need a Woody Allen soundtrack playing. All right. I am I making weird noises here? I don't know. So, um, little disorganized tonight. I wasn't expecting to be, but I am behind schedule trying to get the mobile studio up and running. Uh, so Gord, did you wanna start us off tonight with, uh, maybe pick up some stuff you didn't get to say last night?
Um, or whatever you like. Well, one thing I didn't get to touch up on last night, um, I did a Facebook post about this, um, the other day. Um, I had, uh, you know, I'm out here, I'm, you know, getting, trying to get some new work going and, uh, first of all, Ontario is very sexist in what they're willing to hire you for.
I have actually only walked into three separate companies and asked about a job, and all three times I've been told specifically, sorry, you're a guy that is for women only. And, uh, well, I have never such a thing. It was unbelievable. Um, that was all three for, for customer service based jobs. Um, two was to work in a bar as a server.
I was just flat out told, no, if you wanna work in the back of the kitchen, no problem, but we don't have dudes in the front. Um, and the other one was for an office job. And I was told, no, no, no office jobs are for women. And it was a woman who told me this. I do believe that is against the law, but I don't know Ontario law.
Oh, it is the very definition of sexism against the law. Absolutely. But uh, yeah, it is what it is. And welcome to Ontario. So as a guy, the funny thing, yeah.
I wanna know if anyone else has encountered this. I want send in an email to maybe it's me forty2@gmail.com. Have you ever experienced sexism in a word, male or female? Uh, call in and, uh, a message here on Echo, echo fm, uh, phone number. 3, 4, 3 9, 7 4 5. And leave a message and please specify if you don't want your message played on the show.
'cause if you don't specify, we will play it. Have you experienced sex at all in applying for a job? I can tell you, like as a guy, this is the first time in my life I've ever actually experienced this. In a sense, reverse sexism, if you will. Uh,
You're here a job, you will work in the warehouse. I'm like, I don't wanna work in the warehouse. I'm fucking old. I'm, my body is half falling apart and it's not what I wanna do anymore. Put me in front of people. No, no, no. I'm gonna get you slinging because you're a guy. Shocking. You know what? It's funny, I'm, I experienced something very similar last week where, uh, I was told by an, a job placement agency that, uh, manual labor was what I've cut out for and the fact that I'm now old, my knees are shot, my back can't do what it used to, that's irrelevant.
It's, I'm a, I'm a construction worker and that's what I'll be until I can't do it any. So it's uh, that, that, that part makes sense to me. But the, the flat out being told it's a job for a woman, I don't see how that's even tolerated in this day and age. Yeah, there it is. My buddy who's a director of HR for a company, when I told him he is like, you know, you should be charging 'em.
I said, that would be three separate lawsuits I'd be going through and I've been in the province for a week. Like, come on, you.
Um, but my, wow. The thing I wanted to, what I, what set me off on my initial rant wasn't actually about the sexism. It was the, it was what I actually had to go through. It was a job placement thing where they're doing like a job fair. They had three areas that you could apply for, um, office work, forklift drivers, and um, warehouse work, general labor work.
I went in to apply for the office work because again, I'm good with people, I'm good with customer service, I'm good with the phones, and I was told, no, you're a dude. That's for women, so no, no, no. You'll be, you'll, you'll be applying for the forklift or this. I'm like, I don't wanna do those. I. So she hands me the forms to fill out.
This is probably one of the most depressing things I've ever done in my life, and I've dug graves for people. I mean, I've worked in cemeteries, I've made monuments, I've worked in warehouses, I've done midnight shifts. I've done jobs where people off themselves for a regular basis in, and this hands down was the most depressing shit I've ever dealt with.
The, the, the, the, the testing they have me do, it's right. It's testing for a two year old and this is the companies that want to hire saying, well, you should be able to do this. And I'm just like, I couldn't understand how low the expectations were and what the minimum requirement was. 'cause it was so, it was so s.
Here's nine more versions of that picture. Between one and three of each row will be different. Circle the different ones. And I'm like, this is what you do in grade school. Like, why am I 40 years old doing the same type of bullshit? It just, it just, I I was mind numbed about it, but what was, I wonder? Not sorry.
I, I, I just wonder if that corresponds with, um, Education levels in Ontario. It'd be interesting to look up numbers of, you know, high school graduate percentages and whatnot. Maybe that is the, uh, the standard testing for a 40 year old male. You know, it, it sure as hell shouldn't be. Absolutely not. But, uh, that's something we'll have to look into and get and get back in touch on.
Maybe there is a, a. School system or something. Well, I had asked, I'm like, is there, 'cause like when she first handed it to me, I filled it out and I went back to her and I said, um, you might have given me the wrong one, but do you have one for adults? And she kind of laughed it off and she's like, oh, you know, no, this is the standardized test.
I'm like, well, if you're gonna make me do this, can you at least gimme a crayon? Like, you know, let's just go with, with what you're giving me here. And she's, she's laughing. She. When I'm, each level, they give me, I did three different tests at each level. They gave me, I'm, I'm coming back to this woman more and more angry and frustrated.
And one thing that blew my mind was one of the things, but again, keep in mind I'm applying for a customer service or office position, and the paperwork is all for general labor. One of them was a picture of a forklift. Yeah. Okay. That is three quarters labeled and then on the bottom of the labeling is all the terms and all the pieces of the forklift, and it has like six empty spaces.
And the guy next to me who is like I would say 10 years older than I am, clearly this guy's been in the labor industry most of his life. You know, you can just tell. Yeah. Um, he turns to me and he goes, how am I supposed to know what these things are actually called? And I looked at him, I go, and I, I thought he was fucking with me.
I'm like, really? And he goes, seriously? I'm like, okay. I said, well, you see the stuff that's already labeled? He goes, yeah. I said, find those words and cross them out from your list on the bottom. What you have left over is what's gonna fill in the blanks. Fill in what you do know and what's left over. Yes, absolutely.
Seems pretty simple and understand. This is a white guy and there's no language barrier. Well, I'm gonna take his, as someone who holds four valid forklift certificates at the moment, and I have to redo my written test every two years to renew any given one. Yeah, it's hard. Looks really, really simple actually.
And they don't change. No. So, uh, That's pretty sad. It was quite sad. So I have that. There's a dude in a business suit sitting on the other side of me. He's cursing and swearing through this 'cause he doesn't understand what he's doing. I'm, if you have enough to show up in a business suit, you should be able to add one plus one on difficult stuff there.
Math. Like, it's the thing that baffles me every time I take a forklift test. Yeah. And I'm in a room full of people, half of them drive cars, which more intricate and to learn and, and operate. And yet these people can all get driver's licenses and over half of them failed their forklift test. It blows my mind.
It makes no sense. It really doesn't. It really doesn't. Oh, it makes sense if you don't think it, I suppose. But that was, I think that was the problem. Um, so the last part of the test, if you will, she gets me in the room again. At this point, I am legit frustrated. I'm, each time she gives the test, I'm telling her, I said, I'm stealing another pen.
'cause at least I'm walking in here with something. She's like, I understand. Take the pens. I'm like, thank you. So I'm stealing these big.
I do the final test and she hands, she takes this case, she flips her case open and on one side it's got these round discs with three different colors on it. On the other half of the case are round slots colored and the same colors that are on the discs. And she says, using one handle only, you take, you know, a red goes in the red on the bottom left corner and you go from bottom to, and then the second row bottom.
We have, did you get a food PT kind? Kinda right? I'm expecting data or electric shock. It's one of the two. So I'm like, okay. And she goes, and this is a kind thing. I'm like, all, so I begin and I'm doing this and I'm cruising through it pretty quickly and I get about halfway through and I just sort of paused and I, I, I literally, I stopped doing, I was doing and I looked up at her.
I go, so what's the point of this? Is this like I hand coordination? Is it. How you can pay attention to detail what it is. She goes, oh, it's kind of a combination of those and, you know, just sort of making like a basic aptitude test. And I'm like, oh. So I'm finishing up and I'm airing away talking to her because I'm, you know, I, I'm bored as I'm doing this.
I feel like I'm a child in fucking daycare, you know, putting circles in circles. And I was just gonna, you know, so I'm, so I finish the thing off. She hits the stopwatch. She goes, oh, you know, a minute 12. I'm like, and wow, that took me over a minute. That's pretty sad. I should have done that about 45 seconds.
I did pause, I did talk to her for a bit so I can understand. She turns me and she goes, wow, I'm minute 12. That's one of the fastest times I've ever seen, and the fastest so far. Today is two minutes is two minutes slower than you. It took somebody three minutes to do this. That was the quickest. Wow. So, yeah, I, I left there feeling normally you would feel proud of yourself, of being able to accomplish so much.
But yeah, no, I was quite insulted by the whole thing. I. I genuinely need to know if this is an indictment of the employment system or if it's an indictment of the school system. And if anyone listening in Ontario, uh, tonight, I know you're probably not, but after tonight, you will be anyone listening in Ontario right into the show.
Maybe it's me forty2@gmail.com and let know. Uh, is this on what Gord's going through or is this a new thing? Is it an your Ontario system or is it, is every, is the government putting fl
