Everybody Poops

[00:06] Oh, we do under Google rules that was the player super excited told us we had to
[00:17] say we said we signed up for it in the end it's gonna be better and more true
[00:25] than Google can give you welcome to another under Google rules where we get
[00:35] the life's difficult questions and we you know we finally get the answers like the
[00:40] the real answers at the end of these Coalson what can we do for you this week
[00:47] well how can I answer a question for you you know so this one's been bothering me
[00:50] for most of my life okay and we've got this on episode 450 for you buddy I've
[01:02] looked this one up before and didn't come up with a satisfactory answer and so but
[01:09] that was many years ago and so I'm assuming hopefully the internet's got
[01:13] better or that three of my smartest friends will be able to find a better
[01:18] answer than I've come up with also Joe I'm glad you're here because you as
[01:25] well as probably all of us have a little bit of restaurant experience but my
[01:30] question is where does the phrase 86 come from we use this in restaurants to
[01:36] say that we're out of something we're using some bars to say get them out I'm
[01:41] 86 in this guy I'm 86 my appetizer we just use 86 all the time and I have I
[01:53] have googled this I've talked many a long evening about what this might mean
[01:58] and I still don't have an answer and so I'm coming to you we might not come up
[02:02] with an answer but I want to look look to you my three smartest friends three of
[02:08] your smartest three of my smartest friends yeah I might have gotten down
[02:13] greater while Mike was here yeah Mike Mike took some exceptions so he took
[02:17] some umbrage which fairly he's smarter than me but so he's your three of my
[02:24] smartest friends not my three I feel like we all just got everybody went down a
[02:31] notch well so this is a difficult thing cuz this would be I would come to you
[02:37] for this right a bit of expertise you you are my go-to for all right can I
[02:42] tell you what I my new shit yes please so we're on the clock so one of the
[02:49] things that I have thought of in the past I've been waiting tables longer than
[02:57] there were god yeah exactly and so we used to have to type in on a key so like
[03:05] the computers wouldn't have POS systems as you know them and so when we had was
[03:15] we had a big basically a keyboard and you would type you had to memorize the
[03:20] numbers of the of the thing so if you wanted a club sandwich you would hit 92
[03:26] right and that would go back to the kitchen and the kitchen knew that 92 was
[03:31] a club sandwich or whatever so I thought in some way there might be some
[03:36] way for 86 to be involved in that kind of you know diner experience where you're
[03:43] just typing in numbers but the problem is that the servers typing those things
[03:49] in and how does the server know that that's 86 so it doesn't really quite work
[03:53] I don't know if that's the problem okay there's lots of problems no no no I'm
[03:58] just saying that like whatever that that communicate like if there's a
[04:01] designated code in any system it doesn't matter which direction the code
[04:05] goes long as it's a sure right right yeah well I guess yeah that was gonna
[04:09] be my question could you have bi-directional communication with that
[04:13] system like yes could a server go up to that teletype machine or whatever it was
[04:18] that most got teletype so when you're looking at graphing when you're
[04:24] lithography the order it was called squirrel by the way you typed it in and
[04:32] that would go back to the thing so if I typed it in it didn't there was no
[04:37] chance for it to not work and say 86 which is what you think it should do
[04:42] well right but what I'm saying is if if were you able to receive messages from
[04:47] the kitchen they would yell at me from the from the kitchen and I was typing
[04:51] things in they did you ever 86 okay so just so we're clear you never typed 86
[04:58] but they yelled 86 at you yes okay I was typing in 93 or 17 okay 24 so there was
[05:04] literally no code on your machine for the thing that we're talking about
[05:07] correct which maybe is at least like an a priori suggestion that that's not where
[05:14] that came from sure no I agree with that I'm just trying to say my experience I've
[05:18] got it's all I've got I have no idea I feel like this is goes back deeper and
[05:23] longer I feel like I've looked this up before and it goes back to seafaring
[05:27] goes plenty not plenty not plenty I'm thinking it's yes it's a captain hook
[05:33] captain I just popped in the the idea of deep sixing like and whatever that is and
[05:41] that I assume is a nautical term it is fathom your what do you deep six so it's
[05:49] definitely a navy term it's like an old-school sailor term but I can't
[05:54] remember what it means it definitely means yeah I mean the way we use it now
[06:00] is like to take tank so I think it I think it's keel hauling someone like
[06:08] that's what I think it is okay and like so if so you I mean you literally tie
[06:13] them to a rope and then just drag the rope under your boat it's called keel
[06:17] hauling okay and this is what they used to do who humans who misbehaved on their
[06:21] boat so basically the boat was like right over you under the front of the
[06:26] boat and it's going forward under the middle of the boat yeah so you've got the
[06:30] longest circumference of holding your breath available and the most hits to the
[06:34] whole so so do you do you die from this I mean I think if they just six you yes
[06:43] I think it's maybe six fathoms or something is how make they make you go
[06:47] or something like I don't know I'm okay I'm kind of reaching here but like
[06:50] definitely like humans are really creative about how they torture each
[06:54] other so right and we've learned that these things don't these phrases don't
[06:58] come from nice things gambling or death there's nothing wrong with gambling no
[07:05] there's nothing wrong with death sure you're gonna die everybody dies
[07:09] probably before the end of the night everybody poops everybody she wouldn't
[07:15] stare at him so so my thinking was that you know deep 16 was was this is
[07:22] killing off a person but then somehow it got transliterated into 80 16 or
[07:28] something like that's also like I like that but I just don't understand how it
[07:33] became a very specific restaurant because in my life I never heard
[07:39] somebody who was into restaurants say 86 I've heard it but it was restaurant
[07:46] folk bringing oh really this is like being in the weeds that is a restaurant
[07:55] phrase that doesn't exist it doesn't exist outside of restaurants I've used it
[08:00] many a time it does now okay maybe it didn't then definitely people know the
[08:04] weeds but there's also a show called the weed oh right fair enough it's not
[08:10] drug-related it's just being right so in the weeds in 86 are terms that I've
[08:15] not heard okay that's complicated yeah so I'm gonna go with the 1910 American
[08:24] mobsters I've got more information okay so Jason's got deep six do we want that
[08:32] we were we going pirates are we going like naval like like World War one sort
[08:40] of thing are we going pirates yeah so that's the other thing that this
[08:44] rings true of is like I guess police type code oh yeah they would use numbers
[08:52] instead of like actual because they didn't want to reveal what they were
[08:56] talking so 420 is a over here I'm busting a dude for marijuana or like 187
[09:04] is a yes it is okay yes that is those are both a hundred percent accurate well the
[09:09] 420 thing I think is debatable I mean I heard that it was like these kids in
[09:13] California went for a walk in the woods at 420 potentially potentially but anyway
[09:20] that's a future okay but so I wonder if 86 in in police parlance is like cancel
[09:30] the call or something like that boy like I mean I'm just really thrown by the
[09:34] fact this doesn't exist out of the industry right like if it hasn't
[09:37] persisted it with within like the armed forces it would be weird if it existed I
[09:45] don't think it's in the armed forces do we talk about 86 and people in an army
[09:50] I don't know like I said I'd never realized that that was a thing so now
[09:54] I'm now I'm really now I'm really thrown off well so so my only other thing
[09:58] that I can come up with that might keep it restaurant related is that it's more
[10:03] bar related instead of food related and so like a bartender might want 86 the
[10:10] guest like get them out of there you know definitely has multi-use right
[10:13] yes like like I can I have 86 the product I don't have it tonight like if I have an
[10:19] 86 list when my staff comes in and they see all the things we're out of that
[10:23] night but I also if I'm bartending be like I need 86 this guy and I mean the
[10:28] exact same thing that I mean so we probably shouldn't assume that it came
[10:32] from 86 and food we maybe need to think about it 86 and booze or humans or
[10:38] humans right maybe it's just maybe that's where the restaurant industry
[10:43] came from we need this guy out of here and maybe it's just I mean maybe that's
[10:47] the bridge maybe that was just the like deep six this guy and like it just
[10:52] monopolize sure because we've already got the deep six and we got that well
[10:55] and here's the thing and this is the this just comes to mind 86 proof is a
[11:01] very common proof it's a very common proof like I think most of your
[11:06] whiskies are that this guy's done okay you know what I mean well yeah I think
[11:15] they're we've actually it's one of those phrases from from everything I can tell
[11:21] that is the exact origin is unknown but we basically hit every one
[11:31] so here's here's the theories that people have thrown out there one of them
[11:39] is that it's just a sort of slang for the word nicks oh nicks which isn't a
[11:48] pig Latin thing too yeah I mean it's like a what is the cockney it's like a
[11:55] thing there was a bar in prohibition era New York at 86 Bedford Street there was
[12:17] a crooked cop that was he would 86 the customers when they knew the cops
[12:25] when the non crooked cops were coming get out of here get out of 86 you know that
[12:32] we you mentioned some death a couple times the dimensions of a grave or eight
[12:39] foot by six foot oh my goodness that's very dark even by our standards exactly
[12:45] that's probably the answer and Coalson one of them so there's one from on the
[12:53] whiskey side specifically was that if people were drinking too much again this
[12:59] is just a theory but people were drinking too much hundred-proof whiskey
[13:04] they might be 86 and so water that down as far as I can tell is essentially not
[13:13] that no it's not it's not really I mean it makes a difference if somebody's
[13:17] hammered a little bit I mean you only have to have nine of them before it's
[13:21] a whole drink right yeah I don't know if that's I think you're I think your
[13:28] grave is probably the best I think I found it even more like lists here so
[13:37] potentially in the military during the Korean War reference to the f-86 fighter
[13:45] jet I don't even know if that was a thing that is okay or in the United States
[13:53] uniform code of military justice article 86 is a okay I like that even more
[13:59] accidentally or go ahead so what's a wall 86 a wall is absent without leave and
[14:10] why does anybody like that's the that's the code that's a violation of the
[14:16] military police are using to describe well that's the whole answer then well
[14:21] there's a million others so another is that on rotary phones the eight key was
[14:28] is T and the six keys oh has an O so throw out he said potentially yeah exactly
[14:38] I've seen the idea of apparently in the depression a standard pot would hold 85
[14:50] cups of soup so the 86th person what is out of luck did you say the standard pot
[14:57] help 85 yeah I need more magic in my life if we're gonna start getting down
[15:02] soup cup boiler size solid yeah so deep six we're going to the etymology of this
[15:13] word and it seems to be connected to the grave but the eight by six dimensions
[15:20] specifically of the grave or for the measure of six fad six fathoms and
[15:26] sailing target so I'm thinking it's I think it's the grave I think it's the
[15:32] grave so I'm going with 86 it's always morbid on this show I think we killed
[15:37] somebody it's surprisingly what I'm eight by six no this show is so like when I
[15:44] first started doing under Googles I assumed a hundred percent of these things
[15:47] would be about death because that's what we struggle with yeah it's been
[15:53] most of their time dealing with this right right like you know philosophy
[15:57] mortality whatever I thought a lot more would come from that and almost nothing
[16:02] has it's all about gambling that's about living man that's right but I think
[16:11] that's I think this is really good I feel better I now can tell all of my
[16:16] staff that 86 means they're going to the grave great great I'm glad that was
[16:20] your takeaway that will definitely not result in any HR complaints so I mean I've
[16:27] definitely heard her people say like 86 this guy to me it's that always sounded
[16:34] more threatening than I think the meeting was like get this guy out of here but
[16:37] but I always took it as like as any means necessary sure so telling that to
[16:43] your employees is maybe not the way to go depends on how you how you want
[16:48] things done I'm the enforcer you know how I want things yeah