Bonus Episode - Working Lunches with James Harding

What can a lunch tell you about a colleague, or a job candidate? In this bonus episode, Founder and Editor of Tortoise Media, James Harding, discusses the power of the working lunch.

Ruthie's Table 4, made in partnership in Moncler.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
You were listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair,
would you say.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
That, as a journalist and you're meeting someone, do you
think you'd get a better interview or conversation with them
in a restaurant over food or would you rather go
to their office or in a separate room. You like
to do it over food.

Speaker 3 (00:23):
Always there's a sort of unwritten hierarchy of getting to
know and understand the person. So the lowest and the
least meaningful is anything that you can find on social media.
The next step up is the email. Then there's a
telephone call, then there's a meeting, and the best of all, no,

(00:46):
the second best of all is a meal. Probably the
best of all is a walk.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
It's revealing. It's revealing the way people are in restaurants,
aren't they as well? That you might? You know why
people say why do people go on a date in
a restaurant? Well, you see the way the person you're
with treats the waiter. You see the way they how
long they take to choose the wine. You see if
they get upset about having to wait too long for
their food. A lot of people I know, not so

(01:14):
much anymore will say they really like to interview a
candidate for a.

Speaker 3 (01:18):
Job over food.

Speaker 2 (01:20):
That tells you a lot. One person even teld me
that if they don't push their chair in to the table,
then they think badly of them, which I was surprising.
Michael Bloomberg said he wouldn't hire anyone who asked for
a glass of wine at lunch if he was being interviewed.

Speaker 3 (01:37):
Oh really, which is a bit tough.

Speaker 2 (01:39):
Norman was sitting next to him and said, I wouldn't
hire anybody who didn't, but you might not if you
were being interviewed. Have you interviewed perspective? People are going
to work for you over food.

Speaker 3 (01:51):
In a restaurant, Yes, a lot?

Speaker 2 (01:54):
And what does it tell you?

Speaker 3 (01:56):
You look to get away from language and all the
predictable formulas of office professional working conversations. It's interesting. I
spoke to someone who runs HR for this kind of
enormous investment business and she was saying to me, and

(02:19):
I'm no good at this, So the reason why I'm
so interested was that she's so good at it. She
was saying that when she interviews someone, this is for
a job, not for a story. She books in for
five hours. The first three hours she talks about asking
them about their live until the age of twenty one,
and then after that she'll talk about their working life.

(02:41):
And if you think about it, that's so difficult to
do these days. Often it will be so intrusive. But
also we all know that's what it is, that we're
all playing out those stories in different ways. And you're
more likely to get anywhere close to that in a restaurant,
and you're more likely to get anywhere close to that
over food. I mean, even the fact we're having this conversation.

(03:03):
You know that The trick of this whole podcast, of course,
is that if you call up and say, hi, I'd
like to talk to you about your family and your
background and your working life. Please know if you say,
by the way, why don't we get it together, let's
talk about some horse additions where that goes.

Speaker 2 (03:19):
Did your grandmother cook? Did your father cook? And then
you remember parts of your life? Oh, Lorenzo Richard's partner,
I remember in the seventies when they were doing the Pompado.
We went home for lunch every day, and the idea
for him of having a business launch was intolerable. You
could not conceive of the idea that you would discuss

(03:40):
work over food. For him, you worked and.

Speaker 3 (03:42):
Then you ate.

Speaker 2 (03:43):
I think it's changed now.

Speaker 3 (03:44):
I remember one fifty years ago. The truth is there
were some. I mean one of my favorites was it
being invited and someone said, we're going to have lunch
in my office and going and arriving at lunch in
the office and then arriving and I was on one
side of the desk and he was on the other side,
and do you mind if we have lunch? And I said, well,
of course not. And the person came and served him

(04:05):
up lunch and me not, we are going to But
you do learn so much about people find off having lunch.
I remember interviewing someone at once and we had this
lunch and it was soup, and then it was something else,
maybe a coffee. I was like, this is weird. Are
you just trying to get me in and out here

(04:25):
as fast as possible? And then it was like a
cigar and I said, no, I don't want a cigar.
But then we sat for two hours. We weren't really
having lunch, we were having well he was having a cigar.
I remember I once went to lunch with the head
of a bank. It was his bank. It was a
guy called David de Rothschild who has a bank called
roth Child. And at the end of lunch, this cheese

(04:48):
trolley came in Ruthie, and it's this amazing collection of
the two of us having lunch, and there was an
amazing trolley of cheeses. And I remember him saying to me, Oh,
I'm going to get into terrible trouble thing myself with
who who you can get drob with it to your bank?
You chose to cheese, Johnny. But it was a sort
of chart. It's a very very charming man in fact.

(05:09):
But you did learn a lot about people on the
way in which they interacted with others. I also loved
the meal. And I will wake up and think, I
wonder what's gonna happen?

Speaker 2 (05:16):
Do you think lunch? Yeah, you think about that when
you wake up. I have a granddaughter, Ivory, who you know,
and she says that she goes to bed thinking that
she has lunch early enough she can have a second
lunch round three other people.

Speaker 3 (05:31):
You know.

Speaker 2 (05:31):
Chefs often say and I do it when I'm coming
into the River Cafe and I'm cooking lunch, I think,
what do I feel like eating today, you know what
would be the lunch.

Speaker 3 (05:41):
So it's certainly just the meal itself, but there's also
who you're going to take a break from the screen
or the writing, or the editing, or the just the
back and forth of it all and be with the
person over at lunch or a dinner. I really love

Speaker 1 (06:02):
Thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table for in partnership
with Montclair