Hurricane Milton, Starbucks Sued & Port Workers Are BACK! | Biz To Biz Podcast

What's up everybody, it's Justin live from B2B Vault, the biz to biz podcast sponsored by Nationwide Payment Systems, hosted by this guy, the Ben Stiller of payment processing himself, Allen Kopelman. What's up, bro?

What's up? What everybody's talking about today, it's not our usual day to record, but the weather is not so good here in Florida.

Sunny South Florida has turned into stormy South Florida. Quite cloudy and dreary out there.

Last week we had a, we got caught the side of Helene, and now this week we're getting pounded by Uncle Milty.

Ayo.

Milton.

Pause there, buddy.

What?

Pounded by Uncle Milton.

I'm joking.

No diddy. Aye, that was a lot. Ayo. Yeah, Milton is headed towards Tampa.

It's a mass evacuation.

Yeah, I feel bad for those people up north. Uh, stay up north though. I, I seen people like trying to come down here and that's just not a good idea. Like, I don't know why you would try to go south. Like, go north, bro.

Well, because I read this morning that they said there wasn't a hotel room between Tampa and Atlanta.

Oh yeah, for sure, I understand that part, but at the end of the day, like I just, they're not certain if it's even gonna hit Tampa, but I'm not a meteorologist and we're not weathermen. I don't know. The storm is massive, so it's gonna hit the whole west coast of Florida really bad.

Exactly.

So I feel terrible for all those people out there. They just went through one and now they got to go through another one. So buckle your seat belts, ladies and gentlemen.

Yep. Yeah, when you see the storm chaser guys are all up in the Tampa. Jim Cantore, Reed Timmer, those are your big storm chasers, those guys.

Yeah, be safe, they're out there.

So that's what's going on with Milton. Ben Stiller, great actor. His dad was a good actor. His dad was on Seinfeld.

Oh yeah, that's right.

His— and Ben Stiller's been in a lot of funny movies. I was just mentioning Along Came Polly.

Probably Meet the Parents.

Meet the Parents, another good movie with Ben Stiller.

Meet the Fockers.

Meet the Fockers. Yeah, he's good, he's good, like him.

So he's all right, man. I don't know, Ben Stiller's funny. He used to be— I don't know, I don't know what he's— does he even do movies anymore?

I don't know, not much.

He's rich.

Yeah, whatever, you make a few movies, you make a few mil. Look, look at, uh, I didn't know this, but you know, you look at, uh, Matthew McConaughey, his very first movie. People still talk about the first movie he was in, Dazed and Confused, where he just said, "All right, all right, all right." Oh yeah, that's right. You know, and he's famous for that. I didn't even know that was his first movie. And he says it all the time, that whenever he's doing stuff.

He's a good actor.

Yeah, I like Matthew McConaughey. He's definitely a wild guy.

Wild crazy. I was scrolling through X this morning. Yeah. Just trying to see what was going on. And did you see that Geico, the insurance company, isn't insuring Cybertrucks?

And there's a few—

If you have a Cybertruck, they're canceling your insurance.

I see, I've seen a few insurance companies say, well, they will not insure any electric cars. Oh yeah, or there's exclusion, because I looked into buying a Tesla, and when I talked to the insurance company, they were like, oh well, there's a bunch of exclusions. And I was like, what? And they were like, yeah, the battery's excluded, there's like a electrical failure is excluded, like the car, right? It's not covered.

No, I'm saying it's just Whatever, bro. What I'm saying is Google is refusing to insure Cybertrucks over design flaws. So I thought that was hilarious.

Well, somebody needs to smash that Geico thing. Big lizard.

Why?

I don't know. Need buy him a Tesla. Elon Musk needs to buy him a Tesla.

I don't think they want those. No, but Do you see that in related to that, like the fact that the Cybertruck is just shit, uh, the Rivian brand, right? That thing is awesome. There was a guy in North Carolina, he, uh, you know, he was obviously in the path of Helene last week, right? Parked his car in a spot that he wasn't really, you know, he didn't have much choice, so he just left it there. Not much hopes, right? Got back, it was about 150 feet away from where he parked, so it floated a little bit. He said he hopped in and started right up. The Rivian is 100% waterproof. Like, wow, no water got in his— into the cab, nothing. The front is where the trunk is, right? You know, it's a pickup. Well, they have a couple of them, but the pickup, the front's the— he's— everything was bone dry in there. He had his side compartment super dry, no water on the floor mats.

Nice.

I mean, if the is dumb expensive.

Like, yeah, it's crazy expensive.

Yeah, so, but that was awesome. I thought that was really cool. I love those cars, man. I, I've been a fan of those for a really long time. There's another brand of, of vehicles that are just ridiculous. Maybe one day I would really like to, to own one of those.

The Rivian, I think.

Not a Rivian, it was a different car. I can't remember the name of it. It's like a Basically, it's like an apocalypse mobile. Oh shit, like it's 100%, uh, well, it's gas and electric. It's got solar panels, bulletproof glass. Oh, it's waterproof. Like you could just take it.

Need that for like Walking Dead.

You need that for South Florida.

That's crazy.

Yeah, so I just, uh Shout out to Geico. I can't wait to get off of your insurance company.

That's horrible. And you know that what's horrible is in the wake of all these storms, you know, these insurance companies don't do the right thing, and it's horrible, you know, man.

The fact that FEMA's sending those people $750 in North Carolina is just disgusting. I don't know what is going on, man, but I I don't want to get—

let's not, let's not go down there.

Debbie Downer and shit. Yeah, man, there's enough negative shit in the world.

No, the kind of bad thing is, is they're kind of like disrupting private people from bringing in stuff and everything.

What are you talking about?

FEMA. They're like blocking people from making like deliveries of—

I've seen some really messed up shit, bro. Yeah, like they're like destroying encampments. They're making people leave. They're flying helicopters really low and destroying people's tents that are like trying to hand out food. Yeah, it's whoever's running the show right now, bro, you ain't running shit, and you guys are playing with fire. But anyway, I digress.

All right, so here's some crazy news that I saw. The first story is Panera Bread. I didn't even know they were being sued. Being sued by a whole bunch of people. Apparently they had some drink called Charged Lemonade.

Yeah, you didn't hear about this? No, this has been going on for a while, right?

But now they settled. So they have a bunch of lawsuits against them.

They like killed a kid or some shit.

This girl, 21-year-old student, drank it. She didn't know that it was an energy drink, apparently. And she had some sort of heart condition, but she went into— it's like she drank it, like an hour later went into cardiac arrest. And then they settled with her today because they don't want to go to court for an undisclosed amount of money.

That doesn't mean shit. That could be a little bit or a lot, right?

But we don't know.

I mean, it really depends on her attorney, right?

And then they're also blamed for another death in Florida and two other cases where people said that they got permanent heart injuries from drinking the drink. I mean, I know someone who drank a Red Bull mixed with vodka and had a heart attack from it. They probably had a heart problem.

The energy drinks are not all what it's cracked up to be. I mean, the, the guy, what's his name, John Logan, Jake Paul, Paul Logan, whatever the hell, those guys.

Yeah.

He's got that Prime energy drink, right? They're pulling that shit off the shelves right now too.

Wow, that's crazy.

So I mean, the fact that little ass kids— I see little kids like running around with a Prime, right? Like, are you shitting me?

Yeah, they're trying to—

mom and dad need to be slapped, yo.

Like, yeah, but I don't know if they let you buy that at the store. Yeah, well, that's a problem. They shouldn't let them ride in the store.

What do you mean they did? So then they can't buy Red Bulls?

I don't know, maybe they shouldn't be able to.

I don't think they should. I think that shit is like, they should be, that's like an adult thing.

Yeah, should be 18 or 21.

18, whatever. The 21 thing is so stupid.

So what else you got?

Not much. Visa bought a cybersecurity firm called FeatureSpace.

Interesting.

We were talking about the fraud last week and push notifications, so FeatureSpace is fraud detection software. So they're probably listening to the pod.

Yeah, probably. They're getting some ideas from B2B Vault. Visa, if you want to come on the podcast, we'd love to have a sponsorship. Yeah, we'd love a representative to come on. Allen Kopelman, come on. Yeah, you can sponsor the pod. Yes, speaking of that, Comcast Xfinity notified 237,000 customers that a collection company that they used to do business with got breached. Their data is being held for ransom in a ransomware attack, and the names, addresses, and socials, etc., etc., has been exposed. I guess the ransomware people want some They want some cash. Well, you know, the longshoremen, they're listening to the podcast too. They ended their strike after they heard the podcast, man.

That I can only imagine. Did you see the guy?

He—

if you see the video of like before, like before the negotiation happens, like he looked like a mob boss, right? And then in this one, he looked like the, you know, standard white dad that lives in New Jersey.

Okay.

Like, the way he was talking, everything was— his, his energy, demeanor, everything was totally different, bro. It was funny as hell.

We'll have to get Sean to do a side-by-side post.

It's, it's like night and day. It's, it's hilarious. Like, dude's whole attitude changed and shit. We just wanted to get my guys back to work. He's like— it's totally like— you see, I can't wait till you see it. It's hilarious.

So here's another thing, you know, talking about, you know, I always talk about, you know, businesses need to figure out, you know, new ways to do business, right? We've talked about it on the podcast before, right? So today I'm reading an interesting article, Sam's Club. And so they're going to change warehouse shopping. They're opening a new test store in Texas, the first one of its kind. Where the cashiers used to be, they're going to have like couches and everything so you can just chill where the cashiers used to be. Not going to be any more cashiers. You're going to get an app on your phone, and as you go around with your cart, you just scan an item and then it's in your shopping cart.

Mhm.

And then when you're done, if there's any, like, something big, you could also mark it to get local delivery, or they can bring it out to the curb. And then you're just going to pay, like in the airport. Like the airport? Yeah, you're just gonna pay. I'm talking about—

yeah, you've been in the airport. You grab a basket, you put everything in the basket, and then you just— it knows what you put in the bag.

Exactly. It's wild.

That shit is scary.

Yeah. So there—

so imagine the eyes on you.

Yeah, there's cameras everywhere.

There's got to be like 360-degree angles.

So now they said all the employees that were working on like cashiering and all that kind of stuff. They won't have to have those employees doing that. Those employees, what they're going to be doing is, is people that order on the app and then want to do a curbside pickup, they're going to be picking orders. They're going to be picking orders. And then also they're going to offer local delivery for now. Huh?

Picking orders for now until automation hits the ass.

Yeah, until there's a robot body in there, a robot going around putting this.

Yeah, I'm not a fan of it. I, I mean, I totally understand automation and This guy, he made—

And the other thing—

So real quick, to the automation aspect, we were talking about the longshoremen and some guy made a comment last week about how shame on these people for doing this at this time or whatever, and that he's going to, he lived on the East Coast or whatever, and he's going to vote for whatever processes or bills that push automation.

Right.

What a douchebag, bro.

He was a politician?

No, just some, I don't know, just some guy making comments about it. And I said, bro, you are an asshole.

Listen, today anybody can get on social and say whatever they want.

Twitter fingers, bro.

So then I see another video after the longshoreman thing and these workers are upset. I don't know what state it's in, but apparently Amazon now has robots in the warehouse. Yeah. And they equipped this.

Oh, you just seen it? I've seen that video too, right?

So they just fired all these workers in the parking lot crying and shit. Yeah, they're all in the park.

I'm sorry, I don't mean to laugh. I really—

they're all in the parking lot flipping out because the lady is literally breaking down though, like she lost her parent, right?

I get it, you know, it's tough to find a job, but shit, come on, man, get it together. There's another— so I'm sure can find a job. I don't know. I'm sorry.

They pay pretty good. Amazon.

I'm really not sorry though.

No, no, but it's just, it's just crazy. Soon, I don't know what's next. Amazon's gonna have self-driving trucks. They'll have a robot on there that's gonna hop out of the truck, bring your package.

Oh, drone.

Or a drone.

Drone delivery. I have a strong belief within the next 5 years there's going to be so much traffic in our skies because of that drone.

Let's see if we can order something to the office and have them drop it off with a drone.

That would be cool.

That would be pretty cool, right? Have a drone delivery to the office. Yeah, I saw—

were you able—

I saw a guy getting a Chick-fil-A delivered and a drone delivered it from the Chick-fil-A.

Drone wars.

Yeah, like the drone flew up by the guy's house The guy can't— gate sent him a message.

Instead of Attack of the Clones, it's gonna be Attack of the Drones.

He came outside, and then the drone lowered down the bag of food. The guy took the food. That was it.

That's how they're getting contraband inside of the prisons.

Really? With drones? That's crazy.

They can't fucking stop it either.

I bet you they can't.

They got snipers. They've been shooting the shit out of somebody.

What's that TV show we like, the one that's on Paramount? The one that's about those guys in that small town, Kingstown?

Mayor of Kingstown.

Yeah, Mayor of Kingstown. The guy was taking tennis balls walls.

And in, in that one, they started at later in a, like, season, they started using drones to do it.

Yeah, that's crazy.

And apparently that is a real big problem all over the— not just in the United States, all over the world. Like, it's an issue. They can't fucking— they're like, imagine just some guy in his cell and they got, you know, the one that has the window, and you know what I mean? And they just got their hand out there and they're just getting It's possible they can't see it like at night.

Oh, they can't like at night? Yeah, they better get these guys up on the top with the night vision and like they tell people that's—

they, they— yeah, man, that's, that's a, that's some wild shit.

You need like Mark Wahlberg the shooter up there watching for drones and shoot them out of the sky from Turkey. Turkey. Oh yeah, the guy from Turkey. Yeah, with no equipment, you just pull the pistol. John Wick. Yeah, you see, can—

speaking of John Wick, he— that guy is great, man. Shout out to Keanu Reeves, bro.

Keanu Reeves.

He, uh, he had his first race. He, you know, he's got his— he's like a race car. Yeah, like, he just— he just got— he just finished his first race this weekend.

That's cool.

Yeah.

And just think about it, before all that, he was doing Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Which is one of the greatest movies of all time.

No way, dude. Yeah, I used to love that shit when I was a kid.

Bill and Ted, the first one.

The second one I didn't like.

The second one was weird.

They just, they just ran with it. They, it was, they're making some money.

Yeah, let's put out part 2, 20 years later, and make some bank. Yeah, because it was COVID.

No, that was part 3, what you're talking about.

Oh, part 3.

Yeah, part 2. It was like Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Oh, Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey.

Oh yeah, Bogus Journey.

Some bullshit like that.

Right. That was crazy.

I don't know. But, uh, this weekend, man, I was— my wife was freaking out. I don't know if it was just in my area, but, um, all the ATMs, she went to like 5 different ATMs. She was trying to do laundry, right? And, uh, every ATM was just down. Black screen.

That's crazy. I didn't even read about that. Yeah, I wonder what was going on.

I was under— the only thing that I could think of is maybe everybody was running to the ATM for the—

could be they're out of cash.

Yeah, that's what I'm— that was the only thing. But usually they're not just black, they just say out of service.

Well, that might have unplugged it in the store.

Well, she didn't— I didn't ask.

No, but I'm just saying they might have just unplugged Yeah, they could have unplugged the machine. Yeah, we did. I did see a lot of activity on ATMs over the weekend. And even though they're in like nightclubs, restaurants, hotels, there was a lot of activity.

People were hurricane partying.

Yeah, I'm telling you, they were partying at the strip club. I'll tell you that much. Yeah, they had their hurricane party on. So I read this other story. This one, Justin will be like, holy moly. So they come at, you know, the Stockholm, that's where they give out the Nobel Prize. So that the Nobel Prize for medicine that they gave out today for the discovery of microRNA and its crucial role on how multicellular organisms grow and live. So it says there are two scientists from the, I think they're from the United, Victor Ambrose and Gary Rufkun. Ruvkun, R-U-V-K-U-N, hard to pronounce. And they helped explain how cells specialize and develop into different types, such as muscle and nerve cells, even though all cells of an individual contain the same set of genes and instructions for growing and staying alive. I don't know, I'm not like down with like them being able to alter your RNA or your DNA in your body.

I don't know.

That's kind of scary.

I don't know, man. I don't like stirring or messing with anything that was previously designed by something that we have no idea what did.

It's just, it's a little crazy.

You're asking for some shit.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I seen a video this morning, I don't know, probably super fake, you know. It's like one of those, uh, giant, um, like alligator-looking dinosaurs, right, that had fins though.

Where'd they find that?

It was an ocean camera.

Oh, an ocean camera. It's possible.

Below, like, by a, uh, by like an oil platform.

They find weird stuff over by those.

But it's supposed to be extinct. But, but then you think to yourself, like, the ocean is totally unexplored.

Like, oh yeah, first of all, the ocean takes up like two-thirds of the Earth, and we have barely touched shit.

Like, we have no idea what's in that water, right? Like, no idea. And in my brain, deep the way some places— exactly, the Mariana Trench and shit like that. Like, bro, you can You can lose some shit down here easily. Anyway, so for me, it's not like far-fetched to believe that there's a lot of big fish that stay in very deep in the water, right? But also the way that the water is warming, right? Could that maybe possibly like get them more active, you know what I mean? Like, I don't know, because they were saying like that one time we were talking on a podcast, they were following the shark and they have never seen a shark travel at the speed that it was, right? And then all of a sudden, how far it went, how deep it went, right? And all of a sudden it just disappeared. And like, literally nothing else could do— like, could eat this size of shark. But yet they find like poop with the tracker in it, right? Which means that this thing was digested, right?

So I mean, there's some pretty big whales.

I can tell you that.

Sharks though, dude, I've been— I went on—

I mean, I don't know, maybe a whale shark will eat a shark, but I just don't understand. Whale sharks are super slow.

Yeah, but I've been in— like when I was in Cabo We went on this boat and then we saw like the whales. Dude, some of these whales, they were bigger than the boat we were on.

Of course.

I mean, it was insane.

Yeah, I mean, I'm not— yeah, no dispute.

I mean, it was insane.

I was like, wow. But whales don't eat sharks and not bite them.

Well, who knows what's under there, you know? Yeah, maybe Aquaman is not fake. Maybe it's real.

Maybe there is Atlantis.

Maybe there is some—

they said Atlantis is right off the coast of Florida.

Maybe they— what's happening?

I mean, I, I take that back. It's in the middle of the desert in Africa.

Oh, okay.

Somewhere in Africa. Yeah, it's in Africa.

Yeah, I don't know if there's real Aquaman. They need to talk to Aquaman and say, hey, come over and stop these hurricanes.

Aquaman ain't stopping no hurricanes. He didn't like humans. Okay, well, we're destroying the Earth and killing his fish and eating them and stuff. He does not like humans. He does not like humans, bro. Namor? Oh, I'm thinking of Namor. I'm sorry, that's not Aquaman. Namor is from Marvel. Aquaman was, uh, DC sucks so bad, dude. Do you see the reviews for Jacob? Jacob 2? What up, Jake? Joker 2? No, Joker 2, you know, the movie that just came out with Joaquin Phoenix? It's terrible.

It's terrible.

Like, that's what people are saying. Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 39.

Oh, I heard it wasn't good. Yeah, I saw something.

But when you turn the Joker into a musical with Lady Gaga, it sounded kind of cool at first, right? Right. Like, Lady Gaga being Harley Quinn, you know, she's very, you know, I don't know much about Lady Gaga. It's not my type of music. I don't listen to it, you know what I mean? But she seems like she's kind of like out there, right?

Right.

And then Joaquin Phoenix, he's— I like him as the, the Joker because the Joker was tall, lanky, awkward, you know what I mean?

Yeah.

When they make the Joker— Heath Ledger was a great Joker, no, no, no, no doubt. But like Jared Leto as a Joker was just—

no.

But yeah, so from my understanding, this is a terrible, terrible movie. And total waste of time.

Batman used to be great when it was on TV. It was really corny.

Jack Nicholson? Oh no, the other guy. What was his name? I remember they used to watch it. I used to love that show. Yeah, Penguin, the Riddler.

When they would punch people, you'd see kapow. Yeah, kapooey, kapoo, kapow, bam. It would have a big thing explode on the screen.

Yeah, I remember that. I was a young kid, man, when that show came on. Yeah, that was the— who was the Joker in that though?

I don't remember who. You have to look it up on your phone. Yeah, no, we'd have to look up all the characters of the old Batman. We'll do a podcast and talk about Batman.

Batman? I don't know. I'm not a DC guy.

Okay, Marvel guy. I don't know. I don't— I just— I like watching anything as long as it's interesting to watch.

You see Deadpool yet? Wolverine?

I haven't seen it yet. Me neither. Terrible.

Yeah, we'll probably just wait for all that stuff to come to the TV.

Yeah, there hasn't been any like really good movies on. I wait for all of it to come to Netflix.

Deadpool Wolverine is supposed to be really good.

Netflix or come to Amazon Prime, then I watch it on my big screen. I go to the movies once in a while. I like the movies.

I haven't—

yeah, Deadpool was out. It was packed. You couldn't even get in there.

I think it's still in the theaters, in some theaters. Yeah, so I might try to sneak to that with my old lady.

So let us know, like, what do you think about energy drinks? Should we have— should there be an age limit? And then, are you excited to go to Sam's Club? No cashiers.

I don't use Sam's Club.

Okay, well, I'm just saying, like, other people are gonna copy that model, probably.

I don't know, man. I think it's— that's not a good idea to me.

But takes away from the shopping experience. When I go to this, like, when I go to, uh, to Costco, I always go to the regular cashiers. I don't go to self-checkout. If I have one or two items, yes, but I want to keep the cashiers working.

Yeah, we say no to automation over here, man. But I don't know, stay safe out there. Batten down the hatches. Kiss the babies. Call your mom, tell her that you love her.

And you can't return—

if you still have her.

And you can't return all the toilet paper you bought.

You cannot return toilet paper, hand sanitizer, paper towels, rice, paper towels, or Lysol. So Don't be a dumbass and go and buy everything this weekend. Please don't do that. Please.

Exactly.

I got two packs of toilet paper in my closet.

Yeah.

And I said, I don't think we need more. Right. We have some diaper wipes if you need it. You know what I mean?

No, 'cause people overbuy for the hurricane.

Yeah, no, it's crazy. Everything is gone.

So everybody stay safe during Milton. Peace out. Carpe diem.

Smash the subscribe button for us, please. Peace.

Peace out.