It was YC principal Tanner Smith’s idea to provide each of his staff with a plastic goldfish. He shares his motivations behind the goldfish found in classrooms around campus.
“Well so the motivation actually came from a TV show called Ted Lasso,” he said.
Smith described the show that follows a coach and his athletes. When one player makes a mistake he pulls the player aside and asks him what the happiest animal on earth is.
“He says, It’s a goldfish. And he says, why would it be a goldfish? Because they have a ten-second memory. And so he says, go be a goldfish,” Smith says.
The day Smith had this thought, he brought the idea up to his secretary who did a Google search to see how they could get each staff member a goldfish. By the end of the day, Smith’s vision became reality, the fish were in the mail on their way.
Smith spoke next on how he hoped the message from Ted Lasso would translate into the classroom for both staff and students.
“You know, there’s so many things in high school it’s hard to be a teenager. It’s a lot on your plate. And so I think for teenagers just to understand, like, get by some of those things that they’re not as big a deal as you think they are. And so sometimes you need to stop and be happy,” he said.
Smith hit the ground running with his inspiring message in a staff meeting where he presented the idea. No one could have expected that the fake goldfish would result in a live fish showing up in main office secretary Alicia Rigamonti’s office.
She described what transpired the day she came into work and discovered her new pet awaiting her.
“And so then I was gone Friday, and when I came back Monday, my fake fish was out of the bowl, and a real fish was in the bowl,” she said.
Tiger as the fish was named, or TJ for short, was originally a prank but turned out to be a great representation of Smith’s message to staff.
“Well it was an anonymous prank, but everyone pretty much knew it was Addison Tuning,” Rigamonti said.
Tiger now stands as a living example of how staff and students can take a step back before one bad experience changes the course of their day. Rigamonti, too, agrees and approves of Smith’s metaphor, with her new pet to commemorate.
“I think the message is a very good one. I like the ten-second memory. Don’t let one bad interaction ruin your whole day is a good rule of thumb,” she said.
