In this solo monologue, TJ Walker adopts a grumpy‑old‑man success‑coach persona to comment on four current news items while promoting his Ultimize online courses. He begins with “Coffee Gate,” critiquing a TikTok recruiter’s admonition against Gen Z candidates bringing iced coffee to interviews and offers blunt interview etiquette advice. He then shifts to higher education, describing a tenured comparative literature professor’s lawsuit after being laid off by The New School, using the case to illustrate the erosion of tenure and the new career options for academics. Next, Walker discusses Tucker Carlson’s recent NPR interview in which Carlson calls for Donald Trump’s removal via the 25th Amendment, framing Carlson’s stance as a rare conservative critique of Trump. Finally, Walker examines a Gallup poll showing 43 % of Americans now view socialism positively, debunking alarmist rhetoric by pointing out that many public services (schools, fire departments, Social Security) already embody socialist elements while emphasizing America’s continued love for small business. Throughout, he intersperses humor, cultural references, and a call to action to visit ultimize.com for free communication and habit‑building courses.
Chapters
Ultimize. America has a new scandal, and it's not the war, it's not the economy, it's a Gen Z kid walking into a job interview holding an iced coffee. Finally, a crisis with a straw. This is Filtered. I'm TJ Walker. Today I put on my grumpy old man success coach hat for Coffee Gate. A fired professor learns tenure isn't forever. Tucker Carlson wants Trump bundled up like a toddler, and I'll explain why your local fire department is a communist plot. Here's what happened. A Florida recruiter named Caitlin Wainanen posted a TikTok telling Gen Z not to bring iced coffee to interviews because it makes the meeting look like a stop on your list of errands. 2 days later, America had a scandal. They're calling it Coffee Gate. Starbucks weighed in. People online asked, would you bring iced coffee to a funeral? Depends, how long is the funeral? Then the Today Show got involved. Jenna Bush Hager called iced coffee the pacifier for a lot of young people while holding an iced coffee with whipped cream. That's not a critique, that's a confession with a straw. One young woman told the New York Times that this is avocado toast all over again. Millennials were told they couldn't buy houses because of avocado toast. Now Gen Z can't get jobs because of iced coffee. At this rate, Gen Alpha will be denied a mortgage over a Capri Sun. A recruiter says Gen Z shouldn't bring iced coffee to job interviews, and the internet is furious. So let me put on my communication success coach hat on. Kids, it's called work. It's not called brunch. It's not a comparative literature seminar where you sit in the back row with 300 other students and nobody knows your name. In an interview, everything you say, wear, and carry sends a message about your work ethic and your attitude. I know you're more comfortable with your iced coffee or your mochaccino or your boba tea with the little tapioca eyeballs. Fair enough. Let's talk about comfort. Now, for years I ran my business from home and And I was most comfortable in my bathrobe. So picture it, you walk into your interview, iced coffee in hand, I'm sitting there in my bathrobe, loosely tied. Creepy, right? Now you know how I feel about your iced coffee. And no, I never interviewed people in my bathrobe. Sorry if I sound like a grumpy old man. I am a grumpy old man. I have a course on it. But here's some tough love. You say the iced coffee relaxes you, especially at a morning interview. Let me fill you in on a little secret. No employer cares about your comfort, at least at this stage of the relationship. They might tell you they do. They'll put it on the website. Our people are our most important asset, right next to the page about layoffs. At this stage, they do not care about you. You're not a person yet. You're a PDF. Your job in an interview is not to act like an entitled little kid with a sippy cup. Your job is to convince the interviewer you'll be good at the work, that you'll solve problems, that you'll fit in, that you'll help the organization make money. Nobody in history ever got hired for being well hydrated. Get the offer first. Then, if your boss turns out to be a jerk who times your bathroom breaks and won't let you stand up for 4 hours, By all means, write the nasty online review, job hunt on company time, bring your iced coffee to the next interview if you want, but first things first, get the job. The cold brew will wait. It's literally designed to. And speaking of comparative literature seminars, Paul Kotman, a tenured comparative literature professor, is suing the New School in New York for laying him off. His lawsuit says the school is on the cutting edge of dismantling tenure. Now, I hate to sound like I'm defending the man against the little guy, but at this point, second-tier, third-tier, and fourth-rate private colleges are not the man. They're Blockbuster Video franchises. They're one late fee away from becoming a Spirit Halloween. The new school has 20% fewer students and merged 4 colleges into 2. Cutman got 6 months' notice and an email saying there's no longer an institutional need for him. Ouch, that hurts. But Professor, times have changed. There are thousands of colleges. You can job hunt across the country, even across the world. Professors couldn't do that in 1636 when Harvard opened. Back then, if you got fired, your career options were blacksmith or witch. Or do what I did. Teach online, build your own academy. You might make 10 times what any college ever paid you, and it doesn't have to be a pile of sleaze like Trump University, which paid $25 million to settle fraud claims. The bar is on the floor. You can step over it in loafers. And if you really were treated unfairly, make a stink. Colleges hate that, and it works. After Charlie Kirk was killed, Austin Peay State University in Tennessee fired a tenured theater professor, Darren Michael, for sharing an article that quoted Kirk's own words about gun deaths. The school later admitted it didn't follow its own tenure rules. It gave him his job back and paid him half a million dollars. That's not a firing, that's a sabbatical with a signing bonus. I'm not saying it's easy. I'm saying colleges are struggling more than ever And individual teachers have more options than ever. The new school is Blockbuster Video. You're the one with the streaming service. Act like it. Would you like to be the sort of successful person who is dominating news, at least in your industry? Well, if so, it's time to up your skills. At ultimize.com, I've created online courses to help you do that. Now, here's the thing. No obligation. You can get a free course on communication skills, a free course on how to build better habits. All you have to do is go to ultimize.com. That's ultimize.com. No obligation. Go there now. Speaking of people who can get fired and turn making a stink into a career, Tucker Carlson in the news. Tucker Carlson, who was fired by Fox News in 2023, went on NPR this week and said Donald Trump should be removed from office. Not voted out, removed. His exact words, quote, he should have been removed from office by his own cabinet secretaries the moment he threatened a nuclear attack. Steve Inskeep asked if he meant the 25th Amendment. Carlson said, yes, that's correct. He should have been bundled up and taken out. Bundled up like a toddler in a snowsuit. I picture the cabinet chasing the president around the Oval Office with tiny mittens. Sir, arms up, arms up! And JD Vance by the door holding the car keys, trying very hard not to smile. Carlson's reason is that at the United Nations, Trump threatened to annihilate Iran. Carlson calls that threatening nuclear war, and he says there's no greater crime than that. Now, I'm no fan of Tucker Carlson, but it's time for some honesty in America. Thinking Donald Trump is the worst president in our history is not a liberal position. It's not a progressive position. It's not a Democratic Party hack position. Here's a conservative without a liberal bone in his body, a man who has called Trump flamboyantly corrupt, and he detests Trump not for petty reasons, for public policy, for threatening, in Carlson's words, to eliminate The human race. Let's be honest about the last 3 Democratic presidents. The case against Clinton, Obama, and Biden came almost entirely from people saying essentially, he's not conservative enough. Moderates and liberals didn't love every policy, but they thought those men deserved to be president, deserved respect, deserved a fair shot at reelection. Nobody honest can say centrists, liberals, progressives, and conservatives all despise Bill Clinton. Sorry, they can't. Some people despise his saxophone, but that's it. The same cannot be said about Trump. When you've lost Tucker Carlson, you haven't lost the left. You've lost the guy who used to write your talking points. So if you're still with Trump after this, you're not a conservative. Figuratively, you're a cult member. Back in 2016, Trump said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose voters. He wasn't bragging. He was describing the membership agreement. There's no philosophy left, no ideology left, just a red hat and a sign-up sheet. And if you want to scare that crowd, you don't need Trump. You just need one word: socialism. A new Gallup poll finds 43% of Americans now view socialism positively, a record in Gallup's trends since 2010. And the right is already screaming, we're turning into the Soviet Union! Relax. Do you support your local public school? Congratulations, you support socialism. Free education for all children in public school is literally on the to-do list in Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto. Your kid's bake sale is a Marxist sale. Fire department? Socialism. Police department? Socialism. A road that isn't a private toll road? More socialism. The manifesto also called for heavy progressive income tax. So if you file a 1040, Karl Marx would like to thank you for your service. One city tries free buses and people scream, now we're Cambodia! No, you're Cleveland with a bus pass. Here's what the Chicken Littles forget. The beauty of American capitalism is that it borrows the best ideas from every system while keeping most, not all, but most of the economy private. The same Gallup poll found 95% of Americans love small business. Nobody's nationalizing your nail salon. And here's the part nobody wants to say. Every American over 65 gets a government pension And government health insurance— that's Social Security and Medicare— your grandmother in her Boca condo is running a better socialist program than Brezhnev ever did, and she will fight if you ever touch it. So enough already with the socialism bugaboo. Make the argument case by case. Free buses, good idea or bad idea? I'm open to both. Argue it. Public preschool, worth it or not? Argue it. But stop yelling Stalin every time someone wants the library to stay open past 5. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to drive down a socialist highway to a socialist park in my bathroom holding an iced coffee. Don't worry, I'm not interviewing anyone. I'm TJ Walker. Ultimize.
