In Portugal and discovered a very tasty snack called Ovos Moles. It’s basically a sweet concoction of an egg yolk that’s wrapped into a pastry and looks like this:
I like it because it’s not too sweet and it’s quite yolky. If you like the taste of egg yolks, you’d love this snack. Anyway, we bought a pack of 10 because it’s cheap (only 6€, whereas buying each one individually is 1€ each). Of the 10, I ate one of them because I wanted to film a video of me eating one despite being extremely full so I can flex on my parents who aren’t traveling. In case you don’t have a PhD in math:
- 10 ovos moles, minus
- 1 ovos moles that I ate
- Means there should be 9 ovos moles remaining.
The next day, we went out and our room was cleaned. To our dismay, we came back to only 6 ovos moles left:
The conversation with reception 27 seconds later went like this:
ME: Hi, this is room 123.
RECEPTION: Yes, how can I help you.
ME: I bought some ovos moles yesterday and there was 9 in the box. So can you tell me why when we returned to our room just now that there’s only 6 left?
I use questions instead of resorting to declaratives or yelling because I feel like declaratives make them more defensive, whereas questions allow them to come up with solutions on their own. The end of the story is that this wonderful hotel provided a new box of ovos moles as an apology. So I’m up 8 ovos moles.
The Lesson I Got From This
We lock our laptops in our luggage, which is tracked via an AirTag every time we leave the hotel. So you can’t be too secure. But little did I know that people would resort to stealing snacks. And while I’m not pissed off about it (it’s just weird), it does provide a good lesson. And this lesson is: everyone is out to maximize their own value, and do not care about how it affects you. So things like:
- Working extra hours / weekends will end poorly for you. Your manager will take all your credit and get more money while you end up with more work.
- Not securing your goods while leaving the hotel room will tempt the cleaning crew to steal your stuff. If they can get away with it, it’s free value for them.
This isn’t an emo post saying everyone in the world is evil. The lesson here is to be cognizant of the facts that 1) nobody cares about you, and 2) everyone’s out to maximize value. This is because once you’re aware of this, then you can actually do something about it.
Below are some policies that might help you in minimizing your being taken advantage of:
- Be paranoid and don’t have any vulnerabilities. This means securing your goods and putting in guardrails so it is close to impossible for others to steal or take advantage of you.
- In a zero sum game like a 9-5, either you lose and your company wins or you win and your company loses. You should pick the latter, all things being equal.
- If someone fucks you (such as stealing your ovos moles), you need to fuck them right back (chasing them down for new ovos moles or writing 1-star reviews across all platforms if they refuse to recompensate you for their theft).
Don’t Do This
From my story, you’ll think it’s a good idea to maximize your value by just lying and saying the cleaning crew stole your food every time you stay at a hotel. In this way, you can always threaten a bad review in exchange for some free food.
After all, their downside from a 1-star review that talks about theft is much larger than the downside of having to buy you a couple bucks of free food. Thus, you should theoretically always be able to arbitrage free food if the dollar cost for the hotel is small enough.
The problem with this is that it makes you a shitty person and you’re inviting drama into your life for a few bucks. So don’t do it. Your upside will be some free food from time to time, but your downside is that you’ll generate unforgettable memories of you being a cunt that you’ll carry with you forever. That’s a bad deal and seems to produce large negative value. So don’t lie.