Please Be Interesting: Ben Majoy

It's a different world. And we’re a different Crispin.

Meet some of our humans making things happen behind the scenes. We asked them a few questions, with one requirement… to please keep it interesting.

Name, Title?

Ben Majoy, group creative director

How do you explain what you do to your family/friends? 

"I don't want to talk about work if that's cool. You guys need a drink or anything?"

[leaves party]

How do you start your day? 

Immediately after I wake up, I ask myself whether I am getting sick or just slept with my mouth open. 

Then I walk into the kitchen to grind coffee beans in what is certainly the loudest coffee bean grinder in California.

I usually forget that I left my phone in the bedroom, so I rush back in to turn the alarm off, only AFTER I've woken up my wife to my far too loud phone alarm. 

I feed the dog. I make the aforementioned coffee. I make a very specific combination of oatmeal, steel cut oatmeal with apple chunks, walnuts, chia seeds, and dried apple slices.

I turn off another phone alarm. 

I fill a water bottle with Nature's Sunshine Power Greens (and water). 

I open up a book or a magazine I've been telling myself to read for months. 

I respond to the Slack ding that says "You joining this meeting?" 

I join a meeting 3-5 minutes late.

What’s on your desk right now? 

An original painting of a Golden Corral by @letspainttv

An earring that looks like a half-smoked cigarette that I got at a Halloween store in Chicago

A George H. W. Bush Desert Storm trading card from the inexplicable 1991 Desert Storm Pro Set pack

A miniature candle replica of the Fantoft Stave Church

An unidentified animal skull I got from a mystery box of oddities and curiosities I bought on Etsy

A manuscript from my friend Liz Riggs' debut novel - LoFi

Banjo finger picks

No human remains

What would you be doing if you didn’t work in the creative industry? 

A death doula or a private investigator. And quite frankly, I still may end up doing both of those things. 

What's a piece of work that really stood out to you in the last year? 

Logan Paul vs. Seth Rollins at Wrestlemania 39. It's the most interesting, meta and contemporary version of Kayfabe I've ever seen. 

What film, TV show or piece of online content do you love that no one else seems to like? 

It's sort of a redundant answer, but I find myself defending professional wrestling to people more than anything else. I genuinely think it's high art, and a bizarre spiritual experience that we all don't appreciate enough on a collective storytelling level. 

Also, the Cleveland Browns. 

How do you apply your creative skills to another area of your life?

I spend a lot of time thinking about the root causes of societal problems, which I think is a habit I learned from being a professional creative. So much of this job, and applied creativity as a whole, is about dissection and reinterpretation. 

What’s your biggest hot take? 

I'll give you two:

The ease with which American labour law allows 'layoffs' and 'layoff' cycles is actually stifling business creativity and innovation. It's too quickly used as a solution to profit loss, and if it was harder to do, companies would be forced to expedite internal paths to innovation to make up for poor sales and antiquated products. 

We need to talk more about the tax implications of AI replacing humans. 

Anything else you feel like sharing with us?

Whole Foods soup is sold by weight, so technically you can fill the soup container with heavier proteins and sides and get a pretty good deal. Sometimes the soup container will have transparent tops though, so what you need to do is put one of the transparent tops on after you've filled the soup container with meats, mac and cheese, broccoli, etc. THEN push the transparent topper down so it's inverted, and put a small amount of clam chowder or chili on top, among the heavier of the standard soups. Finally, put a SECOND transparent topper on top of that, and it will seem like you just got a ton of chili or clam chowder instead of all the beef tip, ravioli, or whatever. You'll probably end up saving somewhere between five-eight bucks in the end, at least.