Passive Aggressively Talking Like A Pirate

Ever wonder just how far an HR manager could go in reprimanding an employee? Buckle up as we dish out the jaw-dropping tale of a manager who took things too literally and sent an irreverent cake to an employee's home. As we pull back the layers on this wild mishap, we'll also be urging you to leave reviews on Spotify to bolster our efforts in delivering intriguing content.

Bouncing off the cake debacle, we venture into the realms of workplace communication, deciphering the labyrinth of frustrations that often seeps into our work lives. More than just HR horror stories, we're exploring the dawn of anonymous messaging websites and pondering the unusual proposition of monetizing pet messes. Strap in for a whirlwind of real-life anecdotes, "practical" advice, and a good dose of humor to help you navigate the sometimes murky waters of human resources. This is one episode you don't want to miss.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

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.

Speaker 2: 0:16

I don't think I'll make that the title, though.

Speaker 1: 0:20

Right.

Speaker 2: 0:22

Welcome to JadedHR, the podcast by two HR professionals who want to help you get through to workday by saying all the things you're thinking, but say them out loud. I'm Warren and this is Feathers, alrighty. Well, I know the last two times we've said this is going to be a shorty and it wasn't a shorty. I really, really, really do think this one will be a shorty. You know what else the September 19th is? No, it's talk like a pirate day, matey.

Speaker 1: 0:53

Oh, I feel like that's everyday for us.

Speaker 2: 0:55

Yeah, everyday we're pirates, so whatever we say we're talking like pirates, but anyways, I saw too many memes on that today, so that's the joys of having a PTO day today.

Speaker 1: 1:08

I did not.

Speaker 2: 1:11

The cell phone is such an awful tool in the fact that, like I have a meeting at two o'clock, I've sort of wrapped something up at 1.45. Now I'd grab my phone and I'd look at the internet and I'm like, oh gosh, yeah, I have a couple of news stories and now I have a couple of new turns on old stories that I wanted to hit up again.

Speaker 1: 1:36

Well, given that I try to follow up a mountain yesterday hiking, so I mean the expanses of Feathers, always trying to push myself to the limit and not realize they're forgetting my age, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:49

Well, yeah, we were talking. That's the day before my wife and son were not doing the exact trail you did, but we're there and had a good time and my son wants me to go on that trail you fell on. Try to fall off.

Speaker 1: 2:02

I try to fall off of.

Speaker 2: 2:04

Or is he going to push me? Yeah, there you go. Hey dad, look at the edge of this cliff. Yeah, exactly. Well, before we get started, as always, I want to thank our Patreon supporter, halle, our original J2HR Rockstar. You too can support us on Patreon.

Speaker 2: 2:22

I mentioned something about Spotify reviews. Then I go on Spotify and see we have more reviews there than on Apple and we've got like a 4.8 rating. But they don't allow you leave comments. So thank you for all the Spotify reviews. I did look internationally. I didn't see any new international reviews. So get those out there. We really appreciate them and remember I'll read them. Good or bad, I'll read them. So just let us know. Thank you for the reviews Can support us online through Buy A Severe or Patreon. Check them out. The links are in our show notes. Before I get well, actually, I'll just dive in. How many times have you wanted to tell an employee to just basically eat a dick and kanji for a cool? Get the hell out. How many times? And if you can quantify it by as in per day, per week, per month?

Speaker 1: 3:19

We're going to quantify it in that capacity. Let's see how old am I? How many days have I been working throughout my life? I'll list for the over-end right around 12,000, probably. Yeah, I worked in retail, just like you, so that's on the outside of HR. I worked retail outside of HR and I wanted to tell people you're a fucking dick. Four or five times a day.

Speaker 2: 3:44

Yeah, well, a Portland property maintenance management company manager finally did exactly that. But not only did she do that, wait till you hear this story. This comes to us from KATU in Portland, oregon, dated 9-11. This actually happened in 9-11, 2023. This happened in May of 2022.

Speaker 2: 4:08

The Portland property manager HR manager finally did it. She told a janitorial operation managers at the company, well, she sent him a large cake. It was shaped like a penis in a scrotum with the message eat a dick on the inside cover. And it was sent by a supervisory employee. But she stupidly, more mistakenly or whatever you want to say left her own name on the return address of the offensive package. And at first she was admitting or denying. Excuse me, she was denying that she was the one that sent it, but her name's right here on the return address. So she later admitted to it, but earlier she called this person a huge dick in front of management, just before this incident. But the employee it was sent to his home, he opened it in front of his wife and children and he is now suing his company.

Speaker 2: 5:09

We say all the things you want to say, but we say them out loud on a podcast. You don't? This is the safe place we talk about in the intro. Welcome to our little safe zone. You can say that here, but you don't say it in real life and you certainly don't email them a dick cake to their house with your return address on it, especially right after you just told them they were a huge dick In a management meeting just before the incident.

Speaker 1: 5:39

I just want to like think about what's going through that person's head. They're like little snively, like in the corner going yes, this is the greatest comeback, this is the greatest thing ever. And then, oh fuck, I got caught.

Speaker 2: 5:49

Exactly, but the company upper management said they would receive an apology and all this other stuff he never did, and so yeah, he is suing them and I got a feeling he's going to make, he's going to win this one. I don't see.

Speaker 1: 6:06

I kind of want to be the attorney on that case. I'm sorry. What?

Speaker 2: 6:09

Told you a dick and we got proof.

Speaker 1: 6:11

Yeah, I got this.

Speaker 2: 6:14

I got the proof. I got a return address. Probably got a credit card authorization number or a receipt on it. Oh yeah, we're good.

Speaker 1: 6:21

I got this one. I got this one. That's like the one time I want to be a lawyer.

Speaker 2: 6:28

When it's easy, when everything's lined up perfectly Right. So well, I'm going to. I have some things to talk about that are updates to things we've covered. Even one of them was season one we covered, but back in May of this year that was BF before Feathers BF. But the one that was B whatever, A, F, whatever we would say DF during Feathers. Df. Yeah, I don't think that's any better, but anyways, what is our favorite restaurant on Jaded HR?

Speaker 1: 7:08

There are so many, but I'm going to go with that Chipotle place.

Speaker 2: 7:11

Yes, we've never mentioned any employer, more than we've mentioned Chipotle. So back in May we talked about New Jersey restaurants being fined, just actually the number was $7.75 million. They were fined for child labor law abuse. Well, the Washington DC district attorney said hey, let me look and see what's going on in Washington DC. They found all sorts of labor violations. I should say this comes to us from HR Dive, an article by Julie Littman on September 6th of this year. But the Attorney General decided they would look into the 20 Washington DC Chipotle restaurants and they found a host of child labor violations, including children working past 10 PM, working more than eight hours in a day, working over 48 hours a week and working more than six days straight. So Chipotle decided that they like doing this. Actually they wrote the quote is Chipotle believes that hiring employees as young as 16 provides young workers with a good career experience, an opportunity to grow within the workplace, as Laurie Shullow, chipotle's Chief Corporate Affairs Officer, wrote.

Speaker 2: 8:36

Here's my thing they just got fined by New Jersey. They just got fined in DC or they settled in DC, and I didn't write down the amount of what they settled for, but I didn't know this until reading the article that Chipotle is not a franchise operation, where you have one whacked out franchise owner who's doing stupid shit, that and bringing down the company names. No, all the restaurants are corporate owned. So this is like. You can't have that plausible deniability. Oh, we train our managers that our franchise is. No, these are corporate. All Chipotle stores are corporately owned. So if it's happening in these two districts, I can only imagine that there's going to be a just a full buttload of attorney generals now looking into this and they're going to be settling or being find out the yin-yang as they continue to look at it.

Speaker 1: 9:35

But wow, Laurie, you're less than the first time. It's hard for me to fathom that large of an operation, especially in a restaurant, is actually all corporate owned.

Speaker 2: 9:47

Right, other similar restaurants, like Applebee's and things like that. They're franchises, but they're all corporately owned stores, according to the article on HR drive. So, anyway, that was interesting, but that was an article, a callback to an article we talked about in May. Well, john Hyman wrote on LinkedIn on September 13th, just last week, about episode or I don't know the episode number, but season one. Patrick and I talked about the Tyson's managers who were placing bets on who was going to get COVID and things like that. Well, and all those managers rightfully got fired. Well, I'll read some of what John wrote. If you fire a group of managers caught On caught betting on which of their employees would get six with COVID, you probably don't want to pay them a year-end bonus, but that doesn't mean that they won't try via lawsuit and that's what a price. Precisely what happened at Tyson's foods. In late 2020, tyson's foods fired seven managers caught running such a betting pool. At the time, more than a thousand Tyson employees had fallen ill and six had died. Not content with leaving well enough alone, five of the seven sued Tyson's foods, claiming the company owed them a bonus payment pursuant to the company's annual incentive plan, and that lawsuit went absolutely nowhere. So on in.

Speaker 2: 11:21

John mentioned this. I didn't write it in the article, but judges and Juries are humans too. If you're just being a complete douchebag, they're not gonna have any sympathy, even if you're in a gray area of the law. They're like you're betting on people potentially dying. What's what's the under over Born? Dying this week? I don't know, that's just, it's just crazy. So yeah, but a Side topic not on my list that John Hyman did put out today, september 19th is today the a new new entry into his worst employer list, which I'll probably talk about, but anyways. So this article comes to us from life hacker calm and I like this article and it's written by Elizabeth Yuko on 9, 15th and life hacker calm. She talks about the survey by preply survey company suggesting that people hate receiving unnecessarily Necessary reminders more than any kind of message.

Speaker 2: 12:31

So they listed 10 of the most passive aggressive Phrases someone can use in a work email. So here's the 10 number 10, please advise. I don't. I don't see a problem with that. I don't even consider that passive aggressive. I mean, you asked me to do something. I've replied hey, please advise. How do you want me to proceed on this? I need more information. So I don't, I don't consider that passive aggressive, so that's pretty lame. Good thing it's number 10.

Speaker 2: 13:03

Going to number nine, just to clarify it now, that one I can see being passive aggressive. But just to clarify, do your fucking job If that can be passive aggressive. Number eight thanks in advance. I Don't know, I don't, I don't see that one as passive aggressive. You're asking someone to do something? Oh, I appreciate. Thanks in advance. I don't see that as a as a problem, really, but according to this Preply survey, that is one of them. This one is passive aggressive. I might be mistaken, but that one came in at number seven. Might be mistaken, but didn't last week you tell me to do the exact opposite of what you're telling me to do right now? Yeah, number six I thought I'd bring this to your attention. It's like here Hold on, I want to tabletail real quick Thought. I'd bring this to your attention. Anyways, number five going forward, like, okay, you f'd it up, but going forward, you're gonna do it right.

Speaker 1: 14:11

Yeah, that one's, that one's pretty passive, aggressive.

Speaker 2: 14:14

Yeah, here's another one, number four. Just a gentle reminder.

Speaker 1: 14:21

There's nothing gentle about that one.

Speaker 2: 14:24

Just a gentle reminder Turn your time sheets in on time if you expect to get paid On time. Number three as previously mentioned, that's a response to a stupid question that's been answered three or four or five times already. As previously mentioned, pay attention. Number two correct me if I'm wrong.

Speaker 1: 14:53

So that's almost the exact same thing as I might be mistaken, but correct me if I'm wrong.

Speaker 2: 14:58

It's like I'm not wrong, so I'm just gonna put this out there. I know I'm right. So, and the number one is one of my favorites and I have used that. I do use it and, yes, when I do use it, it's intended to be passed. It's not just when it's coming for me, it's just aggressive. There's no passivity in this Number one. Per my last email, or the email you didn't read, you dumb fuck. It blows my mind.

Speaker 2: 15:28

We launched our reviews and people are already asking dumb questions. Before I launched the reviews, I sent out an email with an attachment at FAQ and I did all this other great stuff. I'm like I want to make this foolproof. Actually, I use a particular person's name. I'm going to make this John Doe proof, because if there's something that they can't be messed up, they will mess it up. And yeah, I'm already getting stupid questions. Yeah, that's FAQ number five on my list, but per my last email. So, as I said, this was going to be a shorty and we're holding to that this week. Anything that you want to throw in there before we kill this episode.

Speaker 1: 16:15

If you're going to send somebody like an eat a dick type of thing, cover your bases better.

Speaker 2: 16:21

Yeah, gosh, I absolutely do Use a prepaid credit card or a gift card, and not your own name.

Speaker 1: 16:30

I thought this out people. Yeah, I mean, if burner phones were things you can't have like a burner account?

Speaker 2: 16:37

But that's your best practice. Think a little harder before you send an eat a dick cake to one of your employees. Think harder, but dammit, if we all haven't wanted to do that at some point. So halfway. I want to applaud them, give them the little golf clap Right. Good job, but failed in execution. Great idea, failed in execution.

Speaker 1: 17:00

Sounds like a story of my life.

Speaker 2: 17:02

In the 90s there used to be a website called Just a Hint. Well, there are two such sites, I don't remember. I remember Just a Hint specifically and like if you someone had body odor, you could put their name and their email address into this and it would send them an anonymous email saying Just a Hint, you have very bad body odor. Or Just a Hint, nobody cares to forward all your people are getting really sick of your. Please forward this to 10 people emails Back in the 90s I remember that, and they actually went out of business because they were seen as a threat.

Speaker 2: 17:35

Then there was another place and I think they might still be in business like they would hermetically seal dog shit and you could buy between Chihuahua size dog shit and like great Dane size dog shit and they would hermetically seal so and send it to the person of your choice. So, yeah, I would love to package my dog's mess and make some money off of that. Anyways, anyhow, that's all I've got for today. The intro is Andrew Culpa. Excuse me, the voice artist doing the intro is Andrew Culpa, and the intro and outro music is double the 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.