Mama Bear We're Getting the Band Back Together

Welcome back to the HR world with your jovial hosts, Warren and Feathers. Brace yourself as we engage in a candid conversation, reminiscing our youthful spirit, remembering the late Bob Barker, and exploring a myriad of captivating HR topics. What happens when you mix work faux pas with humorous policy names? You get an entertaining discussion that underlines the significance of owning up to our blunders and the perils of trying to skirt around them. 

We'll also delve into the wonders of mother nature. This 'mama bear' syndrome analogy extends to the office space, reminding us to respect boundaries and avoid potentially dangerous situations. Don't miss our light-hearted Aflac stories, why corn on the cob is a no-no during crucial meetings. Join us for this rollercoaster episode as we navigate the twists and turns of HR, one laugh at a time.

Transcript

Announcer Andrew Quilpa: 0:03

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 write up my employee for crying too much? Welcome to our little safe zone. Welcome to JDDHR.

Warren: 0:47

Welcome to JDDHR, the podcast by two HR professionals who want to help you get through to work day by saying all the things you're thinking, Say them out loud. I'm Warren and this is Feathers. Yay, as you can hear the globe, traveler, traveler whatever he wants to say, this is back in the United States and back.

Feathers: 1:07

I told my manager about a month and a half ago these are going to quit. Tell them somebody to fuck off or leave the country. So I left the country. That's the pure definition of being jaded. I was like I'm going to quit, I'm going to tell you to fuck off or I'm going to leave the country. So I left the country.

Warren: 1:27

Well, we're glad to have you back. We missed you. You had some really good guests helping us while you were gone, and I did run one on-core episode. So, yeah and boy, we're going to get sick of each other real quick. The next three weekend. We're going to get a ton of each other, so looking forward to that.

Feathers: 1:44

Put the band back together. Get the band back together, drink some beers, tell some stories. It's going to be great yeah.

Warren: 1:55

How much longer we're both at a certain age point? Can we continue to act like we're 18 on weekends, or we could be like 85 and all of a sudden a football weekend comes on and we're 18 years old again.

Feathers: 2:08

I hope so, At least the first one. Maybe by like the last game of the season. We're just sitting in chairs and throwing stuff at each other. Launching yeah, we can't move. Get out of my tailgates spot, that's my spot. No, I hope to sustain this for at least another 15 years. I hope.

Warren: 2:26

Yeah, exactly. So now we've got a lot of fun stuff going on Before we get started. Well, do our traditional police support show. Links are on the show note page and on our website. Y'all, I've been working extra hard on the website. I have all the episodes published. I have a companion blog post for most of the recent episodes, so I might talk about weird behind the scenes things that happened or things that I thought about after we recorded the episode and like, oh, I should have said this or maybe just I don't know, a rant might come up in there. So check out the website. It also has all the ways to support us. I'm also going to add Google has a new way to support us. So a whole lot of options there.

Warren: 3:10

We need that from you, just like Halle, the original Jaded HR Rockstar. But we love our reviews. We got another five star review and this is from Trisha in Pittsburgh. First, trisha, thanks for having a name that I can actually say, versus a bunch of letters and numbers or something that I'm going to completely butch Butcher. I can't speak English very well anyway, but the title is thanks to Jaded HR. This podcast is my absolute favorite. The hosts are funny and personable. Yay, thanks for sharing your Zany HR experiences. It's comfort to know that we're in this together and, amen, that is what we are going for today or every day. But yeah, this is going to be a shorty episode. I don't have any like one poignant topic. I have like the potpourri bag of all sorts of topics that I'm going to be covering.

Feathers: 4:09

In Puppery Bag. You're showing your age again, warren.

Warren: 4:11

Yeah, yeah, wait we're showing our age. Bob Barker just died this week and I saw the memes that said this, but it is absolutely true. If you were a kid a Generation X kid and you were sick home from school, bob Barker was your friend and I don't know how many episodes of Price is Right I've watched. Well, I was sick, or pretending to be skipped, so he was going to be skipped, pretending to be sick or just skipping school altogether.

Feathers: 4:43

So the best one I saw about Bob Barker was he got just as close as he could to 100. He got to 99, but did not go over. Without going over.

Warren: 4:53

Without going over, but man towards the end. You see how he was all over those Barker beauties. So, yeah, oh gosh, what a thing. But so that little harassment, dalliance, was one of his faux pas. I made a massive faux pas recently at work, my first time ever doing a reply, all email, and this went to everybody in the organization. So, and you're still employed, I'm still employed.

Warren: 5:25

Actually, the only nobody, one person said something to me and that's it about the whole thing the person who originally sent the one, this email it's normally the people that are in it are me, the president, the COO and then a group name that, unless you hover over it, you don't get to see what the whole group name. I thought it was the HR group name, but it was by the company, everyone. So, anyways, this person wrote a policy and the policy itself was a one page loan, which gives me a headache of policy that long to begin with. And then they had a disciplinary scale that went along with it that was three pages long. So this whole policy was like five pages long and it had four levels of warnings and just a whole litany list of consequences, but it never gave us the explicit ability to skip a step or just go straight to termination or anything like that. And I thought it was a discussion that we the COO president, this person myself were discussing. So luckily I didn't say anything horribly bad, but I just replied. Here's my suggestions. My thoughts are we want to be explicit, that we do not need to follow each and every step and may jump immediately to termination. And then I said I personally never see the need to do a second written warning for related issues, because there were like so many written warnings that you could get on this.

Warren: 6:58

How many times in your career have you delivered two written mornings for the same thing? Now, I'm not talking like you have an attendance issue and then you have a you don't wear your PPE or something like that. They're totally unrelated. That's apples and oranges and generally I don't think should be accumulated, unless you need to stack them on top of each other for any reason. But you don't. You get one written morning. You do it again. Buh-bye, it's that, it's that.

Feathers: 7:26

It sounds like your fuck up actually might be a good thing for you, because now you put the fear of God and everybody that got the email. Here's your HR manager saying, hey, fuck up once and I'll just fire you. I don't care. Yeah.

Warren: 7:41

Well, the only feedback I got was someone in our procurement department who, when the company was very tiny, she did HR two and she goes Warren, I'm a hundred percent on board with you, but that's the only feedback anybody gave me when I did the reply all and I didn't, I didn't know. I did reply all until much, much later it wasn't like whoops, I was like it was gone and out in the universe. And then I found out I was like oh, oh, okay, so anyways. But on the flip side, I have almost as close to guaranteed my job as any human being can do in an at will situation.

Warren: 8:23

I walked in the office on the Monday before last and I'm walking in, there's a snake inside the office, a slithering on the ground, and I've been to over and I'm looking at it and so I said where are you doing? I said, oh, there's a snake here. And then, like almost everybody near me lost their shit about a little stick and I'm saying this is like an eight inch brown generic garden snake. It wasn't poisonous, it wasn't dangerous, it wasn't anything. So I put down my lunch bag and my computer bag and I got it into a corner. I couldn't, he was too quick for me to catch him just in the loose. I cornered him and I grabbed him and people are still just freaking out about it. So yeah, even like there's this dude, he's like six foot two and he's like an athletically built basketball player, you know type physique and maybe better than six two, and he's like, oh, come on, people. And then someone tells me every company needs, every company needs, one of you type people. Most of the time when you say one of you type people, nothing good comes out of that. But he says, yeah, we all need some good old Carolina country boys that takes care of snakes and things like this. So, gosh, well, at least you're saying it to me versus somebody else. People like you put any other group behind people like you and could be into a world of hurt. So yeah, so my faux pas, I've redeemed myself by being a snake wrangler for the mighty dangerous eight inch garden snake there. Oh, let's see here, what else do I have?

Warren: 10:10

I wanted to follow up. We did our firing torons episode, which was actually quite popular, and yet last week I think it was last week I saw another video that just pissed me off. And it's not just one person, it was like dozens, if not maybe pushing 50, 60 people. In this video it's a comes from, of course, yellowstone National Park, because that is just an insane asylum of torons and a mother grizzly bear and two cubs are walking and all these people are swarming near it to get their pictures and videos and shit like that. And it just pops in my mind. First thing, I think, is have you not heard the term mama bear? Half of these cairns probably have a mama bear sticker on the back of their minivan, but they don't get the point. Oh, mama bear, it's a grizzly.

Warren: 11:06

Now, where I live, we have the highest concentration of black bears on the East Coast, east of the Mississippi, where I live, there are bears everywhere, though I haven't seen a wild one. I've seen plenty dead on the road, but anyways, we have tremendous black bear population here and black bears are docile. Overall, I'm not going to get near back black bear period, and then certainly not where near its cubs. I really wanted to see this bear do some sort of cocaine bear rampage. I was like that would be the most suitable thing in the world, but the bear tried to remain chill. But anyways, come on people. Yeah, it was.

Feathers: 11:51

I mean, I hate people. That's it. That should be our tagline. J and HR we hate people, we hate people.

Warren: 11:57

See, look out, we look for that season five. We do have some things going for season five. There Got some plans brewing in my sick and demented mind, god. So I got this idea.

Warren: 12:13

I've been doing a lot of per that, my little faux pas there. I've been doing a lot of policy revisions and things like that lately and now I want to come up with a new policy, if you will, of titling our policies after the dumb fucks that make us come up with a new policy or amend our existing policy, like the John Doe expense report policy or the Jane Smith PTO update or whatever it is, because we need to call out some of these people that just try and make things much more difficult. Oh yeah, we had to amend this policy because John Doe just can't read or tries to invent things where they aren't there, because a handbook would probably be five pages or help, the one page J to HR handbook. Don't be an asshole. That covers everything and that's it. But now we have to expand on that because somebody says well, is this being an asshole if I turn my expense reports in three weeks late with overseas and in Cape Fond, whatever?

Feathers: 13:19

What's the old Jeff Fox for their routine? Like he might be a redneck, so he might be an asshole, but I do love this idea of like naming policies. It's the feathers. Don't microwave your fish in the break room.

Warren: 13:35

Yeah, exactly that's what we need to do.

Feathers: 13:42

This is the Johnson bar of soap on your second shift policy.

Warren: 13:49

Or this is the Smith wash your hands when you leave the restroom policy.

Feathers: 13:56

Oh gosh, it's your restaurant worker.

Warren: 14:03

I don't care if you never have contact with another human being.

Feathers: 14:08

I think not wash your hands when you leave the restroom is just makes me wonder about you Flashing neon signs that come out like over top, like didn't wash hands, didn't wash hands.

Warren: 14:19

Didn't wash hands, like the game of thrones, shame, shame. Bell ding ding ding, shame. You did not wash your hands, shame.

Feathers: 14:29

Anyways, so much game of thrones.

Warren: 14:32

Oh, you're missed out. You missed out, no.

Feathers: 14:37

Okay with like not losing 72 hours of my life to be pissed off at the end or whatever. It was like everybody should have mapped. Last season, after like three television shows burned me with how bad they fucking ended, I was like I'm done, I'll, yeah, I don't care.

Warren: 14:50

I admire folks like yourself who don't watch as much TV as I do, but I'm trying to get all these other hobbies to sort of fix my time. While I'm brewing beer, I'm brewing mead right now. I've got. I've got all sorts of experience. What's going on in my kitchen? I'm doing some woodworking project this weekend. I've got.

Feathers: 15:10

I put it in it's cause you're an empty nester. Now it is.

Warren: 15:14

I put a new front door in my house all by myself, which was beyond my I thought would be well beyond my abilities, having to do the little hinge pockets and things like that. But damn, it turned out pretty good. So the last thing I got, I had my favorite company in the world Come into my office unannounced last week. Chick-fil-a no, that's, that's my. That is my favorite. They're welcome with open arms, but it does have something to do with the burn. Did you bring them?

Feathers: 15:46

jelly packets I want to add some jelly packet I want some chicken minis. Chicken minis and some jelly and some jelly Grape jelly.

Warren: 15:54

Yeah, yeah, and I I probably gained five pounds on the Pete Shake season. I think that's over now. So I think they're onto Assaulted Carmel, which I'll have to try, but that Pete Shake is crack for my soul, anyways. So I normally the receptionist knows I don't accept solicitors, I don't take walk-ins, I don't do anything like that. Well, she comes to my desk and she's trying not to bust out laughing and she says someone's here to see the HR or benefits lady. She's saying, and she's like I was like okay, so I decided I didn't know who it was and it was some sort of solicitor obviously to ask for an HR benefits lady. So I walk out and say hi, I'm Warren, I'm the HR and benefits lady, and I couldn't help but bust out. And then, oh, the reception, she was laughing out loud when I did that.

Warren: 16:50

And once he said he was from Aflac, I said oh, it's not because he called me lady or anything like that, but I have absolutely zero interest in Aflac. And then he asked the ultimate dumb question of why and I just let him have it I said this sales technique of sending someone new to my office every couple of weeks to sell me something, that's just God awful. I said there's many of superior supplemental income products out there. Very fine with the one we have. And I just I was going on and on and I went back at the end and I said and by the way I mentioned, I hate that people from Aflac drop in my office and announce there every couple of weeks. And so we parted ways. I said if there's any way you can take me off your list to stop by, I would really appreciate that. But that was my Aflac story.

Feathers: 17:44

I'd have been like. Your commercials are funny, believe me the fuck alone.

Warren: 17:50

I have so many bad opinions on Aflac and I've one day maybe I'll go, but so if you want to sponsor us, you can contact me. Yeah, it was, but that's reach out to me.

Feathers: 18:06

I'll make sure you get all of Warren's contact information.

Warren: 18:10

Yeah, give me my wife's cell number, we're running exactly You're kidding Dad, make these.

Warren: 18:16

Aflac fuckers, stop man. So anyhow, wanted to keep it short. Today I do have a best practice. Let me find it. It comes to us from David Smith from LinkedIn. He puts these gems out there all of the time. So earlier today, august 30th, he wrote and this is your best practice Corn on the cob is one of the worst things to eat during an important meeting, so that is your best practice. So, thank you, david Smith, I'm going to try. Maybe I'll try reaching out to him when my world comes down a little bit and see if we can get him as a guest, because he has just dropped dead. Hilarious.

Feathers: 18:59

So that's, that's just a good life lesson. Like corn on the cob is just you just need it in front of people Like what's the street corn? Then I'm down with the rest of it.

Warren: 19:10

Yeah, I love my corn on the cob. I'll go around with all the little pernil skins stuck in my teeth and everything like that. Hey fellas, how am I doing All this idiot?

Feathers: 19:22

Yeah exactly he might need Aflac.

Warren: 19:27

Someone's going to hurt me at some point yeah, exactly, or. I'm going to choke on my corn, on the cob.

Feathers: 19:32

Yeah, I'm glad you, I'm glad you're out of the cob part, like.

Warren: 19:37

Lordy, lordy, lordy. So let's see, that was our best practice. Our intro and outro music is double, with the double by the underscore orchestra, and Andrew Colpa is our voice artist who does our intro. So, as always, I'm Warren and this is feathers, and we're helping you survive HR, one At the buck, moment at a time.