Jake Russo

Student, writer and podcaster

  • Socialization and Customer Service

    This is an excerpt from something I wrote for a sociology class. I liked it and thought I might publish it here.

    Interacting with customers at work has been a major socializing force for me. I got my first job around the time I turned 16 and worked consistently until moving to college. Starbucks was the most demanding of those jobs. Our store was constantly understaffed, and I thought it would be cool to work overtime (“No, I’m not busy at 4:30am; sure, I’ll come in!”). I would sometimes talk to upwards of 40 people per hour in the drive through. This constant loop of communication, where I would have approximately the same conversation with dozens of people in a row, gave me good feedback on what worked and how I could get the best responses. My greeting, after trying (A/B testing?) many variations, eventually solidified to, “Good morning, welcome to our Starbucks; what can I get for ya?”. I still use techniques1 I learned during my time there, even in everyday situations.

    One time, while working as a host at a sushi restaurant on a particularly busy night, a customer who had been waiting to be seated for a few minutes came to the counter, where I was taking an order, and asked if I was going to leave him waiting there much longer. I am not an angry person, but I, in the moment, could imagine a reality in which I told the gentleman exactly where he might take his business if he was so displeased with our service. It took me a second—maybe there was a loading symbol over my head—but I smiled, thanked him for his patience, and said we’d be with him as soon as we could given the volume of patrons. He seemed a little taken aback and walked sheepishly back to his party.

    Something my partner noticed is that I apologize very often for things that aren’t my fault (e.g., “I forgot my water in the kitchen.”). I joked with her about another possible cause of this behavior, but I think the real one is socialization from my time in customer service. The way my coworkers, or at least the ones who seemed effective to me, would field customer complaints was to apologize immediately and (seemingly) sincerely and offer a solution (“Oh, I’m sorry you left it there; let me go get it for you.”). Interestingly, doing this at work rarely felt insincere to me, and it never does in my personal life. I think imitating that has affected my emotional response as well as my verbal one.


    1This is intentionally vague because it includes a wide range of things, from “being patient and understanding” to “getting the FedEx clerk to make a minor exception for me while picking up a package.” Maybe it warrants further explanation in a later post.

  • Winter 2025 Update

    This list is non-exhaustive, and the order is only a little particular.

    • Over the summer, worked as a barista at Starbucks and host at a local sushi restaurant, sometimes 55 hours/week!
    • Moved to college and lucked into some wonderful roommates (who were interested in me partly because of reading this blog!)1
    • Took the photo on the homepage of this site
    • Reconnected with a former (no longer former!) best friend
    • Made my first in-person Apple Store purchase
    • Played Beat Saber for the first time
    • Gave a presentation on credit
    • Got a crash course in dealing with car insurance
    • Read The Other Significant Others, about friendship, and liked it a lot
    • Gave a presentation on the importance of close friends
    • Finally transitioned my writing to this blog
    • Became a steadfast believer in “not wasting any time” on the dishes and throwing them ~straight into the dishwasher, partly thanks to Technology Connections
    • Sent dozens of postcards and letters to a handful of people
    • Found out shaving doesn’t have to be painful (got a Braun S9 Sport from Costco after years of using a safety razor)2
    • Visited several specialty coffee shops
    • Got a projector (XGIMI MoGo 2 Pro) on clearance from Sam’s Club, mostly to watch Impractical Jokers on the wall3
    • Completed an online training that allows me access to my university’s podcast studio
    • Started listening to music more often
    • Went to the post office more often than I care to admit
    • Found out it’s possible to lose track of time and talk for hours, only realizing this once the sun starts to come up; who knew!
    • Started thinking of this quote from Experimental History and decided I might know what it means
      • And yes, love is all of those things. But it’s not only those things. […] That’s why, at a happy wedding, the couple looks like they know a secret that no one else knows, a secret that no one else can know.

    1Which has led me to write off all my spending on the services to run it as 100% worth it

    2I’ve started writing a post about this; it might eventually see the light of day.

    3The thing is actually fantastic and might warrant a mini review.


    I compiled this list by memory and scrolling through my photo library. I will start keeping a rolling list, adding things as they happen, which should make for a more interesting post next season.

  • Why You Should Make Close Friends

    I gave a speech on the value of close friendship to my Technical Presentations class. This was supposed to be a persuasive presentation. It went okay, and the topic is one I think about often. I figured I’d share the video here in case anyone else might find it interesting.

    Notes

    • The speech was produced a few hours before delivery.
    • My movements aren’t very polished.
    • I’ve cut out a personal anecdote (around 1:51).
    • The speech is partly inspired by Neel Nanda’s Intentionally Making Close Friends but, I think, original enough.
      • “Non-standard action” (3:55) is a direct lift.
    • The list of questions (4:08) is mis-cited as being adapted from a New York Times article. More accurately, it is adapted from Neel Nanda’s adaptation of that article.
    • The part at the beginning, about having “no place left to turn” was inspired by a prop in a TWiT set that lives, from time to time, rent-free in my head.
    • I was a little light on information about mental health benefits of close friendships, probably because I figured it was almost intuitive. The presentation could’ve used figures on neurotransmitters.
    • The ending isn’t strong and could’ve been more inspirational—maybe something about how even strangers prefer deep conversation to small talk, or an anecdote about one of my unlikely friendships.
    • I might update this list as I continue to notice things about the presentation.

    Standing invitation to send me a message with your thoughts!

    Transcript

    Have you ever felt sad, lonely, like you have no place left to turn?

    Well, all of us have, and ironically, we’re not alone.

    According to the American Psychological Association, one in ten Americans feels lonely every day, and that number rises to one in three each week.

    So I’m going to make the case to you for making, for why you should make close friends.

    I’m going to propose this as a solution to loneliness.

    And, as kind of a roadmap here, I’m going to go over the definition of close friendship, establish that this sort of friendship is uncommon, go over the benefits of such friendship, and finally, how you can make those friends.

    So how do we define close friendship?

    My favorite definition comes from a blogger who’s written a lot on the subject of friendship.

    His name is Neel Nanda, and this comes from one of his 2021 posts.

    A close friendship is safe, it’s comfortable, it is emotionally close and vulnerable, which I think is one of the number one points there, built on mutual trust.

    And close friendship is uncommon.

    Now, while about one in 12.5 Americans have no close friends, a plurality, so they have five or more.

    So it sounds like we’re in pretty good shape.

    Unfortunately, of the things people report discussing with their close friends, their mental health ranks last, with 31% of females discussing this, and only 15% of men.

    Now, this comes from the Pew Research Center, a survey they did.

    So what are some of the benefits of close friendship?

    Well, one of them, of course, is support during crisis.

    Now, what else do you get from close friendships?

    Is it just like paying an insurance premium?

    You maintain friendships just in case you need them in time of crisis, but it’s just a pain in other ways?

    No.

    In fact, there’s a lot of meaning in the day to day of having close friends.

    I would argue that witnesses give your life meaning, sharing your life with other people, becoming intimately familiar with other people’s lives, and they with yours, is one of the most gratifying and interesting and joyful experiences I’ve had.

    Now, it also improves your mental and physical health.

    The mental health bit is a little more obvious, but the physical health aspects we’ll get to in just a minute, it makes you happier, and it gives you a sense of security.

    Knowing that there are people who are just radically accepting of you gives you a sense of belonging that I think is just unmatched.

    Now, on the topic of physical health, this comes from a PLOS Medicine Metaanalytic Review, a bunch of different studies, 2010.

    People with no friends, poor quality friendships, are twice as likely to die prematurely, a risk factor even greater than the effects of smoking 20 cigarettes per day.

    Now, close friendships also build empathy.

    According to studies of brain activity, the closer two friends become, the more similar their brainwaves become to the same stimulus.

    That means this blue circle expands as you get to know someone better.

    Now, all of this is great, but how do you make close friends?

    Well, I have a few tips for you, be vulnerable.

    It’s hard, and it’s not a standard action, but it is incredibly rewarding.

    Ask deep questions, nice weather, what are your insecurities?

    Now, this comes from a New York Times article called The 36 Questions That Lead to Love, it was published in 2015, and it was meant to give you kind of more of a guideline for romantic relationships, but as psychologist Marissa Franco, PhD, argues, there are fantastic benefits to incorporating some of the intimacy building activities that are traditionally present in romantic relationships into platonic ones as well.

    Now, we’ve talked about being vulnerable, asking questions, what else?

    Listen actively.

    You want to learn more about people, and you want them to realize that you’re paying attention.

    This is very important.

    And don’t be afraid to be weird.

    Chances are, you seem less weird than you expect.

    Now, I hope I’ve inspired you, all of you here, to go out and make a friend.

    This transcription was generated using Aiko on iOS, which is a GUI for OpenAI Whisper.

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  • Transitioning to WordPress!

    WordPress was the CMS I’d use when spinning up cPanel websites on a $30/year Namecheap shared hosting plan in the fifth grade. That is to say I’m somewhat familiar with it.

    For the past few years, this site has run on Hugo, which I covered in a previous post. In fact, I had a second site, running on the “notes.” subdomain, also using Hugo but on a different hosting service. That site was easier to update and ended up being where all of my writing went. That website has merged1 with my “main” one, and all of its content lives here now.

    This WordPress instance is running on EasyWP WPEngine because it’s fast and cheap reliable. They seem to have a strange hobby in suspending it for abuse, but hopefully that stops be fantastic so far.2 The theme is an ever-so-slightly modified version of the basic Twenty-Twenty Five one.

    I have ideas for things to write about, but I’ve learned my lesson about making promises in that department. I’m mostly looking forward to finishing this post so that I can point the domain to this site.


    1My second site is still up at the time of writing, but it’ll disappear soon, and all of its content is already here!

    2EasyWP didn’t work with a custom domain, at least the way I was trying to configure it. Well, it sort of did in that some of the content showed up on the custom domain, but all the site’s references were to pages on the EasyWP subdomain. This is probably just a setting in WordPress, but WPEngine had a Cyber Monday sale and cashback.