Shorty #10 Practice Your Omnipotence and Clairvoyance

Yes  HR Pros you ARE expected to be Clairvoyant & Omnipotent 

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Announcer 0:01

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Warren 0:16

Welcome to J Did HR, the podcast by two HR professionals who want to get help you get through the workday by saying all the things you're thinking but say them out loud. I'm Warren. I'm Patrick. And Patrick's still with us for a shorty episode. So hopefully we can make this this happen. But I I have my my topic is what power should all HR pros have that they don't have? Like sort of I would say superpower.

Patrick 0:45

Okay.

Warren 0:46

Like this already. Well, the answer should be omnipotence. So here's here's the story. So this comes to us from Eric Meyer, who wrote on LinkedIn on Friday, February 10th. Today I'm going to tell you about a woman who sued her employer for disability discrimination. But here's the thing. She didn't know she had a disability, neither did her employer until after getting fired. But Eric, clairvoyance wasn't required for the bar exam or HR certification courses. So let's talk about this. The plaintiff in the case, I read last night, had attendance issues, bad ones. Over four months in 2019, the plaintiff had about 20 absences and latenesses, many of which had nothing to do with her health, but some did. Plot twist. Unbeknownst to both the plaintiff and the defendant, the plaintiff was suffering from a brain tumor and depression, neither of which were diagnosed until well after she was discharged. But let's backtrack a bit. The defendant was warned, the plaintiff, the defendant warned the plaintiff about the attendance issues, but they persisted and she got fired. So the plaintiff appealed her termination to a third party, a procedure the defendant made available to her. During the appeal, the plaintiff learned of her medical condition and she had a brain tumor removed. She informed a third party handling the appeal of her medical condition. However, the third party concluded that the defendant properly terminated her employment. So the plaintiff sued the defendant for disability discrimination. To satisfy disability discrimination, a plaintiff must show she has a disability that and that her employer knew or had reason to know about it. Here, the parties agreed that no one diagnosed the plaintiff with any medical condition until after her termination. She even sought medical help for she never even sought medical help for any symptoms or condition while she suffered. She suffered while employed. The plaintiff noted that many of her text messages to her supervisor to explain her tenants' issues were referenced health issues such as the plaintiff's head really hurting, having a fever and other symptoms, or simply being sick. But the court also concluded that such symptoms are consistent with many short-term non-disabilitating ailments, including a common cold. Therefore, they did not inform the defendant that the plaintiff may have a disability. The court did acknowledge that the defendant had told her supervisor that she felt depressed in her job, but she related it back to lack of leadership, direction, trust within the group, favoritism, etc. And personality conflicts, a workplace stress and being unable to work with a particular person or persons do not rise the level of a disability or inability to work for the purposes of the ADA. In a situation like that, it's okay to offer help to an employee, even suggest contacting HR for an accommodation. The defendant did that, and the plaintiff never asked for help. The defendant also enforced its attendance rules, documented violations, and warned about future consequences before terminating employment. And you know what? Case dismissed. So I like that story because not even the employee knew they had a disability or a, in this case, a brain tumor, until well after they were fired. And she actually had it removed before this hearing took place. So it just goes to show people are going to to try and take advantage of any situation, including a brain tumor after the fact, but you know, I j I just don't know what what does somebody expect an employer or even HR to do? How how are you supposed to do this? I don't know. It's just it's crazy. And I can see more and more of this happening. I see one day when, oh well, you were depressed and you were feeling lousy because of this brain tumor. So those are the symptoms that you had of your brain tumor, and even though nobody knew about it, you're protected. I can see, I can actually see that happening at some point in the game. Yeah. It's just yeah. And so there there were some really cool comments, just like Reddit. Some of the best parts about a story are the comments. Our friend Suzanne Lucas wrote, What HR talking to uh replying to another comment? Or what certification, HR certification did you do? There was a whole section on clairvoyance on the PHR, of course. I knew I would pass before I took it because of course I'd studied clairboyance. So it maybe I meant clairvoyance earlier in the episode versus omnipotence. Uh I guess maybe with that. But it it's just really interesting to see the things that this actually went to court. She did her third party appeal, it went to court. And so the company and the employee had to waste their time and effort working on this. So I just wow.

Patrick 5:56

How I think she didn't pay she didn't pay attention to an open enrollment, is what it sounds like. She didn't pay attention to her. She really should have attended those those sessions.

Warren 6:08

So don't even get me started. We're we're halfway through open enrollment and not even halfway through. I actually cornered an employee today and because I knew this employee would say the exact same thing, even though I've said I've sent at least five emails saying action required. This applies if you're receiving this email, it applies to you, even if you don't take our benefits. And he goes, Why would I have to do it? I don't get benefits here. I have military benefits. Well, you still have to go in and make your elections. I saw so any anyhow, yeah. Open enrollment.

Patrick 6:47

I could yeah, rant about that for I'm done with ours. We're still dealing with it, so it makes you feel any better. Ours wrapped up in November.

Warren 7:00

Yeah, I'm I'm looking forward to this being done. And this year they're getting an extra day because where President's Day falls, and it falls on a Monday, so we're not closing open enrollment until the the 21st. So come on, you got one whole extra day to get this this crap. I know what superpower.

Patrick 7:17

I don't even know if it's a superpower. Let me go into like D D speak. I wish I had like uh insight was like plus twenty, so I knew when I was talking to like a vendor, I knew when they were bullshitting us and they weren't gonna deliver on anything they told us. That's the superpower I want. I want insight and perception skills to be like, you know, at plus twenty, so it's always, no matter what I roll, gonna be a critical hit.

Warren 7:42

I sort of think that if it's if it's coming from a vendor, it's full of BS anyway. I'm I'm dealing with our background check provider right now. They sent us two collections, and I look through the whole, I went through the whole everything. I've paid, I've submitted everything to be paid. It's paid. I don't know what they're talking about, and I haven't been able to get an answer yet. I just the the one person I got on the phone was just so full of bullshit. I I was like, I I end up hanging up on them after being on hold for 20 minutes to get to them. I I was like, no, you're you're not even trying to understand what I'm saying. And it was that I've and that's a whole that's yet another rant for for HR. I could do I should do just a Warren Rants episode again.

Patrick 8:29

All of your shorties, these could all just be Warren Rant out or Warren's little rant corner where you just get to like a chair and scream into a corner for a few minutes until you feel better.

Warren 8:41

Yeah, I need someone to talk to, though. Is I the the two episodes I did, or three episodes now by myself, they weren't good. Well, the the chat GPT one was kinda good, but the the other two were so anyways. I'd uh that's our shorty for today. Practice your clear voice, practice your omnipotence, you know, go to Hogwarts to learn all this great stuff and level up your insight and perception. Level up your insight. And yeah. So that's all that's all I've got for this shorty episode. So thanks for listening. Support us, follow the link tree, and we will see you next time. As always, I'm Warren.

Announcer 9:23

Patrick.

Warren 9:24

And we're helping you survive HR one what the fuck moment at a time. I didn't even want to.