The Weekly Slice 12: Homework, Toilets, Sales Calls, and Why Values Show Up Anyway

A practical Weekly Pineapple Slice from the Brida Community

Over the last week, the Pineapple articles didn’t debate values in theory.
They ran into them — at work, at home, in meetings, in traffic, in language lessons, and occasionally… in airplane toilets.

What ties these pieces together isn’t philosophy. It’s real situations where people had to decide how to act, often without time to think about it.

Here’s what actually happened.

Janita Le Grange — Aligned Values: Moving Mountains and Navigating Change

This Lunch conversation starts messy: people half on screen, technical confusion, someone disappearing and reappearing mid-call. Instead of fixing it, everyone just carries on. That already tells you something.

The practical heart of this piece is decision-making under pressure.

Frank talks about stepping back from a project — not because he was pushed out, but because he realised the questions had changed and forcing himself in would do more harm than good. That’s not a motivational quote. It’s a concrete choice: don’t insist on relevance if it breaks trust.

Rosii shares a very specific work situation: two meetings at the same time, two supervisors, not enough hours. She tells the truth. One boss gets angry. Another suggests she should “select her words” next time. No drama — just consequences.

What makes this article practical is that nobody tells her what she should have done. They recognise the pattern: pressure travels down hierarchies, and honesty often costs more than silence.

Values here don’t look noble. They look uncomfortable — and recognisable.

Alexander — Authenticity at Work: Being Alexander with Customers

Alexander gives one of the most concrete workplace descriptions in the Pineapple so far.

He explains exactly how he adapts to different customers:

• with dominant personalities, he asks questions and lets them feel in control
• with analytical ones, he brings data
• with cautious ones, he slows down
• with relationship-driven ones, he listens more

This isn’t theory — it’s what he does in meetings.

He also explains the limits. He might see a customer only two or three times a year, for one hour, and still builds a relationship by remembering small details: a cat, a football team, a car. That’s not charisma. It’s attention.

The most practical takeaway?
Authenticity doesn’t mean “always behave the same.”
It means don’t fake interest — people notice immediately.

Ralf the Grillmeister — Being Myself at Work: From Top Gun to the Kitchen Table

Ralf’s article is almost aggressively practical.

He describes working on military aircraft where rank mattered less than whether the plane could fly. If your job was done, you went to help someone else — regardless of hierarchy.

Then comes the moment nobody forgets:
Ralf agrees to empty the aircraft’s chemical toilet.
He slips.
The entire contents spill over him.
Colleagues shout, throw him in a truck, hose him down fully clothed, screaming:
“Don’t open your eyes!”

The lesson he takes from this isn’t humiliation. It’s realism:

Sometimes, shit really happens.

Later, he explains how his body tells him when something is wrong at work — waking up at 3am, not sleeping, constant tension. That’s how he knows it’s time to leave, whether it’s the military or sales.

The practical rule he lives by now:
Laptop off at five.
Work stays in one room.
Life stays in the kitchen.

Janita Le Grange — Just Be Yourself

This piece moves between two very concrete scenes.

Scene one:
Grade 1 homework. Instructions in Afrikaans. A picture instead of words. Janita doesn’t understand what the teacher wants, improvises, adds plus signs — and later realises the task was about dots, not maths.

She genuinely hopes her son coloured neatly because she forgot to check.

Scene two:
A virtual meeting with a young engineering student who’s worked with Yamaha and Polaris, talks about Dakar and Formula 1 — and still struggles with English.

The contrast is the point.

What makes this article practical is the shift that happens during the day: from feeling lost and tired to remembering why she does this work at all. Not because it’s impressive — but because people at completely different life stages all need a place where they’re welcome.

Mayor — Mashed

This article follows Frank walking around Strasbourg with invitation cards in his bag.

He notices how hard it has become to simply talk to people:
reception desks, locked doors, systems designed to prevent contact.

Instead of scaling up, he scales down.
No mass emails.
No ads.
Printed cards.
Names checked by hand.
Lists cross-checked because cheap data is unreliable.

The practical insight here is simple:
Generic invitations don’t work.
Specific ones sometimes do.

And they only work if the effort happens before the conversation.

Peeling Potatoes — Episode 34 (Warmth, Absurdity, Real Life)

This episode is where everything becomes very real very fast.

Concrete moments include:

• Fruitloop misunderstanding homework instructions because Afrikaans images don’t match English letters
• The Mayor suggesting all languages be reformed (proposal accepted instantly)
• A serious values discussion interrupted by hunger
• The phrase “crackheads hustle harder” accidentally becoming motivation theory
• A planner designed for busy moms… immediately adopted by an old goat
• Ten minutes of “me time” turning out to be writing, not resting
• Potatoes being declared the most reliable vegetable because they’re “salt of the earth”

Nothing is cleaned up. Episode numbers are wrong. Shoes are too precious to get muddy. Maths feels harder than it should.

That’s the warmth: nobody pretends to be better than they are.

Manfred — Rediscovering Core Values

Manfred keeps it very simple.

He clears snow so people don’t slip.
He respects people without thinking about it.
He knows immediately when something “isn’t right”.

There are no stories of transformation — just continuity.
Values here are habits, not discussions.

That practicality grounds everything else.

Janita Le Grange — Style and Substance

Instead of talking about fashion, this article talks about daily decisions:
choosing jeans over dresses because life requires movement,
rejecting clothes that need constant adjusting,
wearing sneakers because confidence comes from not thinking about your outfit all day.

The practical test she keeps returning to:
Does this support my day — or fight it?

Sarah — Values, Guidance, and the Chicken Mascot

Sarah talks about real things:
tests, homework, scouts, travel, honesty with friends.

She admits she’s drifted from self-discipline.
Fruitloop points out something she hadn’t noticed: courage.
Exchange programs. New homes. Speaking honestly to teachers.

Then values turn playful:
honesty becomes a chicken mascot — not heroic, just persistent and noisy when needed.

That playfulness makes the reflection stick.

Mayor — Why Some People Don’t Know What the Fuss Is About

This final piece shows values in conversation, not agreement.

Different cultures.
Different family expectations.
Different ways of being honest.

Examples include:

• choosing a job based on family proximity
• lying gently to avoid hurting someone
• seeing honesty as care in one culture and cruelty in another

No conclusions. Just recognition that values don’t travel well unless people talk.

If you want neat definitions, this slice won’t help.

If you want to recognise your own daily life in someone else’s story —
this one probably will.

And that’s usually where the real thinking starts.