Cocaine, Bathroom Chaos, and the Worst HR Investigation Ever

Every HR professional knows there’s a massive gap between what’s in the employee handbook…
 and what actually happens at work.

This episode lives firmly on the “what actually happens” side.

We kick things off with one of the most unhinged workplace investigations we’ve ever come across — starting with rumors of cocaine use and, somehow worse, very questionable noises coming from the women’s restroom.

Yes. That’s where this starts.

Bill walks us through how this situation unfolds, including the exact moment a well-meaning but wildly unprepared manager decides the best course of action is to directly ask female employees if they’re… handling personal business in the bathroom.

Shockingly, that approach does not go well.

What follows is the kind of investigation that reminds you:

•  things escalate faster than you expect 
•  the wrong person asking the wrong question can make everything worse 
•  and by the time HR is involved, you’re already deep into damage control 

And somehow… that’s just the first story.

We also get into a case of an employee who decides it’s a great idea to film their own job — including safe access, cash handling, and security procedures — and post it online.

Because nothing says “job security” like creating your own training video for how to rob the place.

From there, we shift into hiring — specifically the rise of what we’ll call “job tourists.”

Candidates bouncing from role to role, stacking titles without building actual experience, and leaving hiring managers trying to figure out what’s real and what’s just… creative storytelling.

Which leads to a bigger question:

•  How much should employers dig into resume gaps? 
•  And at what point does “giving someone a chance” turn into “we’re going to regret this”? 

Throughout all of it, we stick to the four walls rule — because if you work in HR, you already know:

Some of the stuff you deal with is too absurd to explain to anyone outside of it.

And sometimes the only way to survive it…
 is to laugh at how ridiculous it all is.

Got a story that made you question everything you thought you knew about the workplace?

Yeah… we want to hear that.

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Welcome to Jaded HR

Announcer 0:02

Had you actually read the email, you would know that the podcast you are about to listen to could contain explicit language and offensive content. These HR experts' views are not representative of their past, present or future employers. If you have ever heard my manager is unfair to me. I need you to reset my HR portal password, or Can I write up my employee for crying too much? Welcome to our little safe zone. Welcome to Jaded HR.

Warren 0:44

Welcome to Jaded HR, the podcast by three HR professionals who want to help you get through the workday by saying everything you're thinking, but say it out loud. I'm Warren.

Bill 0:54

I'm Cece, I'm Bill, all righty.

Warren 0:58

We have a special guest. It's Bill. You hear us talk about every episode as our Patreon supporter, and a couple of weeks ago, bill shot me a message about a really cool story and I had to reach out to him to invite him to be on board, and he was able to join us. So

Bill's Shocking Bathroom Story

Warren 1:20

thank you very much for joining us, bill, and I'll go ahead and use this time, too, to give a shout out to our other Patreon supporters Hallie, the original Jaded HR, rockstar and Mike.

Warren 1:30

So yeah, so first for everybody, we love feedback from listeners. We don't get a boatload of it, we don't get much at all, but it seems like it comes in waves. If you will, and hopefully this will start a new wave of feedback from listeners. Boatload of it, we don't get much at all, but it seems like it comes in waves. If you will, and hopefully this will start a new wave of feedback from listeners, if you have a crazy story, an antic or something like that that you want to tell, let us know. Some people wanted to be on the show. Other people have not wanted to be on the show when I reach out to them to tell their story. But yeah, let us know, we will have you on board. So, bill, thank you very much for joining us. I mean this is great and personally, thank you for supporting the show for this time on Patreon, because it helps.

Bill 2:14

Well, it's been a great listen. You know you guys. When I found you guys, I was looking for somebody to give me some advice on how to be an HR manager. I've only been doing it for a couple of years, but you guys hit a different need. I needed to hear about people who had the same problems that I did.

Warren 2:30

Exactly and I don't think anything we really say is too unique to any of us. Like we said, the poop rite of passage If you haven't dealt with poop, you're not in HR yet. Be poop, there will be poop.

Bill 2:46

There will be, there always is.

Warren 2:48

And it thinks like that. It's just. There's a billion other shows out there. If you want to learn, actually learn something, there's a. There's a hundred. I've listened to many of them, or not many of them, quite a few of them. Of the ones that give actual advice, my favorite, I'll go ahead and say, is Good Morning HR with Mike Coffey, who was on with us in December. That's my favorite one to actually learn from. But you have Kyle Road and Rebel HR and other great ones that you can actually learn something on HR Besties. You can learn from them as well. Yeah, you can learn from them, so they're a little more akin to us, but yeah, so, bill, tell us why you're here.

Bill 3:26

So, so a couple of weeks ago you guys were going I don't even remember what the topics was, it was like two or three sessions ago but and I was like you know what I just got to share this story because it's still fresh in my mind. It's a, it's a this year story and of course, there's been some updates to this story since I shared it with you. But I'll go ahead and start at the beginning. We have a division of the company. It's about 300 and something people spread across four different locations, but the majority of them are here in the area where I'm located with the headquarters, and there's about 180 people in this building.

Bill 4:04

It's a new building, so there's there's problems with the building. We've moved in recently and one of my favorite people in the building comes to me and goes hey, I need to talk to you about some stuff, and she just starts telling me about all these rumors that are going around the building. And the first rumor was you know, we got somebody in the women's restroom doing lines of Coke and I was like, how do you know it's Coke.

Cee Cee 4:37

I mean great question.

Bill 4:39

I've got stories about that too from my past. But how do you know it's Coke and so. And then they're telling me, me, well, they're finding powdery residue and all that kind of stuff. So I I was like, well, maybe it's, maybe it's a misunderstanding of what's going on, and we put you know, the red, the red sharps boxes in there, thinking it was somebody who had a problem dropping their needles in the in the trash or something like that. Right, so we did that. And then she was like there's another rumor. I was like, oh no, she goes. There is sounds of pleasure coming from the women's restroom several times a week. And I'm like, oh my god, what, what? What? I was like this is just somebody, like maybe someone's having a rough day in the restroom, whatever right. And I was like she goes well, are you gonna do anything? I was like she goes well, are you going to do anything? I was like, absolutely not. I'm not going to touch that one, right, there's no way in or out of that situation that will keep you out of jail.

Warren 5:35

Okay, especially as an HR dude having to deal with that in a women's restroom, you're going to be the creepster automatically, yeah, so now? Why are you so concerned?

Cee Cee 5:44

women's restroom you're going to be the creepster automatically, just yeah. So now, why are you so?

Bill 5:48

concerned. Well, now there's the setup right. So it's now Monday evening. It's about six or seven o'clock on a Monday evening in June and I get a call from the senior program manager. Hey, we'll call you tomorrow. We'll give you some more details, but we had one of our our junior program managers pull in four women that work for him and ask them individually if they were masturbating in the women's restroom shit yes exactly. I may have used a few more colorful phrases at that moment but yes.

Bill 6:30

So, of course, come in the next day, I've got to go brief my boss and who I work for, the CFO. I go brief the CEO and tell them and they're like, oh well, what do we do?

The Masturbation Investigation Fallout

Bill 6:40

I was like, well, we're going to fire him. That's, that's the first thing we're going to do. We do need to do some sort of investigation to make it all clean, but he's going to get fired if even one of those women cooperates. That story, yeah, oh my gosh. And so I went over to the building and I asked all four of the ladies that got dimed out their program manager and got the whole story. And what it turns out is this guy decided he was going to take it upon himself Monday morning to ask the four women. Now he has eight people who work for them. Seven of them are women and he only asked four of them and they were the four better looking of the women who worked for him.

Cee Cee 7:25

Oh my God, it just keeps giving Ugly. Women can't do that.

Announcer 7:28

Nope Ugly women can't do this.

Bill 7:32

So I talked to each of the women, I talked to the supervisor. It turns out that he did that and then an hour later went into his supervisor's office and was like, hey, I think we should do this. And she told him under no circumstances, no. So he just clammed up and didn't say nothing. And it was about four or five o'clock in the afternoon when one of the women finally went to her to the boss and was like hey, this happened today and that's when it all went downhill.

Bill 7:59

So Tuesday, I roll in, I get the investigation going. The four women all rogered up. Yep, this is exactly what happened. They wrote statements. I went back to my boss and I said immediately, make him go away, there's no way to salvage this. So in the middle of it, this is the week of sexual harassment complaints. By the way, 15 sexual harassment complaints in four days, hey, different complaints and they're not in the same complaints, right. And most of them were just like petty, like oh, look, hr is in the building taking care of this problem. Maybe they'll listen to this one and make this other guy go away, right? And that's where a lot of them ended up. So the next one was I was in the building and one of the program managers pulls me inside. Hey, one of our admins just came to me and said that her program manager that she works for was asking her recommendations about lingerie. I'm like no, no, no, no.

Bill 8:57

So, I went and talked to her. She gave me her statement and it was he. They had formed a friendship and he thought it was a different kind of friendship and that he could ask some advice about lingerie that he needed for his wife. And I told him yeah, that you're dumb. Guy's been doing being a program manager for like 20 plus years.

Cee Cee 9:17

You're dumb oh my gosh oh.

Bill 9:22

So then of course, the girl who made the complaint didn't like how we handled that situation, because we fired the one guy, but we didn't fire this guy, and then she rage quit. She sent an email out to everybody in the building Basically saying how she was unhappy, and I mean, everybody in the building got this email. It was printed on email. It was probably three pages long about how bad the management was. That's unfortunate. A week after that, of course, the story just keeps building on itself, right? Because we still have to figure out the whole masturbation and coke lines in the bathroom problem, right?

Cee Cee 9:57

We didn't even figure that out.

Bill 9:59

We haven't yet, but that's coming. Oh wait, there's more. I have a lady check out that works in that building and she's like telling me. I was like and the last question I ask anytime I'm doing an exit interview is there anything you would like to tell me that you didn't feel comfortable telling anybody else? Your name won't get used if I have to take action because you're no longer here, so it's not a big deal. And she did.

Bill 10:20

She dad had dumped on me and one of the things that she gave me the name of the person doing coke lines on the in the bathroom and how she had been caught like, walked in on doing the coke lines and I was like, oh okay, so I go down there. And I was told went to the director. I was like, hey, this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to pull her in with a witness, another a female witness, preferably her boss, who, strangely enough, is the boss in the whole story. And I'm going to pull

Employee Caught in Both Scandals

Bill 10:45

her in with a witness, another female witness, preferably her boss, who, strangely enough, is the boss in the whole story. And I'm going to ask her if she's ever done coke lines on the bathroom floor or a bathroom counter. And if she says yes, we'll have her go do a drug screening, see.

Bill 10:57

If it's positive, we'll use our EAP, get her into a drug treatment program and, depending on if she passes the drug treatment program, we'll allow her to come in to work for us without any adverse action and they're like okay, if she says no, I'm still going to send her to do a drug screening, but at that point she's suspended until I get the results back. And this is on a friday, so I'd get the results back on monday and if she's positive, we terminate her immediately. If she's positive, we terminate her immediately. If she's not positive, we go on like nothing happened. And she can be mad at me Not a big deal, right? I'm the guy they pay to get mad at. So I had her, she said, of course. She said, no, I don't do drugs. I don't do drugs in the bathroom, not at all.

Bill 11:40

No, I do them in my office and so I'm like okay, well, in accordance with our drug policy, I am authorized to send you for a command or a company directed your analysis and you will go. And you will go to this location. Your supervisor is going to escort you, right, because I learned that lesson 30 years ago and we'll get the results on monday and you're just going to go home after you do the drug screening and I'll call you in on monday or tuesday when we get the results on Monday, and you're just going to go home after you do the drug screening and I'll call you in on Monday or Tuesday when we get the results back. She's like okay, and she goes well.

Bill 12:10

Can I ask some questions now? I was like sure, no problem, right? I want to make sure it's all clear and transparent. She goes well. Who told you they saw me doing drugs in the bathroom? I was like what she goes, yeah. Who told you that? I was like I'm not going to tell you that and in the back of my head I'm like that automatically means that you know you did it.

Cee Cee 12:28

Yeah, I was just going to say we didn't say that anyone locked in on you, and so now I'm thinking she did it.

Bill 12:36

I got my law degree from Law Order.

Cee Cee 12:37

I know how this works.

Bill 12:40

So I'm expecting now her drug screening to come back positive for something. Her supervisor and her get over there. I get a call. I'm in the middle of shoving Mission BBQ in my face because it's lunchtime and I answer the phone and the supervisor's like she doesn't want to do the drug screening. I was like, okay, well, here's her choice. She can do the drug screening and run the risk that she's going to get terminated with a positive, or she can be terminated now for refusal to do the drug screening in accordance with our policy. And so the lady quit. That day turns out she was both our coke line user on the bathroom counter and our women's restroom masturbator. Oh, she was both. She was both. She was both. What a twist. So she was going in the restroom getting high, getting high and then rubbing one out yeah.

Cee Cee 13:32

Oh my.

Announcer 13:32

God.

Warren 13:34

And cocaine. It's almost like it's a passe drug now. You know, in the 90s and 80s, I was like is it the?

Bill 13:41

80s again.

Warren 13:44

Yeah, robin Williams' line cocaine is God's message to you that you have too much money. But if it weren't, for cocaine, saturday Night Live would never have been a thing, that's true.

Bill 13:56

Right, some of my favorite comics would have never been comics. Yeah, exactly.

Cee Cee 14:01

That's so funny. That is insane. I didn't expect the twist at the end. So she, that is insane, I didn't expect the twist at the end.

Bill 14:07

Yeah, one fell swoop, we got two rumors killed.

Warren 14:10

So, and I have to ask was she one of the four good looking women or one of the three non?

Bill 14:16

good looking women, um. Of the four women, she was probably the better of the four. However, you could tell like I have some background. I did 25 years in the United States Navy. One of the things that I did was deal with people and their criminal mishaps while active duty and you can tell when someone's using drugs, like I didn't have to ask her the questions to know she was going to lie to me. There were the signs, right. Yeah, the sunken, sallow face. She'd lost weight. She was like stupid stick skinny because you know Coke does that to you. Yeah, oh gosh.

Warren 14:55

Oh my gosh, it was Wow. See, I think you get some sort of award because you had like a mix of like 10 things all in one scenario. You know, bathroom, you don't have to go as far as poop but bathroom stuff, masturbation, drugs, lingerie harassment.

Cee Cee 15:18

I mean, wow, that would be like one really great episode of an HR sitcom.

Warren 15:22

Yeah, it would. It would be like you couldn't, you could. How do you do episode two? What do we do next?

Bill 15:31

Yeah, you can't run that as the pilot episode, that's for sure.

Warren 15:36

Yeah, that's oh wow. And see, I honestly fully believe and I think every listener will fully believe every word of what you're saying, because we've been there, we've done that Maybe not exactly, but we could see that happening Whereas someone who doesn't do HR is like what are you talking about? You're full of shit, you know, or something like that.

Bill 15:58

Well, it's like my COO hates to see me Monday morning. I try not to go to his office first thing Monday morning, because when I walk in there first thing Monday morning it's stuff like this as we leave, he goes. You just can't make this up, can you?

Warren 16:13

No, you can't, you really really can't.

Cee Cee 16:18

Oh, man you do deserve an award that was awesome.

Warren 16:22

Hopefully since then, your work is getting, you know, less exciting for a little while.

Bill 16:30

For about 30 days and then it came back with a vengeance. Oh boy, yeah, some of those players. The lady that rage quit in the middle of all that. She wrote an EOC complaint. So we've got that going for us.

Cee Cee 16:44

That's unfortunate.

Warren 16:48

Fun stuff. Well, you know, that is very lightning of a story, but let's see if we can keep things going from there. So, cece, we didn't get to all of our stories last episode and we recorded I was saying off the air, we recorded for an hour and 40 minutes. I think we got the episode down. I got it down to like an hour and 15 minutes or something like that, hour 10, hour 15. So we missed one of the stories. So what employee behaving badly do you have? Oh my gosh.

Cee Cee 17:22

Okay, so this was like a few weeks ago. Do you have, oh my gosh. Okay, so this was like a few weeks ago. There was a individual who, just you know, loves to have a social media presence and loves to do a day in my life video blogs as she's working. So this was

Social Media Disasters at Work

Cee Cee 17:40

an individual who is a store manager inside of a Mac cosmetics that was inside of the LAX airport and she did a lot of these a day in my life vlogs through her entire career as a Mac cosmetics representative, and I guess she got called in at a no in the middle of her.

Cee Cee 18:03

By the way, it was in the middle of her day in my life, which I thought was so what a great day it was such a great day because she did get fired like in the middle of her day in my life, and all of her mac mascara was like running down her face as she was carrying her box out, like it was very dramatic. But apparently what she was doing was she was videotaping everything like, everything Like. She was videotaping and recording and capturing her pulling up to the employee parking lot. She dangled her badge in front of the camera before she scanned it. In giving everyone a clear view of, like what that security was. That security was, she showed herself going in to like their back office, getting the money out of the safe, putting the money in the canister, showing people what that canister looked like. So if you were walking to the LAX like airport and you saw like this very particular briefcase, you knew there was cash in there. But she was timestamping everything so people could follow her.

Cee Cee 19:08

Basically, and the best part was and this is my favorite she actually recorded herself like logging into the POS, which, if you could slow it down, you can see her employee code. You could see everything. So, anyway, oh, and she also recorded herself taking a nap in the back, which was but I just wanted to, you know, just kind of throw that out there and being and saying like you don't need to record everything, like we should know less of each other, I don't need to know like you going to work in the morning, let's just all take a step back and put the phones down.

Bill 19:43

Yeah I don't know about you guys, but there's things in my 20s that I'm glad there's no photographic evidence of honestly exactly yes, exactly there is definitely.

Cee Cee 19:55

Oh, I was talking about this with someone, actually there was that. It's so funny you brought it up. It was one of those like generational things, like gen c doesn't know what it's like, but honestly, like we I think they said millennials are the last generation to know life before social media and like we had the freedom to act like fools and not have everyone record us. Like we had like that luxury. So anyway, put your phones away when you're at work. Just put them away.

Warren 20:27

Yeah, like put them away Apparently at my work there's someone whose desk is not far from mine, who I've never known, is doing social media videos and everything. And another employee said oh, I saw you walking behind this person's desk while they were doing a social media thing. I'm like what are you? I'm like, really, they're recording social media stuff, did I mean?

Bill 20:52

anyways, that's I would say I would say about every six months I have that conversation with my team like hey, you guys understand that back here is not a place to record, or you want to have private phone calls go outside. But but this is HR, lots of things happen in here and it doesn't need to leave HR.

Cee Cee 21:11

Yeah.

Warren 21:12

One person I've worked with very briefly for two times, but she had this rule that I've carried with me ever since the four walls rule, and within these four HR walls we can say and do all sorts of abhorrent shit that vent ourselves the HR safe space.

Warren 21:30

Yes, If we want to say that Warren is the dumbest ass employee, what the fuck did Warren do today? Oh my gosh, we can say that as loud and with as much tone and attitude with each other as we need just to get it off and be you know, get that out of your system so you don't say it to the employee themselves. And I love that rule and it led to a lot of great conversations the four walls rule.

Cee Cee 21:56

Laughing. One of my really good friends, her husband, just started with an Australian based company and he says like their work culture at this specific company is very different, like people are throwing the c word around and like all it's very lax. And he was in a meeting one day and someone said they, they called someone lasagna okay as a nickname and they're like yeah, he doesn't know, that's his nickname and they're like why is it?

Cee Cee 22:25

lasagna and someone said because I'm not gonna do an australian accent because I'll kill it but he said his, his head's so fucking baked he can't get shit done oh man I don't know why. The four walls just reminded me of that and I thought that was was hilarious. His head's so fucking baked he can't get shit done.

Warren 22:47

Let's see here. So the news. I'm going to keep the theme going of people behaving badly and we have two really good examples since our last recording of people behaving badly, and I'm not going to I don't I don't even know if the guy's name was released. He was the polish ceo who was at the us open and the polish tennis player and I don't follow tennis at all people, so I'm not going to go with the names, but he was giving out, signing autographs and giving things away and he hands this cap to this kid. Looks like he's 10, 12 years old, but this Polish CEO snatches it from the tennis player's hand and then gives it to his girlfriend. He's like oh, he's the cat that ate the canary happy, and he's all this and that. And the kid's like giving him just, you know, you monster type, look type thing. You monster type, look type thing. And that CEO later released a statement and saying you know he didn't realize that the hat was intended for the kid.

Cee Cee 23:52

Oh no, he knew, he knew, just watching every minute of that he knew every second of what he was doing.

Warren 23:58

So you know that's just total bullshit with that and that irritated me. But at least he had the gumption to acknowledge the fact, acknowledge what happened, even though he might have been lying. Oh, I didn't realize it was intended for the kid. Yes, it absolutely was. The whole rest of the world realized that. Why couldn't you? But the more famous one now is your, philadelphia Karen, and I just realized I saw another video about this. This was in my the.

Warren 24:31

The home game was in miami, so they were philly fans down in miami or florida marlins. Now I guess you'd say that you know the, the homeroom ball. Nobody catches. It's bouncing around florida. Dad bends over in front of this lady, picks it up and gives it to his son and everybody's all happy except for that lady who swore it was hers and she's. He stole it out of her hand and he's yelling and she's yelling and screaming at him and ultimately the dad just says get the fuck out of here and gives the ball back to the lady. It's not worth it. But now social media says that she was been identified and been fired from her job. If social media is right, she's a? Uh works on a school board somewhere up in New Jersey or something like that that's.

Bill 25:17

That's what I saw, but then I saw another post the day after that said that it wasn't her. Yeah, oh, so yeah, who the day?

Warren 25:24

after that said that it wasn't her. Yeah, oh, so yeah, who knows? But wherever she works, hopefully she doesn't work there anymore, because that type of volatility you know the CEO, he was just being a jerk and grabbed a hat there was no volatility, anger, rage, whatever in that. This lady lost her shit altogether and first it's sort of par, for course, for a Phillies fan in any sport, yeah worst fans ever.

Warren 25:49

Yeah, and actually I know we have listeners in Philadelphia. You know they're going to hate me. Philadelphia is one of the physically dirtiest cities I think I've ever been in. Maybe St Louis has got it topped. St Louis might have it topped. Sorry, listeners in St Louis, but a few years ago I went with my son and we're going around all the touristy areas in Philadelphia and there is filth. We're in like near the Liberty Bell area. There is filth everywhere, needles in public places and like unhinged crazies. Out there there was one unhinged person who was just going nuts and me and my son walked into the. There was a bank nearby. Hey, let's go into this bank. We have no business being here, but I don't think a crazy is going to come in here and we just sort of watched him walk by and we left just because it was just. Philadelphia is and I have many, actual many friends who live around Philadelphia. It's just a filthy, dirty, disgusting little city, not little city, but it's.

Cee Cee 26:51

I was just going to say you guys need to get your sports fans in order Because, I don't know, I heard they also have a jail in their stadiums because they just get so rowdy. Just get your people in order, yeah.

Warren 27:02

Sorry.

Cee Cee 27:04

Sorry, that woman, just being a Phillies fan, was the icing on the cake it was.

Bill 27:09

You know, though, the team came through, though, and really they resolved the issue, and I think, probably one of the best ways it turns out, it was the kid's birthday.

Cee Cee 27:19

Oh my gosh, that day I didn't love it.

Bill 27:20

And so they brought him like a swag bag, yeah, that day. And so they brought him like a swag bag, yeah, and then the the team that that was the stadium brought him a swag bag with a whole bunch of stuff in it. And then the team the phillies actually brought him down after the game and got got him to get a signed bat from the guy that hit the home run.

Warren 27:36

Yeah, so and you know, kudos to both the marlins and the phillies organizations for doing that. Yeah, because, and the thing is, it's not one of those things that we're finding out those players knew what was happening right then and there, and one of the screenshots I showed, they're doing pitch one and it's a home run and they show all the commotion. They do pitch two and they're going back to the commotion after the thing and they're going back and forth and I'm like geez, lady, you are completely unhinged.

Cee Cee 28:07

It's just the audacity. It's the audacity, like that's my ball. You gotta be fast.

Announcer 28:14

And.

Cee Cee 28:14

I will say this. So, mr CEC, uh, like we go to a few concerts and we've been to a concert before where, like he caught the pick of a guitarist who like threw it, and my and and mr cc loves to play guitars, so but he caught the guitar and there was a kid behind him who wanted the guitar pick and he just sucked it up and gave it to the kid and like it's not that big of a deal, like I get I'm so

Sports Fans Behaving Badly

Cee Cee 28:40

sorry, if you are a sports fan, it could be that big of a deal. I get it, people you know, but I don't know. So now we have a thing where whenever we go to see a show, he brings some fake pics with them. So if he catches, the real pic he will

Warren 28:54

give the fake pic to the child oh, that's what you need to start doing. You start to you start bringing fake balls you know now I've attended.

Warren 29:02

you know I was a baseball umpire for 15 years but I've attended a number. To start doing you start bringing fake balls. You know, now I've attended. You know I was a baseball umpire for 15 years but I've attended a number of games. I've never been even near a foul ball or a home run ball in the stands, never, not close to it Once. So I was like, and yeah so. And then these people who seem to always be in the right place at the right time.

Cee Cee 29:24

Always yeah.

Warren 29:26

So, okay, I've got a couple of stories here. One of them I was speaking to my best friend from junior high and for those of you who are younger than me, that's middle school. Anyways, he is for the past few years he's been a director at a state agency and he got notification for the first time since he's been director that they get to not only hire but it's adding a headcount. It's one person, a whopping one person they're adding to the headcount and you know he's been searching and searching and he's just getting so pissed off through these interviews. And you know he's his current team. He has got a lot of people with a one to three years of experience. He's got like two people in that five to 10 years of experience and then everybody else is like him who've been doing it for 25 plus years, and so he wants someone with like five to 10 years of experience, that middle ground, to sort of even out his team a little bit.

Warren 30:32

But he's doing all these interviews and he's finding these people. He's being sent these resumes with people with five to 10 years of experience, but they have one year here, two years there and he asked them questions that if someone's been working in their field for five to 10 years should know, and they don't have a clue. He says they've got one year of experience, five times and things like that. And then the term he used, which I thought was just brilliant, I'm going to steal it from him. He says they're job tourists. They come in and they you know, oh, portland, oregon, so cool place to go. I'm going to go there and get a job and do this for a little while. And then, oh, let's go to Santa Fe, new Mexico, and that's a cool place to go. And you know, they just they jump around not focusing on they're getting jobs, they're employed, but they're not focusing on their career.

Warren 31:21

And the thing is he can hire either one of two positions and he's running the problem with both. He hasn't decided which way he's going to go, so he's advertising both One. The main thing he really wants is someone to work out in the field and do field work, and that's his first priority. But if he can't find that, he's willing to settle Not settle. But he's also looking at a data scientist to do the work.

Warren 31:46

Their field people come in and do their own data work and he says I could have more people out in the field more often. If I have a data scientist doing the backend stuff but he can't find either that they have know they they're have real experience. He's almost at the point where he's going to go to a college and just hire an entry level either way and develop them himself and he says it sucks that he's. Half his team is one to three years of experience and he wanted you know some more people because he wants to be out in the field and he says with all these one to three year people he's training and doing things like that in the field but he's not doing the work himself. So it's just really interesting. But I love the term job tourist with that.

Bill 32:31

I guess you can afford to do that if you don't have to worry about finances.

Warren 32:35

Yeah, bingo. I think that's the thing.

Bill 32:39

There's a good story. You guys of course know Adam Sandler. That's the thing. There's a good story. You guys of course know Adam Sandler. There in the 90s, apparently, he chose his jobs, the movies that he was going to do, based on where they were being filmed, so that he could take his family on vacations. That's funny.

Warren 32:54

Hey, if you could do it. That's why he's doing 50 First States in Hawaii and things like that.

Cee Cee 33:00

What was the one that they went to Africa blended? Was that the one where it was like Drew Barrymore and they were like a blended family and they like both go like that would have been a really cool family vacation, yeah.

Warren 33:12

Adam Sandler, drew Barrymore, in that that 51st States and those that year, they did a bunch of Never Been Kissed. Was that, yeah, never Been Kissed? And a bunch of other cool ones.

Cee Cee 33:22

Honestly, this is not HR related, but I watched Happy Gilmore 2. Oh yes, a couple weeks ago I was delightfully surprised at how much I enjoyed it. I was a big Happy Gilmore fan the original but I just thought the sequel was just so well done it was, and all of his daughters and his wife were in it and I was like he's such a good family.

Cee Cee 33:45

I mean I like I saw him do stand up like he did like a stand up show, a live show here and he's like half singing, half stand up. He just seems like such a good guy. Yeah, like I really hope he, I really hope he's not like the next Dave Grohl who just let us all down.

Warren 34:02

Oh, oh, really hope he's not like the next dave grohl who just let us all down. Oh, oh, don't, don't break my heart about dave grohl. I have not heard any negative things about him.

Cee Cee 34:06

Oh, you didn't hear. Like a year ago he came out that he had like a kid outside of wedlock, like outside of his marriage, and like there's a woman in some country that like has like a one-year-old or a two-year-old okay wow I.

Warren 34:18

I was thinking he was going to be that's bad, but I was thinking it was going to be a lot worse. He was going to be a racist, or yeah, yeah, or something like that. Dave Grohl he's one of my all-time favorite musicians, artists, whatever.

Warren 34:35

He let us down. Well, I have three more little quickie things today, and this one will go with what I just spoke about. This comes to us from LinkedIn. The writer is Liz Ryan and her byline is coach. You know my feeling on coaches.

Warren 34:53

Creator, ceo and founder, human workspace author. Blah blah, blah, blah, blah blah. So she does everything, but the attention gettinggetting meme is you don't need to ask candidates about resume gaps. They're irrelevant and none of your

Job Tourists and Resume Gaps

Warren 35:10

business. And that just triggered me right off the word gap, and I'll read it's like I don't know a paragraph she wrote there's no reason or justification for asking a candidate why they have a resume gap. That's their personal life. Would you ask a consultant what they've been doing since their last consulting engagement? If they gave me a chronological list and I saw a big gap, yes, I would ask. But that's another thing.

Warren 35:35

Continuing what she wrote, why does anyone have to justify stepping off the conveyor belt, or even for a few months? Do you see how toxic and controlling the question what were you doing during this gap is? If you can see that you are someone who can lead through trust rather than fear, if you can't see why this question is wildly inappropriate, pay close attention next time you ask and see if a candidate fights back tears remembering a family member's illness or death. What someone was doing during a break is simply none of your business and I am going to call giant bullshit on that one. Yes, I've said it on the podcast before In 2011, I was laid off twice in that same year and in 2002, I was terminated for cause and that I had a three-month gap. And when people ask oh yeah, I lost my job because I sucked at my job at that time and I really said something you know, not that directly, but yeah, I didn't. You know, I tried something new. It didn't work out for me. I ended up losing my job.

Bill 36:34

But answer the question even if it is okay, no, I was just to say like there's some times where you know, especially like I got a background screens, I see all those and you can see when someone spent time in jail or something like that, and and it matches up where that gap is and sometimes you just want to see if they'll they'll say anything, you know, and like recently I had a guy who's sitting in my office we're getting, we're onboarding him right, we're hiring him. He's not going to get kicked out the door, because I already looked at his background screening. But I asked him. I was like, hey, look, I see this gap in here. What's going on? And he goes oh yeah, I spent some time in jail for a stupid decision that I made when I was a little younger. I was like well, as long as you learn from it, move on.

Warren 37:24

Yeah, exactly, have a tragedy in your life or your family that you know, I don't know a spouse died and you needed some time off, or maybe you wanted to be a stay-at-home mom. Those are legitimate answers and you don't have to go into too much detail. And I tell you what when I ask that question if you start going into too much detail in a long story, more than a single paragraph or so means you're bullshitting me. You know, if you're going to tell me this long, drawn-out story, okay, I'm not believing that. But oh, yeah, I took some time off to spend time with my kids, my family, or I had an illness, or you know, you know, or I had something personal going on in my life. That's all you have to say. But I, I don't want to. I I kind of want to hear what, because if you're starting to bullshit me, then things are going sideways. So, ms Liz, Ryan.

Warren 38:07

I really could not disagree with you more, and I think most of the HR community is going to be on there with us.

Bill 38:15

Well, unless she's in her 80s, there's no reason to be a coach.

Warren 38:18

Yeah, you know coaches and consultants. They're just people who lost their job. Otherwise, most of the time, it seems so. They were terminated for cause, probably from their employment, or maybe got laid off and decided to go out on their own.

Cee Cee 38:35

Oh, I'm laughing because it's true.

Bill 38:38

I have to admit I've met several HR professionals in my region that are no longer with active companies. They've decided to start their own business as HR consultants and I'm like, yeah, you got fired. I know you got fired because I know the company you're working at. They all told me why you got fired. Because they wanted me to come work for them.

Cee Cee 38:54

It's really funny.

Warren 38:58

It's crazy. It's a consultant coach type thing. Keynote speaker. Add that to the list. That's the next thing they'll be doing too.

Cee Cee 39:07

That's interesting, honestly, like I don't know. I don't know how I feel about that, because there is a bit of me. I could see both sides. I could honestly see both sides to that argument.

Bill 39:17

You know, if you had plenty of experience to back up your coaching or consulting, then that would be different. But some of these folks do it right out the gate.

Cee Cee 39:27

Yeah, they really do. I'm just laughing because I did work with someone who was fired. That person started their own consulting business. Yeah, it's just funny to me. And they just released a book.

Bill 39:45

Oh, okay.

Warren 39:45

How to Get get fired in 10 ways and next are they on the speakers, apparently masturbating on a toilet while doing coke is the answer.

Cee Cee 39:55

Oh geez, yeah, no, it's. It's funny, though, and I, I I kind of want to read it because I'm interested in it, mainly because when we had worked together, I was the one that usually authored things.

Cee Cee 40:09

And this individual had a weakness in that area that he admitted to. But I'm just laughing because I'm just like I'm interested in the book now. Morbid curiosity, like I said. But you know what, though? Here's the thing Everyone's out there getting their money, they're getting paid. Good on him for figuring it out, because he's probably very happy doing what he's doing and I'm very happy doing what I'm doing, so go off, king.

Warren 40:42

Like I said, once I get my master's degree I'll have those three extra letters to put behind my name with all my other little letters I could put behind it, and I want to just start having AI write books and sign them and just do self-published AI books. You know I've written 35 books in three days. You know something like that.

Cee Cee 41:00

See, isn't that kind of sad, like I feel like now AI has made it so easy for people to create like AI slop in self-published book form, and now it's like writing a book. Quote-unquote is just like I have a podcast.

Announcer 41:16

Like, everyone has a podcast.

Cee Cee 41:18

Everyone has a book, everyone has something. It's just like you have two podcasts. Yes, that's right, I have two podcasts. Oh my God, it's just funny, ai is taking over.

Bill 41:33

But you know, it's a great tool if you use it right, it is.

Cee Cee 41:36

Oh, a thousand percent A thousand percent.

Warren 41:40

One of my other courses. Well, I'm going segueing right in. I'm taking one of my other courses. Well, I'm going to segue right in. I'm taking a class now on operations management. We're talking about a lot about AI and I'm really digging that class so far. But the other class I'm taking this semester is organizational behavior and I love the practice of it and I won't be terribly jaded. It's a couple of weeks in. It's not that I'm learning something. I'm getting more or less cued in on things I've already known. It's like oh, there we go, and things like that. But I had quiz number one last week and it's talking about the functions of organizational behavior. Are we going to get quiz now?

Cee Cee 42:23

Oh well, I can ask you these two questions.

Bill 42:26

I took screenshots of oh, okay, it's been 10 years since I did my master's degree, so go easy on me. Why do employees behave the way they do?

Cee Cee 42:39

Jackassery Coke People be peepling Coke Coke People be people-ing.

Warren 42:45

Coke, cocaine. I mean, why do? There's some great theories behind it and things like that, but it's because, yeah, jackassery just being an asshole douchebag, whatever you want to call him.

Cee Cee 43:00

Yes, correct answer, I am going to take a less jaded approach to this question, if we shall, and I don't even know if this is a correct answer. This is just through my lens. In my crazy mind, I think people behave the way they do in organizations because 99 of the people are not psychopaths and they come to work and they want to do a good job and their definition of a good job varies from person to person and sometimes those things create conflict oh you are, I think, one of the right answers.

Warren 43:31

I wish I had did you?

Bill 43:33

did you read that out of the book?

Cee Cee 43:35

no, I am just that brilliant oh, I forget the term.

Warren 43:38

I just took the quiz. Hold up, I'm going to find it. I'll edit this out.

Cee Cee 43:42

Oh, this is so fun If people on my master's cohort can see me now.

Bill 43:50

I remember when I was doing my master's years, I answered a quiz probably in the same class, and the guy actually failed the quiz on me and told me to rethink the answers. Not as a military member, oh.

Announcer 44:02

A whole new, a military member.

Bill 44:03

Oh, a whole new concept for me Interesting.

Cee Cee 44:07

How was that for you?

Bill 44:08

Well, I was 20 years institutionalized, so it was a little harder.

Cee Cee 44:13

That's interesting.

Warren 44:14

I can't find the actual answer to or what the yeah the topic that that falls under, but it does have something to do with what you said it's about. You know people do things based on the situation. Essentially I can't find the exact term in my notes it ties into your psych class.

Bill 44:34

If you've taken that already, you know people are nurture versus nature and then you get put into a social situation and someone else's nurture nature is different and they're not always congruent.

Warren 44:49

Yeah, exactly so I just I wanted to put my jaded answer. I put the correct one in for that answer. I love it. And then you led to another answer. The next question on this quiz I screenshotted was why is one individual more productive than another?

Cee Cee 45:09

Intrinsic motivation.

Bill 45:11

Because they're not a jackass.

Cee Cee 45:13

Because they're not.

Warren 45:15

Yeah, once again, it's almost the same answer that their situational values and values behaviors per the situation are.

Bill 45:25

Well, and I also find that age and longevity in the job also drives some of that productivity issues. Someone who's been in the job forever I have one that kind of slacks off a little bit and has to be kind of redirected, whereas the employee- that's only been here for. Yeah, there's an employee that works here for like two years and she's like on top of it all the time. So, there's kind of a difference in mentality there too.

Warren 45:51

Exactly, exactly. So I've been finding that fun. I'm enjoying the class. Like I said, I'm not quote unquote, learning new things, but I'm just picking up on things. We're a whole weekend so I'm not. It's not like I've gotten a lot of it, but it's it's going pretty well so far. So, yeah, what is there anything else anybody has on the cover today? Anything else on?

Cee Cee 46:16

anybody's mind. Well, first of all, I think that we should. We should have a weekly segment or like an episode segment, where we go over what Warren learned in grad school that week and we can do quizzes.

Warren 46:30

Well, this organizational behavior class might give me some good ammo for that, I know.

Cee Cee 46:37

But talking about people misbehaving, just really quick, this was on Reddit, so take it with a grain of salt if it's on Reddit, but it made me crack up. So, people, it's malicious compliance, which I love some good malicious compliance, especially when the rules are nonsense and don't make sense. So this individual said that they at their company, a new they had like kind of like a dress casual situation. However, some new leader came in and really wanted people to stick to the dress code that was in the handbook, which, like, why, like we've had this conversation so many times. People are professionals, let them be professional but their handbook wasn't revised since like the 90s or something Like. It was just a very outdated dress code. So some examples were that men had to wear suit, tie, jacket, women had to wear blouses, knee-length skirts, nylons, nylons.

Warren 47:38

Going back to the 50s.

Cee Cee 47:40

Yeah.

Cee Cee 47:41

A little leg action, yeah go back to the 50s, yeah, and so, anyway, a few employees decided to follow the dress code to a t. So we had individuals who were showing

Malicious Compliance With Dress Codes

Cee Cee 47:50

up to work in suspenders in full-on, like wedding, like wedding suits, tuxedos. There was people who showed up in shoulder pads and the nylons and closed-toed pumps. So they said it was a small team that started it. By the middle of the week almost the entire office looked like it was out of a corporate museum and very quickly did that new leader. Partner with HR to revise the dress code. Partner with HR to revise the dress code.

Bill 48:24

That's one of those tricky areas too, especially now.

Cee Cee 48:30

Mm-hmm. A thousand percent.

Warren 48:35

I've told this story, I'm sure on the podcast, before, but my brother he was in the Army, did 20-some-odd years retired as a full-bird colonel. But when he was a major he got hired for a job he didn't even apply to, to be a military science instructor at the United States Military Academy, west Point. And so he's there and he's doing his thing and everything's going well. And one of his head people come to him and say well, you know, one of the reasons we brought you on is you're so highly decorated and all that and we would like to see you wear more and more of your ribbons and things like that. He goes no, these are the ones that are important to me, these are the ones I like. He goes I don't need to wear them all, I'm not going to wear them all.

Warren 49:15

And they sort of got him to the point where they're telling wear. And he says I don't think there's anywhere in the UCMJ that I have to wear all my ribbons. And he goes well, we'd really really like you. We want to impress on you how much we'd really like you to, because it'll impress the kids, the students and things like that. So for two weeks my brother wore his dinner tuxedo with not only the ribbon of everything he's had but the full metal of everything he's had. And for two weeks he walked around. He said I looked like a third world country dictator walking around the hallways at West Point in my dinner tuxedo with all these things, he said. After two weeks he went back to wearing the he said six or eight ribbons. That actually meant something to him and nobody said a word to him about it ever since.

Cee Cee 50:04

Did anyone not tell him that it was a requirement to have 15 pieces of flair?

Warren 50:10

Exactly, exactly.

Cee Cee 50:13

My brother wouldn't get that reference, it is very like Jim, all of the office, when Dwight sends out the dress code memo and he shows up in his tux. I do, I do. I just Malicious. Compliance is fantastic. I love it. Yeah, it's delicious.

Warren 50:27

Yeah, exactly. Well, with that, I think we'll call this episode to an end. Bring it to an end. Our voice artist at the beginning is Andrew Kolpa, and the music is the Underscore Orchestra song the Devil, the Devil. So, as always, I'm Warren. I'm Cece and I'm Bill and we're here helping you survive. Hr1. What the Fuck moment at a time. Yay, yay, thank you.