Feathers Dreams of Egg McMuffins but Mickey D's Only Serves Harassment after 10:30

Ever wonder what it feels like to be on the receiving end of age discrimination? That's just one of the many HR horror stories we're tackling this episode. You'll hear about our personal adventures in home brewing, and then we'll take you on a trip to a particular McDonald's in Florida that became the center of an unsettling viral incident. We'll give you the disturbing details about a manager's verbal harassment of an employee named Barry based solely on his age. 

Moving on from that, we delve into the issue of salary discrepancies. Imagine this: an employee earning more than their director! We'll talk about the sticky situation between Jane and Heidi, and how their pay disparity can be managed. We'll also discuss how to survive unnerving HR moments and deal with contract negotiations when things get rocky. With a shout out to our awesome voice artist Andrew Culpa and the groovy theme music by the Underscore Orchestra, we're here to help you navigate the HR labyrinth. Tune in and be part of the conversation!

Transcript

Announcer: 0:02

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

Warren: 0:51

Welcome to JDDHR, a podcast by two HR professionals who want to help you get through the work day by saying all the things you are thinking, but say them out loud. I'm Warren.

Feathers: 1:02

And this is Feathers, all right.

Warren: 1:05

Well, I want to start off the podcast with an apology for new podcasts. Last week, the fourth of July week, I originally intended to do an encore episode, as we had no intention of recording last week. But then all of a sudden, as I'm getting ready for the encore episode, putting that together, I had something to hit me and I decided I was going to do a rant episode. So I was going to do just a little rant and, hey, maybe I'll talk about it today. But I was just going to do a little rant for a few minutes and put it out there. Well, doing a rant, lost power, so lost internet, et cetera. So that stopped. So I said, okay, I'll start again. I'll record on my phone driving to work the next day.

Warren: 1:49

Oh yeah, that audio sucked. That audio was like I don't know, we could have used Mr Telephone or something like that in the 80s to record it. It was so bad so I couldn't use it. And then by the time I was like, oh, we're about to record again. So, yeah, no, no episode last week. So I greatly apologize, but we're back for you this week and I got a couple of good stories for you. But, as always, I want to thank our original J2JR Rockstar Halley for her support on Patreon. You too can support us and also leave us a review, support us financially. Just check out all the show notes and the links in the show notes in our link tree, all that sort of fun stuff. So yes, back again. So yeah, you know, the world of HR is just Well hold on.

Feathers: 2:38

I'll just put out there that I'm probably like four or five beers in at this point in time, so I'm feeling no pain right now.

Warren: 2:45

I feel so pain. Yes, and.

Feathers: 2:48

I'm drinking. I mean, this is a work night so I will go to bed at some point in time, probably feel a little pain in the morning because I am getting closer to a very big milestone of HR in a couple of years, so it's not easy in the morning anymore, but feeling no pain right now.

Warren: 3:04

Well, speaking of beer, I don't know if you saw online, I'm brewing my own. Now Aiden and I my son are brewing. I'm scared. Yeah, I'm actually scared too, but you know, so far, so good. I'll know in about three more weeks what I, if I created something worth it or not. And next I'm going to do a mead. I decided I'm going to do mead instead of beer next time, so I've got to pick up some new hobbies, with all of my other hobbies dissipating. So yeah, Well, you're kids leaving.

Warren: 3:34

Yeah, kids leaving, getting out and actually my son has been, even though he's only 19,. He's been my right hand man and helping me do the beer and it's been fun. It's been a good project for us. So we'll see in about three more weeks if it was worth it or not and I'll try again regardless. So we'll see, yeah.

Feathers: 3:55

I mean it is coming up tailgate season, so I expect at least some kind of shot we can do. If it's that bad, we'll videotape it and we'll post it.

Warren: 4:04

I found a awesome recipe. It's a amber chipotle beer. I was thinking for taco tailgate. Now we're talking. I don't know how this first batch is coming out, but I'm already planning. I'll do it for taco tailgate, I'll plan that out and have the amber chipotle beer. So I was just. I did a deep dive on the interwebs and that's where I ended.

Warren: 4:29

Beer recipes, yes, but speaking of recipes, mickey D's, they have the recipe for burgers and fries, but they also apparently have a, the recipe for harassment. So this one, you know we we do have a explicit language marker on our episode and we usually don't shy away this one gets, really it gets gets pretty strong. So Of course, this happens in Florida was all the good. All the good stories come from Florida. But a McDonald's in Florida hired Barry as a grill, a grill cook and fryer. He was 59 years old. His direct manager repeatedly and profanely harassed him Regarding his age. The manager had been with McDonald's for almost 15 years. Who the hell stays with McDonald's 15 years? But that's. That's another story. Oh, I should also say this this story I've heard.

Feathers: 5:26

They have good culture.

Warren: 5:29

This story is gonna say the opposite.

Feathers: 5:33

Good culture, but Jonathan like good culture. A good culture. Okay, good culture.

Warren: 5:38

I Came for the prize, I stayed for the culture. But this is from Jonathan Pollard on LinkedIn July 2nd so his manager would send him home from shifts, told him he couldn't take meal breaks. She threatened his job. And here's some of the managers according to Jonathan Pollard greatest hits oh my god, they assigned me a retarded, slow-ass motherfucker. The manager would say. Another quote from the manager too old to do this job. Another quote I can't believe. This old motherfucker was assigned my shift. So Barry reported all these to management, including the general manager of the assistant general manager, regional manager, and some of these people have actually seen this happen firsthand. But what happens next? You know, you got to love the cell phones.

Warren: 6:27

The manager made a video of Barry mocking him and then posted it to tiki-taki. So this is what the the manager was saying and this is their grammar, not mine, and I'm gonna try to read this. They just be putting anybody on my overnight. Let me show you what the slow-ass motherfucker done did. The video pans out to a drink. Barry Prepared for good to go order. The manager continues I said put me a large fruit punch in a large uber bag. This is what he did, y'all. He put it in the bag. We're going viral. We're going viral.

Warren: 7:04

Camera pans back out to Barry who's sweeping the kitchen. He's got his head down and obviously humiliated. The manager states he don't want to be on camera, but he is. She tagged the tiktok video of Barry with the hashtags Are you ready for this? Mick retarded and Mick dummies. Oh, here, here's my case, on a silver palette platter there, mr Attorney, all over tiktok. At one point she told me to go home and not come back, or else he, or else he would see what happened. So he quit. But anyways, yeah, that's. That's how good that you can't tee this one up any better. And what sort of training is McDonald's not doing? Besides, let's take too long. Give you cold fries. You know, I Haven't been to McDonald's voluntarily and I don't know how long. It's my least favorite of the fast foods. It's, yeah, it's.

Feathers: 7:59

It's the Walmart, it's my fridge, it's my favorite for breakfast, for breakfast oh.

Warren: 8:05

I'd have to go with see you. English or Hardies for my favorite.

Feathers: 8:11

I've got childhood dreams of like Egg McMuffins. That was like the, that was the carrot and the stick for me as a child. Like, oh, if you do this, it's Egg McMuffins. Oh, I love me some Egg McMuffins Still this day. I'm like if I do something, I'm like I reward myself.

Warren: 8:27

Egg McMuffin. I will have to remember that. But Wow, I just, I just can't believe. You know, you get to hear he said, she said type thing, and that's all Barry would have had up until the point. This wonderful, brilliant manager started putting it on Tiktok it's like, and then they wanted to go viral and I bet you, I bet you that's gone viral at some point. Geez, oh, people, people, the cell phones are just such a you know what there. I think it's actually a good thing. It's a. It is a Darwinism tool for many people. We'll weed out the. Let the others weed them out themselves out. I hadn't thought about that before.

Feathers: 9:11

That's a good. I like that. It's a nice tool.

Warren: 9:17

Oh, I told you, I texted you this. I heard speaking of whatever the phrases were microtarded, I can't. I'd say that laugh. I heard the new. You can't, I mean just you can't.

Feathers: 9:30

I heard the new best.

Warren: 9:33

I heard the new best phrase for putting someone down who's? Stupid, and I'm not going to say the source of it, but they just don't have the intellectual bandwidth for this.

Feathers: 9:46

It's like I was like I can't wait to use that this fall.

Warren: 9:51

That's what I wanted to do. I sat there very stoic and quiet and, yep, let that one go. I was like, wow, so anyhow. No, yeah. So this comes to us from a former guest, suzanne Lucas. She wrote I got it from LinkedIn, but she wrote it for Comstock magazine and this was from July 5th and she puts up there a dilemma of the month, and some of them are actually pretty good, actually, a lot of them, suzanne's writing is awesome, but this one is. This one seemed to stir up a lot of buzz in the world. So, dilemma of the month can a manager be paid less than her direct report? And before I get into the Body of the store, which is only like a paragraph or a couple of paragraphs, I took notes on. But, yeah, what do you think? Have you had experience of managers making less than their subordinates?

Feathers: 10:49

Yeah, 100% yeah, but I'm a job family. I think it's very prevalent when it comes to sales, absolutely.

Warren: 10:58

Yeah, sales is the first thing that came to my mind because, though you know this, sales managers, if you have a good sales team, might be the lowest paid person on that team if you're the manager. Now, I know I know some people have the managers get a cut of their commission or whatever, but still, sales is the number one answer that, as soon as I've read the headline, that's what I thought about. Second thing I thought about are like very high, highly technical Individual contributors that either do not want to be a manager or they're not able to be a manager. You have these people that have just all these strong technical skills, and that's part of things goes on in this story. But when I get to it but that's that's another thing, that that I thought of before reading the story, but it's in the story as well. So, anyways, I'll go into the story a little bit here.

Warren: 11:52

Somebody wrote into Suzanne I'm a brand new HR director and I recently discovered that an employee earns 13,000 more than her director, who oversees his team of 10. The highly paid employee, jane, signed her offer letter in 2021. Finance team explained to me that the employees higher pay was due to certifications and difficulty finding a qualified candidate at market salary. Upon learning that her direct report made more than she did, the director, heidi, naturally requested a salary increase. However, the director's salary is already in line with other other directors and Heidi would be happy if she hadn't noticed this error. Options to consider are Maintaining the employees current salary, reducing the employees salary or increasing the director's salary, although we might not have the budget for that.

Warren: 12:39

What should we do? And I was like None of the above. You, the. They already explained that they had a hard time. You know they're paying more is a hard to find Candidate and the market. You know 2021, the market, the salaries were Extraordinary. They have come down again. You know all these people job hop, job hop for the money and then sort of market set up. We'll go correct ourselves a little bit there and so that happened. But yeah, you're not going to mess with the employees salary and just because you're a supervisor doesn't mean you need to make more. It's, it's, it's interesting. So what?

Feathers: 13:19

Yeah, anyways, well, need, or should I mean? Just you're pointing out like if you're a technical expert or if you know, I always think of like a good, if you are a very good sales manager, your team should 100% make a lot more money than Right, yeah, hopefully there's a commission structure that. Yeah, I mean like, I mean what. I guess the words I'm using are right.

Feathers: 13:46

I know what you're saying true in the sense of like, but if you're manager of sales people, there is going to be a significant disconnect in terms of what compensation looks like, and that's just the decision you make when you go into management. If you, if you are chosen or choose to go into management those types of roles, absolutely, absolutely. That's why. That's why, like I, struggle with jobs that are commission based, that have caps on commission.

Warren: 14:17

Oh cat, no See, caps on commission are are just ridiculous. The company, so you're, I'm stopping earning money, but the company is still earning more. Hell. No, I'm working right up to that cap and then I'm going to, I'm going to take it easy and save my to next month, quarter, whatever cycle there on, so that they can can pick right back up. But there's they lose their incentive and then they, you know, yeah, they lose incentive. If the company is making money, you make money. That's what it is.

Feathers: 14:51

I know the previous company I worked, a previous company that I worked for which I won't name. When I did those for them prior to making the full time change to HR, they would give us our new pay structure every year and every year I'd look at it and go, okay, so I've got to do twice the work and I'm going to make less money. And they wondered why they lost their top salespeople. Because they would start to pick caps or they would change the way and make it harder for sales to be paid.

Feathers: 15:18

And again I repeat my statement they wondered why there's their good salespeople left.

Warren: 15:24

Or these commission structures you've seen out there, maybe that it's almost a regressive commission If you, if you sell, you know $100,000, you get this percentage, but if you sell 200,000, you get a little bit less and you sell 300,000, you're getting even less. That regressive Like, once again, where's the incentive that a good salesperson is? You know I hound and just berate salespeople all the time, but when the good there are good ones out there and when they're good, that's what's motivating them and they want to have more money. When I was doing third party recruiting, that's what motivated me. Each month, my commission check. I wanted it to be higher than a month before and overall I was able to do that, not every single month, but it was. Yeah, just structures are sorry. Structures are, you know, commission structures as such. You have to do it right. You have to do it right. And you I would say, hey, if you, if you're bringing in a hundred million and you come up to 200 million, maybe you deserve more commission because that's a that's a lot of, that's a lot you're bringing in.

Warren: 16:31

But Suzanne went on to write. She gave some examples and said it's not uncommon for at all. She's mentioned sports athletes. They make more than managers, the GMs of the team and things like that. Oh yeah, owners of the team, they make more than actors, she wrote make more than writers and producers and pharmacists make more than store managers, and I should remember that for my wonderful days at CVS. So that is. You know, there's all sorts of examples. You know a pharmacist, highly skilled position, you know. Are they running the sword? No, they're running the pharmacy. But are they running the store? No, unless it's like a mom and pop or something like that. But they're, they're highly skilled, degrade people that you really can't do without. So I don't know. Yeah, it's just, it's just interesting to to see that. Let's see.

Warren: 17:19

Here I have I don't have much else for today, but I I did want to. I try and find another David. I read a David Smith article. Well, actually, I'll save that for later. So the final thing I wanted to do when I was, it was going to be the center of my right and I'm sort of rent. I've sort of calmed down now over time.

Warren: 17:42

But this pisses me off, whether it's the medical HR world or whether it's television providers, but the point of it is anytime there's a contract negotiation and you bring your customers or clients or patients into the mix. So I had direct TV for like 16 years and it's like every other month. Oh, you're going to lose whatever channel it is If you don't call direct TV right now. And they bring the customers into their little contract negotiation and that would just tick me off. And the same thing happens in the HR world. And if you haven't experienced this, I think you're very lucky. But a contract negotiation between a medical group and the service provider, there's one going on in my area. It's actually making news now, but the local newspaper but this doctor's group is going to leave the largest insurance provider in the area. But the doctor's group is emailing their patients telling them to talk to, to call the provider and call their employers.

Warren: 18:47

And oh, I remember I don't know, it must have been like 2013, 2014, when the Express Scripts and Anthem were having their fallout and the same thing was happening.

Warren: 19:00

The Express Scripts was telling you to call Anthem and call your employer and I I kid you not, I had, and I think one of the local grocery chains was the Express Scripts provider, but I had an employee in my office literally crying because they were going to die because they weren't going to get their, their, their medicine.

Warren: 19:21

I'm like, well, it's just this chain, you can go to a different chain. There's I, I, I, you know. I told them, I know where you're coming from, I know you know there's you name the Walgreen, cvs, rite Aid, whatever it is, it's all right there, but at this particular grocery chain, but they needed to get it from there and they were just so upset and they were in my office crying and I have to call Anthem and I have to tell them not to. I'm like I'm not calling Anthem, I'm not dealing with this, but I just. It just irritates me to no end when a when a provider, whether it's this doctor's office or if it's direct TV or whomever brings their customers into their contract negotiations. It is just so. Just irks my nerves. And I was a little more fired up last week when I was going to do this as a rant and I actually started recording it before the power went out on me.

Warren: 20:09

So, yeah, that's that's sort of the abbreviated rant right now. But, gosh people, just if I, if I had a provider that was leaving the network and they told me to call my insurance company and my HR department, I'm calling them and telling them to f off. I'm like, what the hell are you doing? I only have one doctor I see regularly. But why, why are you telling me to do this? Well, how much are you paying me to go to talk to these people? Right, anyhow, that's my. That's my little rant for today, but I think it would have been much better. On the last Tuesday, when I had a, I had a couple of beers and I was fired up about this, and then there you are. Luckily that Thunderstorms edited me out appropriately, so God did not want me talking about that, so nothing's happened yet today. So best practice for today, well, is don't, don't piss me off with these things, don't bring me into your contract negotiation, I don't care.

Feathers: 21:18

We're running list of things that piss you off. Let's do the short list of what actually be like a fun for our recap show next year. Like here are the things that the piss Warren's off.

Warren: 21:29

Well, all fair, you and I were talking about something that pissed me off early, both of us off earlier today that we're going through, so yeah. So, as always, our voice artist is Andrew Culpa and our theme music is double to double by the underscore orchestra. As always, I'm Warren and this is feathers, and we're helping you survive HR one what the fuck. Moment at a time. We're shorter, but