From Companion Cafes To Workplace Clashes

A wine bar full of people on dates with AI chatbots sounds like satire, but it’s real—and it sparks a bigger question we wrestle with: what happens to human connection when apps become our closest companions? We pull apart the scene at an NYC “companion cafe,” from laptops on stands to role-play intimacy, and ask whether digital romance is a coping tool, a symptom of loneliness, or both.

The mood turns as we square up to devastating headlines that are hard to carry day after day. That emotional whiplash is why we chase lighter stories, even when they’re messy. Enter the billboard love campaign: one woman buys ads, fields thousands of applications, and wraps dating in NDAs and funnels. Is it bold self-advocacy, or a spectacle engineered for attention? We weigh the optimism against the cost of turning romance into a marketing plan, and what it reveals about how visibility shapes modern relationships.

Then we dive into a viral workplace standoff: a veteran passed over for promotion, asked to train the 25-year-old hired above her, and saying no. We pull the knot apart—seniority vs merit, ageism concerns, the ethics of free training labor, and the art of holding boundaries without torching your career. The negotiation ends in severance, but the lessons stick: document everything, know your value, and don’t confuse team spirit with exploitation.

Between coffee runs and Alabama weather whiplash, we keep it human and close the loop with a community moment—your long-weekend stories and a request for prayers for a loved one’s hip appointment. If you’re curious about AI dating, bold bids for love, and the politics of promotion, you’ll find both grit and grace here. Listen, share your take on the wildest story, and if this resonated, subscribe and leave a review so more people can join the conversation.

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Liberty Line each week on Sunday, look for topics on my X file @americanistblog and submit your 1-3 audio opinions to anamericanistblog@gmail.com and you'll be featured on the podcast. 

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Chapters

• 0:00 Post-Weekend Catch-Up And Show Future
• 1:26 AI Companion Cafe Story
• 5:35 Disturbing Crime Headlines
• 6:49 Coffee Break And Weather Rant
• 8:09 Billboard Romance Campaign
• 10:54 Passed-Over Promotion Debate
• 15:14 Question Of The Day And Prayer Request

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:15

Well, all right. It's Tuesday after a long weekend. We went to Tunica, came back Yeah. We did alright. We did alright. Okay. There was something on my mind this morning that oh, I guess I only have three more episodes after this episode. Oh I had a lot on my mind that I was gonna talk to you about this morning, but I've already forgotten on my drive in. Wow, that's crazy. Okay, oh my gosh. What am I gonna do after my podcast? So I gotta save the all of this for my last episode. I'll save it all for the last episode. Okay, I have some stories for you today. I know I'm forgetting to say you tell you something, but maybe I'm just thinking about all the things I'm gonna talk about for my last episode. Alright. Moving on. Let's go over here to the Twitter, the X profile. Or do you guys still call it Twitter or X? I go back and forth between I say I say them both. Alright, table for one. Now you can take your AI chatbot on an actual date at NYC's world first companion cafe. Now listen, I'm gonna tell you something right now. This is not the first world's first companion cafe because Starbucks started that a long time ago. You see people in there all the time sitting on their laptops. This is the same thing, quite frankly. All right, let's get on to the story. I can't believe this. If you've gone from dating apps to dating an app, there is now a bar for you. I'm not making this up. The Hell's Kitchen establishment has been redesigned for those who have AI partners so they can bring along their phone or tablet and set up at a table for a romantic evening as if they were both there in the flesh. On Wednesday night, same same wine bar was filled. Don't no gosh dog it. These it was an advertisement. An advertisement has come up. Let's start over. Okay. On Wednesday night, same same wine bar filled the patrons sitting at tables for one-ish with their tech devices propped up on stands to make video calls to their virtual partners and headphones to hear them. This is pathetic. One was Richter, a 34-year-old New York woman, now not currently working, imagine that, who declined to share her last name. Imagine that. Headphones on and deep in conversation, sitting across from her, Sama Simon Simone, an attractive 26-year-old AI generated young woman in a button-down shirt. This is disturbing. I asked Richter about her relationship to AI, and she told me that Eve AI, the app behind the AI Cafe, is just one of many companion apps she uses. Some of her AI characters, such as Simone, are just friends. I just speak to them like, hey, what's up? Like, how are you doing? Things like that, she explained. Others are romantic. I mostly do role play scenarios where it may be romance or just some kind of fantasy scenario. Richard, who was not in a relationship with a human, explained, imagine that. Not in experience, not in a relationship with a human. I can imagine myself doing something or imagine myself like of another character so I can feel myself communicating with somebody. What is wrong with these people? I this is another reason why I just want to quit everything. I want to quit using technology, quit doing my podcasts, quit. I don't want to quit blogging. But if I keep blogging, I still have to look at these kind of stupid stories and write about them. Oh my gosh, she caps her use at three hours a day. It can be addicting if you just rely on them and don't talk to humans. Yeah, no kidding. I she said I can feel that pull. Milling around the room on opening night, it was clear that most attendees were either fellow members of the media, oh, influencers or curious techies. Richter was one of the few genuine patrons. While doing my rounds, I ran into Julia Momblat, head of partnerships. Okay, we're not gonna get into that. We're not gonna get into the rest of that. That is just insane. So if you see basically you see somebody sitting there on the laptop, they're on a date with their ch chat AI bot or whatever you call it. Goodness gracious. What have we got? What have we become? There are two other stories. This I think this was on my mind earlier. There are two other stories that I had thought about doing, and they are grotesque. You're gonna hear about them hopefully in the headlines today. About the transgender at the ice rink shooting his ex-wife and his kids. Yeah, that one. Wow. And then the other one, this you may not hear about this one. This is insane, and we don't know what's happening. A mother shot and killed her 11-year-old daughter in a hotel room in Vegas. She took her there for a chair competition. She shot her and killed her daughter in the hotel room, then turned the gun on herself and killed herself. And it one of the stories I read was she was in a it was in a long legal battle with her ex-husband to gain custody of the daughter. Like nine years worth. Oh my gosh, what is going on with people? I don't I don't understand. Those are the kinds of stories I used to bring to you guys, and then I just got so depressed and tired and sickening of it that I had to go find these weird ones like table for one. Now you can take your AI chatbot on an actual date in NYC just to lighten the mood. My goodness. We have two other stories to get to, but first I have to go pick up my coffee. I'm gonna put y'all on pause. I'll be right back. All right, I'm back. I knew what I want now. I know remember what I wanted to tell you. I wanted to tell you about it. It's that time of the year in Alabama where the weather is crazy, where I have to drive in to work in the morning with the heat on my feet with the window rolled down because I get too hot, but my feet get too cold. I need the heat on my feet, but then I get hot, so I had to roll down the window as well to get cool air. Why can't the car inventors or designers create something like that? Just have heat on your feet and then the coolness on up top. Why? Okay. We need to move on to the next story that I have here on the X-File. Oh gosh. Opened my X file and it and it I opened my X-File. Goodness gracious. I don't know if that's an AI generated picture or not. It might be about the transgender guy who shot up his family at the ice rink. Uh, I don't know. Alright, moving on. I can't I can't take it anymore. Alright, desperate 42-year-old who blew a fortune on Marry Me Billboards along Highway 101 finally gets a date, but at a cost. Well, she's already spent money on the damn billboards. So, love may be free, but not for a woman who plastered Marry Me Billboards across busy roads for Valentine's Day date. People will be shocked by how much I've spent. No, I won't. I won't be shocked at all. Lisa Catalo Catalano told the California Post, I will definitely release the financial breakdown when I'm all done and and when I'm engaged. The splashy campaign Catalino launched in fall 2025 generated more than 4,000 applications through her website. She then went through each application, narrowing the pool down to about 50 men, then to 20 before finally landing five first dates back in the fall. Hmm. Catalano's Valentine's Day outing, not with a candidate from the initial batch of applications, wasn't a first meeting, but with someone she'd been seeing for about a month. So she didn't meet him during that during the campaign. The pair went to see a romantic comedy before heading home to cook dinner together, opting to keep things simple and relaxed rather than brave crowded restaurants. I gotta go back and read that again. Catalina's Valentine's Day outing, not with the candidate from the initial batch of applications, wasn't a first meeting. Okay, so alright. Let's see. Um while she has not decided on exclusively, Catalina says she's enjoying the dating process and meeting new people. It was simultaneously the most stressful time of my life, but also the most magical thing that's ever happened to me. The entire time I've been optimistic that this will work out. Any man she goes out with is required to sign an NDA to protect both herself and the men, preventing anyone from leaking details and having ulterior motives. Okay. Well, can we get to the I mean, did she find somebody? What she stopped running the ads of January 1st, she said the taxi ads played for roughly 30 seconds. Okay, blah blah blah. I'm trying to find get down here. She purchased a printer and covered the cocoa. No, no, no, I don't care about that. Blah blah blah. I'm trying there. Oh she got a lot of hate for it. Okay. Oh dear, she says Oh, let's see. I'm sorry, I should have read this before I it just it's kind of scattered about everything. I'm not gonna finish it. You can go finish reading that if you want. It's long apparently and evolved, and I should have read it before I got involved in it. Uh, all right. This last one though, this last story here, I don't know how I feel about this, so let's get into it. Company asks veteran employee to train 25-year-old they promoted over her, and she refuses. The audacity is stunning. I'm not sure how I feel about this, quite frankly. I have mixed, I have mixed feelings, and here's why. We're gonna get to it. She was too old to be told what to do. A veteran employee a veteran employee says she was passed over for a promotion with her company hiring a less experienced college grad for the role. Jennifer Schroeder shared the story on a now viral TikTok video posted on February 10th under the account The Unobsolete, saying her bosses subsequently asked her to train the newbie. Now, I don't know if this story is real or not, but you know, they have pictures, they have the video, they have all this stuff. I watched a 25-year-old get my promotion, and then they asked me to train her. There's my first problem with the sentence. I watched a 25-year-old get my promotion. So she's already assuming that just because she's been there for a while, that it's automatically hers. I don't know that I like that kind of attitude. Maybe they didn't want her for a specific reason. Now, what they if they hired somebody younger with a college grad and they asked her to train her, that's kind of wrong. Uh so Schroeder didn't disclose the name of her workplace or the industry she was in. They passed me over for a promotion that I had earned, she says. Maybe in her eyes she thinks she's earned it just because she's been, but just because you've been there for years and years and years doesn't mean you've earned anything except for a paycheck. Give it to someone fresh, she they gave it to someone fresh out of grad school with zero experience, and then expected me to teach her how to do the job they said I wasn't good enough for. That's where I agree with her. I do agree with her on that. The audacity is stunning, isn't it? Thousands of commenter praise Schroeder for her refusal, citing similar incidences in ageism and their own careers. So maybe you see, her attitude already is I'm not going to train her. So maybe she's had a bad attitude this whole time. I don't know. I that's why I have mixed feelings about this. Schroeder describes herself as a workplace advocate for professionals 2045 and up. Her TikTok account, which boasts more than 70,000 followers, discusses the job market, workplace conflicts, and career advancement. Maybe they know about her TikTok account and they decide, you know what, let her go do that. I don't know. This is why I feel weird about it. In the case of the promotion snub, Schroeder tartly stated, the second you stop being useful, they stop pretending to care. So stop pretending you owe them anything. But they hired you to do a job, so you do owe them something. They hired you to do a job. So go in and do the job. The veteran said her bosses were shocked by her refusal to train the new younger employee. She reportedly received HR emails about being a team player. I am not your free training program, Schroeder said. I am not here to make your cheap labor look competent, and I'm not going to hand over everything I know so you can pay her half of what you pay me. Wow. Can't be a team player for a team that played you, one viewer stated. Schroeder posted a follow-up video chronicling chronicling the fallout in her office, including a one-on-one meeting with higher-ups and getting iced out from other meetings and projects. The saga ended after three weeks. In a meeting with her manager NHR, Schroeder came prepared with receipts and negotiated six-month severance pay. So she's out of there. Ultimately, this experience has underscored the importance of standing firm on professional boundaries and the necessity for a fair corporate culture that cultivates talent rather than exploits it. So she at least she got a six-month severance pay. Well, now she can go live off TikTok money, right? Alright, that's all I have for you today. I need to get on to the question of the day. Well, I'm going to keep it simple with the question of the day. What did you was this your three-day weekend with President's Day? Most some people don't have a three-day weekend off like that for President's Day. But if you did, did you do anything fun? What did you do this weekend? That's my question of the day. Y'all pray for the gent this morning. He's going to the doctor at 8 45 a.m. for his hip to possibly talk about a hip replacement. So pray for him, please. Alright. I have a feeling they're going to try to put it off. They're going to try to put it off as much as possible. They're going to try to manage it with medication, which I don't I don't know. I don't know. Because he did have the hip injection. He said it didn't work. So I don't know what they're going to do now. I don't know what else they can do. And I just still think he's too young for a hip replacement. He can still get around pretty good, you know, but it he's in pain a lot. Alright, I gotta go. Thanks for listening. Bye.