This is the Business English Podcast, episode 196.
Would you ever take two full-time jobs? Welcome to the Business English podcast from All Ears English.
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Hey there, Aubrey. How's everything going today?
I'm great. How are you, Lindsay? I'm feeling good, but you sent me an article the other day that kind of disturbed me a little bit.
I know. I saw this in the news, guys, and we're going to share it with you today because I was shocked and I'm sending it to Lindsay.
This is one of those things that people might be like, have you heard of this?
This is crazy. So what is it? What are we talking about today?
Yeah. Double dipping. So you and Michelle recently talked on the Allers English podcast about double dipping when it's like dipping something in food.
But this has another meaning, meaning to pull in two incomes at the same time.
And I actually looked that up. It's in the dictionary, double dipping.
It says illicitly earning two incomes. So it's interesting to think about the difference between illicit and illegal too.
We should talk about that. But This is an interesting conversation.
And I'm shocked. I'm shocked that this happens, that people can get away with this.
It's shocking and disturbing. And it cuts to the core here.
And I think it's worse than double dipping your chip in the dip, personally.
It's worse. I know, right? So guys, it's this new business phenomenon called double dipping, which means to take two or more remote full-time jobs at the same time without an employer knowing.
So this is like a salary. You're making a salary, assuming a certain amount of work, a certain amount of working hours.
And yeah, this was really interesting. So we're going to talk about this article that Lindsay and I saw from Business Insider called Inside the Strange Secretive Rise of the Overemployed.
It was by Aki Ito. On November 13th, 2023.
So breaking news. And I think you and I are not alone, Lindsay.
And I think it's going to be surprising that this happens.
Oh, my gosh. Yes. And I'm excited because we're going to have a poll at the end of the episode to see how cross-cultural this is.
Because when I read that article, I thought to myself...
This might just be within the U.S. or U.S. and Canada.
I'm very curious. Just because remote work has been more adopted and we'll go into what this means and the implications of it.
But I'm super curious. So guys, stay on the episode until we announce the poll and participate because we want to know, is this happening in your country?
Yes. And we will share these poll results in a few weeks.
And we want to share the results from a recent poll.
We had asked what is most important for building a positive company culture.
I was dying for the results. We got 45% said communication.
I don't disagree. 27% said good leadership and equal 27% said work-life balance.
So interesting. Lots of opinions out there.
Yeah, it makes sense. Communication, you know, we're here on a language podcast, right?
Our listeners are really interested in good communication.
I feel like communication is the underlying layer to all these things, right?
It's almost the foundation. That's a good point, right?
You have better leadership if communication is strong.
Yeah. Okay. I'm so excited. Where do we start here?
Yeah. So let's dive into this article because not only was this article really interesting, like it's crazy that people are double dipping and what this means for remote work and how this might change the future of the working world, but it also was full of really great vocabulary that we want to highlight as we go through as well.
Yes. All right. So do you want to kind of describe just clearly what it is, double dipping?
What are we talking and what are we not talking about?
Yes. So it is interesting to think about, like you said, hourly employees have for a long time had multiple jobs, right?
You have multiple jobs where you're being paid as a freelance worker or you're going and clocking in with a time card somewhere.
Yeah. There are quite a few people who are taking multiple remote working jobs that are salaried, that are assuming a full time working load.
And they're finding these sort of tricks to be able to handle more than one full time job.
Right. So, you know, again, just to reiterate, we're not talking about part-time work where you're paid for your time.
You work an hour, you're paid for an hour.
That's different, right? That's more straightforward.
There's no deception there. You're working for that job for that hour.
That job pays you. Maybe in the evening you work.
We're also not talking about two full-time jobs like moonlighting, like a day job and a night full-time job, which I feel that could be okay you just wouldn't sleep oh yeah right when do you sleep but people do sometimes have to do it if they're really struggling absolutely yeah this is different this is the article shares about a person who accepted three full-time remote jobs and managed to do all three well in about a 40-hour work week and he was sharing that he had to have three separate calendars if he had a meeting on one he would just block it off on the other but he was able to do Like, you know, no one suspected he was able to do a good job at all three of his jobs.
So it sort of begs the question, was enough expected from each of these jobs for the salaries?
He ended up making like $900,000 a year with all three salaries combined.
Yeah. And just a quick... be clear what else we're not talking about.
We're not talking about 1099 consultants, right?
Consultants work with multiple clients, sometimes pull their work in a certain way where one effort makes sense for all their clients.
Savvy consultants will do that. And that's, they're working for themselves.
It's their own business. That also is fine because you work for yourself.
Where do we want to go here, Aubrey? Yeah, so the person who wrote this article sort of did some undercover work.
She was looking into, it's called the over-employed community.
You're over-employed if you are employed by multiple companies that would have a problem with you being employed for someone else.
They consider you a full-time salaried employee.
They want you to have just this one job and devote your time.
Maybe if you had more time, they would like you to let them know so that they can give you more tasks to complete, right, for this salary.
Yeah. But she found there are about 300,000 members of this overemployed community on Discord and Reddit who celebrate success.
They're sharing about failures and they're like sharing secrets of the best way to basically get away with this.
Oh, my gosh. This really strikes me. This really hits a chord with me.
I would be so mad. This is not... I can't even imagine.
Yeah. I mean, the thing is like... your full-time, you know, there may be, yes, maybe you complete your tasks, right?
So this person that has three full-time jobs, they may complete their tasks, but they're just doing tasks.
The rest of the time, maybe the employer would like them to step back and be strategic, take a walk and think about the work.
How can we improve this process and this process?
But I don't think that's happening with these particular people who are doing this, right?
So they're not giving the full value. So they're blocking off these other calendars.
Maybe these other companies need them to be available during that time.
Like guaranteed, this is causing problems for the company, even if they don't realize it because they're not, you know, micromanaging this employee.
Yeah. In some ways, they're kind of stealing from the employer in a way.
Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. So this is straight from the article.
And we're going to share some of this really interesting vocab said there's a whole community of professionals online who trade tips about juggling jobs on the sly.
They describe themselves as overemployed and remarkably, they seem to be getting away with it.
So that I was like, wow, this is packed with so many interesting idioms, interesting vocabulary here.
Yeah, I think this is kind of taking, I mean, just to comment here, I have a lot of comments.
This is kind of taking remote work, like the way that teams and employees have been given a lot more latitude, which is good in terms of work-life balance with remote work.
So, you know, take your dog to the vet when you need to, things like that.
This is taking it way too far and really kind of abusing the remote work privileges, I think.
That's exactly right. It's abusing that trust and taking advantage, right?
Yeah. which it comes down to work ethic.
I feel like I was sort of horrified when I read this because I have a very strong work ethic.
I could never do this to a company, to an employer.
It feels so wrong and sneaky to me. I love this on the sly, right?
It says they're doing it on the sly. This means sneakily.
This is, it has a pretty negative connotation.
You might say he left work early on the sly means he didn't get permission.
He didn't ask anyone. Right. Or we planned a surprise party for Margo on the sly.
It's just, it's kind of, it feels icky. And I think they even said that in the article.
Icky. It feels icky. It feels like, oh, I don't think I could handle my conscience.
Same. I know. I don't like keeping secrets, especially a secret like this, where I know if I were found out, it would be a problem.
This comes up in the article that they could face a lawsuit if the company found out because most contracts, most work contracts, you're promising to be... um giving your all being however they're worded it was considered you know illicit which maybe not officially against any law but definitely prohibited ethically morally and you would likely be fired if someone found out yeah what if you're working for competitive companies too and you have important information that you maybe can't help but employ that information in meetings on either side You're not necessarily saying secrets of that company, but you're saying, oh, maybe we should pivot this way because I think the market's going this way.
But you have that extra intelligence. No matter what, it's bad for the company.
Exactly. On so many levels, right? Exactly.
And then the other vocab here, juggling.
We often talk about juggling jobs if people have multiple jobs. you know, part-time jobs.
You could say he's juggling two jobs. Here they're talking about juggling multiple full-time jobs.
This means to cope with something by balancing multiple things.
Yeah, exactly. And, you know, I kind of would want to say to someone who's doing this, if you want to have that kind of lifestyle, start your own business and take some risk.
You know, what they're doing here is they're just having no risk or no perceived risk, but having all the benefit.
But instead, why not have the guts to go start out on your own?
And then no one has a problem if you're working with multiple clients.
Yeah. right? Right. This is where ethics really come into play because it feels very unethical to do this.
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it's interesting. So it was interesting.
The article was pointing out that most people in the community take pride in doing all their jobs well.
They legitimately feel like I can very easily handle the full task load given by this company.
But some are sort of more of a worst case scenario where they're bragging about being able to double dip and getting away with it.
And I thought about, you know, speaking of bragging, if you guys missed Business English 177, you and Michelle talked about how to brag in the business world.
Yes. Scroll up and check that one out because some things are good to brag about if it's actually something that's like you can be proud of.
Imagine bragging about this, Lindsay. I'm horrified.
I mean, imagine the company, right? Who?
It's crazy. It's crazy. I'm not a fan. I'm not a fan.
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So where else can we go from here? I mean, I could think of one scenario, Aubrey, here where you might be able to get away with some of this.
Let's say you are moving between jobs. And let's say that your job finishes on a Friday. on a Tuesday and your new job starts on a Monday.
Let's say like you have a day or two or maybe three days in which you're kind of finishing up one, onboarding at the other, doing some online training, that kind of thing.
Because I will say sometimes companies will hire two candidates when they can't choose between the two.
They both seem great. They will intentionally hire two candidates and decide after three months, which is the one we want to keep.
So that's kind of the equivalent, maybe just overlapping.
Yeah. happen. But it's interesting. I remember when my husband left a job and he got severance and he felt really uncomfortable about taking a job while he had severance.
It was the same kind of thing. He had to talk about like, is this okay?
This feels strange, right? Because when you're receiving basically two salaries, it gets a little, it's like gray area.
Yeah. Yeah. I think it comes down to work ethic.
It comes down to, I guess, just wanting to do your best and be honest, like a basic honesty.
You want to provide value for a company.
If you're being paid, you want to feel like you're providing value in exchange for that.
To just get paid for nothing, most people who have a good work ethic would be uncomfortable with that.
Yeah. So there's more outstanding vocabulary here, Aubrey.
What else came up? Yeah. So from this article, there was a sentence that was saying some OE hustlers, they're using this acronym OE to stand for overemployed.
So it said some OE hustlers brag about shirking their responsibilities for them being overemployed is all about putting one over on their employers.
So first shirking is a really interesting verb.
To shirk means to neglect a duty or responsibility.
I like this word. This is interesting. I don't hear this very much.
I feel like if our listeners added this to the vocabulary, they would be super high level.
Yeah? Yes. Let's give a couple examples because I would love for you guys to start using this, right?
You might say, a member of my team has been shirking lately, so I've had to pick up the slack.
Right. And that's the other thing that they mentioned in the article, that they may not see it, but their teammates are actually suffering because they're throwing things on them at the last minute because they have to attend this other meeting, for example.
Exactly. Right. And this is definitely a fireable offense to be shirking responsibilities because this doesn't mean just like you're too busy so you're not able to cover something.
It's neglect. Right. You might say Robert got fired for shirking some of his tasks.
It's like, no, this is definitely like, it's very negative.
It's nobody wants to be a shirker. That's the noun of it.
No one wants to be shirking. No one wants to be shirking.
And then I love the next one because it's kind of casual, but it's also high level to put one over on someone.
Oh my gosh. There's a lot of small words there.
Many words. It just means to fool someone, right?
You're fooling someone if you're putting one over on them.
So you might say, we realized she had put one over on all of us when she called in sick and then we saw photos of her vacation.
Oh my gosh. That's a good example. That's a good example.
Just not very smart if you're going to try to do that, right?
Don't post the photos, guys. Yeah. Or, for example, you're not trying to put one over on me, are you?
Right? And this is kind of a more playful, like, instead of saying, you're not trying to fool me, are you?
This is kind of fun to say. You're not trying to put one over on me.
So what do we think about this, Aubrey? I mean, we've already kind of voiced our opinions very strongly.
Yeah. It's funny, I saved these discussion questions for the end, but we kind of couldn't help but let it out as we went, right?
Because I think we agree. I feel like this is very unethical.
I don't think people should be doing it.
If you guys out there, I'm curious if it could be cultural, but at least in the United States, I would like to hope that...
Yeah. And we're going to, in just a minute, we're going to ask you, I think we should revise our poll question here, Aubrey, and just be more direct to our listeners.
But before we get into that, I think we should ask, could this actually change the return to office, right?
Because this is one of the, the reason this is happening is because people are working remotely.
There's no way you could work for Facebook and Twitter at the same time in the office, right?
You physically couldn't do it. Right. Exactly.
That's sort of my question. Will this lead to a lot of companies, you know, a push to return to offices where there can be a little more oversight if employers start realizing that this is happening?
I don't know. I don't know if enough people are doing it.
Well, we don't really know, right? And if how many people are, we said 300,000.
300,000 in that community of people sort of sharing secrets and saying they're doing it.
So that's a lot of people. But then how many people are doing it and not going on Reddit and talking about it, right?
It could be even more. It could just contribute to the other reasons that employers might decide to bring people back to the office.
It wouldn't be the only reason because, yeah, I'm sure there are other benefits as well.
It's interesting to think about. Yeah. So what do you think about asking our listeners in our poll here, would you ever double dip?
I like that question better, Aubrey. All right.
That works. I ended up changing it to asking just if you know anyone who's overemployed because I wanted to hope none of our listeners would do this, but do you know anyone who is?
Yeah. Let's be more direct. But we could be more direct.
Let us know, guys. Be honest. It's anonymous.
Anonymous Spotify poll. Be honest. Yeah, we obviously don't see your answer.
We don't see your name attached to your response or your phone or anything.
You know, I just want to know because our opinions might be cultural.
Right, Aubrey? I mean, this really cuts to the heart of kind of the work ethic.
There may be some American culture in there, loyalty to employer.
But I want to know if it's the same concept universally around the world.
So this is a cultural question here. So what's the question again?
Yeah. So we'll ask, would you ever double dip?
And no, this isn't about dipping chips. This is about would you ever take more than one full-time salaried job if you had time, if you could figure out how to do both and take both salaries?
Yeah, maybe we could do like a yes, no, maybe or something.
It could be kind of interesting. All right, Avery, what's our takeaway for today?
Yeah, I mean, don't be over-employed. You guys might say yes, but I feel very strongly that this is very unethical.
I feel like if you have time to do more during the time you're being paid, add value.
Like you were saying, Lindsay, be strategic, come up with ideas for the company, right?
Let them know I have more time than what I'm doing.
So like, what can I do to add benefit? That's what I would do.
And I feel like that's what someone with a strong work ethic would do.
But like you said, maybe it's very cultural.
Yes, for sure. Guys, we want to hear from you.
Go over and take part in that poll. We will announce the results.
I'm super excited to get the results from our listeners and see what they think.
And Aubrey, I will see you back here on the next Business English episode.
Awesome. See you next time. Talk soon. Bye.
Bye. Thank you for listening to Business English, a podcast just for you, the high achieving global professional.
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