WTF is Business Casual
Buckle up for real HR stories that'll make you laugh, cringe, and thank your lucky stars you're not that guy.
WTF is Business Casual is the HR podcast where two seasoned consultants—Sarah Bursten and Jenny Lavey, co-founders of RiseHR—dish on wild workplace fails, toxic bosses, employee drama, and leadership gone wrong. With 35+ years of combined experience in HR, leadership development, and people management, they offer surprisingly useful advice wrapped in real talk and hilarious storytelling.
If you’re an HR professional, small business owner, people manager, or just someone who’s survived office politics, this show is for you.
Subscribe to WTF is Business Casual—because work is weird, leadership is messy, and people always be peopling.
Hosted by Sarah Bursten & Jenny Lavey | RiseHR
www.risehumanresources.com
WTF is Business Casual
The Workplace Is Tired: The Darker Side Of Modern Work
This week, Jenny and Sarah start the year by doing what they do best: collecting a pile of workplace nonsense from the internet and asking the uncomfortable question.
Why are we still building work like people are machines?
They bounce through everything from four-day workweek studies to open offices, from job hunting on dating apps to LinkedIn slowly becoming Facebook with certificates. Somewhere in the middle, they land on the real issue: work keeps taking more, and nobody seems able to say “that’s enough.”
This episode is a grab bag of trends, but the throughline is simple. We are tired. And the system is pretending that’s a personal problem instead of a design flaw.
What’s inside this episode:
- Why working less shouldn’t just make you a better worker, but a better human
- The real reason open offices exist and why nobody can focus in them
- Why people are using dating apps to find jobs now
- How LinkedIn lost the plot
- What “ghost promotions,” “career shrekking,” “midlife collision,” and “culture rot” actually mean
- Why some countries are making after-hours work illegal
- The uncomfortable conversation about unions and power at work
- Why “just set boundaries” sounds great and works terribly in real life
Jenny and Sarah don’t pretend there’s an easy fix. They do argue that modern work is slowly eating everything else and calling it ambition.
If you’ve ever looked at your job and thought, “This is too much, but I don’t see a way out,” this one will feel uncomfortably familiar.
Hit play. Then go close your laptop.
Visit our website: RISE Human Resources
Book a call: 30 Min HR Consultation
Follow us on Instagram: WTF is Business Casual
