Super Sick Out And Sick Companies

We start off way off topic and discuss the Soup or Bowl  and the Workday commercial.
Should Warren stop saying Rockstar?
Holidays, Floating Holidays and Personal Holidays
Company emails the candidate accidentally when discussing lowballing the candidate
Activision Blizzard World of Warcraft Woes
A LinkedIn Lunatic loves watching porn
Make sure your execs get their SACS

Transcript

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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've ever heard, my manager is unfair to me, I need you to reset my HR portal password, or can I right up my employee for crying too much? Welcome to our little stage. Welcome to H HR.

Warren 0:55

Welcome to J Diddy Tarta podcast by two HR professionals who want to get you through the workday by saying all the things you're thinking, but say them out loud. I'm Warren. I'm Patrick. Right, Patrick's back. Yay. Just a lot of, we were just talking off our so many things going on in the world and our lives and everything. But I want to, you know, start off by once again thanking our supporters. I'm actually doing some new ways of supporting our podcast host, BuzzSprout, is allowing you to have to set up a thing sort of like Patreon, maybe even a little bit better. If you click in the links, there's a show note link. You can support us directly through BuzzSprout, and that just goes pay our hosting fees. So if you're interested in that, you can do that. But you can still be a Patreon supporter, buy us a beer, leave a review. We haven't had a review in a very long time, guys. So give us a review and share a story or tell a friend. Like I said, you can be like Hallie, our original JR rock star, and we'll say your name at the beginning of every episode. Oh, and I think about things. Maybe we shouldn't use the term work rock star after giggles. Okay. Today's the Monday after the Super Bowl. And so work day, not sponsored. I had that I thought it was a pretty good commercial with all the rock stars.

Patrick 2:15

I missed a lot of the Super Bowl, but I I did see that commercial, I think, twice. And I was like, that's kind of funny to see like, you know, some HR payroll stuff in there. And it was actually a good commercial concept.

Warren 2:27

It was it was well done. I I I liked it, but I guess I is it am I being a boomer by calling people rock stars? I I don't know. There's a lot of other ways we could be a boomer though.

Patrick 2:37

Oh, yeah, absolutely. It did make me laugh because I was like, I'm pretty sure we've used that word a lot on Jaded HR. We probably even had an episode I felt like we had an episode title that had to do with rock star at some point.

Warren 2:49

Who knows? I'd have to look through it all. When you're talking about episodes, we are coming quickly upon our hundredth episode. Who whoever thought we'd make it that far and are beginning our season four, and both are happening within just a couple of weeks. So wow.

Patrick 3:03

I think it's a real it's a real accomplishment.

Warren 3:07

It is. Hey, we've done it all, all of us have done it. So it's a it's been a lot of fun with that. But if you'd like your name shouted out at the beginning of each episode, go ahead and give us some support, and we'll use it to continue growing for the podcast. It doesn't have to be supportive either.

Patrick 3:23

Like you can you can talk shit and we'll still say your name. Oh yeah.

Warren 3:27

Leave us a shitty review. Anything so far, the only Apple review that gave us one star didn't leave any comments behind it. Whoever you are who left the one star, I would have read that. That is fair, yeah. But all the rest of our our reviews have been a five-star review, so hey. Exactly. Performance review. Tell us why you're only giving us one star. Yeah, it needs to be smart.

Patrick 4:00

I don't remember what all those things stand for.

Warren 4:04

A specific, measurable, attainable uh R. What is the R? Realistic and time oriented. There we go. There you go. Look at that. Yeah, smart and channeling. Clearly, do smart goals, Warren. I I've clearly taken so many PHR and Sherm exams that I've memorized all those stupid things that have nothing to do with the developing smartphone.

Patrick 4:28

I need to find I saved a bunch of pamphlets from a Sherm conference a while ago, and one of the best ones was like comparing workers to different like angry bird types, which I'm sure I've mentioned on the show before. But I would love to find that and be able to read them out loud because I think it'd be very funny. Like we're talking 15 years ago, probably.

Warren 4:48

Yeah, I w this year the estate shrimp conference is nowhere near me. Or not really not nowhere near, but not close enough for me to bother going. But when it comes back to Helmstone. No, not this year. They're they're doing it somewhere in Richmond. So in Feathers' backyard there. But I'm not going to go out there for that. But when they come back to the Hampton Roads area, I'll I'll go again. And uh they were supposed to be there the year of the C word, and I didn't quite make it. And so we got sort of skipped in that that one. But I still haven't been to a national sherm and don't think I don't think I ever will go to a national shrimp unless they want to pay me to speak. Hey, you never know.

Patrick 5:31

Yeah. If anybody if anybody knows anybody, let Warren know. You could have a jaded HR session.

Warren 5:39

Yes. Yes, yes, yes. So we mentioned earlier, talking about the Super Bowl ad. Today is the day after Super Bowl. And in my news feed today, and I didn't put it on my screen, so I'm reading it off my phone, Fox 29 Philadelphia, today they put a post. The title of this news article is Super Sick Monday. Record 18.8 million Americans may miss work after Super Bowl survey suggests. And this is by Kelly Hayes of Fox 29 Philadelphia. But they cite that in the estimate released by the workplace research firm, the Workforce Institute, based on an online survey of more than 1,200 employed American adults, most of whom work full-time, 74%, at a physical workplace, 60%, and identify as a people manager with at least one direct report, 62%. The survey found that roughly one out of every five U.S. employees, an estimated 26.6 million people were likely to miss at least some work on Super Bowl Monday or the so so-called Super SIC Monday. This included a combined record-breaking 18.8 million employees not playing to work and 7.8 million who said they plan to start work late. So wow. It's a big deal.

Patrick 7:05

I found it funny that my son's school had a teacher work day today. I was like, well, that's convenient the day after the Super Bowl that they would have a closed school day for all students. So was it was it pre-planned? Oh yeah, they let us know. But there's also one next week for President's Day. So I found that interesting.

Warren 7:25

Um President's Day. Oh yeah. Yes, I I need I need another holiday in my life pretty soon. And that's our last federal holiday until Memorial Day. So it's gonna be a long, long hump to get over.

Patrick 7:37

My last one was New Year's, so oh yeah.

Warren 7:42

Way we get eleven holidays, yeah. And that that that uh brings up a good point. You know, so many people, you're it's not you're not obligated to follow all 11 federal holidays. No company is, and many companies don't. I just have to be working for a government contractor, which without the government open, there's not a lot of work to be done. So we have no we we were debating whether to observe Juneteenth or not, or substitute Juneteenth for another holiday and keep it at 10. But we're like, well, our our number one client isn't open, so there's not a lot of work to be done. So we went ahead and said we'd uh observe it after that that came out. But uh we have an office location in Philadelphia. Actually, from the window of our building, you can see the well you can't see the football stadium, but you can see the hockey arena because that's first if you're looking cross I-95 there. And Philadelphia schools were on a two-hour delay today planned in anticipation of winning the the Super Bowl. So I thought that that was very interesting.

Patrick 8:43

I mean they greased all the holes in Philadelphia, I'm sure, like, because people climb them and do all kinds of crazy stuff.

Warren 8:49

So yeah, yeah. They have a little bit of a reputation for uh getting carried away. You haven't lost the game yet?

Patrick 8:59

Probably hard to avoid that at this point.

Warren 9:03

Yeah, exactly. I I mean, I'm like I said, I'm not a big pro football fan fan. I've seen maybe two full games other than this all all season long and bits and pieces of others just being here, there, everywhere. But interesting.

Patrick 9:16

If companies offered like floating holidays, which I think is a really cool concept that people would use that for the day after the Super Bowl.

Warren 9:24

I I yeah, if that's what your thing is. Or would that be more of a PTO?

Patrick 9:28

Like is a floating holiday only used like on a holiday that maybe just isn't observed, but it's still a holiday? Or is it like, hey, I'm gonna make Super Bowl Monday, my holiday?

Warren 9:39

I think it depends on the company. Where I work, a floating holiday is if you were required to work, say, on President's Day for any reason, or you were on travel and you couldn't observe the holiday, you can float that holiday. I where my wife works, that they have what they call personal holidays to get, I don't know, two or three personal holidays a year. And those are things for whatever you want them to be, your birthday, your anniversary, Super Bowl, things like that. So they they have personal holidays, which which is kind of a cool concept. We don't we don't have anything like that. But or you know, just use PTO. But by all means, people, don't call out sick the day of the game. Go go to work, damn it. Or plan it ahead. Say, hey, you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna get completely sloshed uh Sunday night, so I'm not gonna be here. So we can uh people complain it's the the whole not it's not not being there, it's you know, calling in at the last moment, oh can't come in today, I'm hungover, or whatever.

Patrick 10:36

I used to be a supervisor at a big uh logistics chain, and uh my co-supervisor on my line, if the Redskins lost, that I knew that he was gonna miss that Monday. And it was like it was perfect. If they lost, he was not gonna be there. And he that followed almost 100% consistency through like my two and a half years there. It was very frustrating because that was a hard hard job to supervise by yourself.

Warren 11:03

But yeah, and that time frame with the Redskins was probably not the best of time frames. I mean, you can you can just look back the last 30 years and say that Well it's because Super Bowl, did you see Doug Williams in the Super Bowl? He's I mean, I know it's been 30 years since he won it, but he he was looking a little rough. Think so? I thought he looked all right. Like if I get out there. I was like, wow. Yeah. I thought he was looking a little rough. But boy, we've taken this all over to sports world today. But uh, one last thing before we we move on. My brother lives outside a major metropolitan area that has a team that won the World Series one year. And the year they won the World Series, the next day they were doing the the parade, and apparently, and he sent me a news article, something like 40% of the teachers in the local school systems called out sick to go to the parade and made school be canceled for no reason. And in his position, it was it it was mission critical, we'll say, for people to be there, but they couldn't be there as they now didn't had to care for their kids to be at school. And oh boy, he he raised a fuss with the city, you know, city council, the board of education, all that about you know, you can't allow this, but they have such a strong union. They basically gave him the bird figuratively and said, no. Yeah. But yeah, he he was in he was not a happy camper immediately after that. Not only because his own kids couldn't go to school either, but he he made it to to work at that day. So crazy stuff around sports. It's not worth it sometimes. Oh so you know, if if like East Carolina won the NCAA football champion or baseball championship, I I might miss a day or two of work. I missed a couple days to go to the regionals and super regionals this year, so or last year. So baseball starts in four days in college baseball season. So yeah, looking forward to that. Anyhow, let's get off the sports subject for a little while. Maybe we'll meander our ways back into that.

Patrick 13:14

That was our little Super Bowl Monday break. Break from the usual podcasting, you know.

Warren 13:21

A good time filler. No, we have a couple of good topics to go over today before just freestyling like that. So this came from BuzzFeed, which as Patrick was telling me, they get all their sources from Reddit, and they did cite Reddit. So this is a funny situation. This company, and I don't think they ever named the company, but on the anti-work subreddit, the user come and go, I guess I'd say, they were sent an email accidentally from a company they were interviewing with. And the email reads interview with the candidate's name. Here's the candidate my team likes, and as an alternative to blank. If he does not work if he does not work out, blank is looking for 55 to 60k. She lives in blank. I think she would accept 53k. She's committed to a second interview with you. I'm sending over her resume. So, and they they accidentally CC the candidate basically saying, Yeah, we want her, we're gonna lowball her on that. So I don't know. There, some of the the of course on Reddit, some of the best things are not necessarily the actual post, but the comments. Yeah. Adept carr 9997 wrote, when interviewing, I had to deal with complete idiots offering me less than what I currently make. Three rounds of interviews to find out they wanted to offer 20k less. Why in the world would anybody take that? The anger from employers, recruiters when I would laugh in their faces and turn it down. Ridiculous. Um's 420. I had a recruiter tell me I'm never going to find a job at my current salary range at the time, and I need to take a 35K pay cut. I think at the time I was making 85K. I'm going to try and pick and choose some of these, and some of them are long. A similar thing happened to me too when I was out of college. I had a bachelor's degree in computer science and was asking for 40K, which was considered a decent starting salary in the area I was looking for, even though it's low as fuck in my field overall. Recruiter told me I had to take a 20, had to take 20K. I stopped responding to them and got offered more than what I was asking for a week later when I ditched the recruiter. That was MG Zero. Oh, this is the follow-up from the original poster. I went to the second interview and told them I saw the email. They apologized and told me they were embarrassed, etc. I told them I felt they wouldn't have my best interest at heart if they were already undervaluing me and I didn't want to continue forward with a team that's likely to stab me in the back. She continued HR since text asking me um to continue forward and counted, called me apologizing, saying that's not how they do business. And if it was if it was them, they'd be pissed too. But I think that was more damage control and the other person's and the other person declined. I told them the fact that it was offered by the person who would be my boss means they would be not be looking out for me if I took the position. It also speaks volumes about the company's HR is apologizing on the director's behalf. Shortly after this interview, I took another job that pays more than the 60k.

Patrick 16:28

So anyways, there that's Does that make our HR look bad if HR has to play the damage control portion, or does that like say I would hate to be that HR person doing that damage control.

Warren 16:42

That that sucks.

Patrick 16:44

I am just trying to think if that I think that's sort of like does that buy into the you know HR's already diminishing reputation, especially on Reddit?

Warren 16:53

I don't know. I mean, if you're not gonna ghost the lady, I'm assuming it's a lady, ghost the the person, you've gotta respond somehow. The the cat's out of the bag, you can't just ignore it. You gotta you gotta say something about it. And I'm like, I guess apologizing is the the best uh the best alternative they have. I don't know. Yeah.

Patrick 17:14

Well I'll I'll bounce right into this because this is from that the LinkedIn lunatic subreddit, and it's it kind of goes along with like recruiters and ridiculous in it. This is a a very short LinkedIn message thread that someone got sent a message. And the message was I'm guessing from a recruiter, hi Blank, great implementation background. I am working with a leading SaaS-based platform in the construction space, seeking an implementation manager. Great hiring manager, remote, interested, talk soon. And the person responded back, Hi, Blank, sure, I'd love to hear you out. The next response, hi, do you have implementation experience? It's just like so like are those bots because I get I get stuff on LinkedIn all the time. Am I like is that a bot thing where there's just like all these different recruiter things are just sending out these spam things and with canned responses?

Warren 18:13

I I really can't answer that. I I would think LinkedIn does a I I get ridiculous, I don't want to say job offers or but jobs to look at online. And uh most of them are the other day I got uh uh offered a customer service manager because someone contacted me about a customer service manager on LinkedIn. I'm like, that fits my resume to the T. I why, what, how, I just I I think it's lazy people just click they got a cut and paste. They click on a profile, cut paste, click, profile, cut paste, and they maybe forget who they're responding to and that kind of thing because they're trying to cold call basically on LinkedIn. And and the worst is um if you have your job on your resume on like a career builder or a monster, oh the the I took mine down years ago. Mine should not be existing on either of those platforms, but I still get emails. Oh, I found your resume on Career Builder. I I I'm just like, and they're the dumbest things in uh the world. There's not even been one that's like, ooh, this is even close to something I'd be interested in. I'm not I don't see myself leaving my job anytime in the foreseeable future, but I do look just to see, just to see what's out there, and I'd share it with friends if it was actually something decent to to to go out there. But your boss, a big listener. I don't think she even knows about the podcast. I do not know. I don't I don't advertise it at work, but I don't hide it either. It's on my LinkedIn profile. And my boss is my is on my LinkedIn, and I've posted some things on my Facebook, and believe it or not, this is the only time I've had a boss that's been a Facebook friend of mine, which I know is uh against my own personal whatever relationship.

Patrick 20:09

I don't friend anyone I work with. You know, I even had I had a coworker that you know, you a lot of times you know, if I have a good working relationship with someone, once they leave, I'll add them on Facebook. And so I did that with this one this one lady, and then she got rehired and she actually messaged me back. She's like, hey, do you want me to remove you? Because I know how you feel about this. And I was like, no, it's okay. You found the loophole. It's good. Like I know how much you wanted to be my Facebook friend, even though I post literally never. You don't post uh post anything, no. I let my wife do that.

Warren 20:42

She tags me. She's very good. Well, it when when I was working with you, there were a few of us that were Facebook friends at at the towards the very end, because we were trying to coordinate things and we used Facebook to to coordinate uh tough mutters and and things like that.

Patrick 20:59

That was probably after we all stopped working together, though. I thought that was I couldn't tell you.

Warren 21:10

Oh thanks. But anyway, that was an interesting uh story. I got another company to talk about. We talked about this offline a a little bit ago about a our favorite gaming software company, Activision Blizzard, who is just given you know, podcasts like ourselves, as there's any other that are up to our standards of just shitting on HR. It's shitting on stupid companies that do stupid HR things. But Activision Blizzard made the list yet again. And actually, I don't disagree with with this. This comes from PC Gamer magazine in January 24th, 23. Brian Birmingham, he was the lead engineer on World of Warcraft Classic. He refused to To give an employee a low evaluation in order to meet a quota introduced by Blizzard in 2021. The process called stack ranking requires managers to give about 5% of their employees a low performance evaluation to fit on a bell curve of relative performance. According to Activision Blizzard, sources who spoke to Bloomberg, a low rating reduces an employee's profit sharing bonus and could hamper them from receiving raises and work promotions in the near future. Blizzard executive leadership justified the policy by claiming it will squeeze the bottommost performers as a way to make sure everyone continues to grow. He also said that he was asked to keep the policy a secret from employees. According to Birmingham email, others at World of Warcraft leadership asked if they could meet the quota by giving themselves a poor rating, but were told they couldn't. So forced forced rating systems to make it fit a bell curve. You're literally putting a square peg in a round hole. I don't like forced ratings. I don't like you can you can have a budget. This is your budget, you can divvy it up however you want. So you can't give everybody the most. And it almost was a similar type thing where they didn't want you to have more. You could have more, there was no forcing, but they didn't want you to have more than like 5% of your employees be A's. The majority of your employees should have been B's. And C's were the ones that were, they were either in their first year or they were going to be managed out. And that's that was their system. But nothing was forced with it. So but the the guidelines were only there were no guidelines for C's, but the guidelines for A's that it should be no more than five percent of your your staff. And that I guess that makes sense. And those are the people that are growing and grooming to move forward in the company. It's an interesting thing. I don't think that a a developer for a game such as World of Warcraft, which is probably one of the best-selling games in history. Or it's not even selling, it's a free game. You just it's a premium or whatever you want to say. Yeah. Maybe something like that is not gonna be too troubled in finding another job. But I I do like they stood up for his employees and and stood up against it. Even volunteered, give himself a low rating so his team could get higher ones. That's it's commendable, but a bad system. That's bad system. Bad HR, bad system. But Activision Blizzard, yeah, they they they're not seemed to pass uh year and a half, two years of being known for good HR, like I just shredding having a HR shred party. Let's shred all the these incriminating documents. I just and admitting to that you had a shred party.

Patrick 25:19

I Googled them. They are hiring a couple HR jobs. They're looking for a culture manager, which sounds like they do really need.

Warren 25:29

Oh gosh, I wish I could. I was listening to another podcast. It might have been HR famous, I'm not sure, but they were talking about culture companies only hire culture managers and things like that when their shit hits the fan, and now they gotta, you know, put this person, oh look, we're going to change this person's gonna lead us to the righteous way and all that other stuff, and then they give them a year or two to let it fade out of memory and they can the culture manager.

Patrick 25:54

So I'd collect the paycheck just for that for a couple years.

Warren 25:59

Yeah, if they pay out no, I I wouldn't want to be responsible for culture.

Patrick 26:04

Uh but that's what HR does. HR drives culture award. You know this.

Warren 26:09

Yeah. Yeah, that that's what you want to think. That's what that's what all the employees think. It's HR's responsibility. No, not quite. We can we're pr we can be pretty good at stamping out bad culture, but we can't well we can be a tool in stamping out bad culture, but we can't necessarily make good or bad culture ourselves.

Patrick 26:29

Speaking of good culture. Can I share one more LinkedIn lunatic? Oh, please. Because this is this is more of like an over-sharing thing. And can I just say listeners, I'm gonna say some words here. Please don't take my voice and then put it into something else, like a TikTok out of context. Oh god. You've just asked us to do this. You asked somebody to do that. Any uh exposure is good exposure. I like I like to watch porn. Yeah, I admit it. And I'm sure many of you out there have seen your fair share. But why am I bringing this up? For two reasons. One, because no topic is off limits, and two, because it's important to be aware of indulgences in your life. There are some things that need to be done in moderation. For some, including myself, porn is one of them. Be very aware of things that if you do too much, cause more harm than good. Carry on. Someone posted this to LinkedIn. And do they they have the open-to-work circle around their name? Um they have investors how to grow digital real estate portfolios in their name. I like porn. I just like, why? I mean, I I I don't know. It's just such a LinkedIn is such a weird landscape. I didn't realize that there was a thing called a LinkedIn influencer was a thing.

Warren 28:01

Yeah. Yeah. It LinkedIn is getting just as bad as all the others, the Facebooks. It it's not professional anymore. I I can't see all these stupid Facebook horrific type posts and things like that. That's not what I'm there on LinkedIn for. I I'm hoping to find can boy, connection. I want to find some people to you know follow and read their posts and their stories. I mean, John Hyman's a perfect example. I was following his blog before I ever jumped on LinkedIn, but I follow him every day on because he posts every day. And he's he's got great content. And that's that's what I go there for. I don't want to go for your kids' bullshit. I don't want to go for your religious bullshit. I don't want to go for I just want to see what I do and what I want to see.

Patrick 28:51

You want to see you want to see John Hyman's, you know, his take on the most recent porn, you know? That's what we're all looking for.

Warren 29:00

Oh boy. Yeah, that's that's that's too much. Yeah, oversharing is, you know, I don't think oversharing was a problem in my the first, I don't know, 10 years of my career, but and maybe it's because I just grew into more and greater responsibilities and I'm to deal with greater bullshit. But oversharing is a real problem now. And I think it goes in long lines. Bring your whole self to work, which I do not want you to bring your whole self to work. I want you to bring your work self to work, compartmentalize that shit. And I don't want to know about your your kid who's been on probation 18 times, and I don't know. All this other thing is that's a good thing.

Patrick 29:40

That's just reminding me of stuff.

Warren 29:42

I don't want your whole porn habits.

Patrick 29:43

This reminded me of a very funny. I actually have this literally happened today at work. And so we I work at a university and we have like an accreditation. We have the SACS accreditation. I don't even know what SACS stands. South Oh, if you hadn't asked me, I could have told you.

Warren 30:01

But it's Southern Academic uh accredit Accreditation Yeah, services.

Patrick 30:07

Sure. Doesn't really matter. But anyways, we have sex. So we're going through that at the moment. And so someone had a one of my lovely HR co-workers, we were all in the office today for our envelope stuffing party for the Affordable Care Act letters that we do every year. And uh one of my heart my co-workers had a call with their campus president and asked, oh man, what was it? Oh, did you have did you have your sex today? And I just stood up and afterwards, I was like, are you making sure that our campus presidents are having protective sex? And she just it was just one of those things where we all stood up, we're like, Did you just ask a campus president if they had their s had sex today? And just it was it was just a very funny moment.

Warren 31:03

See, HR can be very extremely inappropriate. When this this lady I work with, she's always I want to describe, I don't know if describe her as a gossip or she or a pot stir, but she's got something going on along those lines. And then she goes, Oh my god, I'm saying this in front of HR. I'm like, I don't give a shit. You know she is she always, oh my god, I'm you're here.

Announcer 31:24

I'm like, yeah, I don't I don't care.

Warren 31:26

I think we've all heard of that. So I was like, HR's here. Uh HR's here.

Patrick 31:31

We're always here.

Warren 31:36

All right. Well, I think this is a great episode for today. Best practice, make sure you get your sacks.

Patrick 31:45

Make sure, make sure you have safe consent sacks.

Warren 31:52

And you can watch plenty of porn, too. You could like your porn. So uh once again, please support the show. There's any number of ways. Look in the show notes, follow our link tree, leave a review, etc. The intro and outro music is done by the underscore orchestra, double the devil is the name of the song, and our voice artist is Andrew Culpa, who does an awesome job. So as always, I'm Warren. I'm Patrick. And we're helping you survive HR1 what the fuck moment at a time, I think.