Buffalo Wild Writs

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman Podcast.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

This week, Buffalo Wild writes.

Rowena brings the case against her boss, Glenn.

When they travel for work, Glenn likes to eat at the same chain restaurants, but Rowena wants to branch out.

Who's right?

Who's wrong?

Only one man can decide.

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

Bailiff Jesse, you are the face of a global brand.

Your smile and warm, friendly greeting start every litigant's experience.

This winning attitude and the ability to make delicious justice quickly and efficiently will make you a key member of the team.

You are the reason why litigants keep coming back.

As a bailiff, you will greet and serve litigants, prepare justice, maintain sanitation standards, and handle or process light paperwork.

Exceptional litigant service is a major component of this position.

Please swear them in.

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 his lack of flair?

I do.

I do.

Very well, Judge Hodgman.

My lack of flair.

Well, you have personal flair.

You're just your outfit lacks flair.

That's true.

I also don't have any flare pens either.

Yeah.

There's not a single pin on your suspenders.

Rowena and Glenn, you may be seated for an immediate summary judgment in one of yours favors.

Can either of you name the piece of rather obscure culture I referenced when I entered the courtroom.

Rowena, let's start with you.

What's your guess?

It sounds like it's from some sort of training manual

for a fast food restaurant.

A training manual for a fast food restaurant.

You want to take a guess as to which fast food food restaurant?

Based on my chief complaint against Glenn, I'm going to go with Subway.

All right, we'll put that in the guess book, Subway Training Manual.

You can actually hear me writing it down.

Nothing on this show is faked or illusory in any way.

All right, Glenn.

Yes.

What is your guess?

Well, I was also going to go with a training manual, but I think I'm going to say it's a training manual by Ray Kroc for the early days of McDonald's.

Training manual by the founder himself, Ray Kroc.

That movie, the founder, starring friend of the podcast, Nick Offerman.

And also, Michael Keaton was in it, too.

I will enter that into the thing, and you can hear me writing it down.

None of this is fake.

That's the sound of a pen tearing up a notebook page.

All right.

Let's see here.

Reviewing this.

All guesses are close.

Too close for comfort, I might say.

Rowena, I might honestly just give it to you

and shut this thing down because all of your instincts were correct, but both of your guesses were wrong, technically speaking, I'm glad to say.

It is some official Subway material, as Subway does play a role, a rather central role.

I just said role.

I just realized the pun that I made.

Goodbye.

I'm

shutting the podcast down now.

I am so sorry.

Goodbye forever to all of you.

No,

it does play a central R-O-L-E

in the case that you bring against Glenn.

It is not a training manual, however.

It is a part of the Subway website where you apply to become what they call a sandwich artist, which is the person who makes the sandwich.

So it was a pitch rather than,

it was before hiring rather than after hiring.

corporate material.

So we will hear this case.

I will also point out that if you have have a little bit more experience, Rowena, you can also apply to become a sandwich artist pro,

which I didn't realize there was a distinction.

The difference primarily is I think that there are two extra USB ports on the sandwich artist.

Well, if this goes poorly, I'll have an option.

That's exactly so.

Rowena, you and Glenn work together.

I am very much looking forward to discussing the job that you guys have.

But first, your complaint against him is what?

We travel together for business a fair bit.

And

he has a tendency to just kind of want to eat at chain restaurants that he eats at all the time at home.

And I know that he does this because he tells me about it all the time, which is probably the bigger issue with this because he likes to bother me.

He's kind of a, despite being my boss, he's an older brother figure.

So he likes to drive me crazy with it.

Okay, so home for you guys is Toronto.

Is that correct?

I live in Ottawa.

Rowena lives in Toronto.

Oh, okay.

Oh, we find.

Oh, okay.

But we are recording you in Toronto.

Correct.

Because Ottawa has no radio stations.

Our business is in both cities, so I'm here in Toronto.

Okay, that's fine.

So,

Glenn, you like to eat exclusively at the Canadian House of Pizza and Garbage.

Do I take that to be true?

May we stipulate to that?

It is delicious, but it's no, I have a number of different choices I like to make.

They don't necessarily meet with Rowena's approval.

But you don't dispute the fact that when you are on the road, alone or together, you like to go to chain restaurants such as Subway.

And we are, by the way, we're just going to name these things.

We can't talk about this without buzz marketing.

I think that it's entirely plausible that, Glenn, you are a secret agent for Canadian Subway.

then what I have been briefed is your actual company.

Please tell me, Glenn, what is the name of your company and what it does you do?

Of my real company, it's Haunted Walks Inc.

So we do ghost tours.

We're one of the oldest ghost tour companies in Canada.

Yay!

Our producer, Jennifer Marmer, is wonderful because when you guys wrote in about this, I was just like, yeah, sandwich fight.

Let's see if it's good.

And when I saw, but she teased out of you that you run the ghost tours.

Yes, I have for 23 years,

which I think is what?

How long?

23 years.

I started it when I was in university.

Oh, my goodness.

23 years ago.

You ever been on the Queen Mary in Long Beach, California?

I haven't been there yet, but I have been to the Winchester Mystery House.

Did you send it?

Well, the Winchester Mystery House is one of the places I've always wanted to go and never have been.

And I'm not going to go into too much detail now because we actually have to hear your dumb case about sandwiches.

But

everybody stopped driving in Wikipedia that crazy thing.

When you were there,

did you sense the presence of ghosts?

I'm not, you know, it's funny.

I actually came when I started this.

I was more from the skeptical bent.

My background's in history.

But I mean, I've had some weird things happen in some places that have caused me to be a little more, I guess, open to the idea.

But I certainly don't claim to be psychic or anything like that where I can actually sense.

I'm not one of those people who is able to go into a place and pick up those vibes.

I just like to hear the ghost stories.

So your patter is, I got into the ghost business for the history.

I stayed in the ghost business because of weird cold patches in rooms.

That's pretty accurate, yeah.

Rowena, how long have you been working in the ghost busting biz?

I've been with the company for 10 years now.

Do you believe in ghosts?

I would put myself in a similar boat to Glenn.

I approach it from a skeptical skeptical angle, but I always say I believe in the possibility because I hear ghost stories every day.

So it's really hard not to keep hearing these stories and dismiss them entirely.

So how do you guys work together in the ghost walks?

Is it that Glenn takes the customers around and say, this is a very haunted Canadian house?

And you hide in the walls and go, woo, woo.

No, Glenn is our president,

and I run our Toronto office.

So

neither of us do tours too often ourselves anymore.

Oh, okay.

How big an operation is this?

There's about 90 tour guides in total between the three cities that we're in.

Holy the moly.

These guys have got this ghost walk stuff wrapped up in Canada.

We do a lot of groups that visit.

Who's your chief competitor?

Do you have an intense rivalry with another ghost tour company?

No rivalries.

I think there are some people that do ghost tours that are great in other locations in Canada,

and we have some local smaller tour operators that we work with, but nobody that's a no we don't we don't have any Pepsi to our Coke or anything like that.

There's no major Canadian House of Pizza and Phantoms out there?

No, no, I'm afraid not.

Who are the independent haunted tour operators that you're the mercenaries you're calling in?

When you're overbooked, you got to call in Dale or whatever?

Like, oh, God.

We have a bunch of tourists coming in to Prince Edward Island.

We don't have a ghost walk pro there called Dale, the crazy crazy dude who believes that the Anna Green Gables house is haunted by...

I'm pretty sure it is.

That's all I know.

The funny thing is the other probably biggest ghost tour company I can think of is a guy named Dale.

Yeah, in Newfoundland, though.

St.

John's.

Oh,

a coincidence.

You guys say you don't have any rival tour companies.

Do you have any enemies on the spectral plane?

That's almost guaranteed.

I have known to have a tendency if we do an overnight at a repeatedly haunted location to torment and taunt the ghosts, much like I tend to torment Rowena from time to time.

You torment the ghosts by telling them that you're going to go to Subway again instead of getting some local food around there.

Yeah, exactly.

Because this is what it comes down to.

So you guys have to travel

all over the country of Canada

to do what?

To quality check your ghost tour people and

make sure they're not making up stories?

It's more that the two of us are kind of the sales team.

So we do go to some conferences in Canada and in the U.S.

where to various different cities.

Also, sometimes we've taken trips for research to go and see what other places are doing.

Like when I went to the Winchester Mystery House, for example, get some good ideas.

So we do travel from time to time, but usually it's for sales conferences or something like that.

So when we are going to places,

I will say that I do like a diverse group of different submarine sandwich restaurants, not just the one.

I also enjoy some others.

But often it's for breakfast that we're

going to places.

And I like going to Subway if we're at a conference for breakfast because I can actually get some vegetables,

which is not always easy to come by when you're eating conference food all day.

But I think the real, in my opinion, the real reason this whole case is being brought is because of Rowena's bizarre phobia of breakfast sandwiches that she's trying to cover up by bringing this spurious suit.

In 1799, an ancestor of Rowena's choked on a breakfast sandwich.

Rowena,

I don't know how to transition into the breakfast sandwich thing, Glenn.

You just laid a lot of weird stuff on me.

You're going to subway for breakfast to have vegetables

well yeah okay so what is what does a breakfast sandwich mean to you because i know that's not what it means to me yeah there's a lot i mean i like any kind of breakfast sandwich i just i like to have a breakfast i like to have something that's got some you know protein or something like some eggs or whatever for breakfast but uh all right yeah eggs let's let's let's let's start nailing down some specific ingredients yeah eggs for sure so a subway a breakfast sandwich from subway would consist of it's basically a sub but with eggs on it instead of a you know meat or whatever I guess yeah I've got I'm able to imagine that much okay then what do you do you throw some bell peppers on there so I like to throw a bunch of stuff on there throw some chipotle sauce put on some spinach uh tomatoes you know just something at least to be able to get a little bit of uh greens in there with the breakfast whereas rowena would tend to just get a muffin and say that that's breakfast A muffin isn't breakfast in my opinion.

Well, not nothing.

It's none of your business what Rowena eats for breakfast.

Well, I fully agree, but I would say the reverse is.

She's your employee, not your thrall.

I think the issue, the issue here, and I don't like this deflection because you may or may not know, I will talk about breakfast sandwiches all day long.

Even if I end up giving a ton of free advertising to Subway, I'm willing to hear what you have to say about what you're going to put on your breakfast sandwich.

And that sounds like a good sandwich.

But this is nothing to do with this breakfast sandwich stuff.

Stop deflecting.

You go to chain restaurants.

I've seen the evidence.

We're going to walk through the evidence in a moment of you openly baiting Rowena

about how you cannot wait once you get to this new town to go to the Applebee's or whatever.

You're clearly teasing her on purpose.

You are her boss and you are harassing her with your terrible taste in where to go.

But before I go down that road, I want to ask you, since you don't dispute that you prefer to go to chain restaurants,

then local holes in walls, which I presume is your preference, Rowena, you want to find some

local off-the-beaten track old-timey diner?

Yeah, something that's unique that I can't get at home.

I think a big part of travel for me is getting to experience

a place that I don't live and is unfamiliar to me.

And whether that's something that's culturally very different or even just moderately different, it's nice to experience something that I can't eat at home.

Right.

Let's take a quick break.

We'll be back with more chain restaurant chat in just a minute.

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I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

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Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

Rowena is filing suit against her boss, Glenn, because he insists on eating at the same chain restaurants when they travel for work.

Why does Glenn prefer chains?

Let's go back into the courtroom to find out.

Rowena,

lay down some actual accusations against Glenn here.

For example, you've you've come to New York City.

Yes.

On your ghost hunting journeys, right?

Yep.

All right.

Did anything happen when you guys came to New York City that pertains to this case?

Yeah, that was really where I think I started realizing this because it was the first time I had traveled just with Glenn because that was a research mission.

We went on, I think it was seven tours while we were there over the course of three days.

And

we were taking tours to steal their ghosts.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We were wanting to bring them back to Canada.

But that's when I really started noticing that it was problematic because I had been to New York City before and Glenn hadn't and I was really excited to take him there.

And I mean, having come from the background of starting at the company as a tour guide, I have a natural tendency to guide.

Right.

And you wanted to introduce him to some of the great New York cuisine, like the Olive Garden on 6th Avenue near the Bed Bath and Beyond.

Not so much Olive Garden, even though I don't think he's been to one of those either.

The time I had been there before that, one of the things that really stood out to me was a restaurant I had been to called the Blue Ribbon Bakery.

Sure.

You can get a good muffin there.

That's a good place.

I was thinking more for dinner, but sure, I'm sure if they have breakfast, they make excellent breakfast.

Yeah.

So you wanted to go to Blue Ribbon, but Glenn said, no, thanks.

I'll just go to this KFC.

it was kind of a mix of things because for breakfast he was insistent on getting eggs and kept wanting to go into Subway which he knows that I am not a fan of and he also there is no diner culture in New York City and certainly yeah I understand right

but he also solicited advice from people who work in the educational travel industry who are are often folks that we work with so we become quite friendly with them and they're dealing with places where they need to be able to bring large groups of students.

So they're not necessarily chain restaurants, but they're not unique or very interesting spots to visit because they're just spots that have a huge capacity to be able to take these student groups.

So did you get to go to Blue Ribbon or not?

No, we didn't.

Where did you go instead?

Well, I know, I'm pretty sure Glenn had Subway a couple times for breakfast while we were there.

We inevitably ended up just having separate breakfasts because we couldn't make that work.

We went to Junior's Cheesecake one night and we had to wait.

That's a New York institution.

Yeah, it was good, but it was a long wait.

John's Pizza, I think it was.

Yeah, John's Times Square.

And the other one.

Another New York institution.

The other one that we went to was the Shake Shack.

Yep.

I was told it was...

Another touristy New York institution.

Yeah, so those ones, I mean, they're not necessarily huge chains or anything like that, but they are very touristy.

And I didn't feel like we were,

as much as they are institutions, maybe they weren't necessarily unique experiences.

Whereas when I went to the Blue Ribbon Bakery, we weren't waiting in line forever to get food that was okay, but just I feel like we could have been spending our time and money better.

So, Glenn, though,

You didn't go and eat at Ruby Tuesdays or something.

No, I've actually,

you know, when we're talking about chain restaurants here, this is very specific to, for me for business travel, because if I'm going off on a vacation or I'm even if I'm at home, I will tend to try to find the same kind of places that are more, I guess, unique or independent businesses.

But

if I'm on, you know, at a conference or if we're, so if we're trying to pack as, you know, pack a million tours into three days or something, you know, one of our trips usually is, consists of, I'm always wanting to try to go go somewhere that's fast and efficient.

I guess that's the main priority.

And I.

So you're not saying that Subway is the only restaurant you ever want to eat at?

Not at all.

And I don't, I mean, I do eat there from time to time at home as well, certainly, but not, I wouldn't say eat there often.

Subway has gotten enough airtime.

Let's stop talking about it.

Absolutely.

John, can I tell you something that happened to me when traveling once?

I would love it.

I was traveling with my in-laws from Los Angeles to San Francisco via Highway 5, a monstrous, you know, 80-mile-an-hour thoroughfare through basically fields that connects Los Angeles and San Francisco.

And about halfway up, there's a town called Kettleman City.

And Kettleman City is distinguished by a few gas stations and an In-N-Out burger, the famous fast food chain of Southern California.

And so we were all headed to In-N-Out Burger for supper.

And

my mother-in-law was not happy about this because she wanted to eat something healthy.

And we explained that there was, you know, there's very few choices between LA and San Francisco.

My mother-in-law, by the way, a total saint.

Very few choices.

And, you know, In-N-Out Burger is, it's not particularly healthy, but, you know, it's fresh food and it tastes great.

And, you know, we were that was where we were going to spend our $4.

And

we finally, get to the in-n-out burger, we get out, and uh, first you go in, we go out

exactly.

We we arrived at the in-n-out burger, we got out of the car,

headed in, and noticed that my mother-in-law, Beth, was headed the opposite direction.

And uh, we said, What are you doing, Beth?

And she said, Well, I want something healthy, I'm going to Kuisnas.

That's actually my favorite subway chain.

Oh, of course.

I love you very much, Beth.

Yeah, well, she finally got to put some bell peppers on a stack of meat and cheese.

Exactly.

I'd like to dispute a little bit of this account of New York because

the one thing that Rowena isn't sharing is the fact that when we were rushing to get places in the morning, she would say that, you know, I would say, oh, well, there's a subway right here, so I'll just grab some breakfast.

And she would say, oh, well, let's just get a muffin.

And I'd say, well, you can have a muffin.

I'll go grab a sub.

We're both happy happy and then we'll go and at least on one occasion in in new york in the morning she said well let's just forget breakfast she said let's just not have breakfast rather than have to try to decide what to have for breakfast so i think it was her revulsion at the having to witness a

come anywhere in the proximity of a breakfast sandwich that was the the trio issue and i can fast going back to this breakfast sandwich thing rowena do you have a problem with breakfast sandwiches i do you have a revulsion i have issues with textures of food.

And like if a texture of something is wrong, and actually, like, there's a very good example from yesterday.

We were, we were at an event in the evening, and part of it was about sustainability.

So they had hot dogs that were made from cricket meat,

which wasn't actually...

I will buy a franchise.

Yeah.

One.

Did you eat it?

Yeah, we both had a small piece of it.

And it wasn't the taste that was revolting to me.

It was the texture because it was just all wrong.

And that's the big thing for me with breakfast sandwiches, because you have the egg, which is kind of like mushy, and then it goes with the bread, and it makes the bread mushy.

And when it's at a fast food restaurant, it's not, they're not quality ingredients.

Like these eggs are kind of rubbery.

So you're saying that when Glenn wants to go get a breakfast sandwich at a subway or a Quiznos,

It's akin to him shoving live crickets down your mouth.

That is exactly what I'm saying.

The same thing.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's pretty accurate.

So when I learned that there was a kind of a disproportionate reaction to the

Subway,

I do admit I then kind of may have taken from time to time to teasing her about it, occasionally involving sending her a picture of a Subway meal.

All right, let's go to the evidence because you guys sent in a lot of it, and I think it'll clarify a lot of these issues for me.

So first of all,

we have a text submitted by Rowena, a text conversation between you, Glenn, and you, Rowena, where Glenn, you say to her, apropos of nothing on January 13th at 2.54 p.m., I'm trying to decide between Applebee's and Subway.

I've actually never been to Applebee's.

I could see how the decision could be tough.

Do I dare try something new and exotic like Applebee's?

Rowena writes back, you have taught me many important life lessons, bro.

Honey for hangovers, the concept of being recessed.

I could go on.

Continuing the quote, so why is it that the one lesson I have tried to teach have never stuck?

Columbus, Ohio has some amazing restaurant options.

I bet Cleveland does too.

So why you got to go to Applebee's, question mark, exclamation point, and Glenn, you say, ha ha.

And then for some reason, you included a picture of Pepe the Frog because you're a troll.

You're trolling her.

There is no picture of Pepe the Frog.

Don't worry.

These are nice Canadians.

And then this is when it came up.

So you said you're going to take him to internet court.

You say, ha ha, nice.

Rowena, you say, I believe I have enough of a case when it comes to Subway, Quiznos, and Chipotle.

And then, Glenn, you say, I'm going to Subway right now just to spite you.

I don't remember this, but that sounds very plausible, yes.

No, because

you were totally on a huge post-Subway sodium high.

You were just

sodium texting her.

It was the rubber ingredients in the.

Right.

And then you sent her pictures.

Look, I have nothing against Subway.

Subway is a good New England brand.

Jesse, did you know that Subway was founded in the late 60s in Bridgeport, Connecticut?

I didn't know that.

I have like separate revulsions with Subway specifically because my sister worked there for a while.

So she would come home smelling like moldy lettuce.

And then when I started working for the haunted walk, our office was underneath a Subway.

So I constantly had to smell Subway when going to work.

You are haunted by the ghosts of heads of lettuce.

Yes.

You have a horror story of your own.

I walk by it, and if the door is opened to Subway and that smell comes out,

I feel physically ill.

I'm also very much bothered by the smell of that particular restaurant.

Because they advertise that they bake their bread fresh, the smell of sugar bread sort of pervades the air, and I find it completely overwhelming and a little bit sickening as well.

Right.

You know what I love?

I wish they pumped in there.

The smell of cricket hot dogs.

Oh, yeah.

I love that.

At the risk of triggering you, Rowena, like your terrible boss does routinely

by sending you pictures of Subway.

What did the cricket hot dog taste like?

It tasted like a regular hot dog.

It just...

So what was the texture problem?

Too many legs?

Yeah, legs.

Yeah, the legs poked now.

It was squishier than a hot dog should be.

Kind of.

I think someone described it as like a tofu.

Spongy.

Yeah, kind of spongy, squishy, not the consistency a hot dog should be.

I've had fried crickets, and I'll tell you something, they were delicious.

But first, A, they were fried.

And B, the one thing you don't want to make a cricket is squishy because you want that crunch.

Now, it's not like I'm eating them all the time, but I was surprised at how much I enjoy them.

I would not want to have them turned into a phony hot dog.

I ate one and a leg got stuck in my teeth, and I don't want to eat anymore.

Right.

And

just so I can make everyone who's wondering when this is going to happen happy, I'll say right now: a cricket hot dog is not a sandwich either.

But speaking of tofu, you also linked to an article from the Canadian broadcasting company accusing at least one Subway franchise in Canada of serving chicken

that when they did a DNA test on this chicken cutlet, it was only 50% chicken DNA.

Which, by the way, I didn't know you could do a 23 and me on a cutlet.

Well, you're not going to, you're certainly not going to do a 23 on me on something bone in.

Right.

Good point.

Good point.

But apparently, at least one Subway franchise in Canada was

going too far in recombining the chicken pulp pulp that they form into these chicken patties with soy protein, with tofu, basically,

in order to make it last longer and look better.

Probably makes it a little healthier.

No, it doesn't make it healthier, actually.

If you had bothered to read the article, which is posted on the Judge Sean Hodgman page at maximumfund.org, they also packed in a ton, ton more flavorings and sodium, including a lot of stuff that a lot of sugar basically has been pumped into this reformed chicken slab

that make it a lot sweeter and more sugary than chicken should be, which is zero.

And Jesse pointed out as well that there's a bunch of sugar that is put into a lot of fast food bread products that

makes the already high carbohydrate bread even worse for you.

Not everyone, you know what?

I love bread and I love gluten and everything's fine.

Everything in moderation.

But I'm just pointing out to you, in some cases, particularly in the way chicken is recombined and recreated into fake chicken, you're not getting the health benefit that you might think you are getting from chicken, Glenn.

Well, actually, it's interesting because I don't dispute that.

I don't claim that Subway is super healthy or anything like that.

It's just that in some cases, it seems to be healthier than a lot of the other alternative choices, especially if you're at a conference in a downtown city somewhere where, you know, some things might, a lot of things may be closed.

So it's either sure pub food or uh one big part of it actually for me why i sort of started eating there uh was because they do show how many calories are in different things and i was able to i was able to track you know and i was i was being conscious and you are totally showing for subway oh not just for them but now now any chain restaurant in ontario has to and i know it's this way in many other places uh like in new york it's been that way for a while where they have to actually display the number of calories on the board and when you start looking at that you know definitely there's some things that, you know, you might think we're okay that are definitely not.

Glenn, you're a businessman.

Can I pitch a business idea to you?

Well, it's sort of, I think it would help travelers, especially people in difficult eating situations.

It would be a phone application.

And when you open this,

it would be able to tell what time it was and where you are.

And it would give you like a list of local businesses in each category with rankings based on how how many, let's say I call it a five-star system, that people who had visited those businesses could then rank them in the application.

And then no matter where you were, you would be able to tell what would be a good place to eat.

I would call it HELP or MELP.

Well,

something like that.

How about LELP?

I haven't worked that out.

Yeah, I like LELP.

Let's go with LELP for now.

I'm saying LELP because I think starting it with an L is good because everyone who leaves a review on LELP is a liar.

I've said this before and I'll say it again.

Yelp is my is my favorite fiction reading of every summer.

It is, if you like short stories told by very unreliable narrators,

every one is a is a stem winder of griping and whining.

I love it so much.

But Jesse makes a good point.

But I will back you up a little bit here, Glenn, because When you are traveling on business, you know, not every haunted house is in a big cosmopolitan cosmopolitan city like New York, and you might be going to places where there are only chain restaurants.

Yeah.

And it's a lot quicker to hit the button on Siri and say nearest subway restaurant.

God, Glenn,

I'm going to find you in contempt.

If you say subway one more time, this is over.

Do you understand?

I allowed this to begin, but now you're really testing me.

You're really making me feel like

you're in the pocket of big roll.

Could I dispute this calorie count

thing?

No.

No.

I'm going to move on to the evidence.

What do you want to?

This is not a podcast where we listen to you guys bicker affectionately because you obviously adore each other and really don't have any fight whatsoever.

And also, this is about nothing because you can put whatever you want in your mouth, Rowena, and he can put whatever he wants in his mouth.

He's your boss, but you are still, for now, a living human being and not a ghost that he controls.

Not a ghost that he stole from another ghost tour.

Don't give him ideas.

Yeah.

Go ahead, say, what do you want to say about calorie count?

I just wanted to say that calorie counts are actually usually 20% lower than

the amount that they say is actually 20% lower than the reality.

Do you want him to eat more healthfully or do you want him to eat more interestingly?

I want him to eat more interestingly, but I just, he's using this as an excuse.

But meanwhile, it's inaccurate.

So he's basing his whole argument on inaccurate information.

Don't listen to the lies of the devil.

Don't get caught up in his mind games

where he's throwing out all this other information.

I already got caught up in that breakfast sandwich boondoggle.

Get thee away from me, Satan.

Don't let him distract you with his lies.

He is the king of lies.

He is Lucifer himself.

Can I put that on my bio as a quote?

Yeah.

Yeah, I would imagine that would be a huge deal if people of Canada found out that Satan is running ghost towards an Ottawa.

I would probably do it.

Now I'm buzz marketing for you.

Finally, exhibit five.

This is evidence of Rowena going to get interesting, specific local food, even though it is a mini-chain of a kind, I believe.

But you were in Halifax and you have a picture of yourself at the King of Donair,

which I applaud.

Donair, for those of you who...

don't know, in Canada, what we call shwarma is referred to as donor kebab or donair.

And I was in Halifax once and I went to that King of Donair and it was fantastic.

It's so good.

I love a schwarma too.

Really,

we have a lot of those in Ottawa.

Why didn't you go to King of Donair with Rowena?

I wasn't on that trip.

All right.

But you wouldn't have stopped her from going to King of Donair.

No, I would have happily gone to King of Donair.

Yeah, absolutely.

That's what I get confused about with some of this is because it's unclear what exactly she thinks is an acceptable restaurant because she's saying not chain restaurants, but then some of the ones she does like are actually local chains.

So I guess I, you know, does it mean that if a restaurant is successful enough to have more than a certain number of locations that I should no longer go there?

I'm not really sure I quit.

This argument is not about your weird semantics, sir.

I'll have you shut your pie hole.

Well,

I love a good pie hole shutting.

And I do think it's time for Glenn to stop talking, but I will say that he raises a point.

Rowena, when you guys were in New York, you did go to chain restaurants.

Juniors has a couple of different locations.

There is one main one on Flatbush, which I presume is the one you went to.

Shake Shack obviously has a number of different locations,

but they are, and they're quite touristy, for sure.

But they are

established New York institutions that you wouldn't probably be able to get in Ottawa, for example.

The problem isn't that you don't want him to poison his body with bad food because it's his body.

The problem isn't that you don't want him to eat breakfast sandwiches because that's his life.

The problem isn't that he has bad taste because I know he has good taste because of the next piece of evidence we're about to look at.

Is the problem simply that you don't get to choose where you go?

I think the main problem is the chain restaurants.

And I think that I was bitter during the New York City trip because he had been so insistent about Subway and had already kind of realized how much it was bothering me.

So the fact that we ended up going to these spots that were kind of touristy and had long waits and took a long time.

I was just already, I think, a little kind of tired of

the buzz marketing that he was doing while we were there for Subway.

Glenn, I think you've heard from Rowena that she was frustrated that you...

that you bullied her into going to these restaurants that weren't her first choice, that were touristy, that were a long wait.

How do you feel when you hear that your employee is frustrated and not having a great experience on the road with her boss looking for ghosts to steal from other ghost tours?

Oh, I certainly,

although I like tormenting her about the breakfast thing,

I certainly would,

hearing that, I would certainly would be more inclined to, you know, give her her choice of restaurants, you know, at least to share the choices between us

on future trips.

I think because it was my first trip to New York, I was especially keen on sort of seeing all the.

I don't think I would go back and go to all the touristy places again, but just because as it was my first time, I thought, oh, I'd really like to check out some of these places.

I knew she'd been to New York before, but I certainly didn't want her to not enjoy her trip.

So

I definitely would have,

you know, going back in time, I would have definitely given her a choice of going to some unique place as well.

I need to go to this piece of evidence submitted by Glenn,

who says he does not only eat

at the sandwich shop that shall no longer be named, but he also likes to take guests for a truly unique Ottawa delicacy only offered at one hole in the wall, quirky local pizza place, pizza with gravy.

And there is a photo of pizza with gravy here.

And

I got to say.

This really is right on that amazing bubble between repulsion and I want it.

Yes.

And I think I've taken probably about 30 people there, I think, and every single one of them has thought it was revolting before they tried it.

And then we're after having it, I think there's only two that thought still thought it was gross.

Everybody else was like, when can we go back?

What is the point of submitting this photo of two thick slices of Canadian pizza drenched in gravy other than to distract me?

Well, I just think it's, you know, I do respect it.

I will always support an independent business and somebody doing something cool and different and unique so i uh you know i do that at home i would certainly do that if i knew of places where i was going as well too that was i think right my reason other than just the pure awesomeness of combining the the wonders of poutine with the wonders of pizza why don't you open a chain of poutiza franchises

steal this idea you just like just like ray croc stole from the mcdonald brothers get out of the ghost business once and for all, or combine them.

The haunted Putitsa mansion of Glenn.

That's a pretty good idea, right?

Absolutely.

I don't think we have time to go into your other photo, which again does not pertain to this case in any way and is just designed as hodgman bait to distract me from the course of justice because you know what I'm going to go.

It's just a photo.

It's a photo.

All right, here's what I'm going to say.

And it's going to be on there.

It's a photo of Rowena holding up a Colorado Avalanche jersey, which is her favorite hockey team.

And I will say this.

We will post this on the website, and the first listener to write me at hodgmanandmaximumfund.org,

who will explain why this bothers me so much and why Glenn is such an expert at distracting and triggering people, whether they work for him or not.

I will send you an interesting piece of memorabilia from my office in the mails, signed by me, the first person.

But now we must move on.

If I rule in your favor, Rowena, what would you have me rule?

No Subway?

I don't want to make him stop eating Subway.

I think that while we're on business travel together, it would be great if for one meal a day, we tried to have something different.

And if he's traveling by himself, he can eat whatever he wants, but I just don't want him to tell me about it or send me pictures of the wrapper from the unnamed sub-sandwich shop.

Respect the fact that you have a visceral PTSD response to even the image, never mind the smell of ghost lettuce from Subway.

Exactly.

All right.

And Glenn, you specifically requested not only that I rule in your favor and allow you to keep eating the food you want, which is a normal request for humans, but as a demon, you further requested damages against Rowena,

specifically forcing her to eat Subway for a whole week.

Was that correct?

Yes, but after hearing

her case for her PTSD,

I would say that it would be okay for her to eat whatever submarine sandwich of her choice for a week.

Not necessarily from that chain specifically.

I can't have you surrender this case before I even go into the verdict.

So I am ordering you to say, yes, that is is correct.

Yes, that is correct.

Good.

I think I've heard everything I need to in order to make my decision.

I'm going to go lie down in a vat of shredded cheese and think about it.

And I will be back in a moment with my verdict.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the court.

Glenn, you seem consumed by shame or at least politeness today.

Do you feel like you're going to come out on top in this case?

I didn't think it was likely I would come out on top in this case, but I just, you know, I confess to being a human monster.

I just wanted to make sure that,

you know, Rowena's eccentricities

were also clouded the case a bit.

Rowena, you work in Toronto.

If you were going to recommend one restaurant for a visitor to Toronto to visit, what would it be?

There's a spot in the distillery district called El Catrin, which is a Mexican restaurant.

They have a lot of different tapas, and they make the guacamole right at the table.

You know that tapas are Spanish, right?

Now I do.

How do you feel about your chances in the case?

Pretty good.

I've had a lot of people agreeing with me, although no one else who works for Glenn wanted to come forward officially in my corner.

Well, we'll see what Judge John Hodgman has to say about all this when we come back in just a second.

I'm Emily Fleming.

I'm Jordan Morris.

And I'm Matt Lee.

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On every episode of our podcast, Free With Ads, we ask, why pay for expensive streaming services when you can get free movies from apps with weird names?

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Find it at maximumfun.org.

Please rise as Judge Sean Hodgman enters the courtroom and presents his verdict.

Allow me to tell you a very spooky story.

Last summer, a gentleman came from Indiana to visit New York City, and he took his family to Chili's.

The end.

Not quite the end.

That gentleman was then vice presidential candidate and now vice president Mike Pence, former governor of Indiana, who came to one of the great food capitals of the world and ate exactly what he could get at home.

I thought that maybe this would be what was happening with Glenn, that there is a fearfulness, a provincialness, a searching out for the comfort of home that obviously is so entwined with the food choices that we make.

We love to eat what we used to eat as a kid.

And for some of us who are still big man babies, you would go to New York City and not get real food, but instead eat chilies because that's what you have in your big man baby life at home.

Sorry, Mike Pence voters.

I just threw that out there.

It also made me think of another person who really loves chain restaurants, and that is the president of the United States, current president of the United States, Donald Trump.

He likes him some Wendy's, and he likes him some KFC.

And I was thinking about the fact that he is a boss whose management style also seems to be a little bit sadistic.

And that he he will routinely pit his underlings against each other for his own amusement is mercurial and will occasionally wildly change the subject in order to keep you off balance and make you feel like you're going crazy.

Glenn,

the issue here isn't what you choose to eat.

What you choose to eat is precisely your choice.

The issue here is, as a boss,

is it appropriate to be a demonic prince of lies who is not merely making

your employee eat places where she would rather not eat, but then almost literally rubbing it in her face by sending her traumatic pictures of subway wrappers for your own amusement.

And then, when called to answer for your actions, seek to distract the clear-eyed exorcist who is trying to tame you with the temptations of pizza with gravy on top of it.

Get thee down.

The power of Hodgman compels you to stop being a demon to your employees.

You know this.

You're a nice guy.

You're Canadian.

You're from Ottawa.

The friendship and the friendly teasing that you are undertaking is obviously well-intentioned.

And clearly, Rowena forgives you for it.

But

you know what her preferences are at this point.

She has has been working for you

for over a decade, if I remember correctly.

Is that right?

Yep.

Yep.

You obviously value her as an employee.

And it is the role of a good boss not to text her triggering images of food she hates, but instead

offer her an opportunity to pick a restaurant in the town that you're visiting that will make her interested.

This is a point of employee morale.

I don't think that you're a big man baby who wants to eat at Chili's because you're afraid to be in the rest of the world.

I know you're not afraid of things because you are constantly stealing ghosts.

I do think that you should rethink the healthiness of what you're eating.

Particularly if you are in a big city, there are probably a lot of actual healthy options as opposed to fake healthy options.

I do appreciate that you are going to a place that you know very well because it takes that decision-making out of your mind.

But I also think you're a better boss than you're being currently.

And I order you to be the kind of boss who not only respects Rowena, but also is going to take our new Canadian house of Potitsa and

Moxie to the worldwide franchise dominance.

This is the sound of a gavel.

Judge Sean Hodgman rules that is all.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom.

Rowena, how do you feel?

I feel good.

I'm glad that Glenn has sort of been put in his place, but also reminded that he is a good boss because honestly, he's the best boss.

I love working here and not having him tease me and send me pictures of subs will make it a lot better.

You know that he can't fire you on a podcast.

I mean, that would be ridiculous, right?

I don't know.

It'd be a pretty cool publicity stunt.

Well, I think you did just compare me to Donald Trump.

So

how do you feel right now, Glenn?

Oh, I'm fine with it.

I certainly knew that my time of enjoying tormenting Rowena with this was definitely coming to an end.

So

I think

it's a reasonable ruling in the circumstances for sure.

Well, Rowena, Glenn, thank you so much for joining us on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

Another thrilling Judge John Hodgman case in the books.

We retire to chambers to pour this gravy on this pizza.

Oh,

so exciting.

Before we dispense some swift justice, we want to thank Matthew Melton for naming this week's episode.

It's called Buffalo Wild Writs.

If you'd like to name a future episode like Judge John Hodgman on Facebook, that's where we put out our calls for submissions.

You can follow us on Twitter at Jesse Thornton at Hodgman.

Hashtag your Judge John Hodgman tweets.

Hashtag JJ H O and check out the Maximum Fund subreddit to discuss this episode.

That's at maximumfund.reddit.com.

This week's episode recorded by Derek Vanderwick at the CBC in Toronto.

Our producer, the great Jennifer Marmer.

Now, some swift justice.

Nick E.

asks, in a cook and clean divided household, who's responsible for cleaning out the fridge?

The cook or the cleaner?

It's actually that that job needs to be,

needs more people.

It needs to be divided evenly between the cook, the cleaner, his wife, and her lover.

A reference to Arthouse Cinema from the 90s.

Look it up.

I'm glad you like that, Jesse.

You're going to need a cook, a cleaner.

a tinker, a tailor, a soldier, and a spy.

Yeah, exactly.

Who can play at that game, Hodgman?

It's an interesting question, and I had to think about it, but not for very long.

The cook cleans out the fridge.

If you are the regular person who cooks, it is part of your job, and I would say part of your pleasure, to manage the inventory of your kitchen.

And if things are rotting in your fridge, you have to dispose of them.

And if they have leftovers, you have to find interesting ways to make use of them to avoid that kind of waste.

You really shouldn't be throwing food out of your fridge unless you're throwing it into the mouth of your loved ones.

But if it comes comes down to it, it is the cook who throws away the food that they failed to use properly.

The cleaner

in the house, if they are not cooking, should, once the fridge is cleaned out once a month or so or every other week or so, give that fridge a good wipe down inside.

That is called cleaning the fridge, but cleaning out the fridge is the cook's job.

That's about it for this week's episode.

Submit to your cases at maximumfund.org slash JJ Ho or email Hodgman at maximumfund.org.

No case is too small, as you just heard.

We'll see you next time on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

Pizza and gravy, y'all.

Pizza and gravy.

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