Need Not Apply

Gina and Gary are back with a shortened episode of Need Not Apply as they continue navigating the final stretch of their move. Between packing up nine years of life, sorting makeup and Pokémon cards, bruising toes, battling apartment chaos, and trying to stay sane, they still make time for one truly entitled customer story, a workplace hero moment, and a few interesting bits of news.

📚 Stories in This Episode

• Gina shares a real-life retail nightmare involving a high-status customer who attempts to return a heavily used, broken $50 lipstick with no packaging or proof of purchase...then does not even say thank you when an exception is made. (No link...this comes from Gina's life)

• A museum employee is called out by a visitor because of her colorful makeup, only for her supervisor to immediately stand up for her and escort the visitor out.

📰 News Stories Discussed

• A simulated fruit-fly brain called Stonkfly that was built to trade cryptocurrency using virtual neurons, market charts, and dopamine-style rewards for profitable trades.

• Pygmy raccoons on Cozumel Island in Mexico turning wet paper and sand into little balls to play a raccoon version of paper football — while researchers warn that their interaction with human trash poses a serious risk to the critically endangered population.

• Allegations that some LG smart TVs may collect extensive device and network data, including claims involving standby-mode audio logs — plus a conversation about privacy, smart devices, and whether anything is actually listening to us.

  
  

📬 Submit Your Work Horror Stories
Have a workplace nightmare, customer meltdown, retail story, question, or topic you want us to cover? Send it to: ✉️ [email protected].

🔗 Follow the Podcast
Instagram & TikTok: @NeedNotApplyPod
YouTube: Need Not Apply Podcast

⭐ Support the Show
Please leave us a rating and review, share the episode with a friend, and follow along on social media. We appreciate every listen, comment, and story submission...especially while we pack up our lives one cardboard box at a time.

“We’ll see you at the water cooler.”
“Don’t forget to punch out.”

Gina and Gary are back with episode 88 of Need Not Apply... sort of. After a full day of packing, moving, and attempting to survive the chaos of their temporary recording setup, Riverside decides to throw its own little tantrum and wipes out part of the episode. What remains is a shorter, slightly cursed installment featuring entitled behavior, animal facts, AI anxiety, sea creatures with possible anti-aging secrets, and Gary talking to himself for a few minutes.

📚 Stories in This Episode

• A grown man’s mother calls his workplace every 30 minutes to monitor what he is doing, what he is eating, and who he is talking to.

  
  

📰 News Stories Discussed

• Edward Worky, a Polish robot with a rucksack and diamond-studded Rolex that patrols a parking lot and chases away wild boars.

• OpenAI’s chief scientist arguing that AI development may need to slow down until safety, alignment, monitoring, and outside oversight can catch up.

• Research on sea squirts and plasmalogens, a naturally occurring fat molecule that showed promising effects on memory, inflammation, and even thicker, darker hair in aging mice.

  
  

📬 Submit Your Work Stories
Have a workplace nightmare, customer meltdown, retail story, question, or topic you want us to cover? Send it to: ✉️ [email protected].

🔗 Follow the Podcast
Instagram & TikTok: @NeedNotApplyPod
YouTube: Need Not Apply Podcast

⭐ Support the Show
Please leave us a rating and review, share the episode with a friend, and follow along on social media. We appreciate every listen, comment, and story submission...especially while we survive moving season and whatever Riverside is trying to do to us.

“We’ll see you at the water cooler.”
“Don’t forget to punch out.”

Gina and Gary are back with episode 87 of Need Not Apply, and this week they’re talking coworkers: the ones who take everything personally, the ones who think they’ve outsmarted management, and the ones who somehow turn a handmade gown and a harmless fashion walk into an HR situation. It’s workplace drama, petty behavior, awkward company parties, and a reminder that there is always one person determined to ruin a good time.

📚 Stories in This Episode

• The Manchild Co-Worker

• A longtime employee spends her days doing as little work as possible, takes extended breaks, avoids major events, and confidently assumes her boss will fight to keep her when the department splits. That does not go as planned.

• A worker designs and sews a stunning red satin gown for a formal company holiday party, wins Best Dressed, does a brief old-Hollywood-inspired fashion walk — and gets called into HR after one person complains about her dancing.

  
  

📰 News Stories Discussed

• A public-service announcement in Japan reminding people not to rearrange their shoes while paramedics are trying to save someone’s life.

• Why taking outdoor shoes off indoors may help limit the dirt, bacteria, pesticides, lead, and other contaminants that can get tracked into the home.

• Colorado’s first Fat Marmot Week, featuring a very large yellow-bellied marmot named Dawn, an OnlyFans account called OnlyMarms, and fundraising for long-term marmot research.

• Potential new tariffs on gaming consoles, laptops, servers, and hardware connected to the AI boom — along with a discussion about rising prices, physical media, and the increasingly expensive hobby of gaming. Gamer specific link is here [Kotaku]

• A Spanish study on pets and childhood mental health, including why the results about cats may be more complicated than the clickbait headline suggests.

• Reports that AliExpress may use a silent audio signal to help fingerprint devices, plus practical privacy conversations about cookies, browser tracking, Bluetooth headphones, and anti-fingerprinting tools.

  
  

📬 Submit Your Work Horror Stories
Have a workplace nightmare, customer meltdown, or retail story we need to hear? Send it to: ✉️ [email protected].

🔗 Follow the Podcast
Instagram & TikTok: @NeedNotApplyPod
YouTube: Need Not Apply Podcast

⭐ Support the Show
Please leave us a rating and review, share the episode with a friend, and follow along on social media. We appreciate every listen, comment, and story submission.

“We’ll see you at the water cooler.”
“Don’t forget to punch out.”

Gina and Gary are back with episode 86 of Need Not Apply, where they take a detour through the wild world of Ask Reddit. This week’s stories include a catastrophic pharmaceutical database mistake that somehow becomes a career win, a manager so cruel she makes everyone’s blood boil, and the kind of workplace chaos that proves a bad day can turn around when the right person steps in.

📚 Stories in This Episode

• A 21-year-old employee accidentally locks a massive pharmaceutical company out of its drug-document database...but what happens next will shock you.

• A young homeless worker is berated by a fast-food manager on their first shift, only for the assistant manager to do something that no one anticipated.

📰 News Stories Discussed

• The bizarre mating behavior of some marine flatworms, including "fencing” and the evolutionary battle over which worm has to carry the eggs.

• AI-run newsrooms publishing stories faster than traditional journalists, along with the risks of misinformation, synthetic reporting, and AI-created feedback loops.

• A Finnish study that found higher long-term screen time was associated with stronger teen cognitive-test performance — while emphasizing that the type of screen activity matters far more than the total number of hours.

• Research suggesting that more than one-third of new web pages may show signs of AI authorship, as online content becomes increasingly created, edited, and consumed by bots.

  
  

📬 Submit Your Work Horror Stories
Have a workplace nightmare, customer meltdown, or retail story we need to hear?

Send it to: ✉️ [email protected].

🔗 Follow the Podcast
Instagram & TikTok: @NeedNotApplyPod
YouTube: Need Not Apply Podcast

⭐ Support the Show
Please leave us a rating and review, share the show with a friend, and follow along on social media. We appreciate every listen, comment, and story submission.

“We’ll see you at the water cooler.”
“Don’t forget to punch out.”

Gina and Gary are back with episode 85 of Need Not Apply — after some technical difficulties, a delayed upload, and a lot of editing frustration. This week, they return to one of their favorite Reddit categories: TIFU, featuring a library program that nearly causes a fire-department response, a military burn pit that gets half a base unexpectedly high, and of course...the NEWS BREEAAK!

📚 Stories in This Episode

• The library Durian fruit incident...

• They hotboxed a military base.

• [BONUS STORY] A nervous employee responds “yes, have a good night” to their boss without knowing what they actually said.

  
  

📰 News Stories Discussed

• Essex County Turtle Back Zoo’s nearly $9 million hoofstock-barn expansion, which will support zebras and critically endangered bongos as part of coordinated conservation and breeding efforts.

• Nestlé’s AI-assisted food development for people using GLP-1 medications, including protein-focused products and nutrition plans designed to address muscle loss and appetite changes.

• Anthropic’s testing of multiple AI agents working on the same task, where agents allegedly escalated into sabotage, self-replicating malware, price collusion, and very human-looking workplace conflict.

📬 Submit Your Work Horror Stories
Have a workplace nightmare, customer meltdown, or retail story we need to hear? Send it to: ✉️ [email protected].

🔗 Follow the Podcast
Instagram & TikTok: @NeedNotApplyPod
YouTube: Need Not Apply Podcast

⭐ Support the Show
Please leave us a rating and review, share the show with a friend, and follow along on social media. We appreciate every listen, comment, and story submission.

“We’ll see you at the water cooler.”
“Don’t forget to punch out.”

Gina and Gary are back with episode 84 of Need Not Apply, where workplace drama escalates into full-on revenge plots. This week, they dive into two Pro Revenge stories featuring a bakery manager who gets caught in a web of her own lies and a former employee who pulls off an international long con involving golf, Rolexes, and one very expensive fake job offer. So, buckle up and grab your coffee because things are going to get...vengeful. MUWAHAHAHA!

📚 Stories in This Episode

• A young bakery employee gets fired before they can quit...then helps expose their manager’s alleged time theft, racism, health-code violations, stolen money, and much more.

• A former regional sales manager discovers that his boss may have pushed him out to conceal a shady spending scheme involving a fake demo company and the boss’s mistress.

  
  

📰 News Stories Discussed

• Reports of AI models accessing outside systems during testing, and why weak passwords and poor security practices make the situation even more concerning.

• “Normal F*cking Sunglasses,” a camera-free, battery-free, anti-AI parody product that sold out after taking aim at Meta’s smart glasses.

• Research suggesting that AI may not be eliminating jobs at the rate people expected — but could be slowing wage growth, particularly for lower-income workers.

• A Finnish study on how a single 30-minute sauna session temporarily increases immune-cell circulation, plus a conversation about whether the benefits last over time.

• The growing financial strain on Gen Z and millennials supporting both children and parents while trying not to drain their retirement savings.

  
  

📬 Submit Your Work Horror Stories
Have a workplace nightmare, customer meltdown, or retail story we need to hear? Send it to: ✉️ [email protected].

🔗 Follow the Podcast
Instagram & TikTok: @NeedNotApplyPod
YouTube: Need Not Apply Podcast

⭐ Support the Show
Please leave us a rating and review, share the episode with a friend, and follow along on social media. It helps the show grow more than you know.

“We’ll see you at the water cooler.”
“Don’t forget to punch out.”

Hold onto your coffee, folks. In this episode, we're diving into the craziest childcare stories that prove sometimes the biggest problem isn’t the toddlers — it’s the adults running the show. Spoiler alert: one coworker thought it was OK to put diaper cream on a child's vulva without gloves, and another left a classroom door wide open during a fire drill. Buckle up for a wild ride of incompetence, over-the-top parent drama, and workplace nightmares.

This Weeks Reddit Story:

Yes, actually, you DO have to pay for childcare! : r/entitledparents 

AI opens new era in cognitive studies of wild primates 

The scientists cracking the code of interspecies communication | CNN 

Gina and Gary are back with another chaotic episode of Need Not Apply, and this one has everything: a convenience store manager panic spiral, a pregnant customer on a mission, a bleak AI scare, and a heartfelt reminder that retail workers are sometimes the only people holding the world together. They celebrate Punch’s first birthday, and somehow end up talking about ghost fonts, spiders, and whether cats and dogs can read facial cues.

📚 Stories in This Episode

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  A new convenience store employee gets abandoned on their first day and slowly realizes they may be trapped there forever.

• A heavily pregnant customer breaks into a closed store just to buy one item, and the staff rally around her to make sure she gets what she needs.

📰 News Stories Discussed

• 
  

  Teens are facing the worst summer job market in decades, while an 11-year-old kid cleaning trash bins is somehow becoming a business success story.

• 
  

  A study on babies’ reactions to spiders and snakes raises questions about whether fear is learned or built into us.

• OpenAI’s rogue agent allegedly escaped its testing environment, hacked into Hugging Face, and triggered fresh fears about AI safety and control.

📬 Submit Your Work Horror Stories

Have a workplace nightmare, customer meltdown, or retail story we need to hear? Send it to: ✉️ [email protected].

🔗 Follow the Podcast

Instagram & TikTok: @NeedNotApplyPod

YouTube: Need Not Apply Podcast

⭐ Support the Show

Please leave us a like and a review, and follow us on our social media. It helps a ton.

“We’ll see you at the water cooler.”

“Don’t forget to punch out.”

Gina and Gary are back with episode 81, and this one is a full-on grab bag of workplace nonsense, hotel drama, nostalgic tangents, and animal chaos. This week’s episode opens with a parasite outbreak update, a Taylor Farms lettuce correction, a leather jacket auction, a detour into early-2000s nostalgia, and a few very strong opinions about AI, data centers, and digital media.

The front desk called because we're diving into two wild front desk stories.

📚 Stories in This Episode

• A hotel guest tries to book a room for a few hours and leave without paying...but the front desk agent is not fooled.

• A woman checks into a hotel under a fake name, and the reason might shock you...

📰 News Stories Discussed

• As PlayStation declares nobody wants physical discs anymore, Gen Z is helping fuel a 16% surge in US music CD sales

• When elephants play, they rapidly copy one another’s trunk and head movements — a form of bodily mimicry resembling the contagious smiles and laughter seen in humans

• China Unveils The World's First Non-invasive Platform To Control Robots With Your Mind

📬 Submit Your Work Horror Stories
Have a workplace nightmare, customer meltdown, or retail story we need to hear? Send it to: ✉️ [email protected].🔗 Follow the Podcast
Instagram & TikTok: @NeedNotApplyPod
YouTube: Need Not Apply Podcast

⭐ Support the Show
Please leave us a rating and review, and follow us on social media. It really helps the show grow.

💬
“We’ll see you at the water cooler.”
“Don’t forget to punch out.”

Gina and Gary are back with episode 80 of Need Not Apply, and this one is packed with workplace absurdity, bad judgment, and a few surprisingly intense news stories. The episode kicks off with a nationwide parasite outbreak including Taco Bell ingredient drama, a terrifying plane window incident, and a bizarre AI job apocalypse tangent before rolling into two workplace stories that are both equal parts infuriating and unbelievable.

📚 Stories in This Episode

• A pregnant employee is forced to sit through a two-hour meeting while actively in labor, even after telling her boss she needs to go to the hospital.

• Another worker’s peanut sauce lunch keeps getting stolen, until the thief eats it, has an allergic reaction, and lands in the hospital.

📰 News Stories Discussed

• The return of Neil the Seal in Tasmania, the huge elephant seal who keeps causing chaos around roads, cones, vans, and crowds of fans.

• Catnip lotion in Uganda being tested as a mosquito repellent that may work as well as DEET, with possible implications for malaria prevention.

• FanDuel’s personalized gambling messages and the growing ethical mess around sports betting addiction, athlete endorsements, and prediction markets.

📬 Submit Your Work Horror Stories
Have a workplace nightmare, customer meltdown, or retail story we need to hear? Send it to: ✉️ [email protected].🔗 Follow the Podcast
Instagram & TikTok: @NeedNotApplyPod
YouTube: Need Not Apply Podcast⭐ Support the Show
Please leave us a like and a review, and follow us on social media. It helps more than you know.“We’ll see you at the water cooler.”
“Don’t forget to punch out.”