Jocko Underground: How To Deal With Public Transgressions Against You from Someone.

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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is the Jocko Underground Podcast, number 213, sitting here with Echo Charles. We have some, we have some questions from the field, from the front lines, from the go zone.

• 0:10Speaker 01

  From the go zone, yeah.

• 0:12Jocko Willink?

  And we are going to attempt to supply you with answers, guidance, or at a minimum, courses of action to follow.

• 0:23Speaker 01

  All right, first question. I try to live by letting small transgressions go, like not speeding up to cut someone off when slowing down gets the same result. But I recently had a situation that made me question where the line is between letting things go and standing up for myself. My wife and I went along checkout line at a busy big box store. We got behind a woman with a few items and her husband suddenly rolled up with a flat bed full of stuff and started unloading. I tell him, "Hey, bro, you can't just do that." He told me to shut up and mind my own business. I asked the cashier if he was really, if she was really gonna allow it, and she looked overwhelmed.

• 1:04Speaker 01

  A manager came over and instead of addressing him, he moved me to another checkout line. I felt embarrassed afterward and realized I probably should have let it go. But my question is, where is the line? And what, at what point do you stand up and say, "That's not okay"?

• 1:23Speaker 01

  If no one confronts disrespectful behavior, won't people keep doing it? How do you balance self-respect with knowing when to walk away?

• 1:34Jocko Willink?

  Well, all right, let's, let's break this down. This is actually a very, a very important question.

• 1:40Speaker 01

  So just to clarify, because, because there was a part that where, okay, so he was in line. A lady was in front of him with a few items. Meanwhile... That lady with a few items, her husband was apparently shopping still, picking up, you know, a final few items, which happened to be a truckload. Yeah, a bunch of them and just started unloading. So she hit the line first, got the little placing line in a way. Started, you know, unloading and then he came in with some additional stuff.

• 2:12Jocko Willink?

  Which technically, I guess, maybe you think I'm gonna start to review queuing etiquette.

• 2:19Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, standing in line.

• 2:21Jocko Willink?

  Right? Cause that's the thing, right? We could go there and start talking about like, is that a, is that violate, is that a violation?

• 2:28Speaker 01

  Right, yeah.

• 2:28Jocko Willink?

  Do you think it's a violation?

• 2:33Speaker 01

  Put it this way, I could get there to, to, look, if I was tasked with finding the violation in this very specific scenario, in general, I could, I could probably find it. But at the end of the day, in a practical sense, when you're there and it's happening, it's not a violation. Like if, I wouldn't be like, hey, it wouldn't move me. I wouldn't feel disrespected.

• 2:53Jocko Willink?

  Check, check.

• 2:55Speaker 01

  I have a, I have a situation like this, which I'll go over after. We'll see what you say.

• 2:58Jocko Willink?

  Well, it's just interesting because there are, let's say, perhaps unwritten rules that make this a violation or not a violation, right? And really it depends on who you are, depends on where you grew up, depends, like, there's a bunch of things that roll into this, this scenario. Um, but I'm not gonna talk about that at all because it doesn't really matter.

• 3:24Speaker 01

  Yes, that's not even the question.

• 3:25Jocko Willink?

  You know what I mean? So the question is, where's the line? And I'll tell you what, very, if I try to draw a very distinct line, like you wanna know where the line is? Cause it's very easy to sit here and go, well, you know, someone does that kind of, well, if you wanna actually draw a line, to me, it's physical threat to the safety of my family or my friends or me or the innocent like a bystander, right? Meaning someone is going to, someone is in the act of or indicating that they are intentionally going to harm someone, right? Attack someone. Okay, so cool. Like if they cross that line, I'm going into action.

• 4:07Jocko Willink?

  By the way, they're not gonna know it. I'm not gonna talk about it. There's not gonna be any words. Nothing's gonna come out of my mouth. I'm gonna, I'm gonna handle the situation with total hostility and aggression and it's not gonna last very long for that person.

• 4:21Jocko Willink?

  Now, here's, here's where we start to break this down, this little feeling that he's got going on. A good thing to think about in this scenario is I will not put myself

• 4:40Jocko Willink?

  in a scenario, in a situation where some other person's action

• 4:48Jocko Willink?

  determines the outcome of the scenario. So I'm gonna say that again. I am very extremely cautious, extremely cautious that I don't put myself into predicaments where someone else's behavior determines the outcome of where I end up.

• 5:04Jocko Willink?

  And I'll tell you why. Because I can't control other people and I have no idea what they're gonna do. And I might think I have an idea what they're do, they're gonna do, but I don't. I don't have any idea what someone else is gonna do. I don't know how, how they're gonna respond. I don't. And I can, I can give my suspicions. This person looks like they're rational. This person looks like they're crazy. This person's behaving erratically. This person's behaving normally. Right? And, and you could make those assessments about anybody. And you could think you're right and you might not be. You might even be batting, you might even be batting 90%, 95%. I bet you, I bet you that I bat,

• 5:44Jocko Willink?

  I bet you I bat 90%. I bet you I bat 90% if I assess someone's like where they're at, kind of from a mental stability, I bet you I'm at a solid like 90%. Cool. That other 10% outlier is a real problem if you let it be. So,

• 6:02Jocko Willink?

  here's the thing.

• 6:04Jocko Willink?

  When you confront someone immediately, immediately when you confront somebody, their response is now, is now the controlling mechanism of the situation. Right? Because if I confront someone and they don't respond the way I expect them to, now I have, I have to engage. I have to escalate. And when I escalate and my suspicion is, well, if I escalate a little bit, then they'll back down. Or then they'll take an action that I anticipate, which is what I want.

• 6:40Jocko Willink?

  But that's no guarantee. And how do you know what this person went through that day? And how do you know what's going through their head? And how do you know what trauma they've been through in their life or not? You don't know any of that shit. So, let me ask you this. Are you willing to kill a person because they cut you in line at Costco or at Walmart?

• 7:02Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna, I'm gonna say that again. Sounds really stupid, sounds really stupid, right? That sounds dumb, right? Are you willing to kill a person? Because they cut the line in Costco or they cut the line at Walmart? Are you willing to kill them? Because if someone doesn't back down, at some point, you either have to back down, which is not what you had in mind when you opened your mouth, or you have to escalate until they're dead. Am I being extreme here? Yes, I'm being somewhat extreme. But you, you understand what I'm saying? Like, this is a legitimate thing to think about. It might be, it's a straw man of an argument, right? It's, this is right in your, your, your, your, uh, area of expertise, just throwing the straight straw man. This is a straw man argument.

• 7:47Jocko Willink?

  So I understand. So you understand fully. But if you take that premise and you actually apply it, it's gonna keep you out of a lot of situations that are stupid. So, when we, when we confront someone in the streets, we have a hope that they give us the response that we expect. And the hope that someone, hoping that someone else is gonna do something that you expect is not a good move. It is infinitely smarter and better that the outcome of the situation is based on what I do. Right? I don't, I don't give away, I don't give away that leverage to people. Right?

• 8:32Jocko Willink?

  I'm not giving that away. And by the way, this is not only applicable in the streets, but it's, it's applicable in anything that you do in life as often as you possibly can. Don't put yourself in the situations where you rely on other people and you're trying to predict their actions and you're trying to account for their idiosyncrasies and their ego and their agenda and their trauma and their psychopathy, right? These are all things that can come into play. Don't do that. That's a bad move.

• 9:00Jocko Willink?

  You have to set yourself up in situations where you get to determine the outcome. Your behavior determines the outcome and you don't rely on someone else's behavior to determine the outcome. That's, that's the bottom line. So that, that's part one. Now, does this make sense? Do you understand what I'm saying? It totally makes sense. Like walking down the street, someone, uh, you know, does something inappropriate. They catcalled my wife. Okay, cool. Turn around, walk back and fight them or tell them, hey, you better, you know, better apologize. Watch your mouth. Yeah, watch your mouth. Cool. My expectation is they say, oh, sorry, but they're not going to do that or they may not do that. And then what do we do? Hey, you better say you're sorry or, or I'm going to kick your ass. Now they think, oh, I don't want to kick my ass. Cause

• 9:45Jocko Willink?

  oh, I'm sorry. No, they don't do that. They say, fuck you. I'll say whatever I want. Now what do you do? Okay. Now you're getting in their face and you're pointing your finger in their face and you're expecting maybe that close intimidation is going to make them back down. They don't give a shit. They don't care at all. They actually want this kind of engagement because they're crazy. And you can see where I'm going. So now you gotta, now you gotta hit this person, choke this person, whatever. Now the cops are there or now you got stabbed or not. There's just like all these things, which what we've talked about since day one, these street fighting scenarios, but it's also like any interaction that you have with people and you get into a, uh, negotiation, like negotiation, when I put the ball in

• 10:29Jocko Willink?

  your court, the ball's in your court. The next move is yours. It's not mine. So why am I going to do that? I'm going to keep the ball with me. I'm not going to overexpose myself. I'm not going to give you leverage.

• 10:43Jocko Willink?

  And I know that this is, can be tricky for people to comprehend. So that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground Podcast. So if you want to continue to listen.

• 10:57Jocko Willink?

  Go to JacoUnderground.com and subscribe and we're doing this, we're doing this to mitigate our reliance on external platforms. So we are not subject to their control and we are doing this so that we can support the Jocko Podcast, which will remain as is free for all, as long as we can keep it that way. But we, but we are doing this so we don't have to be under the control of sponsors and we're doing it so we can give you more control, more interaction, more direct connections, better communications with us. And to do that, we are, we're building a website right now where we'll be able to utilize to strengthen

• 11:42Jocko Willink?

  this legion of troopers that are in the game with us. So thank you. It's JacoUnderground.com. It costs $8.18 a month. And if you can't afford to support us, we can still support you. Just email [email protected] and we'll get you taken care of. Until then, we will see you mobilized underground.