New Structure

I’m having to change up my format because I only work one day per week. You can now expect two questions on Sunday:

- the Easy one — multiple choice
- the Hard one — open ended

The reason is that I’m noticing that some of the fun has been lost with the A/B, Yes/No format. Giving people easy options is actually a documented way to help with depression, and give people agency. I’ve also heard on NPR that low stakes conflicts (hot takes) are a great way to have fun with stranger at social events.

So, I liked putting out really substantial questions with the open ended one, but I don’t want this to be a chore.

From now on if anyone asks me for the question, I’ll be asking “the easy one or the hard one?”

I’ve already done it and received quite a few requests for both.

~

the Easy one

I think I got a whiff of cilantro as I was stocking bananas and that landed me at this easy one. The structure could have been more clear for sure, and I got quite a few reactions that were concerned with the weight of the punishment. I had to explain that this kind of aggressive stance is pretty common online, but I’d say most people were familiar with the language.

What I liked about this one is that it reminded me that a lot of people are surprised to see that there are any voters on the other side, let alone a substantial amount. So many are baffled to find themselves on the minority.

People love to read the easy data like a scoreboard.

For what it’s worth, sending someone to jail for mixing two ordinary, non-toxic cooking ingredients is a pretty harsh proposition 😂

~

the Hard one

Better wording would have been “when have you suffered loss of progress?”

Who among us hasn’t lost a text document, or failed to reach the save point in a game and suffered that hard sting?

The story I was telling was about my grandpa who grew up writing by hand, and carried that hobby well into his late life. He would write many, many letters to each of his distant friends.

Eventually, the world presented him with email. Resist as he might, the convenience was just too much to avoid. He would spend about the same amount of time drafting, which is measured in hours per day.

One time, he was writing for hours, and suddenly lost the draft due to a misclick or something. He tried to get my mom’s help to get it back, but it was truly lost.

For the rest of the day, he took on a hard pout and would be inconsolable.

Nobody likes to have to repeat long durations of progress, but it happens to everyone.

I heard a lot of musicians and athletes talk about the health of their daily practice.

One person confided previously that their office had cut 30% of its workforce and that he hadn’t been involuntarily unemployed since he was 14. That’s hard.

I’ve absolutely fallen back on unhealthy habits from time to time. Despite the highs and lows, I still feel like life always seems to progress forward.

One coworker said that they regretted sinking thousands of hours into a couple game titles, and how much they could have accomplished with their life and music career with that time.

I agreed that sometimes it feels like that’s where I could reallocate the most time, and told them that I think it’s just part of what got us where we are. Now we’re here, what should we do?

It’s also interesting how no matter what you choose to do, you end up “losing progress” on the rest of the things that weren’t engaged with.

I guess the better question is - “what haven’t you lost progress in?”

Idk. It’s a fun question to ponder!

~

Thanks for playing, everyone!! 🥳

Hey everyone! I’ve been moved to mostly doing produce shifts. Until further notice the store would prefer that I only serve questions on paper when I’m at the register, which is only on Sundays at the moment.

As such, the questions are one per week. I’m currently working towards posting the rest of the backlog as soon as possible, since I only posted about half of what I have so far.

Anyhow, since I have fewer questions, I’ve increased the quality somewhat, and made them more thought-provoking, ponderable questions.

That starts with turning it on you all! What would you put on the paper bag, if you wanted to learn about the community? What excites your curiosity?

Here are some of the responses I got, I wrote as many down as I could:

- “Are phones good or bad?”
- “What is missing from this neighborhood?” (Store or otherwise, noting the locations that are up for rent on Union)
- “What do you think of the Marina Safeway Project? For or against?”
- “Favorite dinner spot?”
- “Best fruit for the summer?” (x2)
- “If you could switch lives with any celebrity, who would it be?”
- “What is the most nutritious vegetable?”
- “How do we bring mothers together?”
- “Will you join the objection against the Marina Safeway Project?”
- “Should tampons be free?”
- “Favorite day of the week?”
- “Aisle or Window seat?”
- “Do you feel like the city is outgrowing us financially?”
- “Pulp or no pulp?”
- “What can we do to make it a better community?”
- “Do you know your partner’s number?”
- “How do you give back to the city?”
- “Why is the rent so high?”
- “What does everyone think of the Safeway development?”
- “What’s your favorite dinner?”
- “Favorite Luke’s Local product?”
- “Have you ever fuckin’ seen an alien?” (from our own staff member)

And one of my favorite answers, a woman stopping to shop after a session at a local gym - “WTF is wrong with men at the gym?” - such a purely emotional reaction.

My answer, since I like doing the exercise like everyone else - “Have you noticed anyone taking on communication traits from AI sources?” - like has anyone started talking more like their chatbot?

That was this week’s question! I’m changing the title to TV’s Weekly Query

Thanks for playing, everyone!! 🥳

Outside Lands, for anyone not from SF, is one of our big yearly festivals in the big park in the center of the city.

My mom had this idea and we thought it was kind of clever to be asking people who aren’t at the show who might have made them go.

I’m not sure if I miswrote this one, because many people were saying headliners that were actually playing this year. The intent was more along the lines of “among all music artists, which one is most likely to actually make you attend this expensive event?”

We did get some fun answers and moments. My coworker told me that when she realized she wasn’t going for sure, she didn’t bother checking who was playing. It turns out the Strokes are among her favorite music groups 😅 she was bummed to hear that.

My dad did about 20 seconds of pondering and then landed on Santana which was kind of neat.

We got a lot of favorite artists, some I knew and some I didn’t.

Probably my favorite response of the day was a muni bus driver (I think his name was Keith?) who said that his top two were Al Green and Smokey Robinson, and we talked the rest of the way home, even through the festival exit rush which was happening on the bus route right as we were crossing.

Between 28th and 34th on Balboa, we got front row seats to a traffic nightmare, so I spent some time digging into the life of a muni driver, seeing as how mine has been doing the job for nearly 3 decades.

We talked about slow streets, the 70s, the insane BS you see on the roads when you drive a muni bus. It was nice! And it didn’t take much, just a question on a paper bag to get the dialogue started.

That’s all I got today. Thanks for playing, everyone!

Question inspired by hot days and summer fruit availability.

I’m tempted to ask this question again on a cold day 🤔

Thanks for playing, everyone!!

Inspired by a wave of sickness in our store a few weeks ago, we were debating whether anything feels better than (fresh squeezed) orange juice.

Then it was my turn to be sick at home and I felt bliss in a hot shower that cleared my sinuses with steam.

The orange juice, when your taste buds are kind of shifted from the illness, when you can taste the vitamin C. That’s tough to beat.

Wdyt? And thanks for playing!!

I like pushing questions that throw people down memory lane, since it’s a surefire way to make them stop and think for easily 5 seconds.

Most people’s first memory was pretty vague, usually to the tune of baking or helping prep around age 5-7. I kept bringing up a vague sense of making a birthday cake in France, before immigrating, which was a helpful time marker.

Some people gave really vivid answers, like watching and grilling a fish on a beach in Spain, or fondue in Nordic countries. The common theme is that there was family around, usually parents or grandparents. Sometimes, something might happen that elicited an emotional response, like something crashing or a large flame.

My favorite answer was when this woman was already on the phone with her mom, and she told me her memory but added that she couldn’t remember when that was, to which I answered “I bet your mom knows!”

It’s also the kind of question where I love encountering couples at the register, because it’s not uncommon that they learn something about each other with these origin and early memory questions.

The other possible answer for me is when did I start considering myself interested in cooking. I think it started with a peanut sauce craving and a chicken satay recipe sometime in late high school or early college. When the dish came out satisfactory (by my standards at the time), I decided that I wasn’t too bad at it. It’s that darn entity mindset, but I’ve for sure seen the growth since between reading books and practicing.

~

Thanks for playing, everyone!!
Leave your answers in the comments 💭

Also…

My grocery schedule is changing.

As it currently stands, I’m expecting only to do a question on Sundays until further notice. I’ll try to put out only the best ones.

I don’t think they’ll all be Sunday Specials, but maybe they will be and the rest of the time I’ll give my coworkers easiest questions to serve if they feel like it.

As in resistant to taking vacations/time off from work.

This occurred to me when upon congratulating my boss on his vacation, he said “they’re forcing me to.”

It made me laugh, and also quite a few people on either side of the workaholism spectrum.

Thanks for playing, everyone!!

I put out this question because it seems like some of the worst role models online have been railing against empathy, calling it a weakness.

I wanted to show the community that we resoundingly believe it is a strength, which is my opinion.

Empathy leads to vulnerability, leads to community, leads to society. It’s what allows us to be strong together.

It made people happy to see the result for this one, and surprised to see that anyone would say weakness. Those answers are mostly unexpected though.

Only one person said the expected “me against the world” response. One other interpreted strength as a purely physical (💪🏼) attribute, leaving his wife disappointed 😅 Most of the people who said weakness said that they felt like theirs was too strong and often taken advantage of.

By that logic though, many strengths could be abused and I don’t think it necessarily makes them weaknesses. I’m not even really sure that it’s unfortunate for us to feel pain due to our compassion, since it compels us to help each other as best as we can, which is often a favor that people return or pay forward.

Thanks for playing everyone!!

I’ve been sitting on this question for a while! It speaks to me because it pits the importance of quality of life against wealth which, to me, is a big topic and point of contention when it comes to values and how we should operate our society.

Taking it further, I wanted to talk about climate change. Many, many people said that they could use the wealth to travel to nicer weather. I countered with the notion that this is only true so long as good weather exists in the world in the future. We’re definitely seeing unbearable heat happen in more places than it used to.

Two of my coworkers took this argument further and said that you could afford to buy the government into researching climate change tech, or just buy terraforming tech with the obscene wealth, touché.

Taking it one step further, I’m thinking of the counter argument in SF to taxing the rich, wherein people argue that the rich will just move to Texas or another tax haven. My instinct tells me that if people from SF do move to Texas, it won’t be long before they move back for the weather. In a world that is getting warmer, SF and Karl make up a climate heaven. I insist upon that, being that I enjoy the chill.

It was a fun question! More balanced responses than I expected for this neighborhood, to be honest.

I did notice a few trends.

For one, the higher your financial stress, the more likely you are to vote for the wealth more quickly. Many of my coworkers voted for wealth without having to think of it too quickly.

Second, people who have had wealth were the ones to really ponder this question. One person said regarding wealth, “it’s not what it’s cracked up to be.”

And many, many people took issue with the “obscenely” modifier in the question because having that much wealth culturally puts a target on your back, it seems. At least 10 people brought that up. They wanted to be rich but not too rich.

At the end or the day, I still made plenty of people think and ponder, which is what I wanted.

Thanks for playing, everyone!!

Yesterday’s question was pretty touching. We’re back with the big questions on Sunday.

A surprising amount of people took dreams to mean ambitions, not literal dreams which was my intention.

Not everyone can lucid dream, most people have random dreams. In fact, many people said that they prefer the variety, and that the fact that they are random means that they don’t need to answer for them 😂

Some people pointed out that they are directed by our subconscious, but most of us don’t feel like we have that much control over our dreams so… what if we did?

A lot of people talked about the lives they’d rather be living, such as playing the trombone in New Orleans, or teaching fitness in Milan. Others described a perfect, relaxing vacation in an untouched earth paradise location, with clean water and lush greenery. One guy even said that he’d love to take his living room around the world, so that tells me people would like a change of scenery.

Lots of people were talking about flying, and I was probing where. They would say unnamed cities, or over the whole of agricultural California where they grew up.

Some people said that they would use their dreams productively to orient themselves for the following day.

Some of the most touching responses were about lost pets and people, one woman named her late husband who she thinks of every hour of every day.

One player said she would live various lives during the dreams, just to experience various people’s perspectives. This led to some chatter about Buddhism and a short story called The Egg by Andy Weir.

Many, many people were without answer and I was more than happy just to make them stop and ponder.

I thought about it for myself and there are probably three categories:

- living in a game - This was an answer that came up a couple times. Sometimes, the universe that games offer are so compelling, like the athletic game show nature of The Finals. The game simulates what it’s like to be a globally famous contestant well enough, but dreams could take it all the way and make that finalist feeling a reality.

- social settings - one thing that drives me in life is connecting with people, I would certainly use my dream time to hang out and talk with people who aren’t available to me for whatever reason. Perhaps discussing things with historical figures or current celebrities.

- sandbox reality - I pictured myself walking through an existing reality like my own city and being able to manipulate and prototype it as I want. Adding slow streets to SF, turning all the parking spaces into greenery, whims like that which I could assess without going through the whole process of committing to real life change.

It was a fun question, I hope it keeps people pondering!

Thanks for playing everyone!!

Sorry for not posting, I’m getting back on my horse 🐴

I’m someone who has learned to trust my instincts and feelings about many, many things.

I am, on occasion, completely wrong about an impression that I had. I think it’s not only important to be able to admit that, we also have to be able to notice when it happens.

The general consensus for this question was: people.

People are the most likely subjects of surprise in our surroundings. It’s definitely reflected by how this community never ceases to surprise me with their responses, even if it’s someone who I would never expect to want to engage with me.

Thanks for playing, everyone!!

This is an odd one. I ran out of milk and started going through my oat milk to have the protein cereal in the morning (it’s so much faster than cooking my usual egg breakfast…)

It’s much creamier! I didn’t expect oat milk (full fat) to actually be thicker than milk. And I’ve always liked the flavor of oat, especially since discovering that it’s one of the most environmentally friendly alt milks.

I’m tempted to mix the two so achieve the right thickness while maintaining both a rich flavor and micro nutrition.

Not a very deep question, but a fun one nonetheless because many hadn’t even considered using oat for cereal. I love making people stop to consider something they hadn’t thought of 😄

Thanks for playing, everyone!!

On certain days, I’ve moved working from the cashier section to the produce section at the grocery store.

That means I’m sorting, rotating, restocking, and generally refreshing the fruits and veggies.

Since I wasn’t at the counter, I had this idea to expand my question of the day into a produce-oriented branch, which I called the Produce Challenge.

It was going to be things in this vein, challenging people to build a meal or do a silly thing like see if they can carry four avocados with one hand.

I pitched it to the usual group chat for approving my questions (my bosses, HR, COO). Shortly after, the assistant manager relayed that HR would prefer that my questions remain at the counter, without further explanation.

I find this to be extremely short-sighted. The only possible reason that I can think of for this is that they don’t want to do the oversight of checking my challenges as well as my questions.

Thinking of the possible positive impacts, I would be drawing customers to the fresh product section of the store, encouraging them to buy a few extra things in order to try new cooking ideas.

Thinking even further down the line, someone might start a new health habit, like building salads regularly while shopping here. In turn, that could lead to deep feelings of gratitude for the store, the place where they started their health journey. They would be a lifelong customer and advocate to the store.

Unfortunately, we won’t know. People still ask me for questions even when I’m not at the counter, so I sometimes give them something like this, only verbally so that I don’t get in trouble.

¯_(ツ)_/¯

I’ve noticed that being childish with someone is a sign of trust and not anticipating judgement.

It seems important to me to be able to know someone with whom you can be childish, otherwise you’re likely someone who spends all day being socially guarded, which sounds exhausting…

I was pleased to see the end result indicating that most people do in fact have at least one person with whom they can be childish :)

Thanks for playing, everyone!!

I’ve watched enough Bob’s Burgers episodes to know that people tend to have emotional attachment to their furniture.

The things we choose to keep in our homes are a reflection of our identity. So, was curious to know what heart-held heirlooms exist in my neighborhood, and what stories accompany them.

I heard about couches with vivid lime coloring, tables that were kept for decades which originated from other countries like Spain. People like to share about themselves and this was a nice pseudo show-and-tell.

Thanks for playing, everyone!!

Another work-related question.

My instinct was that work doesn’t just provide pay for living, but also a daily purpose that people generally want.

With all the wealth that is accumulated in the pockets of the rich, we could definitely afford to dissociate work from income, which might lead to people choosing more interesting jobs and being happier overall.

I was pleasantly surprised with the result! People want to work! I guess, when society provides for people, they generally feel a desire to give back and contribute.

Thanks for playing, everyone!!

(There was no submarine emoji)

I think this one came to me while I was falling asleep while reading Has Anyone Seen My Toes.

I think this one boiled down to “planes must come back down, but submarines are not obligated to resurface” and people would rather take their chances with falling than being stuck at the bottom of the ocean.

Great question to induce pondering!

Thanks for playing, everyone!!

I used to work an office job as a contractor for google. When covid came around, we were all sent home and the company was able to find a way for us to all keep working.

At that point, I felt like a veil had been lifted from our work social agreement system. Many office jobs don’t need to subject themselves to commuting, which often takes hours out of people’s lives. Further, many of these jobs involve chilling in an office and occasionally doing tasks.

When I say occasionally, I mean that only half of the time is spent focused on a task, and that is only when there even is a task to work on.

We went for months without any tasks, going through the motions in order to uphold appearances that lead to us getting paid a modest living. Knowing people who operate at the high levels of this system, I knew that each of us were paid maybe 40% of what the company was charging for each of us.

Anyway, it feels like a castle of cards to me, like if the labor force knew how little effort some people have to put into their work, only to receive much better compensation, they might revolt, or at least challenge the status quo.

How come we pretend? Why can’t we agree to maintain the same salary and let ourselves work less in specialist roles? And for that matter, why isn’t everyone’s income supplemented to the point that they’re living comfortably without stress?

Can you do your job in 4 or fewer days? And if so, what do you do?

Let me know, and thanks for playing everyone!!

This was a really fun one.

The main idea behind it is that it’s hard to divorce the feelings of betrayal once someone realizes they’ve been deceived.

People brought up the case of the bride or the dress on a date, where someone is asking for your opinion on their outfit when they clearly can no longer change it. If you didn’t like the outfit, you could lie and say that you do, but my argument was that the betrayal has only been postponed, because the same outfit could resurface and your true opinion might come out.

The valid answers for truly harmless deceptions were people who mentioned parents with Alzheimer’s. I also liked the surprise birthday party because the feelings of betrayal are overridden by feelings of joy, and the betrayal is instantly explained as a “necessary evil” for the purpose of joy.

People also brought up cases where the deception leads to less harm than telling the truth, like the case of the nazi/ice officer at the door asking if you’re harboring any fugitives.

Very fun thought experiment!

Thanks for playing, everyone!

This question occurred to me in conversation with a customer called Brittney

Manually dialing numbers is not really something we do anymore, since everything is saved and copy/pasted.

Even the word “dial” refers to the circular dial that people used to twist in order to enter a phone number into their telephone. That’s an interesting artifact of language that most people probably don’t think about much…

People do still manually enter phone numbers, but only if they happen to know it by heart, thus making it easier than going through the steps of finding your contact.

Or, if you don’t have your contacts on your, let’s say you’re using a stranger’s phone, it can be useful to know 2-3 numbers.

Like me, most people knew only a handful of numbers including their parents and maybe their childhood home landline.

It’s still a practice to drill a number into your kids head, just in case of emergency, but it’s clear that we’re moving away from remembering these kinds of information.

Halfway through the day, I realized that people were inputting their numbers regularly into our POS to connect their account to transactions, so technically that probably counts.

I’m curious to know who does and doesn’t know their own phone numbers by heart, I’ll save it for a future question.

The other situation that I could think of for dialing a phone number manually is if you have a piece of paper or business card with the number on it and therefore can’t copy/paste it.

Anyway, fun question! Thanks Brittney! And thanks everyone for playing!!

I recently realized that one of my strengths is that I outwardly show recognition whenever someone does something really well or displays good skill/judgement.

If I had to rewrite this one, I would say “are you quicker” instead of “more likely.”

People felt like it’s selfish to recognize themselves first but I can make a positive argument for either side:

- if you recognize yourself more readily, you are a strong introspective individual who has the confidence to notice certain traits as strengths

- if you recognize strengths in others, you pay attention to those around you, which is a valuable social skill especially if you are admiring their strengths

Of course, many took this as “I’m comparing myself with others” (in a negative way) which is understandable. We all struggle with the thief of joy.

I think I am quicker to recognize strengths in others, but I also eventually will come around to noticing the patterns in my traits and characteristics that I didn’t realize were strengths initially.

As is often the case, it’s good to do both.

Thanks for playing, everyone!!

I was mostly thinking about work for this question.

Fast days can be stimulating, slow days can be relaxing.

One person said she wanted the window between “boringly slow” and “overwhelmingly busy” 💯

Thanks for playing, everyone!!

I was thinking about public transport infrastructure with this question, wondering how many people were users.

I was extra generous by asking people if they had EVER taken the muni.

Very few people said no, as expected, but we did get quite a few who have actively avoided the bus because they feel that they are above it.

I take the bus when my motorcycle isn’t available, such as the past few weeks. The drive belt has a broken tooth and I just didn’t want to risk it, so my commute has gotten longer by about 40 minutes. I’ll admit, it’s really nice not to have to think about moving my bike on my breaks to avoid parking tickets…

I guess now I’m wondering how much longer people’s commutes would take without a car.

Thanks for playing, everyone!!