Encore Episode: Spooky HR Spooky Spooktacular

A Halloween throwback with teeth: we revisit the moments that make HR feel haunted and explain how to handle them without losing your cool. We kick off with a real company memo that tied election outcomes to potential layoffs and unpack where employer speech ends and voter intimidation begins. The difference between context and coercion matters, so we walk through how to communicate policy risk without turning paystubs into campaign flyers or unraveling trust.

From there, we shift to the customer side and the Expensify CEO’s mass political email. Using a product mailing list to advocate a candidate is a masterclass in how to torch goodwill. We talk data stewardship, opt-in norms, and the reputational cost when brands push beyond the purpose of their channels. Then we lighten the mood with remote Halloween ideas that don’t create HR nightmares, and we draw hard boundaries around costumes that cross into racism, sexual content, or glorified violence. A little guidance in advance can spare everyone a lot of pain later.

We also roll up our sleeves for real management work: coaching a leader through their first termination when a remote contractor misses deadlines, hijacks meetings, and submits shaky timesheets. You’ll hear the exact steps we use to document performance, run a clean meeting, and close the loop when someone “resigns” after being let go. And yes, we poke at HR’s own monsters: job titles that confuse more than they clarify. Fun is fine, but titles should map to market norms so candidates, comp, and compliance stay on solid ground.

If you enjoy candid HR insights, practical scripts, and a few spooky laughs, hit follow, leave a review on your favorite podcast app, and tell us your best workplace costume disaster or haunted-office prank. Your stories might make a future show.

Chapters

• 0:00 Encore Intro And Disclaimers
• 3:20 Politics At Work Without Getting Political
• 6:45 Employer Memos And Voter Coercion
• 12:00 Customer Political Emails Backfire
• 16:40 COVID-Era Halloween Party Ideas
• 19:50 Are Fewer Office Parties A Red Flag
• 25:45 The Flu Shot Email Meltdown
• 32:30 Coaching A Manager Through Termination
• 38:00 Resigning After Being Fired
• 41:15 Workplace Costume Lines You Don’t Cross

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:01

Hey y'all, this is Warren. Unfortunately, due to the Amazon Web Services downtime earlier this week and a heavy dose of reality, we were not able to record an episode this week. But I pulled up this old Halloween episode from season one, so we'll take you back to 2020. Please enjoy this encore episode, and we'll see you in two weeks.

SPEAKER_02: 0:24

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've ever heard, my manager is unfair to me, I need you to reset my HR portal password or get rid of my employee for crying too much.

SPEAKER_01: 0:49

Welcome to our little table.

SPEAKER_03: 1:16

Podcast by two former human resources coworkers who just want to help you get through the workday by saying all those things you are thinking, but say it out loud. I'm Patrick Concilis. And I'm Warren Workman. And welcome to our spooky HR episode.

SPEAKER_00: 1:31

Yeah, spooky and scary. We're going to actually delve a little bit into politics, which we avoid on this podcast like the plague or like COVID-19.

SPEAKER_03: 1:40

Spooky. HR spook tacular. Oh my gosh. I did want to say one thing. So peek inside my kimono a little bit. First started this podcast, I started labeling things. I think the first episode just on my random notes, I labeled it Jaded HR episode 0A. Okay. You know, I did an episode one just because, you know, episode 0 to me was like The throwaway. We're just starting. I don't know what this is going to be, what's going to happen.

SPEAKER_00: 2:08

And it still hasn't been aired.

SPEAKER_03: 2:09

But then it became 0A, and then it was 0B, then it was 0. So I just I went through the entire alphabet. So we're actually, we just released our 26th episode, I believe, last episode. So I I guess I really just want to kind of say thank you. Like we've done 26th episode and we haven't gotten a whole lot of feedback, but we're seeing people download and people are listening. So we just started on epit this is my episode 1A. So uh that we're recording right now. So yeah, we've gone through the alphabet. Just wanted to say a quick thank you at the start of the episode that to people that have downloaded, we still would like your your lovely feedback. Absolutely. But we know you're out there listening. I hope that we are providing some some lovely value for you. Yes. So I just want to say that. And then another quick thank you also to Andrew Quopa for recording that amazing disclaimer at the start of our episode. You can find him at uh Instagram, I believe at AndroidQopa.

SPEAKER_00: 3:05

It'll be in the show notes again.

SPEAKER_03: 3:06

I put it in last week's. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Andrew. I didn't I'm trying to do this off the top of my head. I should have had your email already. I'll give you another shout out at the end of the episode with some of your projects. I said I was gonna do that last time and I didn't. So yeah, so Warren, do you want to start us off?

SPEAKER_00: 3:20

Well, here we are, a week until the big election. And so we're gonna get into politics, but we're not gonna get political. But there's a there was a story, and like all good stories, this one comes from Florida, but I actually read about it John Hyman's Ohio Employment Lawyer blog. But this company, Daniels Manufacturing Corporation, are based in Orlando. The news article that was linked to it was very sure to state that they had a Trump flag in front of their building. But anyways, uh the president of the company attached a memo to all employees' last pay statement. And it reads, quote, If Trump and the Republicans win the election, DMC will hopefully be able to continue operating more or less as it's been operating lately. However, if Biden and the Democrats win, DMC could be forced to begin permanent layoffs in late 2020 and or early 2021. And obviously, this caused uproar. It made some local news. Obviously, the uh Ohio Employment Lawyer Ball blog picked it up and and that's where I found it. And uh so it it it caused an uproar. But my question is does this in your mind cross the line of what an employer can and can't do?

SPEAKER_03: 4:37

For me personally, yes. Because it's like scaremongering, I I feel.

SPEAKER_00: 4:42

Okay.

SPEAKER_03: 4:43

I I think if you have if you have a very strong uh business case, I guess for your business, and you want to just float it out there and say, hey, this is how the election could potentially affect our business, I I guess that's okay. I still think you're drawing the line as far as campaigning goes and threatening your employees goes, because no matter what, those those memos are always going to draw the line one way or the other in trying to lead you in one certain direction. So But that particular case, just th you're threatening your employees. If you vote this way, you're gonna potentially be laid off. And with Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 5:23

Oh, well, I I was thinking of it, I I didn't quite seeing as that crossing the line because I read it as more of a factual statement. Based on what they said here, I might be forced to do layoffs and based on things they've said. And now the I was I read the you know, in the Ohio Employer Law blog, they they did cite the law that basically says it's illegal to coerce, intimidate, threat, threaten, or threaten people to vote or not to vote in certain ways. And I don't it definitely don't think rose to that level. But I I have some other friends.

SPEAKER_03: 5:55

I see it as minor intimidation. Yeah. If you're threatening your job, because if you the vote goes this way, this is how it's gonna affect your job negatively.

SPEAKER_00: 6:03

That's fairly threatening. I want to know is what industry are they in? Because the industry could be very specific because um some employment industries or companies in general are more susceptible to political changes. And I one that came to mind immediately for me was the coal industry. The the candidates have very different views on coal industry, and he's in Orlando, Florida. I don't believe there's a lot of coal going on in Orlando, Florida. Uh to the best of my knowledge. But yeah, i i I I would want to know a little bit more. Is it something that, you know, uh is it an industry type thing that one of the candidates is more pro their industry than the other? I I don't know enough to know.

SPEAKER_03: 6:48

So Yeah, I I can agree with that, but either way, it's it's each individual's right to vote however they want. And if your employer is potentially threatening in a very roundabout way your job, if you don't vote one way, that's I think it's a little bit crossing the line, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_00: 7:06

Yeah. And I I have sort of experienced this in the past, an employer I once upon a time worked for. He sent out an email, not with any veiled, well, I don't know if you'd say veiled threats or anything along those lines, but he basically put out a thing during this particular election that candidate A stands for our industry in XYZ ways, and candidate B uh was a total trash job on candidate B because they hate our industry in these particular ways. And it was it was factual. You obviously knew which way they were saying, but they in my mind and trying to remember from years ago, it it went out as we're you know, this is for our industry, not for our personal gain and and things like that. And I it maybe if that was the person's intent over there at the Daniels Manufacturing Corporation, it maybe it wasn't done well. But what do you what do you think of that type of situation where they specifically say, here's what candidate A has said about our industry, here's what candidate B said about our industry?

SPEAKER_03: 8:07

Yeah, I mean, it's still again a i they have every right to send that memo, but I still don't necessarily agree with it. But I have another another story on another side of a let's say business campaigning towards their customers. Have you heard about this? No. Are you familiar with Expensify? No, I'm not familiar with them. If you just Google Expensify right now, you're gonna get your Google results will be Expensive CEO email, Expensify Biden email. Uh oh. Expensify is like a reimbursement travel cost software. They might do other things. But their CEO decided to send an email to 10 million customers, I believe. So if you had an employee in their database, so you know, their customers are starting businesses, and then any business is an employee had an email registered with an account on their software, got an email, because their emails are part of that software, right? But got this long, very pro-Biden email. There's so if you look at there's a lot of reactions out there, very negative reactions. But yeah, I think it was around 10 million emails went out of this whole tirade about how a vote for Trump was a vote against democracy, and just very, very pro like he was not hiding anything.

SPEAKER_00: 9:28

Well, I now that that in my mind does cross the line. If I was a customer of Expensify, and you know, maybe my company uses we I I we I based what it sounds like our company uses a different program for expenses and travel and things like that. It might be something like that. But if if this company sent out an email to me trying to influence my vote, I would become a little irritated. I don't want my solicitation emails to begin with, and B, I don't want you soliciting a vote. That would that would make me want to not use your your service pretty quickly, regardless if I agree with them or not.

SPEAKER_03: 10:05

Exactly. So this wasn't like threatening or anything like that. It was just here I'm here are how I feel the facts are and this is how I feel it's gonna go. But for me it crosses a line of almost like a personal data breach where you're using my personal email to be just because I'm a user of your software, you can email me these political facts. Whether I agree with them or not, doesn't matter. Like it's I definitely felt like that was a breach of kind of customer client data.

SPEAKER_00: 10:34

Yeah. You can't do that. Just because I have a a client list of you know, 10 million people, I'm not gonna send it out with something along those lines. You know, if I'm on that list, I want to get updates about the product, maybe, uh, or you know, whatever I'm needed for use of the product, but I don't want your your political garbage any more than I want anybody else's political garbage.

SPEAKER_03: 10:56

Yeah, exactly. So yeah, that was um when I saw that on your notes, I was like, oh yeah, I wonder if you've seen this. No, I I missed that. I don't uh all you gotta do is do a quick Google. It's it's all over the place. I saw it on Reddit, I saw it everywhere. It was uh good good times. People are doing a lot of stuff. Technology is great, but people are finding more and more ways to I think take advantage of some of these things.

SPEAKER_00: 11:20

Exactly. I w uh have you heard anything about the CEO or president, whoever it was that sent the email or facing repercussions?

SPEAKER_03: 11:27

It was a CEO, and I'm sure we stepped down or asked us. I don't think so. Not that I'm aware of, but I imagine because he I think claimed that you know he ran it by his employees and ran it by people, and they thought it was a good idea. But yeah, I mean I know some companies are probably not using that software anymore. Wow. So yeah. Well So I I wanted to go just a different route real quick. And we'll go uh we'll go a more fun route. Gotcha, fun. And one of the things I was thinking of is Halloween. So Halloween, costumes, parties. I kind of got into a party.

SPEAKER_00: 12:10

I saw, yeah, from your notes.

SPEAKER_03: 12:12

Yeah. So I found an article, it was five five COVID-19 Halloween ideas for your next office party.

SPEAKER_00: 12:21

So sexy nurse, sexy doctor.

SPEAKER_03: 12:25

Well, that that is another discussion for I guess inappropriate um what or what counts as an appropriate work costume, but you can have a Zoom Halloween costume party. Okay. So if we all wanna want to get together and show off our costumes.

SPEAKER_00: 12:40

Ooh, that that that screams danger, Will Robinson, danger.

SPEAKER_03: 12:46

Yes. A scary movie Netflix party. I guess you could all like, I don't know, watch Netflix together. I don't I kind of like this one. A Halloween dec Halloween decorating contest. So like you can kind of decorate your work, your work from home space, and do like a little kind of a fun like morale booster, I think. Around this time of year. Probably more fun for like a Christmas decorating contest, but people are gonna have more stuff for that. A COVID-19 masquerade ball. Okay. Can wear an eye mask, a traditional masquerade ball mask to ensure everyone's oh that's that's not even a Zoom one. Alright, these are like stupid office parties. Another one was um actually sending your coworkers like candy. There's um some companies that do like candy delivery. Oh, candy gram, yeah. Yeah, so I thought that's kind of a cool that'd be kind of a cool idea. I don't know. I probably won't do them. I'm not that f for thinking too late by now nice to my co-workers, but yeah, just some little party ideas. But then on another side of that, I found an article that was talking about is a decline in office parties, a red flag. So this is uh uh from Reddit user Deadpool Designer, and they said, I've worked at this company for around six years now, and there seem to be less employee activities every year. We used to have monthly birthday parties, Halloween costume contests, holiday lunches, happy hour drink, so on, so on, so on. I realized when an employee asked if there was more to this job than work, I couldn't think of anything in the recent years. So this just kind of it perked my interest a little bit because we come from a company that did a lot of parties and celebrated birthdays and did things like that. But if you notice those things starting to, I guess, drop off and not be as common, would that be kind of a red flag that your time is nearing an end at that employer? I would office parties that big of a deal.

SPEAKER_00: 14:40

No, they I think they are a pretty big deal. Unfortunately, my company made the announcement today that uh we're canceling our Christmas parties because of COVID. We can't have gatherings of more than however many people.

SPEAKER_03: 14:54

And you know, if we can't do it, I will say this is from two years ago. This is a pre-COVID. This is this is from the before times.

SPEAKER_00: 15:01

Oh apocalypse.

SPEAKER_03: 15:03

This year, obviously, there's no parties going on, but uh just kind of as a hypothetical of in general, would you say?

SPEAKER_00: 15:10

In general, maybe. I w I would hope because parties are fun, there's something people look forward to, and I know people are ups upset right now, given the current situation, can't have parties. We have our our company, we do uh bi-monthly birthday parties, so we do like August and September birthday parties together in between the two and have a little thing for everybody. And uh we used to do that. We do employee breakfasts and and things like that, and we we aren't doing things like that anymore just because not that you can't, but it's just probably not best practice at at this time.

SPEAKER_01: 15:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 15:47

But if you're talking, you know, pretty if if those things are starting to slide, you might want to ask why. Is it budgetary limitations? I mean, or maybe there's new leadership that the people who put it together are no longer there, nobody had picked up the ball. There's there's a lot of reasons why. It wouldn't start.

SPEAKER_03: 16:03

That was probably one of the number one Reddit comment was most likely the people that organize those things just aren't there anymore, so no one thinks to send out the email or send out the invitations or whatever.

SPEAKER_00: 16:15

That's what I've personally seen when you have uh an event like that and that it's all of a sudden, oh my god, we didn't do it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 16:21

Uh because you know Patrick's birthday was two months ago. Oh well, we'll get him next year. You know, we we'll we'll hide his card for three months and then give it to him.

SPEAKER_00: 16:29

Yeah, yeah. I'm guilty as charged. That's uh I don't know if we've told that story on the on the show yet.

SPEAKER_03: 16:36

No, probably not. I'm still bitter about it.

SPEAKER_00: 16:38

It's still bitter three years, four years later.

SPEAKER_03: 16:40

Warren hid my card from me under his keyboard for three months. Yes. Didn't give it to me, and everyone wrote me nice messages that would have helped me get through the day. That would have helped me get through hard times.

SPEAKER_00: 16:49

Well, in my defense, my desk is always a fire hazard. It's not that I hid it, it's just that it got somewhere under the bottom of the palm. One day I actually cleaned my desk. I was like, oh, look at this. It was signed by people who haven't been here in three months, but that's okay. But no, yeah, that that was me. I'm the person who who did it and uh found it later. So you know, make sure you put it in my hand and not just on my desk because otherwise it just falls into the the abyss of things. So no ask questions, find out. Yeah, everybody loves to get together. Uh I when we worked together, we were doing potlucks and cooking things. It seemed like at least every other month, if not more frequently, we'd do things and everybody looked forward to it.

SPEAKER_03: 17:42

So I mean anytime you can you can have an excuse to not work and enjoy some yummy, some yummy munchies.

SPEAKER_00: 17:48

Yeah, no, exactly. So now I I don't think there's anything to be alarmed about, but just ask the questions. Figure out, and hey, if it's not if that person's left, you pick up that ball and you go ahead and run with it and say, I'll be the party planner now.

SPEAKER_03: 18:02

Fair point.

SPEAKER_00: 18:04

So uh well, I don't have anything really fun. I have something.

SPEAKER_03: 18:09

I mean, this is jaded HR. That was just taking off the jaded hat a little bit. It's all good.

SPEAKER_00: 18:14

Well, we're going straight down the jaded hole right now. I received a friend, an email from a friend, and they they CC'd mean about six or eight other people on this, and their only comment on this email that they forwarded to us was I wish there was a dumbass vaccine. So I read the entire thread of the email. I took out some highlights. So start with uh so starting at the bottom, I highlighted some things here. You know, blank companies, please don't know that once again we'll be holding a flu vaccination clinics at each of our locations for all of our employees, both full or full-time, part-time, and interns. Remote employees are welcome to schedule a vaccination at nearby company location, company name location there. We are also able to continue to offer flu vaccines to immediate family members of our employees. If you have health insurance through company name or elsewhere, there should be no cost to you. So be sure to bring your health insurance card. It gives then it gives a link to schedule for an appointment and it talks about social distancing, and guidelines will be posted at each location for social distancing. And then the last two lines of the email, if you're unable to attend one of our clinics, we encourage you to get your vaccination. With any health insurance plan, it should be at no cost to you. And vaccinations are generally available at many pharmacies. If you would like assistance in scheduling a vaccination at one of our locations or help finding a nearby location offering flu vaccinations, please contact and it gives a person's name. So face value, awesome email, engaging.

SPEAKER_03: 19:49

Yeah, I was gonna say that's that's pretty cool, especially if they do uh family members too.

SPEAKER_00: 19:52

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I I've never been with a company that offers it to family members. I know when we worked together, the company put together vaccination clinics and and things like that, but no, I don't think I don't recall family members being invited. Well, then comes uh part of that is the reply to that email. So a certain employee replies, hell no. As a retired sailor in the Navy, I had my fill of mandatory, in quote, vaccinations, and being the government's goddamn guinea pig. You'll have to fire me before you make me get, once again, in quotes, vaccinations. And when you do, you'd better know to expect the biggest goddamn lawsuit you've ever seen. I know my rights, and the Constitution guarantees me the right not to be forced into this, once again, in quotes, vaccination. I'm not a constitutional expert, but I don't think it talks anywhere about flu vaccinations in there. I I I just I I I replied, I haven't heard a comment, I've replied to her and saying, really, tell me the rest of the story, what happened after this? And I I don't have an answer yet. But just sounds like another company just being unquestionably shady and you know, doing this a convenience to uh to have a flu vaccination. Uh I tried to put one on where I worked, couldn't gather enough interest. I put a poll out there uh uh on the employee portal, and you have to get X amount people before the company will come out to you, and I couldn't get that number. But uh, you know, it it it's one I think that's a nice little perk if it accompanies.

SPEAKER_03: 21:29

Yeah, I missed the part of the email where it said it was mandatory.

SPEAKER_00: 21:31

Ah, you're going so I wrote down what my ideal response to this email would be for our little shits and giggles. So if if that were me and I had to complete reign and control, this is how I'd handle the situation. I'd I'd call the employee into my office and I'd give them a copy of the email for them to read aloud and then ask them to tell me exactly where it said, this is mandatory. My next statement would be, once I can't do that, is to tell them today is their last day of employment, not because of their refusal to get this non-mandatory vaccine, but you know, the email's completely inappropriate and we can't employ people to make such poor, rash decisions. Bye-bye. That was my my Warren's ideal client.

SPEAKER_03: 22:15

If we lived in your ideal world of being able to do whatever you wanted as an HR person trying to purge.

SPEAKER_00: 22:20

So I but I asked about I asked my friend if we get a if I get a response, I'll I'll I may post the update what what happened, what how who said what and anything come out of it. But you know, employees who abuse HR or you know make these knee-jerk reactions and rant like this, that nothing ever becomes of it, and it's like, oh well, you know, who knows what their the the cover-up will be, and nothing gets done.

SPEAKER_03: 22:46

It's someone that is just a very angry person and was looking for an excuse to blow their top shed some light and blow their top on some controversial topic they feel is just, and yeah, he took a swing and sad to say he missed.

SPEAKER_00: 23:03

Yeah. Strike three, you're out.

SPEAKER_03: 23:06

So yeah, I knew as soon as you said flu vaccine it was gonna be some anti-vaxx employee dumbass.

SPEAKER_00: 23:11

And it wasn't really well, I guess it is anti-vaxxer. I don't want to get into it. Yeah, he's an anti-vaxxer. He was the goddamn government guinea pig or whatever he said up there.

SPEAKER_03: 23:20

Uh yeah, so he's uh yeah, the 5G microchips that the Bill Gates wants to give everybody in, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 23:27

Oh yeah. Sit in a corner with your tin feel tinfoil height, please, buddy. Yep. Let the rest of the world move on. Ah, so but I guess that sort of could lead into my my next topic. Uh I recently had to coach a manager through their first termination. And it was interesting. I I hadn't coached somebody through it in a long time. And I tell you, I love this manager. I don't report to her, but we're on a couple of committees together, so I we have interactions. And my time where I've been, I've never heard a peep out of her, her employees. It's been like the set it and forget it department because nothing ever goes wrong. Well, they're working on a very large project, and they had to hire a particular subject manager expert to fill in some knowledge gaps to help us out. So uh I recruited, found someone part-time temporary to get us through this project, and he worked remote, everything was going fine, just like it always does. Things go fine until they don't. So he'd be late for meetings that he would schedule. He would, when he got to meetings, he wouldn't be prepared. He came in late to one meeting with a client on the line once, and then overtook a meeting that he hadn't been party to the first half of and took tried to take it a whole different direction. Didn't provide deliverables on time. And then what I thought when I heard the story should have been the final straw, told the manager he wasn't going to do something because it's not my job. And uh that's always uh a nice thing. But he kept it going. But there was more and it missed some due dates, but final straw ended up being this person's timesheet did not equate the amount of work they were claiming done. So uh we had some theories. He we knew he had a full-time job when we hired him, and uh he said that we were only looking for 10 to 20 hours a week uh reviewing and adding things to our information in his subject area of subject matter. So we our theory was during the pay he was recently we he told us he was recently told he would be returning to work to his office at full-time. So we're thinking he was sort of bilking his full-time employer while doing our work on the side. And then when he got back to the office, he had supervision and uh couldn't bilk his employer anymore and had to, and then tried to bilk us for it. So but going back to the termination, you know, I I did I did talk to her and say, hey, termination should never be an easy task. She was really struggling with the the whole process, and I coached her through it. I even volunteered, hey, you know, I I'll do it if you'd prefer. If it if it's just and she said it's her responsibility, and I agree, but uh, you know, she'd do it. So he was terminated. A week later, we received an email, and let's see, he CC'd the email to his manager and to me and things like that. Now, this email came from a Gmail account, but he put his work signature like cut and paste it into this Gmail account. So it's it was really bizarre. But he wrote to us I haven't heard a status or update regarding my contribution contributing to the blank project for at least a week. This hasn't been the case over the past couple months. It appears there's not enough work for me to stay on board and contribute to this project. Therefore, I'm resigning from my position effective immediately. Boy, reading's not my strong skill today. Thank you for the opportunity and best of luck on this project. I mean, he was terminated. I I went and talked to the mentor. I said, You did talk to him, and she said, Absolutely. And you know, you resigned a week after you got canned. That's good, I guess. I don't know when that was just so bizarre.

unknown: 27:11

Bizarre.

SPEAKER_03: 27:11

What would happen in a situation like that? And I'll apologize to all the HR professionals, you probably know this, but like let's say this person was terminated, and then with that came unemployment or severance or something like that. But then for whatever reason, a week later he he resigns.

SPEAKER_00: 27:26

I I don't know. I would just say you were terminated and you you know, in this case for cause termination, so you're not going to qualify hopefully for unemployment. That's a whole nother entire show on itself. But you you wouldn't qualify as it's for cause. And and he had been warned previously.

SPEAKER_03: 27:44

So didn't know if there was ever a situation where someone was terminated and they decided randomly to like just go ahead and resign, but then they canceled any kind of benefits they would get out of being terminated.

SPEAKER_00: 27:55

Yeah. I don't know. But uh that that person was a very special person, apparently. And like I said, I I recruited him and everything was going fine at at first, and even told me that hey, I have a full-time job, I'm working from home, but I can give you the 10 to 20 hours a week you're looking for, and it was that's all we we really wanted out of him, but it just didn't work out.

SPEAKER_03: 28:16

Well, speaking of stupid people, can I jump back into Halloween? I'll ask you a question first. You can think just off the top of your head of any have you ever had to deal with an inappropriate Halloween costume at work?

SPEAKER_00: 28:29

No, I don't think I have. No. I I think I've heard whispers and complaints, but never ever ever anybody saying, Warren, you have to investigate this inappropriately.

SPEAKER_03: 28:39

I'm trying to think, I don't think I've ever worked for a company that really did like allowed legit Halloween costumes.

SPEAKER_00: 28:46

We worked together, there were some uh Did we do some Halloween? We didn't necessarily, but there was a department that was on our floor that really went all out sometimes. And some of them were questionable judgment.

SPEAKER_03: 29:00

Any any day of the week, a Tuesday might be questionable. Yeah. But yeah, unfortunately I didn't I couldn't think of any, but I did find um an Ask HR from Reddit user Sydney2030. They're actually in Australia, which I thought in Australia this is a really interesting costume choice, but said we had a ha our Halloween party in the office, and a lot of staff dressed up. However, our state manager wore a KKK costume, complete with hood and that funny red cross symbol, and seemed to find it funny that everyone was uncomfortable and no one wanted a photo taken with him. And they go on and on and on about talk about this, but Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 29:35

That is a extreme lapse in judgment and uh Yeah, that that's terminable. Yeah, I I there should be zero tolerance for that.

SPEAKER_03: 29:46

That's the person that was complaining here because it was a m very much like an old school mentality, old basically old white man hierarchy in the organization, so people just thought it was funny and this was a higher level manager. So from an HR standpoint, like how do you even how do you approach that?

SPEAKER_00: 30:05

That that's something you just rip off the band-aid and say, you know, hey Warren, that costume is not appropriate in any way, shape, or form. We can't have that in what it represents in our company. I'm sorry, we you're you're gone. That's really how the the the conversation should go. Same thing if you you want to be uh you know a Hitler or you know any of these other people notoriously.

SPEAKER_03: 30:34

It is the some of these people just go for like the shock value, but man, doing that at work is such like a it's work I mean it's work suicide. Like if you're trying to get this weird shock out of people, but man, like that is just not the way to do it.

SPEAKER_00: 30:47

No, no. Go for the creepy gory costume, go for other things, uh but it's something that's so you know, I don't know.

SPEAKER_03: 30:55

There was like there was a list as I was doing some research for the episode, it was like ten ten costume ideas to avoid at the workplace, and creepy gory was one to avoid, you know, all the all the sexy things. Um anything that was racially insensitive, like this one.

SPEAKER_00: 31:11

Yeah, going in blackface, you know. I don't know there's I seem to remember once upon a time somebody, uh a white guy doing blackface dressing as uh Barack Obama once upon a time and getting that made some stories. Yeah, I think it made some stories a few years back.

SPEAKER_03: 31:26

Uh probably on things like that Okay, this wasn't a personal story.

SPEAKER_00: 31:30

Okay. But we did have that that sk skeleton costume uh or mummy cost poster on the wall at work. And I brought my son to work one day and he points it out, and I probably still have a picture of it on my phone. He said, This poster looks just like Barack Obama. And after I looked at it, I could never look at it again. It was a mummy. I'll I'll I'll have to forward that to you. But we also know how my son likes to compare things to Barack Obama, or used to, at least back in the day.

SPEAKER_03: 31:59

That is true.

SPEAKER_00: 32:00

So that was that was but after you know, after I looked at it that way and I saw, wow, that that the mummy does sort of look like Barack Obama, and I could never look at it again without and it wasn't, you know, what I'm sure it wasn't intended to, but it just it was just the eyes and the facial features. I was like, wow, that I couldn't look at it again that way.

SPEAKER_03: 32:21

One more funny note, this is a hypothetical I have, and I just thought this was a a good timing for for our spooky, not so spooky, spec sp not so spooky spectacular. So this is from Reddit user Weezy Runner, and his hypothetical is you are now it's just kind of a morbid question, but we're gonna we're gonna get to we're gonna do the fun bit of it, not to think about the circumstances of our current situation. You are now a ghost, and ghost high command has assigned you to haunt your former workplace. How do you mess with your former coworkers?

SPEAKER_00: 32:54

Well, first you'd have to pick a workplace. I mean, I guess you have infinity times, so you you can go to all of them and and haunt them.

SPEAKER_03: 33:02

So uh I know a certain person who would never be able to find their chapstick.

SPEAKER_00: 33:08

Yeah, I think just randomly screw with people all the time.

SPEAKER_03: 33:13

Yeah, some of the comments were try to make the toilet seat warm all the time.

SPEAKER_00: 33:17

Uh that you know, that's one of my pet themes of a public recipe going in and the seat is warm. That just makes me cringe.

SPEAKER_03: 33:25

Yeah, in a public space, it's the worst. Yeah. I liked um just constantly adjusting the thermostat up one degree just throughout the day. And all of a sudden everyone's just melting.

SPEAKER_00: 33:35

Uh yeah, I I would I would screw with people's work, like uh edit people's emails that they uh before they send them, or or yeah, put put some macros in their outlook, so with that every time they typed in like the company name, it changed it to a different like competing company. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Do do fun do some fun things just to screw with people, no matter where you are.

SPEAKER_03: 33:55

Yeah. I actually did that. I back when I worked for UPS, I a co-worker of mine we used to prank each other a lot. And I researched, I spent way too much time researching how to put a macro on someone's computer, but it was and I don't remember how to do it now, but every time we typed UPS, it changed it to FedEx. Oh. But he ended up sending an email to our our HR regional manager. Just full of fun. Yeah. We had to stop doing that.

SPEAKER_00: 34:23

Oh, and I would be I would be awful. I'd find the people that I didn't like working with and for, and oh, they're I'd make sure they got their ass fired or you know, went crazy.

SPEAKER_03: 34:32

I swear. You don't want to do firing stuff, you just want to do like annoying things, like hide a timer somewhere like in the in the ceiling tile that just would go off randomly. Randomly throughout the day when you couldn't find it, you didn't know where it was.

SPEAKER_00: 34:44

And move it randomly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 34:46

Yeah. It's gotta move every day.

SPEAKER_00: 34:48

Oh man, that's I'm that's a good one. I'm gonna have to remember that little timer.

SPEAKER_03: 34:53

Yeah, so shoot us uh shoot us a message on Twitter or Facebook. What how would you haunt your coworkers? Oh that's your homework for this week.

SPEAKER_00: 35:01

Homework assignments, ooh. Well, I'll I'll I'll go uh another thing I have the HR nightmares since we're being scary and things like that.

SPEAKER_03: 35:12

Stay with a theme.

SPEAKER_00: 35:13

Well, HR as its own worst nightmare. And uh so for a long time, HR has been looking for that quote unquote seat at the table, you know, and HR does deserve it. And for a lot of companies, the pandemic gave them that sort of right to the seat at the table. But once again, sometimes HR can be its own worst nightmare. And I'm thinking specifically when it comes to job titles. And I don't know if it was the last episode or the episode before that, I made a jaded comment. As soon as you mentioned a person's title was the chief people officer, I I sort of scorned it, but it turned out I agreed with everything that they they did. But uh so I know I'm going to contradict myself here, but uh I'm just gonna throw it out there. Anyways, uh this can also be very dependent on the culture of the company. If you're one of those trendy techie firms, you know, that does things differently, then your titles can be a little bit you have a little more leeway to be a little crazy with your titles. But overall, I I think that when I looked at a job title, I should be able to look and see your job title and know have a very good idea of what you do without having to think about it too much. But so here's some doing some research, I found some HR titles out there and some other titles as well. So I found People Evangelist. And what do you think that would be?

SPEAKER_03: 36:34

People evangelists? Yes. I a recruiter. I don't even know. Oh gosh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 36:41

I I I didn't write down the name for that company. I some of these I've written down names of the company or typed down the names of the company that did it. Chief Chief Happiness Officer, that was the HR D at uh Google. And a couple other companies had that.

SPEAKER_03: 36:55

I like Chief People Officer, Chief Chief Happiness. Officer.

SPEAKER_00: 36:58

The Culture and Geek Resource Manager was a title for HR manager, and I once again I didn't write down the name of that company. The head of optimistic people, that is their HR director with Life is Good. The Chief Vibes Officer. That's the Witch Witch Sandwich Shop. Speaking of which, they're opening one. Apparently, I saw a sign in uh right up the road from you, looks like. The chief heart officer, and I'm gonna butcher the name of this company, but Vanner Media, I'm gonna go with. Now, here's one I found interesting.

SPEAKER_03: 37:48

I kinda like that one. It's like uh, you know, guiding exp guiding a company to their to reach their highest potential, reach their peak, the pinnacle. I like that.

SPEAKER_00: 37:58

Okay. Well, here's a title from Google that might be just a little bit sexist. It is the security princess. And what if they don't what if they identify as a male? And then that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_03: 38:12

That would be a security princess. That sounds kind of cool.

SPEAKER_00: 38:15

But what would be the general neutral title for a princess or a prince? Uh I I thought I spent too much time thinking about that and I did not come up with an answer. They they they there. But uh, I do have one personal experience with a a stupid title. I was working at a CPA firm, and a senior partner sends me a resume and said, Hey, we're hiring this person. And after I sent me, and they sent me a lot of information. The only thing they really didn't send me that I needed to get the person set up and hired was a job title. And I read the person's resume and I I replied to them something to the effect of, hey, I'm great to help you make this happen. I need a little bit more information and reading the resume. I don't know if they fit in better as position A or position B. And the reply was they'll just be a utility infielder. Like in baseball, you might have that guy who can play all the infield positions. Uh, after a little back and forth, we ended up sticking with the titled Utility Infielder. They had business cards made, utility infielder, and uh, we created that in our HRS system as well. So that was like I kind of like that. Yeah, uh, I mean, you know, once again, uh going back to my theory, when I look at your your job description, I should know exactly what you're doing. And if you're at a CPA firm and you're a utility infielder, I don't know.

SPEAKER_03: 39:43

I always create Jedi Knight in the HRS HRS systems that I manage, and I always just want that to be my my title. Or I could just change my title to like I don't know, HR firefighter. I spend a lot of time just putting out little fires here and there.

SPEAKER_00: 39:59

Caused by other people.

SPEAKER_03: 40:00

Sometimes caused by myself. But you know, and still still fighting the fires.

SPEAKER_00: 40:05

Yeah. So no, I I I'm I just I love seeing some of these. I both love and hate, I should say, seeing some of these employee job titles that they have and and people get. You know, some of them are really cool and creative, some of them are really stupid, and I'm not going to get my um you know, we're all wound up over sanitation engineer or sandwich artist or something stupid like that. Everybody knows.

SPEAKER_03: 40:27

I feel like we can probably do that could be like a topic every episode of just like here's the top three job titles I found this week or something like that.

SPEAKER_00: 40:35

Yeah, no, you look around LinkedIn, there's all sorts of uh great job titles, and I I did some other research. Uh so yeah, I could fill up uh uh Tune in next week. What is our new favorite job title of the week?

SPEAKER_03: 40:47

Well, I don't know about that, but I do know we need to tell the people what we want them to do for us as we start this new new alphabet chapter.

SPEAKER_00: 40:56

All right. I'm only gonna ask for two things, people. I I really, really want to see some reviews. It's been a while uh since we've gotten a review. That was Chris up in Canada, so thank you, Chris.

SPEAKER_03: 41:06

But we still think about you every night.

SPEAKER_00: 41:10

Maybe, maybe not. That might be a little ooky. But uh, anyways, I do uh one I do want some reviews, go to your favorite podcast player. Most of them now allow reviews. Give us your feedback, tell us you love us, tell us you hate us. Give us your feedback. What would make it better for you? But uh uh we will respond to any any feedback you give to us if we're able. We uh can't access iTunes Canada to get into and respond to that, Chris's. But we've now acknowledged you on the the show a couple times. But the other thing, just engage us on social media, follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook.

SPEAKER_03: 41:47

We'll and we'll try to engage you as well.

SPEAKER_00: 41:48

Yeah, we'll we'll try and engage you. We're getting better. I'm getting better. You are, you are. I am horrible. I'm I'm trying my hardest as I'm I'm and it's the strange thing is I'm getting personally further away from social media, but at same uh but yeah, working on this. So that's what we're looking for from our our lovely listeners. So just keep spreading the word, uh, give us some reviews, and we'll talk to you all very soon.

SPEAKER_03: 42:13

Absolutely. And I'll say uh quick thank you to the underscore orchestra for the use of their song Devil with the Devil that we use for our intro and outro music.

SPEAKER_00: 42:21

And we'd also like to give a thank you to Kyle Rhode of the HR Rebel podcast. He had us on as a guest, and the episode will be airing on his podcast on uh October 27th. So this will already be this it will come out before this episode, but we'll also be rebroadcasting it as one of our bonus episodes sometime in the not terribly distant future.

SPEAKER_03: 42:45

And we always like to leave you all with a best practice to uh take with you for the week. And Warren, what do you have for us tonight?

SPEAKER_00: 42:53

I want you to randomly select any employee mailings that you you send out and put glitter bombs in a certain percentage of them before you you mail them out. Your employees will love it, promise you.

SPEAKER_03: 43:06

Yep, spread the joy. Yes. With that, thank you all so much for listening to another episode of Bookie HR. I'm Patrick and Tillis.

SPEAKER_00: 43:16

And I'm Warren Workman, and we're helping you survive HR one what the fuck moment at a time.