Reheat Offender

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman Podcast. I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.
This week, Reheat Offender, Brandy files suit against her husband, Sean.

Brandy believes leftovers should be consumed in a particular order. Sean doesn't always want to eat the leftovers according to Brandy's schedule.
Who's right? Who's wrong? Only one can decide.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman enters the courtroom and presents an obscure cultural reference.

I've walked across the surface of the sun. I have witnessed events so tiny and so fast they could hardly be said to have occurred at all.
But you, you're just a podcaster.

The world's smartest internet judge poses no more threat to me than does its smartest termite.

Bailiff Jesse Thorne, please swear them in. Brandy and Sean, please rise and raise your right hands.
Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

So help you, God, or whatever.

I do. I do.
Do you swear to abide by Judge John Hodgman's ruling, despite the fact that

he uses leftovers in his baths?

Yes.

Yes.

What? Yeah, it's good for the skin. What specific leftovers am I using in the bath? Meatloaf.
It's one of those things that gets better the next day. Yeah.
That's why you're so vibrant, John.

Let me just get out of my chili hot tub first.

There we go.

The flavor is really mellow after a night in the fridge. You know what I mean? Like it's not as spicy as it mellows.

Yeah, I mean, I think this chili hot tub really answers the question of whether chili should have beans or not. I mean, it's the meat, the fats from the meat that really give you that glow.

And also, of course, chili being a soup or a stew was the subject of the very first Judge John Hodgman case back when it was on Jordan Jesse Goh.

And I can definitively say now it is a stew, and I'm steeping in it. Okay, Brandy and Sean, you may be seated.

For an immediate summary judgment in one of yours favors, can either of you name the piece of culture that I referenced as I entered the courtroom? Brandy, you guess first. I have no idea.

The one I had in my pocket was a like Better Homes and Gardens article about leftovers, and that's not it, but we'll go with that. Sean, do you know it?

I do not because I also directed towards leftovers, and I was going to go with Love Your Leftovers. What is that? It's a book by Nick Evans.
Is it a novel? No, it's a cookbook for leftovers.

Oh, okay, cool. Well, I'm going to give you a hint.
A lot of real nerds listen to this show, and they know it. They're screaming it into their car radios right now.

You can get at this from two possible angles. One is where you live.
According to your petition, you both live together. You're married, correct? Correct.
Yes. You both live in Manhattan, Kansas.

Is that correct? Uh-huh. All right.
So that's one way to get it.

The other way to get it it is there was a TV show called The Leftovers on HBO based on the novel by Tom Parada.

This quote is not from that TV show,

but from the property that has been adapted to a TV

by the co-creator of The Leftovers TV show. John, I know this one, and as everyone knows, I'm not even a nerd.
I'm artsy. That's right.
It's an artsy nerd one.

Does that help in any way? I'm a little bit of a a nerd and it doesn't help. Yeah, that doesn't help me at all.
Damon Lindelof co-created The Leftovers, a TV show based on the novel by Tom Parada.

Tom was the other co-creator. And Damon Lindelof has a new adaptation, or I should say a continuation, a very famous comic book called Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.

And the character that I was quoting was the super-powered atomic god-man named Dr. Manhattan.
Ah.

So we have to go on and hear hear the case, but now, now I know you guys aren't deep into the Alan Moore canon. I get it.
It's cool.

You should read it. Watchmen.
It's good. All right.
I also like the new TV show, but that's neither here nor there.

I am here and you are there and we're going to solve this problem regarding leftovers, non-metaphoric leftovers, but actual...

honest to gosh or whatever foods in your refrigerator brandy what's the dispute all about so i cook dinner most nights probably half the time we have leftovers from those meals.

I feel like to prevent food waste, we should be consuming them in the order that they get put in the fridge. Sean

will eat whichever one he most wants to eat, or he will make himself something completely different. I think that's ridiculous, and he should go by my first in, first out rule.

First in, first out for leftovers. What kind of food do you cook, Brandy? Like, what kind of leftovers are we talking about? Kind of a typical leftover is tacos.
We have tacos every week.

And so that's definitely one. And then just soups and maybe casseroles and things like that usually are kind of the typical ones.

So Sean just gets in there and takes whatever his favorite thing is and leaves the rest behind. Doesn't matter how new or old it is.
Correct. Sean, what's your favorite leftover? Probably the tacos.

In fact, you send in some evidence, right?

Which is available on the Judge John Hodgman page at maximumfund.org as well as on the Judge John Hodgman Instagram page, which is, of course, at judgejohnhodgman at Instagram.

Specifically, there are two pieces of evidence. I would ask my bailiff, Jesse Thorne, to not look at the second piece of evidence yet if he can avoid it.
Yep.

Evidence number one, of course, is a recipe for easy salsa shredded chicken, which is what you use for the tacos. Is that correct, Brandy? Yeah, we do those and like some like ground meat tacos.

We kind of alternate between those. Right, but this is an Instant Pot recipe.
Right. So you have an Instant Pot.
How do you like it? I love it. Really? What else you make in it? We make spaghetti.

I make yogurt in it, not for dinner. I make soups and things like that.

Wait, did you say you make spaghetti and then you said but not for dinner no no no i make spaghetti for dinner but i make yogurt in it also but not for dinner oh i missed the yogurt

okay

i should say i should say that you know before we started recording you know we're testing the mics and we asked brandy what she had for lunch which is how you sometimes get levels and he's like tell us what you had what you did this morning or what you had for lunch and and she mentioned that she had a tuna sandwich and it made me realize i really like tuna sandwiches a lot i expressed a yearning for a tuna melt and brandy was like i've never heard of that.

Is that correct, Brandy? Oh, no, I've heard of them. I've never had one.

Okay.

I was beginning to think that maybe there were more cultural differences between Park Slope and Manhattan, Kansas, beyond merely they don't read watchmen there and they've never heard of tuna melts.

No, no, no, I've heard of them. Oh, and spaghetti is never served for dinner.
Are you kidding me? That would be insane. No.
There's more that unites us than divides us.

We all have spaghetti for dinner sometimes. Yes.
What would you say, Brandy, are the foods that Sean passes over rather than eats the leftovers? What does he leave behind rather than eat?

The spaghetti he often passes over, which he's not a huge spaghetti fan, so that doesn't bother me as much.

If I make like pork chops or if I make like chicken breasts or something like that, he typically won't eat those leftovers. I make like a beans and rice that he usually won't eat those as leftovers.

Here in Park Slope, it's 5.02 p.m. I am now incredibly hungry.
This all sounds delicious. I want to eat all of it.
Why do you pass over what you pass over? Why do you leave behind stuff?

It's just there's other things available that are more appealing at the time. Or that might be quicker and easier.
Or things that maybe it's lunch and the kids will eat if I make that.

And so I'll skip the leftovers and make the kids and I something. So you're basically, you want to eat what you want to eat when you want to eat it.
Pretty much. Like a human being.
Yes.

You don't want your next day meals to be decided by a schedule, but by what you want to eat that day. Yes.
And when you're going in for leftovers, what's the situation?

Are you getting, are you going in next day for lunch? Are you eating like weird cold taco breakfast? Or like, why are you going in for those leftovers? It's usually lunch. Sometimes lunch is at home.

If I'm home for lunch, it's leftovers or on the weekends. Do you work at home or do you work outside of the home? No, I work outside of the home.
Okay.

So are you bringing stuff along to work for lunch, like leftover tacos?

Not usually. I don't have a way to heat it up.
Oh, okay. Gotcha.

So Brandy, has there ever been a case where you made spaghetti, not for dinner, obviously, not for dinner, like for luncheon or supper, and you put the spaghetti away and Sean has never touched it, and it just goes bad and moldy, and you have to throw it away.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, that definitely happens.
Oh, really?

So, there are damages that are being incurred here. There is food that is going to waste.
Sean would rather choose what he eats rather than told what to eat by you and your sister.

Yes, that's correct. Why don't you eat that moldy spaghetti? I mean, before it gets moldy,

I do. Sometimes there's a couple days of leftovers.
I mean, that's why we have the issue is because there's more than one thing.

And what also happens is that if sometimes if he is eating, like we already had, say, beans and rice in the fridge,

and there's also tacos.

I'm eating the beans and rice because that's what needs to get eaten, even though I'd rather have the tacos and he'll have the tacos, which means I don't ever get the leftover tacos.

You're stealing tacos out of your wife's mouth, Sean.

If you look at it that way, yeah. That doesn't seem fair.
Yeah, kind of, but beans and rice reheated isn't the same. Yeah, that's not what you want to eat, I understand.

You're absolutely right that they are different foods. That's for sure.

I can't deny that. When you open the fridge and see that Sean's eaten all the tacos and left you only the rice and beans, how does that make you feel?

Pretty annoyed and like, I've been eating beans and rice like a chump and he's getting the good stuff because he's, you know ignoring the system right because he has no principles exactly

and Sean when Brandy tells you you need to eat some of these rice and beans before they go bad you can't just eat the good stuff how does that make you feel that I'm being forced into a system

all right do you think Sean that you and Brandy have the same sort of feelings about food

in other words, you know, some people think a lot about food. I think about a tuna melt probably every half an hour.
You know, I think about food. I love reading about food.
I love cooking.

I love eating. I love the social events and the rituals around going out to eat.
But some people just think of us, you know, think of food as just like, oh, that's calorie ballast for me.

Those rice and beans are nutrients and it doesn't matter what they are. Do you think that you guys feel the same way about food one way or the other?

No, I think she's probably more nutritional about the food and I more like the taste of the food and go for that part of it. Well, okay.

I mean that would definitely support your case that because you care about food, you get to eat the chicken tacos. Right.

Since your wife is a nutritional pragmatist, she gets to eat just the calorie ballast of the rice and beans. But is that how you feel about food, Brandy? I mean, I like food that tastes good.

I think I probably do put more thought into like, you know, wanting to have something that's going to be nutritious nutritious than uses, you know, the food we have on hand, I guess.

I probably definitely think about it more that way than I think Sean probably does. Right.
Well, are you responsible for most of the cooking? I think you said that you were, right? Yeah.

I do almost all the cooking. Do you do the grocery shopping as well? I do.
You mentioned you have children. How many children do you have? We have three kids.
And how old are they?

They are 11, 9, and 6. Yeah.
So that's a full-time job right there. Do you do any other work outside or inside the home? I do.
I have like kind of three part-time jobs.

Yeah. So yeah.
Gig economy.

Yeah, pretty much.

No one ever gets to rest. Exactly.

But obviously one part of your life is managing the pantry,

restocking it, cooking it, and everything else. That's your job.
That's correct.

And Sean, you said that you cook for the kids sometimes when there's only garbage, rice, and beans in the fridge that no one wants to eat. You'll initiate some kind of food for your kids, right?

Is that what you said, Sean? Yes. And I volunteer to cook other times.
Yeah. What do you like to make, Sean? What's your thing? Usually it's a go-out and grill.

We're having hot dogs and hamburgers or steaks or pork chops on the grill, something like that. But there's times that I'll offer to cook and Brandy says, no, I've got it.
Okay.

But like, tell me a situation where rather than use

something that Brandy's already prepared, something left over from the night before, you just look in the fridge and you're like, this is all garbage. I'm going to make something fresh.

Like, how often does that happen? I guess I'm asking. Maybe once a week, twice a week.
Usually on the weekends, more for lunch on the weekends and dinner or something like that.

And do you ever do the grocery shopping? I try to. She's very controlling over that grocery list and

when she gets to go. Sean, would you say that

the control that Brandy is attempting to exert upon you

with regard to

the grocery list that she has preordained,

the food that is cooked and when it is cooked, and then this concept of making sure that the last or the oldest leftover in the fridge gets eaten first.

This might all be easily explained as a matter of simple thrift, right? Yeah. Would you say that Brandy is being thrifty

or controlling

for other reasons beyond thriftiness?

I think it's a little both. I think it's a controlling of her thriftiness.

She doesn't want anyone to impede on how thrifty and organized her whole system is. So she has to control every step of it.
Does that ring true for you, Brandy?

Or is Sean just making up a psychological profile of you in order to justify him getting the good stuff out of the fridge and leaving the rest for you? No, I think that's probably fair.

I think it's kind of a known thing in our marriage that I do like to be in control of things, and I feel like I'm really good at maintaining a good food budget.

Part of that is that we are, you know, wasting as little food as possible. And so I think feeling like he's stomping on that system is probably triggering some of my like,

just follow the system. Just do what I say we should do with the leftovers.
Let's take a quick recess. We'll be back in just a moment on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

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I would imagine that thrift is for a young family with three growing children. You have three part-time jobs on top of that.
Obviously, not to be indelicate, but it's not like

you're rolling in cash money down there. You got to watch your budget.
You're on a budget, right? Sure, yeah. This matters.
Yes. How long have you been married, Brandy? 14 years.

So you've now served a lot of dinners. Yes.
There is a solution to this, which is adjusting the amount of food you're making to minimize actual leftovers. Sure.
Speak to that.

Our oldest is pretty good about eating whatever, but our two younger girls, they are extremely picky, but it's important to us that we kind of keep offering them things.

And so I feel like we need to make the portions that would amount to enough if by a miracle they actually ate dinner, they would have enough of the dinner. Oh,

I got you. You're making full dinners for your children.
Yes. But sometimes the kids are like,

one bite of pork chop is enough. Goodbye.
One bite of pork chop some nights would be glorious.

Right. Okay, I got you now.
Your children are the problem.

Sure. Why not? We normally don't hear disputes against or between people under the age of 18.
Very rare exceptions.

And I presume you don't have your children with you right now, but I'm willing to make a summary judgment against them.

They should eat the food that their mom is making for them and occasionally their dad, too. Yes, that would be glorious.
Sounds like Sean, your husband, is,

as my grandmother once described, my uncle, he's a nice-sized eater, right? He cleans his plate, correct? Sure. Yeah.

See, Sean, I have a profound issue with you because at some point, Brandy suggested that you would not eat a leftover pork chop.

I mean, look, people like what they like, but I have to say, how dare you?

Right?

I mean, I know that a lot of our listeners are not carnivores, and I apologize to offend you with this, but boy, I would like to eat a pork chop out of your refrigerator.

I want to go to Manhattan, Kansas, and do that.

First of all, you have one of the greatest privileges in the world, which is that you have a life partner who is doing almost, it sounds like all of the meal planning, shopping, and preparation.

That's a huge amount of work. I'm always the one who's like, no, I'm going to make dinner and I'm going to plan it all out and I'll buy all the food and everything else.

I also know that as much fun as I and satisfaction as I gain from it, it's work. It's real work.

So you have that advantage. And you also have this other incredible advantage, which is that your kids don't finish their food.

And you know that food that is abandoned by children has zero calories. You know that, don't you?

Yes.

This is like. the greatest situation to be a dad in.

Your beloved partner is making pork chops and your evil children are not eating them and then you can just grab up those pork chops and eat them all night long or have them later on.

An abundance of opportunities to eat good food, correct? Yes. You just don't like a next day pork chop.
Yes.

All right.

Fair. I guess not everyone is exactly the same as me.
I'll learn to accept that one of these days. So Brandy, what would you have me rule? You want him to follow the system, right? I do, yes.

Like, what's the oldest thing in your fridge right now? Well, actually, actually, right now, we do not have any leftovers, which is why I had a tuna sandwich for lunch.

You just had to bring that up again. That's my favorite sandwich.
I'm so hungry now. Yeah, we don't have any leftovers in the fridge currently.
This is a clean slate.

I was going to order him to eat whatever the oldest thing was in the fridge, if I found in your favor. But since it's all hypothetical now, if I do find in your favor, what do you want me to do?

Tell him to eat the oldest thing in the fridge first?

I think that we should eat leftovers instead of making something new, And that if there's more than one leftover in the fridge, assuming it's not like something that he really truly does not like or that did not turn out well or something like that, I don't expect him to eat, you know, stuff that he will have to like force himself to eat.

But if it's a reasonable leftover, I think we should eat the leftovers, and I think we should eat them in the order that they got put in the fridge. Sean, I don't know.

There's not a lot of people listening to this podcast who's going to be rooting for you, I'm afraid to say.

We have obviously some settled law that is in your favor, some precedent that could be cited, that people like what they like.

And when you have lunch and you open the refrigerator and you see a food that you want to eat and you see another food that you do not want to eat, that maybe you have a basic, decent human right to eat the food that you want to eat.

Because this is not a dress rehearsal. We're only here once.
We might as well eat the food that we enjoy rather than the rice and beans. that no one likes.

No offense. I'm sure your rice and beans are great.

The other piece of precedent and settled law that you might cite is that spouses should not be enslaved to the other spouses' systems.

I think I heard you kind of poking at that particular piece of settled law, right, Sean? Yes, that's correct.

And yet, I think a lot of people will be listening to this going like, Branny's out there, you know, cooking up the food and buying the groceries and laying out the feed bag and then carefully storing the food so as to minimize waste.

And you're just going into that fridge willy-nilly.

What would you have me rule if I were to rule in your favor? In my favor, that she lets up on her system a little bit and the control of things, and lets me

do things more frequently to help her and let her let go of the control.

You know, like go shopping once in a while.

She can write the list, that's fine. I can handle going to the store.
You don't do it right.

See?

Tell me what Sean does wrong when the one or two times you allow him to do

it. One or two times is not right.

To be fair, my grocery shopping is a little, I'm very specific in what we're buying and what price I want to pay for things. And so it's not that he's incompetent.

He is perfectly competent to go grocery shopping. And most of the time, he does just fine.
He just doesn't do it right. I mean, we were rolling on that.
We know what you said.

Don't try to backtrack. Don't gaslight me and tell me you didn't say what you said.
He doesn't do it right it's not that he's incompetent judge hodgman it's that he has a deficit of competence

it's not incompetence so much as low competence low c

he does fine but if there's something like you know he might get the wrong brand he won't get the one that's on sale because he's you know

doesn't see that one and he, I don't know, like he won't necessarily buy the correct thing or maybe doesn't buy enough of them or he ends up having to call me to ask me where something is.

And so by the point that he's gone, you know, by the time I've prepped the grocery shopping list and everything, it's usually easier for me to just do it myself.

So in other words, his offer to take some of the burden off of you in order to make up for him stealing your tacos from your very pans

is actually just more burden because he doesn't do it right. He tries to call you.
And it just doesn't end up being correct in your mind.

Yeah, that's fair. Do you have any hope that that he might be able to do it right someday? Yeah.

I'll allow that answer to reveal itself.

It's a different low-cy, low confidence

impossibility of change. Let me ask you this, Sean.
Do you really want to do the grocery shopping? I mean, would you like Brandy to be less controlling about this stuff?

Yeah, I wouldn't mind doing grocery shopping just to give her a break away from having to do the same thing all the time. Well, no, that's not quite my question, I think.

Brandy has pointed out is that you're helping her with the grocery shopping is no help at all. It would not be a break.
It would just be an annoyance to her because you would do it wrong.

And you could probably learn to do it more correctly. But I guess what I'm feeling is when Brandy says you don't do the grocery shopping correctly,

and when Brandy says you're not eating leftovers correctly, how does that make you feel? Infantilized might be a word. I'm not saying that's what you mean.
That's a good word for it. Untrusted.
Yeah.

Not worthy of her system. Yeah.

Do you think she loves her system more than she loves you? Speak the truth.

No, I don't think that's the case.

Brandy, do you feel that the system is more important than Sean's happiness?

No.

And if I thought it was truly affecting his happiness, I would be willing to adapt my system. But I don't think his happiness is in jeopardy with this.

Brandy, is the system for you something that gives you pleasure? Do you enjoy getting the most out of your dollar? Does that bring you satisfaction or is it servicing anxiety?

No, I think it's more just the satisfaction. I put a lot of energy into sticking to a food budget.

Yeah, so feeling like we've, you know, fully stretched, you know, done what we can do with that, that does bring me pleasure. I like doing that.

All right, Brandy, Sean, I think I've heard everything I need to in order to make my decision.

Before I go into my chili vat, though, to think it over, there is one more piece of evidence that you sent.

Bailiff Jesse Thorne, may I direct you to exhibit number two, which is a photograph of Brandian Sean's cat Pip.

What is it doing? What kind of chair is it sitting in? It's a child booster seat. That's a child booster seat that's lying on its side or on its back, I guess you would say.
And the cat Pip

is lying in in it on his back, I presume, also

acting like

a four-year-old in a car. We'll have this photo posted, obviously, at Judge John Hodgman.

Looks like, John, it looks like Pip

is piloting a rocket to the moon. That's right.
Pip is beginning the countdown for the mission to Mars. Getting ready for the G's.

This photo will be available at the Judge John Hodgman Instagram account at Judge John Hodgman, also on the show page at maximumfun.org. Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom.

Brandy, how are you feeling about your chances? I want to feel really good. I feel like my system sounds really ridiculous once I actually have to say it.

And so I worry that that will work against me. I mean, you're the one who put in the effort to put together a system.

I know one time my wife and I tried to put together a system for food and grocery shopping and meal planning. And I don't think we've ever failed at anything more colossal than we feel like that.

It went back to just us each being mildly resentful of the other one for buying the wrong things at the store.

Sean, how do you feel? I was

feeling good about the system, the leftover food waste part. I don't like that part of the

equation to it. But overall, I think I'm feeling okay with it.
Well, we'll see what Judge John Hodgman has to say when we come back in just a second.

Hello. Hello, I'm calling on behalf of the Beef and Dairy Network podcast.
Oh, no, I'm sorry. No sales calls.
Goodbye.

It's a multi-award-winning podcast featuring guests such as Ted Danson, Nick Offerman, Josie Long. I don't know what a Josie Long is.

And anyway, I'm about to take my mother into town to see Phantom of the Opera at last. You are wasting my time, and even worse, my mother's time.
She only has so much time left. She's 98 years old.

She's only expected to live for another 20 or 30 years. Mother, get your shoes on.
Yes, the orthopaedic ones. I don't want to have to carry you home again, do I? Right.

Well, if you were looking for a podcast, Mother, you're not wearing that, are you? It's very revealing, Mother. This is a musical theater, not a Parisian bordello.
Simply go to maximum fun.org.

I'm reaching for my Samsung Galaxy 4 as we speak. Mother! Mother, not that hat!

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman re-enters the courtroom and delivers his verdict.

So,

Brandy, Sean,

you know, you have to know, if you've ever listened to this podcast before,

that

if the genders

were reversed in this situation,

and it was a heterosexual married couple, and the guy did all the shopping, did all the meal planning,

and then also instructed his wife how to eat the leftovers and in what order.

And then the wife said, I would like to go shopping sometimes. And the husband said publicly on the podcast, you don't do it right.

You know how this would go.

A gavel is a hammer. And that hammer would come down so hard on that husband so fast

because there are systems that are designed for efficiency.

And then sometimes there are systems that are designed for maintaining control over another human being.

And balancing those two things is sometimes a challenge. But this is complicated too, because the genders are not reversed.
And in many ways,

you guys are living in a highly

sort of

super traditional heterosexual marriage paradigm. Just in regards to the kitchen, I don't know how it works in the rest of your family life.

But where, you know, mom is doing the cooking and the shopping and household management and budgeting, and dad is going out to work and every now and then makes hamburgers and hot dogs for the kids, but otherwise is not involved.

And as someone who, in my relationship, in my marriage,

the shopping and planning and meal preparation and then meal storage and leftover deployment falls to me because that's my interest area and I love to do it.

I must respect that not only are you doing something to keep this family going that deserves honor, that is not designed by pure desire to control, but in fact is a desire to be thriftful and mindful of your budget as a system of nourishing others in a highly traditional, quote-unquote, women's work kind of way.

There is an equal balancing impulse where I feel like saying Sean gets what he gets and should not get upset, the way you tell children to act, act the way you tell children to deal with it it's hard to balance those things it sounds to me that you do a great job at meal planning preparation leftovers you're dealing with obviously a challenging situation kids are finicky and you end up trying to make everybody happy and it's really hard to do and it sounds like you're doing a good job doing that everyone loves those tacos only make tacos then there's no problem probably make tacos right and i think that you are to be commended and i think that uh Sean, you should be considerate of, and it sounds like you are, of the work that your wife is putting into this.

But at the end of the day, or should I say, at the beginning of the next day, when leftovers are concerned,

yes, food waste is an awful thing and you want to minimize it at every turn. However, as I said, We are only human beings.

Whatever comes after this life, I do not know. As far as I am concerned, this is the one we've got.

And you are allowed to choose to eat the things that you want to eat that are good.

I don't think that I can properly enforce your system to be consistent with the principle of people like what they like and systems should not be onerous upon the other person.

I think I cannot fully enforce the last in, first into Sean's stomach rule that you want me to enforce. He is is a whole human being who has tastes and desires and agency.

And even though he doesn't do the grocery shopping right, he wants to help. His heart is in the right place.
And he just wants those tacos.

You gain satisfaction from planning and executing the shopping and the meal preparation in the most efficient way possible. But ultimately, making food for others is an act of generosity.

And obviously, he loves those chicken tacos and he doesn't love the rice and beans that much.

So I would say that you can make adjustments to make sure that the things that are left over are things that everyone would want to eat the next day.

I'm not going to rule in your favor here, Brandy, and I'm sorry about that. I hate food waste a lot.
And obviously it's a huge problem in the world that we waste so much food.

But, you know, everyone needs to eat the food that they want to eat.

And Sean deserves the agency to pick what food he's going to eat and not just get rice and beans through a hole in the wall because that's the calories he gets that day.

But though I am not ruling officially in Brandy's favor, Sean, I hope and trust that you are hearing what she is saying.

Don't just grab the chicken tacos. That's the best stuff.
That's what everyone wants.

Don't grab the good stuff and leave the rice and beans. Honor the work that your wife is doing for your family.
I trust that you do. Eat some of the other stuff too.

I mean, just because I'm not ruling specifically in her favor doesn't absolve you of the right to be a good leftover citizen here.

Snake in all the good stuff for yourself. You wouldn't tolerate in a shared refrigerator in an office situation, someone just taking all the good stuff.
Take some of the less good stuff. Do your part.

Find a way to eat a leftover pork chop. I guarantee you it's good.

The final element of Settlevaw that is being referred to and just struck me is, you know, help in the way you are asked to help, not in the way that you want to help.

Your offer to do grocery shopping is a good faith offer of help that obviously Brandy rejects outright because you do it wrong. Sorry.

You might get there there someday. You know, you should do a ride along with Brandy a couple of times, like you're doing research for a role as a police officer.
Like, see what she does.

Let her explain to you why she's doing it. And maybe after a few times, she'll relinquish that control to you.
And that will be a help to her.

But the way she's asking you to help now is just eat some of the rice and beans along with the good stuff. That would be of help to her for you to do that.

That is merely me suggesting you to take what you've heard today and put it into practice and be a little bit bit more flexible as you steal those leftovers for yourself.

Ultimately, I do not rule in Brandy's favor, but in fact, in your favor, Sean. I know that you're grateful for what you have in this life.
Show it by modifying your behavior.

This is the sound of a gavel.

Judge Sean Hodgman rules, that is all. Please rise as Judge Sean Hodgman exits the courtroom.

Sean, how do you feel? Good. I think I still have to adjust my leftover habits a little bit, but overall I won, so I'm happy with that.

I'm not sure you're taking the message from my verdict.

You have to modify your leftover habits. Let's just not say a little bit, period.
You know what I'm talking about. Yes.
Yes. And winning isn't everything.
Go ahead, Jesse.

Brandy, how do you feel?

I'm fine. I think that I kind of had a feeling that the you like what you like might work against me, so I'm not super surprised.

So, you know, I appreciate, you know, that I think Sean does appreciate what I do. So hopefully going forward, even though it wasn't in my favor, you know, hopefully he'll think about that.

Well, Sean and Brandy, thanks for joining us on Judge John Hodgman.

Another Judge John Hodgman case in the books. In just a minute, Swift Justice.
But first, we want to thank John Perobel for naming this week's episode Reheat Offender.

If you'd like to name a future episode, make sure that you like Judge Sean Hodgman on Facebook. You can follow us on Twitter at Hodgman and at Jesse Thorne.

Hashtag your Judge John Hodgman tweets, hashtag JJ H O, and check out the Maximum Fun subreddit at maximumfun.redddit.com to chat about this episode. We're also on Instagram at judgejohnhodgman.

Follow us there for evidence and other fun stuff.

This week's episode recorded by Randy Wills at Exception Studios, produced by Hannah Smith, edited by Jesus Ambrosio. Now, Swift Justice, where we answer your small disputes with a quick judgment.

Skip asks, is it petty to request that my family dry off their feet after a shower before stepping on the bath mat so the mat doesn't turn into a soggy mess?

I've stepped on a soaking wet bath mat while wearing socks too many times.

This is very, very, very visceral for me because you know what I hate, Jesse Thorne?

Standing on one foot in the shower? No, I hate wet socks.

If I'm wearing socks around the house and I step in the bathroom and there's some water on the floor from the shower or whatever, and then my socks are wet, that will ruin my life forever. I hate it.

You're saying that when it comes to socks, wet is your moist.

Right.

Moist socks are the worst. You know what's even worse than that? Drying off your feet in the shower.
You know why that's worse? Because it's impossible. The whole shower's wet.

The shower's wet. There's no way to do it.
It is petty to request that skip.

The rule that you are asking is not only impossible, but more onerous than your practicing some simple self-discipline, which is don't wear socks in the bathroom.

You know what's going to happen in there. It's wet in there.
Don't wear socks in the bathroom. Bare feet.
That's how you do it. Huh.
You know what I used to have? A teak bath mat, a wooden platform.

That was the best. You ever use a wooden bath mat, Jesse Thorne?

No.

What role does it play?

It's just a place to put the water on? I don't remember where I saw it. I think they may have had it at the hotel I stayed in in Little Tokyo in San Francisco once.

I think that it might be a Japanese home deal. But like teak or bamboo or cypress wood, it's raised with slats.
You step onto it and water drips through,

but it dries quickly. Never mind.
Forget it. My wife threw that thing away as soon as she could, and I miss it every day.
That's all I'm saying. Teak Bath Mat.
Look into that, Skip.

That's it for this week's episode. Submit your cases at maximumfund.org slash JJ Ho or by email at hodgman at maximumfund.org.
No case is too small. You know what I say?

Submit them over and over and over. I don't care.

Not the same one, but just come up with different ones. Pick fights with your friends.
Submit them. We need more submissions.
Submissions are more important than quality submissions.

We're in the volume business here. That's exactly so.
We'll decide on quality. Also, I love hearing from you.
So just write me, hodgman at maximumfund.org or maximumfund.org slash jjho.

They all come to me. I'll read them.
And if we hear them on the case, then I'll get to talk to each other. Okay, we'll see you next time on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

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