This is the all ears English Podcast.
Avoid this business English question.
Welcome to the all ears English Podcast downloaded more than 200 million times.
Are you feeling stuck with your English?
We'll show you how to become fearless and fluent by focusing on connection, not perfection with your American host, Aubrey Carter, the IELTS Wiz and Lindsay McMahon, the English adventurer coming to you from Arizona and Colorado, USA.
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There is one key question that everyone in the US asks, but you may want to avoid it.
Find out today how Americans are shifting their identities and what it means for your conversations with native speakers.
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Hello, Aubrey. How are you today?
How's it for you? I'm great, Lindsay.
How are you? Excited to chat about this topic in particular.
It's going to be a good one.
Yes, this I saw this.
I think it was Sunday morning.
Woke up and saw it on my newsfeed and I was really drawn in by the title.
It was this article Stop Asking People What Do You Do?
And I was like, oh, this is interesting.
I'm excited to chat with you.
There is a lot of questions.
A lot of cultural things that go on as well as personality, and is this changing?
Yeah, I also wondered, did you read the comments?
Because I'm sure it elicited a lot of comments, this article in The Wall Street Journal.
That's a good point.
I did nothing to read the comments.
I'll have to go back and check it out.
That's a good idea.
People are going to have a lot of thoughts on this.
And not only are we getting into content today, but you could, on a meta level, guys, you could have a great connection conversation about this topic itself.
Right? Yes. Absolutely, you're going to see a good example of it because Lindsay and I are going to talk about sort of our thoughts, our feelings, we're sharing, and this is the type of conversation you could have with friends or coworkers.
Yes, I am excited. So, Aubrey, has there ever been a time when someone asked you that question, what do you do, and you felt uncomfortable?
Absolutely, right. I was a stay -at -home mom for a few years right after I had the twins because the cost of childcare for two was more than my salary, so I resigned, and I was home with the kids.
And when my answer was stay -at -home mom, there was often judgment.
I could see it in someone's eyes, and it's sort of a fear for me of like, do they feel like I'm worth having a conversation now with?
Wow. If I am not having these academic conversations, I'm just home with kids, right?
There's a lot there.
Yeah, and the fact that, you know, the cost of childcare for two kids is too expensive, that's a whole other problem we have currently in society that is causing our society to kind of like have major issues.
So, another day we will talk about that because just that fact I don't think is global.
I think it's a uniquely American problem and something we have to solve for sure.
But, Aubrey, we're going to get into some very high -level topics, but another place that's coming up very soon, a brand new place where we get into super high -level concepts, is our new C1 Fluency course.
Exactly right. The conversations we had with very interesting native English speakers dove into these types of issues, gun ownership, right?
Childcare costs, all of these kinds of things that we do have conversations about.
So, we want you to have those conversations.
This is not textbook English.
This is how natives really speak.
Yes, and this course helps you add nuance, color, and sophistication to your English at that C1 level.
So, we have an exclusive list where you can sign up for the list, and then you'll be sure to get an email from us when the offer goes live.
But it's brand new, Aubrey.
Where do they get onto the list?
Go to allearsenglish .com slash C1 to get on the list.
You'll be the first to know when it's ready.
We're excited about this.
Yeah, okay. Let's get back into the topic.
So, stop asking people what do you do.
All right, that was the topic of the Wall Street Journal article.
What do we need to take from the article as a starting point?
So, this was by Joanne Lippmann.
Just a few days ago, October 3rd, 2024, just a few days before we're recording here.
And just right off the bat, I feel like this is a pretty controversial title, because most people reading this are like, well, what else am I supposed to ask?
This is often someone's first question.
If you're meeting someone, especially at a conference, some place where most people are working, but often even at a party.
And I'm not innocent of this, right?
I'll often ask someone, what do you do?
Oh yeah, 100%, 100%.
I would argue that this is more, is heavier in certain cultural regions of the US.
I think it's, because I remember living in New York and Boston, especially Boston.
In Boston, it's kind of where do you go to school, which is a whole other loaded question, right?
Because you have Harvard, you have MIT there.
But definitely what do you do hearing that a lot in Boston in my 30s?
East Coast stuff, right?
A lot of these cities are very career driven.
And I actually talk about this in the C1 course, in one of the lessons.
So, excited to dive into this more, but it's everywhere, right Aubrey?
I mean, you experienced this too in the West.
But what's interesting is as the business world evolves, right?
Not everybody's a nine to five now, there are a lot of freelancers.
There are a lot of people who are taking a break, either to be a parent or for other reasons.
And the question is, what are the judgments that are implied in this question and the person who's receiving this question, are they feeling judged or are they feeling insecure about their job?
There are also people who have been laid off, people who have been forced early into retirement, that you can imagine there are feelings involved with their job situation.
There's a lot. And I think this is part of the reason that the new term has cropped up in the last year, fun employed.
Right. Because I think people use that when they want to say, I'm unemployed, whether you are laid off or you quit, but it's okay.
Like I'm financially okay, I'm having fun.
So, I'm fun employed.
So, people clearly need a way to say everything's okay.
Exactly. And I'm choosing not to work.
So, that's really interesting, what goes behind it.
Like when new terms crop up, Aubrey, it means something is going on in our culture.
Exactly, right. Like the term gig economy.
So many people, they're doing these freelance gigs.
And so, what they do might be different day to day.
So, they sort of need a different answer sometimes, right?
They'll need to think about, how would I answer this question?
There is so much here.
You're right. And I think it does come back to that work ethic that's so baked into us that I think, you know, if you go back to the history of the U .S., we never would have succeeded if we didn't have this.
We never would have become the biggest economy in the world if we didn't care what we did and held it deeply as a part of our identity.
I think it's very common in the United States for people to define themselves by their job.
Not everyone, but very common.
So, this might be why our first instinct is to say, what do you do?
Another way to ask that is sort of, how do you define yourself?
Because this is so common in the U .S.
that we're thinking about jobs.
That's the first thing we want to know, someone, is what they do for work.
Yeah. And this is really in contrast to some cultures where you would answer that, I'm a son, I'm a grandparent in relation to your family or in relation to your community, your culture, your societal position.
It's what do you do?
It's, you know, what like kind of how are you making money?
How are you pulling yourself up by your bootstraps?
It's really historical, you know, frontier days, people moving across the country making money.
It's just, I don't know.
Well, and it's interesting, if we think about our society as a whole, or if we're looking at the individual, if we think about someone being, you know, upset in some way by that question, what do you do?
Then we're looking at the bigger picture of, are we, you know, obsessed with our career, or is our identity involved in lots of different things, our family, our hobbies, is there more happening here?
And what kind of judgments are we assuming people are making, or what are we making about others?
There's a lot that goes into how we interpret a question.
Oh my gosh, yeah, so where do we go from here, Aubrey?
What advice does the article share?
And then we'll offer some commentary on that advice, whether we agree with it or disagree, we'll add to it, right?
Yeah, so it went two different ways.
First, it was sharing ways to redefine yourself, sort of to change the framework of what you think.
You know, if you are obsessed with your job, if that's the only way you define yourself, this article definitely posited that that might be unhealthy, that you should think about, what else do you do?
You are more than your job, right?
Or you should be, you should be more, or what is your work -life balance if you don't?
Yeah, I think we've come around on this quite a bit.
There has definitely been a societal shift, otherwise you wouldn't have seen this article published, right?
And I think it happened around the time of the pandemic, when people started to say, hey, like maybe they did lose their jobs and they said, I don't need to be running the rat race, right, and defining myself just by my career.
People made different choices.
Right, exactly. And so then if you do happen to be laid off or something happens, if you're not totally defining yourself based on your job, then it's not so stressful to get that question because you will have other interesting answers.
Depending on where you live, someone says, what do you do?
The assumption might be that they're asking, you know, what sports do you play, right?
What do you do for fun?
And that's actually literally what's going on here in Colorado.
And I didn't know that when I moved here.
So I was still thinking, oh, you mean what's my job?
Okay, I'll tell you about my business.
No, but they meant, no, what sport?
Which ski pass do you have?
Like, where do you ski and what do you do, do you mountain bike?
Do you hike? Where do you do?
What do you do for fun?
No one here really wants to know that much about your job.
And for me when I first moved out here, I thought, oh, wow, huh?
Hmm. That's kind of superficial.
I thought it was superficial, to be honest.
It's interesting. It's such a different cultural mindset, even just one state to another, right?
So according to this article, people in Colorado have kind of got it figured out, right?
They're suggesting to like, you know, focus on skills rather than just the occupation, reprioritize to make sure you have that work -life balance.
And someone in Colorado who's thinking more about, what do I do outside of work to make sure my life is full and, you know, I have joy.
They've kind of got that figured out.
They do. They will fight for their lifestyle.
I mean, people move to Colorado and other parts of the west, but I think specifically Colorado and they quote the reason they leave Boston, New York, Washington, DC is to have a better lifestyle.
Like they say this, right?
So of course the values are a little different here, but it's refreshing for sure.
Yeah. And then the second part of this article was sort of saying we need to be aware that people might have job insecurities.
They may have, you know, there, there may be some interpretation of this question.
What do you do that is out of your control?
What you can control is the, you know, the questions you ask and there are other options.
So I thought of a few here that I think we could share.
It's interesting. You know, I don't know if there's a right or wrong answer of should you say what do you do?
But just knowing that this could be triggering for someone, we could ask it a different question.
And I definitely think being aware of where you are, if I go to a business networking event for entrepreneurs, of course, I'm going to say, tell me about your company, right?
Tell me what you do.
That's what we want to talk about.
But if we go to a hiking event, it's unlikely that you're going to ask that.
Right. So where are you and who are you meeting?
Exactly. That's a really good point.
And if you are somewhere where it's not focused so much on career, like that hiking event, questions you could ask instead are just, what are you up to these days?
You know, what do you do for fun?
It's another good question.
How are you staying busy?
Or what drives you now?
I think what drives you.
That's a little bit.
I don't know if I would go for that the first time I meet someone.
It feels a little too abstract.
Figures a little abstract.
It's true. It's interesting.
This would either be after you've talked for a while and maybe you're getting into these deeper questions of like maybe someone shares that they did start a company and then that could be an interesting follow up question.
Like, Oh man, what drove you to be an entrepreneur to start.
Right. So kind of what drove it's like a second or third question.
So what drove you to go in that direction, right?
Yeah, that's true. That would make sense.
Yeah. Yeah. I think just saying like, hi, my name's Lindsay.
What drives you kind of strange, right?
Right. That's a good point.
Yeah. Yeah. But it's interesting to think about how these questions can really elicit or invite a more interesting conversation.
And then you're avoiding the chance of someone of this awkward moment of saying, well, I've been laid off.
So if you're instead ask a more open question where they could respond about their hobbies, their passion for hiking or cycling, and you could avoid the topic of work entirely.
100%. The other good questions that, you know, when you come, when you go to join a group, let's say a networking event or some kind of community, just asking if they've been a member of the group for a long time.
Like, are they a, you know, a long timer or are they new in the group or do they live in the area?
Now that also could have other connotations.
Do you live near here or where do you live?
I remember in New York, that was a key question.
When I lived in New York, where do you live?
Because people want to know, are you in Manhattan?
Are you in Brooklyn?
Are you in Queens? But there are, we could explore other potential questions too.
Absolutely. There are so many options.
We've done a lot of episodes about what to ask someone to party, what to ask at an event.
There's so many things you can do to start an interesting conversation that it wouldn't be that hard to avoid this.
What do you do question if you wanted to.
If you can be a little bit more creative, you can get to a better connection probably, Okay, Aubrey, let's get into a little role play.
We have brought up a really important topic today.
So let's see how it plays out in a real conversation.
We just met at a business conference in this role play.
I'll start us. So nice to meet you.
How are you staying busy these days?
I'm working as a freelancer, which has been fun and definitely keeps me on my toes.
And I hike a lot. Oh, nice.
What type of freelancing do you do?
I write ad copy and create content for a social media manager.
Interesting. I bet you're able to really be creative with that.
Absolutely. Never gets boring.
How about you? What do you like to do?
I also love hiking.
I did a four -miler yesterday with some friends.
Maybe you've done it.
Have you been to Hackberry Springs?
Nice, four -mile hike.
Sounds good. Sounds good.
All right. So this is interesting because we're at a business conference.
Yeah, wouldn't be the end of the world to ask someone.
What do you do? This is more work related, but I sort of love that because we use these other options instead.
We sort of made it more open to where we could talk about your work or we could talk about something else interesting as well.
We're not pigeonholed into just talking about our jobs.
For sure. 100%. Yes, I love that idea.
So you said instead, you said, how are you staying busy these days?
Right? Yeah. And this one could be useful if you are greeting someone that you already know.
And then if it is someone new, I think it works for both.
Right. Yeah, I agree.
Absolutely. And this is interesting where you did something really good here.
I think you said, you know, I'm working as a freelancer.
And then you also shared a hobby and I hike a lot.
So that gives me the option to ask a follow -up question about either.
We're doing these great conversation skills, basically, where we're keeping it open for lots of different avenues.
That actually brings up another episode idea, Abhri, where how do we say one more thing about ourselves to give the person more material to grab onto and to ask you about?
Yeah, then they can choose what they're interested in.
Maybe that could be an interesting topic.
We do another time on the show.
Let's do it. Yeah. Hit policy.
Don't miss that. Yes.
All right. So then you said, I said what?
What do you like to do?
So you're bringing me into the question, you know, asking me.
And then here I jump right into hiking.
I might be laid off or unemployed.
Maybe I'm at this conference looking for new opportunities.
And this open question has avoided that potential awkwardness and opened it up for me to share anything that I enjoy doing.
Exactly. I love it.
I think this article brought up a really important point, you know, and also a cultural shift.
Our culture is shifting a little bit away from identifying ourselves just with our work, which is good.
Very good. It's good.
And so we'll see how this evolves over the next 10 or 15 years, Abhri.
It'll be really interesting.
It'll be interesting.
Right. I think it's so important to maintain a healthy perspective, to keep priorities straight.
We all need that work -life balance.
And I'm glad to see that, you know, society in general is headed that way more.
And I'm actually really interested to know what would be the default question in our listeners' countries.
You know, for us currently, the default is still what do you do?
Like I said, in New York at that time, it was where do you live?
In Colorado, it's what activity do you do on the weekends?
What is the default question?
Really interesting.
Yes. Come to YouTube.
Let us know in the comments.
Yes. What would you ask someone when you first meet them?
Super interesting. Abhri, I will see you very soon.
You take care. See you next time.
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