HR Haters Gonna Hate Hate Hate

A hot take roared across X: “HR is useless—fire 90% and business will run happier.” We lean into the controversy and pull it apart with real stories, practical examples, and a clear look at where HR earns its seat. From ADA moments that avoid lawsuits to manager coaching that prevents blowups, we show how accountability—not buzzwords—separates meaningful work from noise.

First, we swap winter war stories and a few travel mishaps, then pivot to a candid breakdown of a truly awful presentation and the simple fixes that make complex information land: fewer codes, more context, cleaner slides, and clear narrative. That sets the stage for the debate that follows. We explore why the anti-HR sentiment resonates for some employees, how corporate language can block trust, and why AI won’t replace HR but will reveal which teams do real leadership. Compliance is not a punchline; it’s the baseline. Risk management is not fear; it’s care with foresight.

We get specific. Need a special chair for back pain? Handle it fast, document it, and move on—protecting the company while treating the person with respect. We talk through the less visible wins: Secure 2.0 changes, ACA and ADA realities, and the slow, unglamorous work of turning laws into payroll and process that actually function. Then we spotlight a growing threat to candidates: recruiter impersonation scams that exploit hope and urgency. You’ll get crisp verification steps to stay safe, plus a reminder to trust your gut when something feels off.

We wrap with community shout-outs and a simple invite to text us from the show notes. If you care about real HR, better leadership, and cutting through rage bait with practical, human solutions, this one’s for you. Subscribe, share with a manager who needs it, and leave a quick review to help others find the show.

Chapters

• 0:02 Cold Opens, Disclaimers, Banter
• 0:49 New Audio, Weather, Travel Tales
• 5:44 Career Wins And HR Life Updates
• 7:22 Presentation Fails And Lessons
• 10:36 The Viral “HR Is Useless” Take
• 12:28 AI, Accountability, And Real HR Work
• 16:22 Compliance, Risk, And Manager Gaps
• 19:24 ADA In Practice And Practical HR
• 22:08 Company Culture Shapes HR Perception
• 24:04 Laws, Acronyms, And Real Execution
• 27:04 HR As Cost Saver, Not Profit Maker
• 30:04 Scams Targeting Job Seekers
• 30:08 Listener Link, Reviews, And Thanks
• 32:35 Global Listeners And Farewell

Transcript

SPEAKER_03: 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've ever heard, my manager is unfair to me, I need you to reset my HR portal password, or can I ride up my employee for crying too much?

SPEAKER_02: 0:26

Welcome to our little safe zone. Welcome to JR.

SPEAKER_01: 0:49

Welcome to JDHR, the podcast by two 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.

SPEAKER_00: 0:58

I'm CeC.

SPEAKER_01: 0:59

All right. Hopefully we have better audio than our last episode because that was uh almost embarrassing to post as I'm editing it. That my microphone of five and a half years just decided no moss, no moss. Yeah, but hopefully this one does better. Thank you. I really debated not publishing it at all. So we did miss a week last week, but we are back with you. We've uh survived the snow, or in my case, rain, and we're about to get hit with snow. But wow, it's been a crazy few weeks.

SPEAKER_00: 1:32

We got 13 inches, and uh I gotta be honest, we lucked out because we didn't get any sleet and any rain, only snow. But it's a powdery wonderland out there, and it's so cold it's not going away. So it's just gonna eternally be snow on the ground.

SPEAKER_01: 1:47

Is Bean enjoying it?

SPEAKER_00: 1:50

It's been too cold to take her out. Oh, it's been like nine degrees. School's been canceled, and I have not seen any kids in our neighborhood playing outside. That's how cold it is.

SPEAKER_01: 2:01

Oh, yeah. Our highs have been in the 20s, which is horrible. During the snowstorm we were supposed to get, some forecasts put us like 10 inches, some put us in the sleek snow line. We just got rain. We had a few flurries for a few minutes, and that's all we had. Nice. I'm happy with that, but it looks like this weekend we're gonna get our dumping on. So we'll see. Maybe they'll be wrong yet again.

SPEAKER_00: 2:27

Maybe they'll be wrong. But I do have to say they were a hundred percent right on this one. They were saying we were gonna get 12 inches and we got 13. So I was like, oh, that's pretty accurate. Uh it is now nine degrees here. Oh wow. Yeah, no children are playing outside.

SPEAKER_01: 2:42

Yeah, I don't think I could handle that. I would say, yeah, oh wow, we've gone up since I got home from work. We're up to 32. So something's warm front.

SPEAKER_00: 2:51

Something's coming on, but I do have to say, one of my best friends, her dad turned 80 and they went on this really bougie trip to the Bahamas. She just came back today, and all of her photos the past week have been her on boats with cocktails and sun. And I'm like, welcome home.

SPEAKER_01: 3:10

Oh, yeah. My wife had to make a trip to their headquarters outside of Washington, D.C. this week. And I was hoping they would cancel it, but she she's up there in the snow. At first, I was hoping they'd cancel it. Second, I was trying to convince my wife to take the train. I would drive her up to the closest train station. It is uh a four-hour ride on one train, a transfer in DC, and then a metro ride under non-horrible snowy conditions, because their area got like 24 inches of snow where her office is. You could walk to either the hotel or her office from the metro station. But I told her, just take an Uber. Yeah, the guy give him a 200% tip that you're gonna he's going like 200 yards or something like that. But she even when he lived up in DC, she hates the trains. If I was with her and we wanted to go somewhere and we'd take the train, that was fine. She will not navigate that system by herself.

SPEAKER_00: 4:08

So I went to grad school in Connecticut and I would go to New York City like all the time. And I so appreciate really good public transportation. Like I love the train, I love the subway. I was not responsible for driving on the road. And mind you, this was grad school, so I would just wander drunk with my friends and no one had to drive. It was amazing. I love public transportation.

SPEAKER_01: 4:39

When we lived up there, two stops down, once a week, they had an express train to New York City. And I kept saying that I was going to try and get Lime King Broadway tickets and trick my wife one day. Hey, we're going into DC. Let's hop the train because she wouldn't have a clue where we're doing. And take the train once and before.

SPEAKER_00: 4:58

True passenger princess. I love it.

SPEAKER_01: 5:01

And take the train, get off the platform. We just have to get on probably the same platform when the express came through and go scrape New York City. We could have gotten off right one subway station or two stops from the Amtrak station to Broadway, I think it was. I was like, I can do this, and should we be an hour away before she even realizes we're not in DC. Wait a minute. Surprise her that way. I always wanted to try and do that, but never did. I'm bacheloring it this weekend. So my dinner tonight was a peanut butter and jelly and a root beer. And I am perfectly fine with that.

SPEAKER_00: 5:38

I love it.

SPEAKER_01: 5:39

Yeah, we had some interesting good things going on, but you had some fun stuff in the LD world.

SPEAKER_00: 5:44

Oh yeah. I have spent years creating, facilitating, selecting individuals to be in various programs, like leadership development. And this is the first time in my life that I have been nominated to participate in a program. I started this cohort, and I am so thrilled to be a participant instead of the architect. I am just having the time of my life. Always a bridesmaid, never a bride, until today.

SPEAKER_01: 6:17

Oh, congratulations. And being so new there, I guess you really made an immediate impact.

SPEAKER_00: 6:24

Look at me. Who would have guessed? Love it.

SPEAKER_01: 6:28

Awesome.

SPEAKER_00: 6:29

Yeah, it's been fun. I love it. So I'm having a blast.

SPEAKER_01: 6:33

Good for you. I've just had a crazy couple of weeks in, like I said, we're about to start open enrollment, and that's gonna be a little bit crazy.

SPEAKER_00: 6:40

Nice. Yeah, I got performance reviews coming up. So I'm just finishing that. And I have a presentation tomorrow to our HR team letting them know the wonderful changes that are coming down the pike because honestly, I'm trying to make it as easy as possible. I hope they like it. So fingers crossed.

SPEAKER_01: 6:58

Off topic, we didn't talk about this. The presentations, I had attend a presentation day, and I kid you not, it was one of the worst presentation. I got up and walked out. There was a little technical glitch, and that was my cue. I even just said in front of the room, this is god awful. I can't do this any longer. The presenter English is not her first language.

SPEAKER_00: 7:21

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 7:22

If you're presenting to a group of people, especially remotely, you English communication skills might need to be increased very significantly to do the job adequately. On top of that, she kept referencing all these code numbers for government codes for stuff. And it just grinding, there was a slide of nothing but code, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, supports code, blah, blah, blah. Nobody can follow it. It was absolutely awful. I just said, I'm out. I can't do this anymore. This is god-awful. And I just a good presentation is really, really worth it. And it's gonna make me next presentation I do for open enrollment. We'll get rid of all that out. I want to make sure every T is crossed, every diet is dotted, and I am ready and ultra prepared so I can speak well about the products and the plans we have and the changes we're going through in front of everybody because I just I could not do it. I'm sorry. I'm I've been having a little bit of a day, so I was a little bit moody already. That was just another strong camel's back for I have to be honest.

SPEAKER_00: 8:32

The first time I worked at a global company, like the okay, so first of all, backtrack. Like I grew up, my dad's my dad's originally from Turkey. I grew up with my dad having a very thick Turkish accent. Uh-huh. And it would be funny because I would never hear it. But my friends would be like, your dad has such an accent. And I'm like, I don't hear it. And then I started working in global companies, and it took it a while. It took fairly quickly, but at the beginning, there was like certain accents where I was like, oh crap, I have to pay real close attention to decipher. But then all of a sudden within a week, I'm like, oh, okay, I got this.

SPEAKER_01: 9:08

Yeah, it's amazing. My two quick stories about accents, English proficiency. My brother-in-law, he's originally from Chile, and he speaks, I've known, I don't know how long he's been in the country. I've known him at least 10 years. He speaks beautiful English, and it's almost who's the puss and boots actor of Antonio Benderis. Yeah. And he's got an awesome voice. Now, flip the switch to my wife's sister-in-law, is from Colombia. I was in their wedding 30 years ago. She's been in the United States probably 40 years, but her Spanglish is ridonkulous because part of it is she works for a company, she does international customer support, so she's speaking Spanish all day and she loves her job. She's just the happiest claim you've ever had doing that. But she has not lost any bit of her accent or her spanglish.

SPEAKER_00: 10:03

It's like my dad.

SPEAKER_01: 10:05

In the same room with her, I understand her just fine. But over the telephone or video, it loses something in being electronically communicated.

SPEAKER_00: 10:14

Funny.

SPEAKER_01: 10:21

Not better. I won't say that. She speaks well. It's just heavy, heavy. It's like Sofia Bagara on steroids that you'd say. I love it. She speaks very well. It's fine.

SPEAKER_00: 10:30

Whatever. I can't judge because they speak more languages than I do.

SPEAKER_01: 10:34

Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Maybe our discussion on languages threw you into a little bit of a rage, but one of our most popular episodes last year was our rage bait episode when we talked about Jennifer Say from XXXY Athletics, who started doing some rage baiting. Somebody else.

SPEAKER_00: 10:55

I took the bait and I got rageful. I'm keeping it calm tonight.

SPEAKER_01: 11:00

Apparently, last week, someone else did a very similar thing. Her name is Amanda Goodall. And on January 12th, so a little bit over a week, I guess it's right, she put on X. I still want to call it Twitter. She posted on X. HR is the only department that gets a free pass for being completely useless. They produce zero revenue, kill morale with endless policies, protecting the company, not you, and somehow still get invited to every meeting like they're essential. Move 90% of HR tomorrow, and the business would run smoother, faster, and happier. Change my mind with the little flaming emoji. Cool.

SPEAKER_00: 11:40

And uh I can't I can't change your mind. I'm now yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 11:46

Her Twitter handle is the job chick. I meant to check out her LinkedIn or something like that to see what her is she when she says the job chick, what does that mean? But anyhow, it's your M1A1 stereotypical hate HR. You can say something just like this, and it's gonna get on when I copied and pasted this on whatever day I did it, she already had 2.1 million views on this tweet. There were some interesting responses to her, and uh yeah, there were some interesting responses to her. Some were like pro-HR and some were anti-HR. I found this tweet from Jacob Morgan. He referenced her tweet. One of the things he wrote was the frustration is clear, and many people can relate. However, while that take is emotionally satisfying and also strategically lazy, AI isn't making HR irrelevant, it's making bad HR impossible to hide. And then he goes on MIT's human in loop studies consistently find that AI drives productivity when accountability stays with human, not when decisions are fully automated. Uh and he just goes on in defending HR to a certain extent. Uh, why is the future of HR not about becoming more technical? It's about becoming more accountable. AI doesn't replace HR, it reveals whether HR is ever doing real leadership to work to begin with. And that's a reckoning that we're heading towards. And frankly, it's overdue. And so I like that. He was both pro and con HR because I've said it any number of times in the podcast. HR is an industry full of people who are not HR professionals. They were their good secretary. And then they because they're a good secretary or a good customer service person, they'll be a good HR person. And that's not the way life works all the time. Not saying those people can't learn.

SPEAKER_00: 13:44

Yeah, it goes with the whole it's the same idea of promoting a really good performer into a manager. Just because you're good at people, it doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be a proficient HR person.

SPEAKER_01: 13:56

Yeah. It's the bad HR people that make us look bad. I'm going to butcher this name, not intentionally. It's from Medium Online. The name is Inraidi Saha, and I'm sorry for butchering that name. But uh she wrote when leadership advisor made a goodall tweeted that companies should fire 90% of HR tomorrow. It didn't spread because it was polite or balanced. It went viral because it captured something many employees already feel but rarely articulate. She goes into why employees shared the tweet so aggressively in her words. Because HR protects the company, not the employee. Same old policies over people, blah, blah, blah. Corporate language instead of clarity, a performance system that rewards compliance, not contribution. And over time it creates a belief that HR exists and made at risk, not people. It's just the real issue isn't HR. It's power without accountability.

SPEAKER_03: 14:53

Yes.

SPEAKER_01: 14:53

Authority without transparency. She goes on. It creates a dangerous imbalance because HR influences careers, employees lack meaningful appeal mechanisms, and decisions are final, not fair. It's once again regurgitating the same stuff.

SPEAKER_00: 15:11

Ah, okay. Like I, and this is one of those things. It's just it just really depends on the company. I worked at companies where HR is respected and does the right thing, and it's all about the people first. And yes, is HR there to protect the company? Of course. But at the same time, that's not a dirty secret. I don't know. But but then you have then I worked at companies where it was like HR was referred to as profit sucking overhead. And like literally verbatim. And it's just like why what respect does that company have for HR? For me, it just depends on leadership, like the C-suite and how the C-suite seriously takes HR. And if they don't, then no one else is going to. And also, if you just have HR as just administrative pencil pushers, then you're doing it wrong.

SPEAKER_01: 16:01

Absolutely. My favorite response to this came from our friends, Suzanne Lucas. She put this on Inc. magazine, and some of the things she referenced the XXXY Jennifer Save person who called HR officious whole monitors. But here's some of her main points that she put in her article there. First, compliance isn't optional. And that's a fair portion of HR in any if you're in benefits, if you're an LD, if you are in employee relations, it doesn't matter what you do. Compliance is a huge portion of HR. You gotta play do it. She writes, risk doesn't manage itself. At what point do you put an employee on a performance improvement claim? When do you terminate? You have to know how to handle it. And you I one thing I'm glad I have other people. I'm not a uh on an island upon myself because I do need someone to balance me out because sometimes I just want to say, F you, get the hell out of here and be gone. I need someone to balance me out and say, let's think of this way. Because I do get very reactional sometimes when, especially just stupid people. But, anyways, Suzanne continues, managers don't know what they're doing. Hey, boss, my back really hurts. Can I get a standing desk? Do your managers know how to respond to that? And uh a few years ago, we had uh someone go to our my assistant, a former assistant of mine, and ask for a specific chair for their back situation. And she wanted this, that. I said, I said, just have her send us some links to the chair she wants and let's take a look at what she's done. She wanted like a$250 chair, and I think the normal office chairs are not. I was like, just get it. Don't ask her about ADA or anything like that. She wants this chair. 250 bucks, get it, done.

SPEAKER_00: 17:55

See, and that's what I was talking about before. Like when we say HR is there to protect the company. That's honestly a really good example of what the average employee doesn't think of in terms of protecting the company, because we're protecting the company from the employee who could turn around and be litigious. So, in one point, it's we're helping you, we're also helping the company, but people don't see that. It's we're still gonna help you out. And also, we do want to just help you out because we're fucking human. Yeah. Spend$200 on a chair. I don't care. In the grand scheme of things,$200 is a drop in the bucket to satisfy an employee with any kind of ADA needs they have. So just do it.

SPEAKER_01: 18:33

Now she'd come back and need this$3,000 chair or something, then we're gonna have to begin the interactive process. And see, but when I said, Hey, just send us the links, we'll go from there. And she sent three links and they were all right around the same process. I said, Pick your favorite one and and I'll order it. That was the extent of our interactive process on that.

SPEAKER_00: 18:51

Could you imagine if there was no HR and the manager was like, I don't want to spend$200, how quickly that could escalate? Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 18:58

I'm not conserving$250 or whatever.

SPEAKER_00: 19:01

Just like all the things under HR, if you're thinking compliance, conflict resolution, recruiting, onboarding, performance management, like you really want to put all that on a manager who's not trained. And by the way, managers who are already stretched, because not only are they doing their own contributor work, but they're also like leading a team. So now you're gonna put that on them without training. Okay. Like that's fine. All I know is that at the referring back to the same company that thought HR was just profit-sucking overhead, we would be like, you you have to coach your employees, you have to do performance management. And they would literally turn around and be like, but I have real work to do. And I'm like, that is your real work. Like so if you're complaining that you have to coach someone on something, okay, throw recruiting on there too. Go find your next director for it. Oh, and then do an onboarding plan for them and all the things, just put it on your plate on top of your quote unquote real work.

SPEAKER_01: 19:57

Yeah, exactly. They don't realize. The value of HR for instance. We see these magic ratio numbers for this type of company should be one to one hundred, and this type of company should be two to five hundred or whatever these ratios they have. But it depends on what the company is doing and the type of employees you're hiring and things like that. How many people do you need in your team? But you can't, I have myself a recruiter and an HR journalist. That's our HR team. And it works perfectly. If we get I I think we'd have to probably double in size before I needed to add a headcount to us. We'll see. We are slate for a heck of a lot of growth in 2026. So we'll put that to the test. But I might be changing my mind after that. Let's see here. Suzanne Lucas goes on. HR does the stuff you voted for. And it's like the ACA, handling the ACA, ADA, all those other wonderful acronyms that we have to know that are laws that people voted for. So now we have to figure out how to make it happen. And this whole Secure 2.0 act on your benefits and 401k. This has been a little bit crazy with that working with our payroll company to make sure that uh these provisions of Secure 2.0 can work. And it's not just something, oh yeah, sure. It requires some strategy, some planning, some forethought. It just doesn't happen by itself.

unknown: 21:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 21:23

Our final point was HR does protect your business, and that's okay. But does HR protect the business? Absolutely. Just as the finance department ensures the business has money to in the right place. You would never expect the finance department to go around paying people's mortgages instead of putting revenue in the proper places. Why should you think HR should go around prior prioritizing the employees over the company? If you hate HR, then reach out to your congressional representative about updating and changing laws. If you don't like policies, talk to the CEO CEO. And if you're a manager, learn how to manage. Until then, HR doesn't bring in money, but they surely prevent you from spending money on lawsuits and ridiculous terms.

SPEAKER_00: 22:01

See, that's my point. Articulated perfectly. Mic drop. Mic drop. That's it. That's it. And that's a sucky thing because it's like we're a cost center, we're not a profit center. So like it you can't see tangibly at the end of the year, like all the money that we bring into a company because we don't, but all the money that we save a company.

SPEAKER_01: 22:20

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00: 22:21

It's just a bunch of HR haters. You can't be as cool as us. So you just gotta write nonsense rage bait.

SPEAKER_01: 22:28

Yep, exactly.

SPEAKER_00: 22:29

Rage bait is you can't sit with us.

SPEAKER_01: 22:32

We're cool kids.

SPEAKER_00: 22:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 22:34

I've never been one of the cool kids.

SPEAKER_00: 22:36

Never. No.

SPEAKER_01: 22:38

Oh Eddie How I got it. I gotta kick out a that little article and some of the replies.

SPEAKER_00: 22:44

I get it. I get the trust piece, but at the same time, the trust piece is company specific. And I think it probably resonates with I think it's pretty ratioed in the comments. It looks like it's about 50-50. So I'm like, if people are like really negative, that's the company you work for. And that's an issue with the company you work for.

SPEAKER_01: 23:01

And like I said, there is a hell of a lot of bad HR out there.

SPEAKER_00: 23:04

I've witnessed some.

SPEAKER_01: 23:06

I I wouldn't go to John Hyman's worst employers list. I think the most recent one was pretty interesting. Check that out. You can see his last article. He said this was not only a complete HR failure. I forget what he called it, but check that article out on his blog or on like that. It's a good read about the most recent addition to that.

SPEAKER_00: 23:23

The only one I can think of off the top of my head that was the most haunting was the CVS employee who was complaining to people that the coworker was creepy, and then the coworker ended up murdering her. So I was like, oh God, that was the yeah. And the company CVS didn't really do anything about it or didn't act on it, and she ended up getting murdered.

SPEAKER_01: 23:42

Someone I know, I was talking to you about this a couple weeks ago offline, that is having to do with some bad HR. And I'm trying to help them navigate through it. But it's been three weeks and there's been no follow-up. So I'm like, maybe somebody grew up and realized that there was a big nothing burger there. So anyhow.

SPEAKER_00: 24:01

Yeah. It sounded like a nothing burger. I wouldn't have, I don't know how I would have entertained that, but whatever. I will say, speaking of bad actors in the HR space, I have a friend who got a solicitation from a recruiter basically finding them on LinkedIn and saying, We have this role available. Here's the job description. What do you think? And my friend was like, absolutely, sent the resume in. This is a very well-known company. If you haven't heard of them, you've heard of their products. The person's email address had a company signature. It went to the company page. They linked the job description to the actual site. It looked very legit until the recruiter responded and asked my friend, oh, great resume. I see that you have XYZ experience. We're really looking for that. I think your resume could use a little sprucing up so I could best put forward to the hiring manager. Here I have a resume coach or a resume writer. It was a link to an email. And I was like, I've never heard of one internal recruiter doing this. If it was an external recruiter, I could totally understand because they want their people to be a step ahead. So he took the feedback, did a little chat GPT magic, sent it back, said, no need. I did it myself. Here you go. The person basically copied and pasted the same exact response from the first email to the second. And it was really funny because when you read a little closer, it looked a little AI-ish, like something weird. My friend went to LinkedIn, found the recruiter. Recruiter on LinkedIn is a real person, posts like everything for the company, interacts with the company's LinkedIn pages, just a really good LinkedIn recruiter. And I was like, I think this is social engineering. I think this is somebody who is pushing this service that you'll probably have to pay out of pocket for, who is mirroring an actual recruiter. So anyway, my friend ended up LinkedIn, like messaging that recruiter and being like, hey, just to let you know, like something someone is using your information for nefarious reasons. Just want to give you a heads up. And yeah, so we'll see what happens. But bad actors in the HR space just scams, just scams. In this economy, we're scamming.

SPEAKER_01: 26:30

And the they're scamming people who are looking for jobs, and many of them might be desperate for work. My wife has a very good friend who lost their job four months ago, and they got a three-month severance package. The day that severance package expired, they got an email from this company saying, We've been hired by your former company to help me find another job. And I was like, this doesn't add up because I would think the company would have given you this resource day one and A, told you about no direct contact at that time. I haven't spoken to them since, has come directly from the company about, oh yeah, we did this for you. We're helping the people we outplace. You would think that would be part of the exit package. We're going to give you your severance and use the service to help you find another job, et cetera. No mention of it. And this person, it's been now four months, they've been out of work. They're, I'm not trying to say desperate, but they're getting at that desperate level. And I just cautioned them, go ahead and start this process. But as soon as they start talking money and you're going to need to do this and that, I said, this just isn't passing the smell test for me. I think there's somebody out here who's trying to take advantage of you. I can't prove it, but this doesn't seem right. It's in the company's best interest to get you a new job as soon as possible. Because also she thought she was going to be able to find another job pretty quick and double dip for some period of time and have the severance plus a new salary. But that just hasn't happened. And now, like I said, they're they're certainly a little desperate. I feel very badly for them. I wish I could do a deep dive with them and figure out I want to, because there was a live in-person meeting that they've probably already gone to, and I wanted to go myself with them. And so bad just to check this out. But I it I need to find out. I'll have to ask my wife what the final result of that is. Was it legit? Was it not? I don't know. Doesn't sound like it. That really sucks. And there's speaking which, there was a I'm trying my hardest to give up LinkedIn because I think it's the worst of all social media, in my opinion. But I TikTok's pretty bad. I was I I went on a few weeks ago, and there was a person that's claims to be a job search coach and a job coach or whatever. And they were posting about how they were taken by a scammer who wanted money. They actually paid the scammer in there in the industry. I'm like, there's a lot of scammers out there. And there are especially if someone's desperately looking for a job, it really sucks.

SPEAKER_00: 29:06

It does suck. And like my friend's not looking for a job, but at the same time, the opportunity to work remotely is really something that they're interested in. And this job happened to offer that. You just kind of get your hopes up. But here's the kicker. My friend's friend works for that company. Oh. So anyway, it was really funny. I'm like, I just didn't just ask your friend to look in the company Rolodex and see if that person exists. Get in there, get in their work day and see if that person exists. But yeah, it's crazy.

SPEAKER_01: 29:40

It is crazy, but yeah, I think that's about all that I had for today.

SPEAKER_00: 29:49

Yeah. Stay smart out there. If it doesn't feel right, it isn't right.

SPEAKER_01: 29:56

No.

SPEAKER_00: 29:56

Follow your intuition.

SPEAKER_01: 29:58

You have that spiny sense for a reason.

SPEAKER_00: 30:00

Yeah. Eat your vitamin C. Apple of Day.

SPEAKER_01: 30:06

I did not think our do our thank you. So Andra Copa, the voice artist, the underscore orchestra, or the theme song Devil with the Devil, and of course our Patreon supporters, Hallie, the original J D HR rock star, Bill and Mike. Hey, one quick story. We're doing this. Uh I've been there's a podcast I listen to. It's about making podcasts, and they use the same post that we do, where in the show notes there's a send us a text link. So you go to our show notes, first thing on the show notes line is a link that says send us a text. So uh a few episodes ago, they asked the person you listener feedback. I said, you know what? I've got some feedback for them. I clicked it and they read my comment on the air and they discussed it, they engaged in it. And I'm like, wow, that'd be so cool if our people did that. So please check out the show notes and send us a link.

SPEAKER_00: 30:57

I'm lonely. I want to test.

SPEAKER_01: 31:00

We haven't gotten any user interaction. I did search for abuse. We don't have any on Apple, but on Spotify, that number seems to be growing regularly. There's no narrative associated with that, just people writing it on stars. I'm glad to see that. But I one note is one thing I picked up. I looked at our stats over the last month. Okay. By far and away, United States is our number one country of listeners. Canada is a very strong number two.

SPEAKER_00: 31:28

Now historically, I know I know one of our Canadian listeners. Okay. Shout out to Barb.

SPEAKER_01: 31:36

Thanks, Barb. Review us. Because we have one Canadian Apple review, if you use Apple. But uh the third and fourth usually alternate between Great Britain and Australia. However, the third, most recently, has been Germany specifically, Frankfurt. We've been getting a lot of downloads, and it's not it's like they've downloaded quite a few of our library and things like that. Thank you from Frankfurt Germany. I'm glad if you've been with us in season one, you knew that one of our early international listeners was from France. We haven't had any downloads from France in a very long time. Maybe they moved to Germany. I don't know. Freak for Germany is number three now of Great Britain and Australia. So leave us a review on Apple Podcasts in Germany. I just found that really interesting. So with all that said, I think we're ready to call this one an episode and wrap it up. As always, I'm Warren. I'm Cece. And we're here helping you survive HR one what the fuck moment at a time.